On democracy versus a republic

“[The] illusion, that the democratic process is the same as liberty, is an ideal weapon for those few who may desire to destroy liberty and to replace it with some form of authoritarian society; innocent but ignorant persons are thereby made their dupes. Under the spell of this illusion, liberty is most likely lost and its loss not discovered until too late. Liberty can easily be taken from the individual citizen, piece by piece and always more and more, as more and more persons under the spell of the same illusion join the Pied Piper proceedings. Finally, all liberty is gone and can be recovered only by a bloody revolution.”

-- F.A. Harper
Harper, Dr. Floyd A. Liberty - A Path to Its Recovery. Irving-on-Hudson, NY: Foundation for Economic Education, The, 1949.

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Additional reading:

• Democracy: The God That Failed
• Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy
• Literature and the Economics of Liberty 

On mistaking “democracy” for “liberty”

"Probably no other belief is now so much a threat to liberty in the United States and in much of the rest of the world as the one that democracy, by itself alone, guarantees liberty."

"…[T]he citizens of a democracy have in their hands the tools by which to enslave themselves."

"[The] illusion, that the democratic process is the same as liberty, is an ideal weapon for those few who may desire to destroy liberty and to replace it with some form of authoritarian society; innocent but ignorant persons are thereby made their dupes. Under the spell of this illusion, liberty is most likely lost and its loss not discovered until too late. Liberty can easily be taken from the individual citizen, piece by piece and always more and more, as more and more persons under the spell of the same illusion join the Pied Piper proceedings. Finally, all liberty is gone and can be recovered only by a bloody revolution."

"The right to vote… assures only the liberty to participate in the process. It does not assure that every-thing done by the process shall automatically be in the interests of liberty. A populace may commit both political and economic suicide under a democracy.
….
"There is no certainty whatever that liberty in a country with a democratic form of government is at a higher level than in a country having some other mechanism of government. There is no certainty that liberty will be maintained where the founders of a democracy may have hoped that it would be pre-served."

-- Harper, Dr. Floyd A. Liberty - A Path to Its Recovery. Irving-on-Hudson, NY: Foundation for Economic Education, The, 1949

This is the issue... self-government

"This is the issue…: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves." -- Ronald Reagan (1964)

Concerning a Second American Revolution

May God forbid either another American Revolution or another American Civil War. The Civil War was fought over secession, and I have already expressed my views (at LinkedIn.com) on that, so I will not opine further here on that matter.

As to a second American Revolution, Thomas Jefferson warned us that it may be necessary to have a revolution every 200 years or so, just to set government again on a sound footing. Here, however, is the danger: This is NOT 1776 and we will never again, in this nation, have group of people like the colonists (many of whom had experience tyranny and oppression first-hand) nor such staid leadership as was present in our Founding Fathers. I cannot imagine what an ill wind might arise were we to take men of power and influence today and ask them to construct for us an entirely new Constitution.

You must remember, if one were to start an armed rebellion, we would not be supporting our nation and our Constitution, for even though many in the battle might hold to the ideals expressed in our present Constitution, it would be necessary to violently overthrow the existing government and establish an new one. That is the nature of violent revolution.

We have a method for changing our government in a non-violent way. You and I have forsaken that way through our own idleness and indolence, through self-serving and an unwillingness to fight the fight for liberty EVERY DAY instead of just when things "get too bad."

Plato warned us millennia ago that for preservation of a republic there are ONLY TWO IMPORTANT QUESTIONS:

1. WHO gets to teach the children, and

2. WHAT do they teach them.

More than an hundred years ago, the American citizenry decided that state-run schools were an acceptable solution for the education of our children. Despite warnings to the contrary, the vast majority of citizens took the path of least resistance and surrendered their children to COMPULSORY MIS-EDUCATION promulgated first by the states, and then, ultimately (under Jimmy Carter), by the federal Department of Education.

When our children are educated by the state, what in your wildest imagination makes you believe that these children will not ultimately be conformed to believe that the government is the solution to EVERY PROBLEM?

This has gone on for so long now that even our colleges of education are wholly contaminated by this philosophy. Almost every new teacher and administrator comes into the state-run school system fully saturated with nothing but foolishness about government, economics, politics, the environment and more.

This present generation in the U.S. has never KNOWN tyranny, never FOUGHT AGAINST tyranny, never really STOOD UP for anything much more than their own SELF-SATISFACTION. (Sometimes that self-satisfaction involves making themselves feel better by "standing up for the poor" or "hugging a tree," but, in the end, it is self-satisfaction.) That's why it is much simpler to establish a solid constitution, a new government, free markets and a sound monetary policy in places like the Czech Republic today than it is to do the same thing here in the U.S. The people in the Czech Republic -- most of them -- experienced 40 years of oppression and tyranny and they know what they DON'T WANT again! Many in the U.S. electorate that voted for Obama, on the other hand, considered their vote of no more significance than casting a vote for their favorite on "American Idol."

I believe there is a way back. I have written an article that describes that way. It is available here.

Thanks.