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March 19, 2021 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
23:50
Democracy Cannot Be A License To Steal

Democracy is useful for the peaceful transfer of power. However, in an of itself, Democracy does not equal "Freedom." In fact, neither the Declaration of Independence, nor The U.S. Constitution mention the word "Democracy" anywhere. Is it a coincidence that the U.S. Constitution is almost completely ignored at the same time that America is considered a "Democracy"?

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Protecting Minority Rights 00:14:24
Hello everybody and thank you for tuning into the Liberty Report.
With us today is Chris Rossini, our co-host.
Chris, welcome to the program.
It's great to be with you, Dr. Paul.
Very good.
Today we want to talk about democracy and everybody loves democracy, except for a few other people.
A few people understand that pure democracy isn't so good.
The founders must not have liked it.
They never even put it in there.
It wasn't even in the Declaration of Independence.
And everybody is fighting for democracy in Washington.
You never hear people mention, you know, that we are a republic.
A few people will.
But the big thing is the popular term is democracy because everybody gets a vote and the vote becomes the authority for how to run a country.
Well, I have a limited acceptance of democracy.
I think it's probably when you have to have a vote to pick a leader or somebody in a political office, probably the vote has to be permitted.
The founders certainly accepted that.
But this whole idea of the majority being so powerful turned out to be very, very dangerous.
And some people call it a mob.
And when you look at what's going on in this country, we have mobocracy.
We have mobs that are controlling things.
And the Congress, the Congress responds to this whole thing.
The whole issue of democracy, De Kochville in the mid-19th century, talked about this.
And his conclusion, after having spent some time in America, being a Frenchman, came out with the statement that he had to be cautious because America could move toward the tyranny of the majority.
And I believe we're there because everything is majority, majority.
And when you think about it, if you allow the majority to determine rights, who's going to protect the minority?
And really, basically, the more loud statements made in favor of majority rule are the people who are trying to protect the minority.
But if you think about it, think about our history.
It was the majority that gave us, you know, the majority vote even to get the Constitution passed.
The majority vote was in favor of slavery.
And even the Jim Crow laws, the majority passes those laws.
And yet everybody wants the democracy.
And the founders much preferred the term a republic, to have a republic and a representative government and have selected individuals to go and participate in good government.
But that didn't work too well because right now everything is determined by majority vote and whatever the majority says, so they have become the dictators.
And in this case, they are able to get together.
The various special interest groups get together and they become the majority.
So they can write any law at all.
And that's why you end up with budgets like we have today.
There's enough to control 51% plus of the votes because it's the majority vote.
But it's all somebody that wants stuff from government.
They're all the ones who want to undermine the principles of liberty.
So I've been very negative on the concept of promoting democracy.
We don't go to war to protect democracy.
Unfortunately, we should go to war to protect our freedoms, but no, we go to war for various other reasons.
But democracy is not the reason we should ever go to war.
We should have a goal by the federal government, by the people.
The goal of the government should be to preserve liberty and present a condition where the people determine what they want to do with their lives and their fortune and not have it say, well, what's the majority say?
Well, these budget bills that we're seeing today and have seen for decades, and they're voted for by Republicans and Democrats, and it was passed overwhelmingly, trillions and trillions of dollars.
That is the end result of a truly democratic society, and the democratic society dictates rights.
And that is where we are today.
And that has to be reversed, which means that people have to come to a different understanding about what the role of government is.
And it's not to take care of people, not to feed people, and not to tell you and pass out benefits and be involved in education and be involved in medical care and all these things.
So what happens?
It becomes a political football, and it will essentially always drive the country into bankruptcy because it does.
Many people believe it is.
It's that type of rule that leads, because it's inefficient, that leads to the demand for socialism.
And now that's what we have.
We have the move on to collectivism.
Collectivists now with the name of socialists and others, and some qualify as fascists, are already in our Congress.
But that's a Congress consequence of the failure of too much emphasis on democracy.
So, Chris, I know this is something that is very important, and you've taken a look into this.
So, tell us what your opinion is.
Yes, Dr. Paul, I agree.
I think democracy is useful as a peaceful transfer of power.
I mean, if you're going to have transfers of power, peaceful is the way to go.
But what is far more important is what powers the people in power have.
Now, if politicians followed the Constitution, respected the Bill of Rights, then yeah, democracy, great.
But if they don't, and they don't, and they haven't for a very long time, then democracy makes no difference.
If a king could take your rights, your liberties, and your property away, then what's the difference if the majority does the same exact thing?
There's no benefits.
And the people in power, you know, we've been under this system for a while, have been very clever and in a bad way.
They've drilled into everyone's minds that democracy equals freedom, that it equals freedom, and it most certainly does not.
Look at how our freedoms have been disappearing over this last year, and it didn't just start this last year, over the last decades.
And democracy has not prevented it at all.
So, it's the important thing is how you change power, but far more important is what powers the government actually has.
Very, very good.
You know, right now there's a discussion going on in Washington and elsewhere, and there's a big debate going on on the filibuster.
The filibuster is a tool that protects the minority, and that's what freedom should be all about.
