Democracy: No Friend Of Liberty, But An Ally of Tyranny
“Our Democracy” has reached a point where both sides in the upcoming presidential election are claiming that freedom will end if the other side wins. If that were really true, it certainly makes clear that But where did all this “our democracy” stuff come from anyway. The word “democracy” is nowhere to be found in the Declaration Of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, or U.S. Constitution. Democracy has existed for thousands of years, why did America’s Founders explicitly keep it out of our form of government?
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today, we have Chris Rossini, our co-host.
Chris, good to have you with us today.
Great to be with you again, Dr. Paul.
Good.
We're going to talk about the presidential elections, the philosophy behind what's going on and why people are saying such things.
You know, we're going to be talking about the fact that people are saying democracies could end if the right person is not elected, you know, this go-around.
And I kept thinking when I first heard that, you know, I sort of kiddingly said, well, that's good news, isn't it?
Democracy's going to end.
The founders hated democracy.
This is pretty good.
And, you know, de Tocqueville didn't like it.
He studied the Americans' democracy and American system in the 19th century thoroughly.
And his conclusion was, you know, that it was a, if you did watch out, you're going to have the dictatorship of democracy.
And of course, we're there now.
The majority rule.
The majority is a dictatorship.
But I think the point we want to try to make today is it's even worse than we thought.
Maybe at one time had hoped one party would be more thoroughly, you know, in understanding of what one side stands for, you know, understanding of the liberty and limited government versus the other side wanting more and bigger government and dictatorship of a majority.
But now, Chris, it looks like, you know, there may be some bipartisanship here.
We have to be careful.
Everybody likes bipartisanship, except the people that watches this station, most likely.
Bipartisanship sometimes is a sellout on both sides.
But anyway, I think that this tells us a lot about it because both parties now, leaders in the party, are saying, well, if Zhou Enga-song gets elected, it'll be the end of this wonderful system of democracy.
But the other side says the same thing.
So, boy, I guess maybe that's why the voters are so confused and not know what to do.
They are unhappy with both sides.
And I think if we had a different system where both were competing with the thoroughness of understanding liberty, they might be enthralled by that argument.
But right now, it's who's doing the most demagoguing and who's saying that they're going to hurt our wonderful system of democracy.
We have to hold this together.
How will the special interests get what they want if they can't demagogue it, put the feet together, and give that 51% the sole power of running our tyranny?
So, Chris, I hope we can contribute something positive here and get people to talk about what we really should be talking about if we want to live in a free country.
That's right, Dr. Paul.
And, you know, the word democracy is nowhere to be found in America's founding documents.
It's not in the Declaration of Independence.
It's not in the Articles of Confederation.
It's not in the U.S. Constitution.
Yet, if you ask the average person today, they think of America as our democracy.
I mean, what happened?
How did this go off the rails like this?
Because the important part, the important part about freedom and liberty is not how rulers are chosen.
That's, you know, down the line.
It's what rulers are permitted to do.
You know, even King George III, who we broke away from, he was only 2% tax, and that was it.
That was caused for a revolution.
That's how his hands were tied.
But today, we're paying, some people are paying 50% income tax, and that's just income tax.
That's not all the other taxes.
And all the inflation on top of that.
King George would be like, what?
He would never have gotten away with that.
And there was no democracy.
There was a king.
But his powers were limited.
But not limited enough, obviously, for the colonists here.
But look what happened afterwards.
So democracy today is the government could do whatever it wants, as long as it convinces you that the majority is for it.
And it's always what the government should not be doing.
But as long as that's 70% or 50%, 51%, then that's good enough because this is the democracy.
And that's what all the propaganda is.
And that's why we have drifted so far away from freedom.
And like you mentioned, the Tocqueville, even John Adams, they said give it like 200 years and democracy always fails.
Well, it's been over 200 years and now it's falling apart.
Oh, that's a dangerous prediction coming true.
I tell you what, the political threat is there and they frighten people.
They have to scare people into this.
But I and many others who believe in liberty see that democracy is actually a threat to liberty.
And yet 90% of the people probably know that both major parties are talking about this and they want to say that, well, the solution is democracy.
And if we could just have more democracy, we would have more freedom.
But I think if you believe in the non-aggression principle and you want limited government and you want maximum amount of freedom, you have to realize that democracy, the way it's being used now, becomes an ally of the tyrants because the tyrants, the job is well set out for them.
All we have to do is get 51% of the people to vote on something and it becomes the law of the land.
They don't talk about why the states might have to amend the Constitution and you'd have to go through the process of trying to change something.
But no, they are able to achieve this by saying, well, it's sacred to have the majority rule.
And therefore, if we just get that 51%, and then it ends up when they bankrupt the country and the country becomes demoralized and lack of morals, then they say, well, we have to demagogue even more.
So it's the people who are in power and in place, who might have control of the media, might have a fact that they're passing out a lot of money to the special interest, like the military industrial complex and the pharmaceutical industry.
Then they get to make up and finance and bring people together.
Then you have the sources coming in and, boy, oh, well, we can convey this.
And then when you look at it structurally, working on this majority rule, then it's broad and it's broad-based.
And people say, it's not like if a tyrant walks in and he's just Hitler, Hitler, get rid of Hitler and you're going to get rid of all.
That's not the way it is.
Because when it's the majority rule, you have this infiltration.
Well, they've achieved that, but they've ended up saying that democracy is a wonderful thing.
And at the same time, the majority is coming to it.
And they're authoritarians.
They believe in big government.
They believe in taxation.
This is why for years I've complained about watch out for bipartisanship because they're working on that 51% and it's the bipartisanship when people come together, ah, we got it.
And that's the way Congress worked all the time.
Just get that vote up there.
