LewRockwell.com | Theft and slavery are crimes, even if sanctioned by the majority of the people! Theft of the government, by the government, and for the government is somehow accepted and rationalized by the population at large. Why does that majority agree with this theft?
We must analyze the most misrepresented concept nowadays: the concept of democracy.
The conventional use of the term “democracy” conveys a certain disrespect for semantics. Most of us utilize the word democracy when we actually mean other concepts, such as the “rule of law,” “liberty,” “equality before the law,” “individual rights,” “solid institutions,” “justice,” and other concepts that have specific words to designate them. Democracy is, formally, the regime of majority rule, that is, the majority of voters decides whatever it sees fit. Or, as is commonly said, it is the tyranny of the majority – which in practice means the tyranny of the minority: that of the politicians who rule over our lives and property.
The adulteration of meanings has practical consequences. When we say that Brazil is a “democracy,” we assume that we are “rulers of ourselves” – while, in fact, there are still rulers on the one hand, and citizen-subjects on the other. The concept of democracy is employed to obfuscate and confound, with the purpose of having us believe that there is equality among all.
Yet, dumbfounded or not by the smoke and mirrors, why do we suffer so much at the hands of those ruler-governors, if we are many and they are few? Why do we become enchanted with the belief that our ruler-governors are just and benevolent, when we experience evidence otherwise every day, everywhere? Why do we allow so many abuses of liberty and property, if the power the rulers possess is only that which we bestow onto them? Why do we let them treat us like beasts?
The recapture of our rights does not require that we take up arms, demonstrate, or even vote – we are, after all, a much larger legion than our ruler-governors. In a face-to-face combat of the many against the few, where the many fight for the grand prize of liberty, while the few fight for the chance to subjugate the many, it is likely that no shots need be fired before the many are declared the winners. We, therefore, reach the paradoxical conclusion that we don’t reclaim our rights because we do not want to; because we support, explicitly or tacitly, the tyranny inflicted by the ruler-governors. Read More
