The modern political god is called Democracy. We are expected to worship it; to reflexively think of it as the finest – the only – legitimate form of government.
Everything is couched in “democratic” terms. It is “democracy” we (that is, the government) force-feeds to the world, either by shame or by literal force.
To be anti-democratic is the political equivalent of pedophilia.
But what is democracy, in practice?
It is theoretically mass rule; whatever the majority approves, via the vote. This concept is by itself vicious and tyrannical. As explained so brilliantly by an unknown wag, it is two wolves and a sheep taking a vote about what’s for dinner. In a democracy, the individual has no rights – or at least, none that may not be taken away or diminished at any time, whenever the majority so decides.
Does it really matter to the individual whether he is abused by a solitary dictator or millions of little dictators?
But even this is a sham. Though in democratic theory, the vox populi rules – in actual fact, it is almost always a minority – and not infrequently, a single individual – that determines (and implements) policy.
Consider the case of Abraham Lincoln – America’s first dictator.
In the election of 1861, this man got about 40 percent of the vote. The majority of the country voted for someone else. (Indeed, if you break it down some more, Lincoln was affirmed by an even smaller minority; the 40 percent representing a fraction of the country’s total adult population. Many people did not vote at all- and at the time, women and blacks couldn’t vote for anyone.)
Yet this man took it upon himself to launch a war against the Southern States, who had peaceably chosen to depart the federal union after their elected representatives – the majority – chose to take that course.
Lincoln – the Democratic God – could not abide such democracy in action and spent the next four years brutally stomping the South to make his point clear.
Since that time, American “democratic” politics has followed the same course. The minority that actually controls the machinery of government pursues whatever course of action it wishes, after having gone through the make-believe process of “democracy.”
The masses are permitted to vote, but they are not permitted any real choice.
George W. Bush (to cite just one recent example) decided that America would go to war in Iraq. Not even the thin democratic veneer of a congressional declaration of war was needed, such is the degenerated state of this country and its understanding of rights and process as defined in that “god-damned piece of paper” (Bush’s words) called the Constitution.
Citizens of the old Soviet Union were permitted the vote, too.
And it is well worth recalling that most of the communist totalitarian states habitually referred to themselves as democracies.
Voting was – and is – a very clever means of legitimizing one-party rule (or, as in our case, a duopoly). Specific elected individuals may come and go, but the system is a permanent fixture.
Most average people, meanwhile,have come to accept – and even support – any outrage – so long as it has been “voted” on. People who would be appalled to discover their next-door neighbor spent his evenings mugging people have no problem mugging him – provided it is voted on first.
The small elite that actually runs our government – and the government in any democratic state – is well aware of this and appreciates the importance of convincing the average citizen that he “has a say,” because after all, he votes.
Left unmentioned is the truth that he in fact exercises no real control over anything; that at best, he can band together with others to effect some temporary change around the edges of the system before some other group, with greater numbers on its side, effects change in the opposite direction. But the basic template – coercion; submerging of the individual – never changes. The power of the state never diminishes. Every individual finds himself at war with every other individual in a desperate battle to protect himself against the depredations of his neighbors – with the elite that controls it all splitting the difference and holding tightly onto all the power.
It is no coincidence that as the world becomes ever more “democratic” in form, it also becomes ever more tyrannical.
Not perhaps in the open, jackbooted way that the old centralized states (Nazi Germany being the stereotype) were; that was too obvious – too crude. The people were not given the illusion of consent.
Far better to wear a velvet glove over the iron fist. Let the masses think they exercise control, because after all, they can vote. But when the only question they may vote on is whether statism will march a little to the left or a little to the right, they have no more real voice than a citizen of the Greater German Reich.
This is the sinister genius of “democracy” – and the mortal danger to human liberty the Founding Fathers (at least, most of them) tried (but failed) to chain to the floor.
It is also why you almost never hear the word republic anymore. Certainly not in media intended for mass consumption. “Democracy” is the knacker’s call; the song that cattle hear as they are marched toward the chute.
A republic – in which some things are never subject to a vote – is what we once had but have given away.
Whether we will ever get it back remains to be seen. I rather doubt it. The masses don’t want such a thing, especially once it is explained to them. This includes, I suspect, a considerable cohort of the Tea Party movement. Many of these people decry “wasteful spending” – and “big government” – but would arise in uproar if, say, it were suggested that (just one example) “their” Social Security is welfare just like an EBT card – and just as illegitimate.
Few would agree that a man’s land, once paid for, ought to be his – and inviolate. “The children” need public schools, so the government needs to impose taxes on real estate… taxes imposed even on people who have no kids, or who school their kids outside of the public system. Thus we never really own anything; even after we’ve paid off the private bank that held our mortgage, we must endlessly pay rent to the state in the form of taxes on real property.
And so it goes.
It is all very democratic.
But it is very far from being free.
The fact is that the United States was never a *national* republic, but an *international* one among the 13 original states. Lincoln expressly denied this, in order to turn the republic into an empire– which is why he’s called “America’s Caesar” by Greg Durand. However due to the fact that he did it by denying the sovereignty of the individual states, folowed by Total War, totalitarian censorship and crimes against humanity, he better fits the title of “America’s Hitler.” As Adolph himself wrote in “Mein Kampf:”
“What is a federated state?
By a federated state we understand a league of sovereign states which band together of their own free will, on the strength of their sovereignty; ceding to the totality that share of their particular sovereign rights which makes possible and guarantees the existence of the common federation.
