Posted on 07/06/2013 3:58:03 PM PDT by neverdem
Democracy without civil rights is two wolves and sheep deciding on what they are going to eat for dinner.
Remember - the Nazis also won the popular vote.
The quality of any democracy will never exceed the quality of the press. Egypt never had a chance.
That is an excellent point. I would submint the success of the US experiement can be largely attributed to the moral constraints of Christianity evident in many of our Founders and early leaders, and a determination to properly educate the masses during that same time. As both have declined, we lurch towards the tyranny and tribalism that you see in the rest of the world. America has in the past treasured liberty, which protects the most vulnerable minority - the individual. Does anyone really believe any religious or secular minority will be free in Egypt with islam in power, or influencing leaders in that country?
McCarthy is good columnist. This column was awful.
Simply put, the Egyptian people are expected to legitimize their tyrants with elections.
Sound familiar?
I couldn’t agree more. It is our present culture that is our downfall...not the resulting leaders that are elected. Yuri Bezmanov pointed out that after America there is nowhere else to go.
McCarthy’s points are sound, except for one fundamental point: the whole idea the limited government in which the rights of minorities are respected is coextensive with democracy in which popular sovereignty is the decisive feature.
The attempt to make democracy coextensive with limited government is an example of the No True Scotsman fallacy. Democracy is popular sovereignty, period.
One can have limited government in which minority rights are respected even under a theoretically absolute monarchy — Russians use phrases like “when we were free under the Tsars,” thinking of the time after the abolition of serfdom, because unless one publicly attacked the Tsar (or the office of Tsar) or the Church, or had the misfortune to do so privately in the presence of one of the few hundred secret police deployed exclusively in Moscow and St. Petersburg, or committed crimes of the sort universally condemned by all governments and in all societies, basically the Tsarist government left you alone — and as we see in the contrast between pre- and post-17th Amendment America, popular sovereignty is actually a very poor tool for limiting the scope and reach of government.
Exporting “democracy” is a Wilsonian project, and thus part of the baleful legacy of Progressivism. America is the “shining city on the hill” (now tarnished by Progressivism) not because we are democratic, but because we are (were) the first and greatest exemplar of limited government. Admittedly, one needs some democratic elements in a constitution to have reliably limited government (the Christian Emperor who takes his coronation oath seriously and therefore provides limited, freedom-respecting government may go mad or be replaced by one who does not and reigns as a tyrant), but those democratic elements should not be seen as the primary source of limits on government.
They're missing a central point. What distinguishes a culture of liberty is not different human nature in such countries - human nature is a constant - it's the rule of law. What they're describing as 'legitimate democracy' is, in fact, the outcome of a constitutional republic in which the Constitution is the supreme law of the land and followed to the letter.
I accept the Constitution as written, in almost the same spirit as I accept the Bible as written. If God wanted to change the rules, we already know what He would do - He would send someone to add to His Word. If a democracy really wanted to change the rules, it would approve a constitutional amendment through the proper procedure.
The liberals who say we can safely change the interpretation of the Constitution to insert gay "marriage" or abortion in the penumbra are just as destructively wrong as the liberals who say we can safely change the interpretation of the Bible to insert similar sick positions. Such insertions destroy the document and remove all meaning.
Remember the warning of the great Jeanne Kirkpatrick on elections to be wary of: “One man, One vote, One time.”
“Simply put, the Egyptian people are expected to legitimize their tyrants with elections.”
Let’s correct the above sentence:
“Simply put, the American people are expected to legitimize their tyrants with elections”, which is what we did last election.
Gosh, that way of thinking sounds familiar....
Actually, elections ARE democracy - which is why our Founders abhorred it.
America’s value is Freedom.
Democracy is merely the illegal immigrant that made it past the Founders’ fence - The Constitution.
“Democracy without civil rights is two wolves and sheep deciding on what they are going to eat for dinner.
Remember - the Nazis also won the popular vote.”
I like to point out to people that if we had a pure democracy, African-Americans and Jews would have been deported to Africa and Palestine respectively in the 1930’s, because the majority of Americans thought that this was a good idea, according to polls taken at the time. Of course, had they had their way, I would be writing this in German now, if at all.
“I disagree with Andrew’s take on “real democracy”. Marxism is real democracy. What he calls “good democracy” is actually a Republic.”
Agreed-the US does not and never did have a democracy. This is a democratic republic, which, of course, is slipping away.
Dictators love democratic votes—as long as they are: One man, one vote, one time—and then they are in power for life.
“Remember - the Nazis also won the popular vote.”
Actually, no, they didn’t. They achieved only a plurality. Their greatest vote total, in the last election held under Nazi government, was about 44% in March of 1933.
Elections very much ARE democracy. It is just that Democracy is a means suitable to a Judeo Christian based culture or some very small tribal milieux It does not produce results that we would recognize as “democratic” in other environments.
That, of course, doesn’t matter to the conscientious Liberal. For him in other cultures the Process is everything, the result is trivial.
This is the most chaotic, poorly organized and irrational article I have ever seen from Andrew McCarthy. I disagree with him on a lot of things, but I always thought he was capable of writing a coherent article.
This one made no sense.
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