Reflections on Elections by Joseph Sobran (who died in 2010) Classic Sobran! November 5, 2002 When the media find a Senate contest involving Walter Mondale the most exciting race in the country, it’s time to admit that democracy hasn’t quite lived up to its billing. Why is this a system we should impose on the rest of the world, when it isn’t even serving us very well? Maybe regime change should begin at home. I know, I know. Democracy is “the worst form of government, except for all the others.” I prefer another definition: “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.” Many people view it as an opportunity to rob their fellow citizens through the ballot-box, with the result that the Land of the Free now pays far higher taxes than its former British masters would have dared to impose. Nor have we abolished taxation without representation. A national debt in the trillions is nothing if not a huge tax imposed on those who can’t vote yet. It has been estimated that a child born today comes into the world owing $100,000 in bills his elders have chosen not to pay. Federal spending has increased by a fifth in just the last two years, and the Heritage Foundation projects spending under the “conservative” Bush administration at levels even higher than those of the liberal Lyndon Johnson administration, when we were paying for the Vietnam War and the Great Society at the same time. So why vote? No matter which party gets elected, we’re going to get pretty much the same result. Your vote will make no difference. It’s not worth the effort to get “informed” about all the candidates in order to cast one ballot among millions. “Your vote counts!” you are told. Well, one economist has reckoned that your chance of getting killed on the way to the polls is greater than the chance that your vote will decide an election. And of course if the election does happen to swing on your single vote, there will be recounts and lawsuits and endless mud-wrestling to reverse the outcome. Finally a court will choose the winner. The myth of the thoughtful citizen “making the difference” with his vote is less and less plausible, as more and more minority blocs, growing rapidly, vote almost unanimously (and often illegally) for the Democrats anyway. Elections have far more to do with social engineering and appeals to greed than with meditation. [Breaker quote: How long can democracy last?]Mass democracy guarantees stupidity. Masses of people, even if they’re individually intelligent, can only act stupidly. “If every Athenian had been a Socrates,” John Stuart Mill observed, “the Athenian Assembly would still have been a mob.”
Posted on: Sun, 18 Jan 2015 20:50:56 +0000
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