Recognizing the dangers of democracy

Thursday’s decision by the Nine Nazgul (SCOTUS; well, six of the nine) overturning Hawai’i’s insanely-unconstitutional ban on people carrying concealed weapons onto private property open to the public without express permission of the landowner is an important action. One of the best points was the concurring decision by Amy C Barrett:

“While most Hawaiians might prefer that no one carry firearms in public places, a majority’s opposition to a constitutional right is not a permissible basis for restricting it,” she wrote. “After all, ‘[t]he very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy’ and ‘to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials,’” she wrote.

So we have at least one of the Justices that recognizes the evils and dangers of democracy, of majority rule. This is one of the reasons that a republic is at least tolerable and a democracy is intolerable for lovers of liberty. Republics, by a good definition, are limited in powers and realize that.

Most, if not all, libertarians know the parable of the wolves and the sheep: what Hawai’i did was that very thing: supposedly, a majority of Hawaiians don’t want to be around guns. And therefore, elected a majority of conscript parents (senators) and people’s representatives that also don’t like to have guns around, either. In a democracy, anything is theoretically possible if a majority votes for it. Even if that majority, for example, consists of 5,000,001 out of 10,000,000 voters. (And since there are no quorums for voting, and so many people either don’t vote or have their votes ignored, that ten million voters would be “served democratically” if only 10% of the voters turned out and the vote was 500,001 to 499,999.) The wolves (well, voters) get to enjoy their choice: veal Parmasan or veal stew, but the sheep are dead and eaten regardless.

Of course, even republics are dangerous, and many of us consider them to be nearly as evil as democracies, oligarchies, tyrannies, monarchies, and all the rest. As L Neil Smith was, and Boston T Party is, fond of pointing out, limits on the power of legisatures, judges (and juries!), presidents/governors/mayor, and the voters themselves, are only as good as how much they are enforced. And how well they are written and understood.

At least as a temporary, stopgap measure, that is why we and other lovers of liberty support BORE (Bill of Rights Enforcement) at the Federal and State level. (And for that matter, local, tribal, and every other level.) The Nine Nazgul do a really bad job of enforcing the Bill of Rights; we can say the same thing as far as State supreme courts do for each State’s bill of rights. And we also know that some of those (like the UN’s “Declaration of Universal Human Rights” and the various Commonwealth, French and other European versions, to name a few) are very poorly written.

At least from the point of view of lovers of liberty. From the point of view of the predators/parasites that infest every government office building and assembly hall, these “declarations” and “bills” are written exactly as they want them. Full of loopholes that a jackboot fits through very nicely.

We submit that the reason is that these lawyers-turned-judges (and justices) know what side their bread is buttered on. And that means they sympathize with and support the other powers-that-be and not the ideals of liberty, justice, and freedom that they should.

Of course, some Nazgul also have their Woke, anti-liberty agenda to justify their actions. We believe that is the case of Jackson, Sotomayor, and Kagan. Like the men who appointed them, they have no use for freedom.

READ MORE