How do you protect the minority from the majority that will abuse it?
But the filibuster was designed for that sole purpose.
Originally, the filibuster was reserved for the senators.
It was reserved, you know, you had to have a vote of 66% to pass a bill.
So this was a pretty tight protection.
So that protection of the individuals that didn't like it could filibuster.
That doesn't mean they destroy it, but they just have to get more support for it.
And it was reduced several years ago, a couple decades ago, down to 60.
So 60 is the magic number.
And of course, that's too much trouble.
And the Democrats right now want to get rid of it.
Well, even politically speaking, if they do, it'll backfire on them because they're not always going to be in charge.
So if they want to get things through faster under these conditions today with denying to the minority the right to filibuster, it will be denied to them because they did that when it came to court justices and they eventually it backfired on them and hurt them.
But still they want to get rid of the filibuster and they would argue that they are the true Democrats because we want just majority rule.
We don't want a minority interfering.
But if you think that the purpose of government is to protect the minority against the majority, then you understand this.
But the founders did other things to try to protect the republic and the limited government and keep the mob from taking over.
For instance, why does a state like Wyoming have two senators and Texas has two senators?
That's not fair to Texas.
You know, we should have 10 senators.
Of course, the way they balanced that was to give Boris House of Representatives for a larger state.
But no, the two senators representing the states, because originally it was thought they wouldn't be elected under general election, they would be sent here by the state, by the state legislatures.
They would send the senators here for the purpose of protecting the rights of the state.
And that was the idea of representative government.
And right now, certainly this last election was a real battle on who was really controlling the vote in the Electoral College.
The Electoral College is such that every state gets a vote.
But if you did not have an Electoral College, you could take 10 states and with a little bit of ambitious vote counting or campaign efforts in big cities like New York, you could take over 10 states and 10 electoral votes.
But so the Electoral College was sort of an anti-pure democracy vote.
And every election there's talk about getting rid of that Electoral College.
But there, it's a protected minority.
How else would a state join the union if they didn't have representation of essence in the Senate?
So that was their compromise on this, that you would have more Electoral College members from the larger states, but the smaller states would still have electors go there.
And the whole idea of two senators, this is certainly anti-pure democracy.
You know, once again, the little states have two senators and big states have two senators.
But the principle is they were supposed to be representing the states, not necessarily each individual.
And this is, there's a lot of things embedded in our rule of law and our Constitution where there was a challenge on pure democracy.
And of course it was Benjamin Franklin was asked that famous question as I finished writing the Constitution and they said, what did you give us?
A lady came up and asked him, he says, a republic if you can keep it.
And the founders were big on Making the pledge that this can't work unless you have a moral people acting responsibly and taking care of themselves and taking care of matters back at home.
And but it wasn't going to be magic.
You can't just write into the Constitution and say, you are a Republican, this is what you're going to do.
None of it, in any government, for that matter, if you don't have a moral people, you can't have a moral government.
And certainly it has been undermined over the many years.
So it's something that was part of the tradition, but it is being challenged.
And I think it's safe to say that we've moved more to mobocracy because the mob, the majority, are coming together.
And it's so powerful now that there's a lot of Democrats and Republicans working very well together, spending that money.
And that is not a positive movement.
That is, they say, well, that's more democratic.
It's much more democratic to have this system.
But if you look at it, it serves a special interest and it undermines the minority rights of the individuals that would like to just have their freedom and take care of themselves.
And some smaller states are more inclined to do that than the larger states.
And you can see the difference between what happened with the coronavirus from, say, New York and California versus South Dakota.
There's quite a bit of difference.
And that difference is beneficial.
But they would, the pure majoritarian, the movement toward democracy would demand that, no, count every vote.
Every one vote is a simple.
We don't like this idea of a republic.
And yet, that argument continues.
Chris?
Yes, Dr. Paul.
And since politicians today do not follow the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, what democracy means today is a license to steal.
And I like to think of it like a rental property.
You know, I speak to people that are real estate agents and they deal with rental homes.
And they've told me, I've heard so many stories about when a renter moves out, the mess they leave behind, because it's not theirs.
They use it and they leave.
And they could be perfectly wonderful people.
It's just the incentive structure.
When it's not yours, subconsciously, somehow, you're just not going to be as careful as if it is your property.
And this is how it is with politicians today.
They have a certain amount of years, let's say at least four years, to come in, grab whatever they want, use the place up for themselves, their friends, make them all rich, and then they end up leaving.
Voting With Dollars 00:04:15
And look at Joe Biden.
He comes in, he's signing executive orders.
Go, go, go.
You've got to squeeze everything you can into those four years.
And they get into reckless, unwinnable wars, $28 trillion in debt.
And after your term is over, you leave.
Your name is off of it.
The problems that you created are not yours.
You're not accountable for anything.
Let the next guy worry about it.
Let the taxpayers worry about it.
And this is why our founders didn't put the word democracy in the Articles of Confederation, in the Constitution, in the Declaration of Independence.
They understood what happens when you create a completely unsustainable democratic system.
Very good.
You know, there is one form of democracy that I really like, and that's a free market democracy.
