printAfter visiting South Africa, Eli Kedourie, “noted student of nationalism,” wrote in the South Africa International:
“If majority and minority are perpetual, then government ceases to have a mediatory or remedial function, and becomes an instrument of perpetual oppression of the minority by the majority. … The worst effects of the tyranny of the majority are seen when parliamentary government on the unalloyed Westminster model is introduced into countries divided by religion or language or race. Such for example was the case of Iraq … where an extremely heterogeneous society came to be endowed with constitutions which made no provision for diversity, and where the result was tyranny of one groups over the other groups in the society.”
Kedourie was not the only sensible scholar who pointed out the obvious. But that’s history—South Africa is history.
Why are such voices not heeded today? America’s make-up is changing. Through mass immigration, it too is moving toward becoming a racially and ethnically stratified country, in which democracy will be ever ruthlessly wielded as a weapon of the usurping majority. Yet the din for democracy grows among the conservative and neoconservative cadre.
From “Exporting Democracy”:
Political democracy on the other hand, is a “leftist” idea. Why? Because it inevitably leads to a massive consolidation of power, centralized especially in the national government.
Democracy, like leftism, is un-American. It is, in fact, a foreign pollutant that wafted over the Atlantic from the French Revolution. And like a wild weed, it took root in the republic’s soil, growing out of control.
Update I (July 2): The post addresses a specific aspect that makes democratic mass-society unworkable. The premise of Mr. Kraus, hereunder, is that all cultures are equally prone to the principles of the Enlightenment. Nothing a little show of Western pride won’t fix. I vehemently disagree. The historical population of America is becoming progressively more ignorant of the principles of freedom by the day. But dissolving the American people and electing another—which is what America’s centrally planned immigration policy aims at—will ensure freedom is never revived, as immigration policies privilege Third World immigrants. Please refer to my immigration archive. Democracy, for what it’s worth, works in small, relatively homogeneous societies, like Denmark (although that country too is becoming too riven by religious and racial strife to work).
Update II: Mr. Kraus, there is nothing “unorganized” about the “multicultural noise machine.” Identity politics is highly organized and emasculating. If the latest affirmative action case tells you anything it is that by nature, the Anglo-American WASP tends to go quietly into that good night. He is expected to so do. (In fact, others of their ilk on this blog have reprimanded Ricci for daring to seek redress, instead of doing what WASPS do; hunker down and get used to losing.)
Empires have been decimated by the barbarians from within and without. You can’t do much about your own barbarians, except try and educate them. But why import more?
Ilana,
Here in Europe, I share your concern about immigration and dangers to liberty in the numerous cracks within the institutional framework of political democracy. But neither immigration nor democracy is the fundamental problem to be solved by restrictions or total abandonment.
The West is unconscious of its values and ideas and it loses them by the same process of unconscious stupor and resignation. Its active enemies on the left are intellectually decimated and in any case do not have a vision to offer. Everything distinctly Western is vanishing from school and university curricula, popular culture, minds and hearts. This development shows that those values and ideas were never, in fact, held firmly and consciously, even by European Americans.
Unlike its enemies on the left and religious movements, the classical liberals have always lacked the visible, mass expressions of pride for Western values and achievements. Stop apologizing, be consciously proud of distinctly Western achievements, organize an active pro-Western (capitalist) propaganda in form of exhibitions, marches, parades, mass demonstrations, public readings, active university groups, even youth camps that would explain and extol the essence and achievements of the West.
Do not compromise with open enemies and alleged friends in any way, especially on the questions of faith, reason, and science.
At least we’ve got despotism to look forward to. Oh, wait.
The “Din for Democracy” is rising in Honduras as well.
The cream of the world’s supreme leaders, Barack Obama, said: “President Zelaya was democratically elected, he had not yet completed his term. We believe that the coup was not legal and that President Zelaya remains the President of Honduras, the democratically elected president there.”
Never mind that this was the strangest “coup” in human history, the military having been ordered to arrest Zelaya by the Honduran Supreme Court and the Honduran Attorney General.
Immediately after the “coup” the rightful, i.e., constitutional successor to the presidency, assumed power and the Honduran congress affirmed that Zelaya’s ouster had been proper.
Apparently Zelaya had attempted to conduct an unauthorized and unconstitutional referendum to amend the Honduran constitution, which forbids the President from succeeding himself. (In a magnanimous gesture of goodwill, Hugo Chavez had printed up the ballots.)
Despite his stance against “meddling” in the affairs of sovereign nations during the Iran uprising, Obama saw fit to meddle in Honduran affairs.
According to the Washington Post, “U.S. officials had tried ahead of time to avert the coup, warning the Honduran military and politicians against suspending democratic order.”
Not to worry. The whole mess is likely to be settled by a US/UN mandated super-democratic election, supervised by that guru of democracy, Jimmy Carter.
Democratically elected supreme leaders are forever.
Amending a constitution by fiat? That’s change we can believe in.
limiting immigration may well be a viable policy option, but only in the short-run. The erosion of Western values, everywhere, has been largely accomplished without the aid from without.
Mass immigration will only accelerate the decline, no doubt about that. The utterly disgusting spectacle of once proud peoples castrated by political correctness is probably by far the more powerful contributing factor than the sheer masses of illiterate, unorganized, and destitute immigrants.
Madison: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.”
233 years ago this Saturday, an enlightened Congress tried to create a unified set of 13 sovereign republics whose purpose was to “secure our rights” for a largely moral people capable of self-government with some minimal government to restrain the rapists, thieves, and other non-angels. Now we have a DEMOCRACY where groups of competing statists – racial groups, agribusiness lobbyists, trade associations etc. – compete to tyrannize and plunder the sheep while pandering for their “votes”. Sadly, the Obamas and Bushes are not angels but we have shed any real controls on these popularly-elected Global Emperors. The “dead white males” who fought to free us from the tyranny of a King and his corrupt East India Company and a foreign policy of “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations — entangling alliances with none.” would be appalled by our Messiah, the governmental-assisted mercantilist “private sector”, and our micromanaged World Government. What are we celebrating Saturday other than a faint memory of a country gone astray and choking to death on its own DEMOCRACY?