Category Archives: Egalitarianism

NEW COLUMN: How Democracy Made Us Dumb

America, Ancient History, Democracy, Democrats, Egalitarianism, Elections, History

NEW COLUMN IS “How Democracy Made Us Dumb.” It’s currently on WND.COM and The Unz Review.

An excerpt:

From the riffs of outrage coming from the Democrats and their demos over “our democracy” betrayed, infiltrated even destroyed—you’d never know that a rich vein of thinking in opposition to democracy runs through Western intellectual thought, and that those familiar with it would be tempted to say “good riddance.”

Voicing opposition to democracy is just not done in politically polite circles, conservative and liberal alike.

For this reason, the Mises Institute’s Circle in Seattle, an annual gathering, represented a break from the pack.

The Mises Institute is the foremost think tank working to advance free-market economics from the perspective of the Austrian School of Economics. It is devoted to peace, prosperity, and private property, implicit in which is the demotion of raw democracy, the state, and its welfare-warfare machine.

This year, amid presentations that explained “Why American Democracy Fails,” it fell to me to speak to “How Democracy Made Us Dumb.” (Oh yes! Reality on the ground was not candy-coated.)

Some of the wide-ranging observations I made about the dumbing down inherent in democracy were drawn from the Founding Fathers and the ancients.

A tenet of the American democracy is to deify youth and diminish adults. To counter that, I’ll start with the ancients.

The Athenian philosophers disdained democracy. Deeply so. They held that democracy “distrusts ability and has a reverence for numbers over knowledge.” (Will Durant, “The Story of Philosophy,” New York, New York, 1961, p. 10.)

Certainly, among the ancients who mattered, there was a keen contempt for “a mob-led, passion-ridden democracy.” The complaint among Athenians who occupied themselves with thinking and debating was that “there would be chaos where there is no thought,” and that “it was a base superstition that numbers give wisdom. On the contrary, it is universally seen that men in crowds are more foolish, violent and cruel than men separate and alone.” (p. 11)

Underground already then, because so subversive—anti-democratic thinking was the aristocratic gospel in Athens. Socrates (born in 470 B.C.) was the intellectual leader against democracy and for the even-then hated aristocratic philosophy. Socrates’ acolytes, young and brilliant, questioned the “specious replacement of the old virtues by unsocial intelligence.”

The proof of the foolish, violent and cruel nature of the crowds is that the crowds, not the judges, insisted on making Socrates the first martyr of philosophy. He drank the poison at the behest of the people.

No wonder Plato, Socrates’ most gifted student, harbored such scorn for democracy and hatred for the mob—so extreme that it led this controversial genius to resolve that democracy must be destroyed, to be replaced by his planned society; “the rule of the wisest and the best, who would have to be discovered and enabled.” …

READ THE REST. NEW COLUMN, “How Democracy Made Us Dumb,” is currently on WND.COM and The Unz Review.

UPDATED (8/6/019): NEW COLUMN: We Aren’t Americans; We ARE The World (Part II)

Democrats, Egalitarianism, Globalism, IMMIGRATION, Nationalism, Nationhood, Republicans

NEW COLUMN (with YouTube), “We Aren’t Americans; We ARE The World (Part II),” is on The Unz Review and Townhall.com.

Part I, “Do We Still Have A Country,” is on WND.COM this week.

Excerpt from “We Aren’t Americans; We ARE The World (Part II)”:

Asked and answered in part 1 of this inquiry was the following question:

“Do we still have a country, when every single passive, non-aggressive act taken to repel people crossing into our country is considered de facto illegal, or inhumane, or in violation of international and U.S. law, or in contraventions of some hidden clause in the U.S. Constitution.”

Table a new law limiting trespass en masse, or attempt to enforce any of the many immigration laws already in the United States Code, and this is deemed by a plurality in D.C. to be problematic, if not outright diabolical.

Why do I say most in the ruling class? Because Republicans in power seldom ever fulfill their obligation to enforce America’s existing tough immigration laws.

You mean you didn’t know there were immigration laws aplenty already on the books? My point exactly. No representative tells you about the laws he or she has sworn to uphold, and hasn’t. Few representatives will fight to enforce these laws, or retaliate when judges routinely nullify immigration law.

Rather, Republicans spend their term on their knees, obsequiously apologizing, beating on breast, for the rare instances where immigration law is enforced.

Alas, most every U.S. law removing trespassers and interlopers is de facto unenforced because the multicultural noise machine—enabled by a complicit Administrative State and inept, indifferent legislators—sets the tone in this country.

Using their harshest Hitler hyperbole, the activists tell you that enforcement is not merely problematic, but Nazi-like, practically a war crime.

Here’s the nub of the matter: The noise makers want you to believe that to distinguish America from The World is immoral.

Why?

Because for America to be America, the World must be able to land in the U.S. and, forthwith, lodge claims against its citizens.