And there's voting there, but it's different than the conventional understanding of how voting occurs.
In free market voting, that means what is measured and what determines events will be how people spend their money, how the consumer spends their money, and that every penny is a vote.
So if you spend money in a certain way and the people decide to support product A versus product B, they're voting.
They send the money to product A because they like it, as long as it's free market and no subsidies in government, this sort of thing.
So if the people vote for product A and say, well, this is a better product, it supports it and that company is going to thrive.
But it helps to decide what wages would be.
If there's not a good income by providing a good product, you can't give out the wages.
But when they're very efficient, wages go up, profits go up, the value of the company goes up, and it's a very, very important symbol.
And this will tell people which companies will fail.
Today, though, frequently when there's a crisis, the better company will get taxed and penalized in the company that's not working so well and didn't do so well and didn't have any income because their product wasn't so good.
And the people voted them out.
And they say, well, we're not buying their products.
We don't like it.
We made the choice to go over here.
So the governments come in and they subsidize the bad companies that are inefficient.
And then they go out and, you know, they sometimes will do this.
And then the good companies have a much tougher time because the opposition gets the benefit.
But no, the democracy in the marketplace is very, very valuable.
And prices are determined that way.
Of course, this is the assumption that the government wouldn't be involved in subsidizing, giving contracts, having inflation, and manipulating interest rates and giving small business loans and doing all that mischief.
But if it's left to the market, the market is going to sort it all out and vote which companies will survive, what the value of the company will be, what the wages will be, and what the value of the company will be.
And that kind of democracy I think we should encourage.
Right, Dr. Paul, I will finish up now.
Earlier I pointed out that democracy, it is said that democracy equals freedom, and no, it does not.
And here's another slogan that the powerful have drilled into people's minds and they believe it.
And that is, we are the government.
And no, we are not.
You know, if you look over this last year, you didn't lock yourself in your own home.
Or if you lost your job, you didn't do that to yourself.
You didn't force yourself to wear a mask.
This was done to you by someone else.
And when we're taxed and we hand over the money, our hard-earned money, to politicians and they go and waste it and go give it to the companies and their friends, you know, this robbery is done to us.
We are not the government.
But, you know, that provides cover.
It's a catchy slogan.
People believe it.
Why We're Not the Government 00:04:55
And it provides cover to pretty much every form of tyrannical action you could think of.
People think, oh, well, we're the government.
We owe $28 trillion to ourselves.
No, we don't.
It's nonsense.
We're individually sovereign individuals, human beings.
We are here to pursue our own happiness as long as we don't harm other people while we're doing it.
And we're not means to someone else's ends.
We choose our own ends.
And government's proper role, and hopefully we try to drill this as best as we can, is to protect that freedom.
And that's it, and to punish people that decide to use force against others to pursue their happiness.
But once government goes beyond that, and it really doesn't matter if it's democracy, theocracy, any type of government you could imagine, once it goes beyond that, then it's the primary source of harm and civilization begins to unravel.
Very good.
You know, I'm going to finish with quoting Goring, Herman Goring, who was interviewed when he was being tried at Nuremberg.
And the reason I'm doing this is he was asked, he was interviewed.
It's a very interesting interview that he had as he was waiting on the trial before he committed suicide.
And the question that the reporter asked him was, how was it possible to get the majority to go along with this war?
How did the German people do this?
Why did they do this?
That's a frequently asked question.
Why do countries go along with it?
And it can be asked about why does the large majority of our people go along with some really nonsense?
Why did the majority of the American people go along with what we did in Vietnam?
So Goring answered this question, and I think it's significant.
It's a frequently quoted thing that he said.
And I want to read a little bit of that because it really tells you the psychology of getting the majority to go along.
And that doesn't really represent what the people believe, but it represents a psychological event that is very important.
But Goring was asked, how was it possible to build and sustain public support for the war effort?
And Goring responds, he says, of course it was easy.
The people don't want war.
Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best thing that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece?
Naturally, the common people don't want war, neither in Russia, nor England, nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany.
That is understood.
But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy.
And it's always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it's in a democracy or a fascist dictator or a parliament or a communist dictatorship.
He said, it's not a problem at all.
Just get the majority, get them behind them.
He says, that's all well and good, but he says, but the voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to bidding of the leaders.
That is easy.
All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.
It works the same all the time.
So whether it's a foreign invader or domestic terrorism or whatever, it's that type of psychology that is used to get the majority to come along.
Scare the living daylights out of them.
They're being attacked.
Now we talk about domestic terrorism and foreign terrorism.
So there's always an enemy out there.
And if one disappears and taken care of, there will be a new one out there.
So he says it was an easy matter, no matter what kind of government you had, but you had to get the majority to go along with it.
Democracy works because you just scare people and they'll go along with it.
Of course, that's what we would like to reverse, that attitude, that people don't go along with it, because I think that what Goring was talking about was historic.
That attitude has been around for a long time.
And sometimes it doesn't work just with saying you lack patriotism.
If you don't do it, sometimes it's deadly.
And then there's a use of force to make people become part of the majority.
And that is why I strongly oppose the whole principle of pure democracy as the founders did.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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