Our democracy is at stake, and it's about time!
In a fund-raising trip to Utah last year, Joe Biden claimed that President Trump and his voters are pushing our country to the brink. “Our democracy is at stake,” he said. Of course he wasn’t the first to say that. Do a quick search for those words in quotation marks and you’ll see thousands of results, including Jack Black’s embarrassing appearance at a recent Joe Biden fundraiser.
Is democracy really at stake as the Democrats claim? Let’s hope so.
Democracy, simply put, is rule by the majority.1 An example of democracy in action might be a lynch mob. “There’s only one dissenting vote, and he’s at the end of a rope.” The Rwandan genocide was conceived by Rwanda's majority Hutu population who tried to exterminate the minority Tutsi population.2 So genocide is an example of what can happen under majority rule democracy. Even China calls itself a democracy3, and if the definition we use is simply majority rule, are they wrong? The communist party has a firm majority.
Clearly, rule by the majority is dangerous, but Democrats seem quite fond of it.
For an example, Democrats in Washington state have been trying to lower the vote threshold to 50% to pass school bond issues. Michelle Nims, a former president of Washington state Parent-Teacher Association, bemoaned, “A minority of voters is being allowed to prevent school districts from addressing student safety” etc. 4
That minority of voters has good reason to vote against a school bond. They are the homeowners who will have to pay thousands of extra dollars out-of-pocket over the years for increased property taxes if a school bond is passed. That minority is also likely wiser to the way that school bonds work. See my article about Tacoma’s recent school bond that passed under questionable circumstances. In the case of school bonds, the minority has more at stake than the majority. Therefore, doesn’t the minority have the right not to be pushed around by the majority?
Protecting minorities from the majority is exactly what America’s system of government was set up to do. That’s why we have a republic, not a democracy! “A republic is a limited democracy. It’s a form of government based upon the principle of limited majority rule. Limited so that the minority, even a minority of one, can be protected against the whims and passions of the majority” (see footnote 1).
In Washington state, the whims and passions of the Democrat majority run roughshod over the rights of minorities for years. In 2023-24 Dems voted unanimously for legislation that could let sex offenders off community supervision, reduce prison sentences for dangerous offenders, shut down rural hospitals if they don’t want to provide sex-change surgeries or abortions, and give the governor power to decertify county sheriffs.
If Democrats are allowed to continue their rampage, it seems likely that they will soon get rid of the electoral college, which was designed to protect us from, well, democracy. According to Pew Research, 82% of Democrats believe the election of a president should be by majority vote, not by electoral college:
The reason that the Constitution calls for this extra layer [electoral college], rather than just providing for the direct election of the president, is that most of the nation’s founders were actually rather afraid of democracy. James Madison worried about what he called “factions,” which he defined as groups of citizens who have a common interest in some proposal that would either violate the rights of other citizens or would harm the nation as a whole. Madison’s fear – which Alexis de Tocqueville later dubbed “the tyranny of the majority” – was that a faction could grow to encompass more than 50 percent of the population, at which point it could “sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens.” Madison has a solution for tyranny of the majority: “A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect, and promises the cure for which we are seeking.” (source)
I would like to think that the average Democrat just isn’t aware of how oppressive their own party has become, that they are now the tyrants of the majority. But I believe that Democrat politicians do know what’s happening. Majority rules, Dems are a majority, and by George they’re going to use it!
Heaven help us if they get the supermajorities they hope for in 2024.
When Democrat politicians say they are “fighting for our democracy,” what they really mean is they are fighting for their right to squelch minority voices who do not toe the party line.
“And how do you protect the minority from the majority? You right down a set of rules on a sheet of paper. You say this we can do. That we can’t do. At the top of the paper, you write the word Constitution. And everyone agrees to follow the rules no matter what the temptation.” (1)
Vote Republican this year. It’s clear our Constitutional Republic is at stake!
https://x.com/i/status/1807519081136042346
https://www.britannica.com/event/Rwanda-genocide-of-1994
https://thediplomat.com/2021/12/why-is-china-insisting-it-is-a-democracy/
https://www.chronline.com/stories/proposed-law-would-lower-washington-school-bond-election-threshold-to-55,332780
https://washingtonstatestandard.com/2024/03/04/washington-legislature-voting-on-three-citizen-initiatives/