To deny these trespassers and claims-makers, first, their creature comforts, next, their welfare rights, is a violation of The World’s natural right to reside in a territory that belongs to The World.

Or, as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez put it, “All people should be free to be here.” …

YouTube Version:

READ THE REST.  NEW COLUMN (with YouTube), “We Aren’t Americans; We ARE The World (Part II),” is on The Unz Review and Townhall.com.

UPDATE (8/6/019): Smart readers got it:

Alexander Gofen • 9 days ago • edited

This is a text of the prophetic caliber and depth, accurate to every word.

Indeed, Repoops spend their term on their knees, accurately playing the role assigned to them. Absolute lack of the organized opposition, nor any dissent, now became the reality of this former beacon of the former Free world, while “we the sheeple” are conditioned to run as a deer between two lights of the duopoly… Nothing to add, just to repeat in bold:

The country is no longer, because, for one, there is nothing to separate citizens from The World. For another, the country’s representatives are representing The World, not their constituents.

MORE At Townhall.com

COLUMN: Bernie’s Degeneracy: That’s Democracy For Ya

Conservatism, Democracy, Democrats, Egalitarianism, History, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Nationhood, Political Philosophy

COLUMN: “Bernie’s Degeneracy: That’s Democracy For Ya” is now on Townhall.com.  An excerpt:

BERNIE SANDERS, the senator from Vermont, said he thinks “everyone should have the right to vote—even the Boston Marathon bomber … even for terrible people, because once you start chipping away and you say, ‘Well, that guy committed a terrible crime, not going to let him vote,’ you’re running down a slippery slope.”

Bernie is right about a “slippery slope.” But the befuddled Bernie is worried about the wrong slope.

Denying the vote to some and conferring it on others is not a “slippery slope.” It’s exercising good judgment.

Insisting that the vote in America belongs to everyone, irrespective: now that’s a slippery slope, down which the slide is well underway.

As it stands, there are almost no moral or ethical obligations attached to citizenship in our near-unfettered Democracy.

Multiculturalism means that you confer political privileges on many an individual whose illiberal practices run counter to, even undermine, the American political tradition.

Radical leaders across the U.S. quite seriously consider Illegal immigrants as candidates for the vote—and for every other financial benefit that comes from the work of American citizens.

The rights of all able-bodied idle individuals to an income derived from labor not their own: That, too, is a debate that has arisen in democracy, where the demos rules like a despot.

But then moral degeneracy is inherent in raw democracy. The best political thinkers, including America’s constitution-makers, warned a long time ago that mass, egalitarian society would thus degenerate.

What Bernie Sanders prescribes for the country—unconditional voting—is but an extension of “mass franchise,” which was feared by the greatest thinkers on Democracy. Prime Minister George Canning of Britain, for instance. …

… READ “Bernie’s Degeneracy: That’s Democracy For Ya” on Townhall.com. 

NEW COLUMN: Bernie’s Degeneracy: That’s Democracy For Ya

Conservatism, Constitution, Democracy, Democrats, Egalitarianism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Morality, Political Philosophy

NEW COLUMN, “Bernie’s Degeneracy: That’s Democracy For Ya,” is now on WND.COM and the Unz Review.

An excerpt:

BERNIE SANDERS, the senator from Vermont, said he thinks “everyone should have the right to vote—even the Boston Marathon bomber … even for terrible people, because once you start chipping away and you say, ‘Well, that guy committed a terrible crime, not going to let him vote,’ you’re running down a slippery slope.”

Bernie is right about a “slippery slope.” But the befuddled Bernie is worried about the wrong slope.

Denying the vote to some and conferring it on others is not a “slippery slope.” It’s exercising good judgment.

Insisting that the vote in America belongs to everyone, irrespective: now that’s a slippery slope, down which the slide is well underway.

As it stands, there are almost no moral or ethical obligations attached to citizenship in our near-unfettered Democracy.

Multiculturalism means that you confer political privileges on many an individual whose illiberal practices run counter to, even undermine, the American political tradition.

Radical leaders across the U.S. quite seriously consider Illegal immigrants as candidates for the vote—and for every other financial benefit that comes from the work of American citizens.

The rights of all able-bodied idle individuals to an income derived from labor not their own: That, too, is a debate that has arisen in democracy, where the demos rules like a despot.

But then moral degeneracy is inherent in raw democracy. The best political thinkers, including America’s constitution-makers, warned a long time ago that mass, egalitarian society would thus degenerate.

What Bernie Sanders prescribes for the country—unconditional voting—is but an extension of “mass franchise,” which was feared by the greatest thinkers on Democracy. Prime Minister George Canning of Britain, for instance. …

… READ THE REST. NEW COLUMN, “Bernie’s Degeneracy: That’s Democracy For Ya,” is now on WND.COM and the Unz Review.