Liberty or Voting: I'll Take Liberty
Couldn't agree more with the thoughts in this post from TJIC:
I was discussing this with Dan Geer the other day "“ the fact that individual liberty (social, economic, etc.) is the goal, and democracy (political "liberty") is just a tool to get there "¦ and not even a particularly good tool.
I'd be all in favor of a limited constitutional monarchy, if the result was "“ integrated over time "“ more social and economic freedom....
Leftists don't understand this at all "“ they think that the freedom to vote for your choice of bully who will lord it over everyone else is the paramount right, and they don't recognize economic liberty at all.
I said something similar in this post on why I don't necessarily treasure the right to vote.
Now, don't get me wrong, the right to vote in a representative democracy is great and has proven a moderately effective (but not perfect) check on creeping statism. A democracy, however, in and of itself can still be tyrannical. After all, Hitler was voted into power in Germany, and without checks, majorities in a democracy would be free to vote away anything it wanted from the minority "“ their property, their liberty, even their life. Even in the US, majorities vote to curtail the rights of minorities all the time, even when those minorities are not impinging on anyone else. In the US today, 51% of the population have voted to take money and property of the other 49%.
I go on to discuss what things are more important to a good government than voting.