In practice this theoretical formulation does not apply entirely to any of the federated states existing on earth today. Least of all to the American Union, where, as far as the overwhelming part of the individual states are concerned, there can be no question of any original sovereignty, but, on the contrary, many of them were sketched into the total area of the Union in the course of time, so to speak. Hence in the individual states of the American Union we have mostly to do with smaller and larger territories, formed for technical, administrative reasons, and, often marked out with a ruler, states which previously had not and could not have possessed any state sovereignty of their own. For it was not these states that had formed the Union, on the contrary it was the Union which formed a great part of such so-called states. The very extensive special rights granted, or rather assigned, to the individual territories are not only in keeping with the whole character of this federation of states, but above all with the size of its area, its spatial dimensions which approach the scope of a continent. And so, as far as the states of the American Union are concerned, we cannot speak of their state sovereignty, but only of their constitutionally established and guaranteed rights, or better, perhaps, privileges.”
Compare this to Lincoln’s July 4, 1861 War Address to Congress:
“Our States have neither more, nor less power, than that reserved to them, in the Union, by the Constitution—no one of them ever having been a State out of the Union.”
Of course this ignores that those “reserved powers” expressly follows those not *delegated* to the Union, by the individual states– but Lincoln was never one to let the facts stop him, as he went on to revise history:
“in, and by, the Declaration of Independence. Therein the “United Colonies’’ were declared to be “Free and Independent States’’; but, even then, the object plainly was not to declare their independence of one another, or of the Union; but directly the contrary, as their mutual pledge, and their mutual action, before, at the time, and afterwards, abundantly show. The express plighting of faith, by each and all of the original thirteen, in the Articles of Confederation, two years later, that the Union shall be perpetual, is most conclusive. Having never been States, either in substance, or in name, outside of the Union, whence this magical omnipotence of “State rights,’’ asserting a claim of power to lawfully destroy the Union itself?”
In reality, however, the original “Union” was simply an *alliance* among the colonies to *achieve* independence as free, sovereign and independent *states*; it’s the “Union” that never had any power of its own. For the states were each declared individually sovereign, and they simply *delegated* powers to the Union: they never relinquished their individual sovereignty, but in fact expressly *retained* it under the Articles of Confederation:
“Article II. Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every Power, Jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.”
But Lincold had an answer to any and all facts: the suspension of habeas corpus, and the imprisonment without trial– and often, the third-degree *torture*– of all those who spoke or printed openly against him.
And the rest is history: the federal government has claimed national authority over the states ever since, and has accredited and employed lapdog “court-historians” who validate its authority– in defiance of the facts.
As such, we live under an imperial dictatorship which has *no* valid authority over us, save for brute force– and which was established no differently than Hitler’s.
Brian, an excellent overview of how it happened. I’ve always understood the Lincoln presidency to be the end of the republic but it’s useful to have the exact words quoted in a concise and understandable way.
Great article and good read! Nicely done.
Thanks!
If you haven’t read “The Real Lincoln” by Tom DiLorenzo, I highly recommend it.
All accounts of Lincoln’s tyranny, are meaningless without asserting the states as sovereign nations unto themselves; for this is the only basis by which the states had a “right of secession.”
Dilorenzo and others, however, clearly fail to use this one essential phrase: i.e. “sovereign nations–;” and so they not only fail to make their case against Lincoln, but they implicitly *concede* his claims of national authority over the states.
Rather, they too-often base their case on the original 13 colonies, and its secession from Great Britain; however this was clearly a *revolution,* and so was contingent on military victory.
Unfortunately, most authors on the subject– from either side– seem illiterate on international law, and the nature of national sovereignty; for this reason, they make (mountainous) *qualitative* arguments about “the right to secession–” when the issue is actually purely *quantitative,* regarding the simple fact of whether or not the states were sovereign nations unto themselves.
This issue puts an end to all others: however due to this lack of literacy on the topic, we see endless writings on the matter… all of which miss the essential mark– i.e. whether or not the states were sovereign nations, under the Constitution.
That’s the one key issue in all of the war– i.e. whether or not it was a civil war, like the war of 1776… or a war of imperialism against sovereign nations, waged by duplicity, like the Gulf War in which Hussein claimed that Kuwait was the legal property of Iraq.
Yes. Once – if – the truth about “Honest Abe” (and the Republican Party) is ever widely known, we may have a shot at restoring the Republic.
PS: Welcome to the site; if you like it, please help spread the word!
Wow, I am impressed. From the git go we have been told to worship Lincoln and yet the truth cannot be denied. He ruthlessly crushed a constitutionally legitimate secession.
IMHO “Democracies”, whoops, what I meant to say “Demoncrazies” are just that–“Shitholes” and all sorts of other “expletives deleted.” However, can anyone suggest a form of government that would really work and guarantee our “Basic Human Rights?” Remember, a “Republic” is a “Limited Democracy” in which only a few “Priveleged or Choice Elite” get to “Vote,” which is in itself not conducive to guaranteeing “Basic Human Rights.”
Yes, anarchy! No, not the rock-throwing, anti-property fanatics more prone to communism that are often portrayed as “anarchists” but true anarchy is the absence of rulers . . . and NOT the absence of rules, since he who owns a property (including oneself) has the right to impose whatever rules he deems appropriate for the use of that property. Read some Murray Rothbard to get a better and more fuller understanding of the concept. Whenever you have rulers – regardless of the system – you will have immoral action and corruption, which is why ALL States fail. The idea of a limited govt. was supposedly the idea behind the U.S. Constitution, but of course, govt. makes all the rules, so it never stays small for long. This albatross we have today is such a gross distortion of the Founders intent that they would have never pledged their lives or sacred honor to have the amerika of Ovomit and the other criminals that have destroyed it – the worst being those of the 20th Century and beyond – Wilson, FDR, and LBJ created more damage to the principles of freedom than any outside attack could have provided! Mob rule – democracy – is just a deception at best. Like Mark Twain said, “If voting was important, they wouldn’t let us do it!”