But they're running into problems, political problems, as well as economic problems, because this country is bankrupt because of that system.
And it's also a bankruptcy because of a moral bankruptcy.
So I would say the majority has not done well and we should start thinking about personal liberty and limited government.
Absolutely, Dr. Paul.
And you mentioned in your first segment there that both sides now are claiming that if the other side wins, the freedom is over, democracy is over.
Now, the left has been doing this with Trump since 2016.
Now, he had an administration.
He wasn't Hitler.
He didn't end democracy, but they're still going with it again.
Why not?
But now the right is doing it too.
They're claiming that the country is over if Biden wins.
And if this was the case in both instances, that in itself shows that this system is broken beyond repair.
And Trump wanting to end democracy also is illogical.
If he wins for the second time, and many people would say the third time, what would he have against democracy?
He's obviously very good at it if he keeps winning.
So him ending elections is, you know, but when you're talking emotions with the left, you know, it goes right over their head.
They don't care about that.
And Biden's same thing.
If he wins, the country is not over.
Obviously, it won't get better.
But I don't know if it would get better in either case, you know, because the president should not be this important.
We should not care about a vote this much.
It means that they are way too powerful, or at least the government is too powerful, because cases can be made that even the president doesn't run things.
I mean, look at how many times the president will say something and then their underlings will come out and say, oh, no, no, we're not doing that.
You know, so they get overruled.
But even Trump and his first administration, government didn't shrink.
Government grew like a week's spending and debt.
I mean, that CARES Act was under his thing.
That was $6 trillion that the Fed had to print.
That was him.
And now we're dealing with the inflation.
So it's not like Trump is going to come in and shrink the state.
So this whole propaganda of the freedom is over, democracy is over, you know, things will get worse, but I don't know if I would go that far.
You know, this doesn't come together by accident because people do believe they're better off going along with the majority.
They just want to be a participant in it.
But also, you do need some demagogues to present the case for, I'm going to take care of you.
The medical system is messed up right now.
It's currently messed up.
People come along and they don't say, well, what we need is more freedom in the medical profession.
We need more.
Just think they did a good job on taking care of COVID.
Just look at that.
But they don't look at it that way.
The demagogues are slick and they make it sound like, and they make it sound like plunder is exactly what they need.
Because even under inflation, they say prices are going up too much.
We need more inflation.
We need more people spending money, running up the debt, print more money, because I'm broke and I want the government to send me more money.
So it goes on and on.
And there's a lot of seduction that goes along with this.
But it is very valuable.
It becomes the big issue.
Most of the time, they were able for decades, if not years and years, to be a little more subtle about it, but that's what they were working on.
Now it's out of control, and that's why they have to be shouting.
But they also have the benefits of some establishment that supports this principle of mob rule, and that is the media.
The media goes along with that because they're part of the group that will benefit by this 51% will go after the 49%.
Ironically, some of the people who express the greatest concern about the poor people, the middle class, and all the problems we have, and they've gained a lot of political power over this by wanting to take care of the indigent and the poor and the homeless.
And at the same time, though, they make it worse.
They're the ones that have caused all this, and yet they want to just get hold of it and continue it.
And rarely can we get the debate into the issue of why is it that we don't recognize that the countries that have had maximum amount of freedom, certainly in our early history, the prosperity was so much better than all the authoritarian government.
But authoritarianism is alive and well, and it's embedded into our educational system, our medical system, and the militarism that we have.
And so it is a very, very large part of our system.
That's why people who want to get into government have to join the system.
Because if you come up and say, you know what, you better rethink this whole idea of pure democracy, and they say, why?
Well, that means 51% can take advantage of the 49%.
And all we have to do is tell them, well, next year we'll do better.
We're going to take care of you better next year.
And they have gotten away with that.
But now some of the people are waking up and we've heard those lies too long.
And my pocketbook is hurting more than ever.
And it's harder to live today.
And there are more street people than ever.
And there's no law and order.
So maybe the lies have to be challenged.
And of course, that's what we would like to do is challenge it to make sure that people aren't easily deceived by saying, watch out, they're trying to take our democracy away from us.
We have to understand exactly what they're talking about.
Fantastic, Dr. Paul.
I'll finish up with my closing thoughts.
Yeah, in a democracy, the people are not both the rulers and the ruled.
That is a giant mental scam that has been imposed.
You're not taxing yourself.
If your business was locked down and you went out of business, you didn't do that to yourself because you are the government.
You are not the government.
We are not the government.
The government is something separate than us.
But look what's been sold.
Most people, I'm sure, say, oh, well, we're the government.
We're responsible for all this that's happened.
No, absolutely not.
If that's the case, then we're some of the worst people imaginable.
But that's not the case, thank goodness.
American people are good people.
But instead, what democracy is, is organized minorities, very tightly organized minorities that rule over the majority.
Lobbyists, they supersede the voters.
Because the majority, like us, we're in the majority, are disorganized, and we always will be because we have lives to lead.
We have jobs.
We have things to do.
Our lives cannot revolve around who's in office.
But lobbyists, that's all that they do.
Majority Disorganized00:04:25
That's their job.
That's their sole focus all day long is focus on getting this politician to do our bidding for us.
And this shouldn't exist, but this is what our democracy is.
And that's why every policy is for big farm one day and then big oil another day and then the military-industrial complex.
And it has nothing to do with us.
I give no lobbying, no money.
And what can I say?
Oh, I voted for you?
First off, when you vote, they don't know who you are.
They don't know that you voted for them personally.
They don't know what your interests are.
They just see a number, and that's it.
And the money overpowers a number every time.
So you're not giving those donations from these, you know, as opposed to these big multi-billion dollar corporations.
And that's why the people get, you know, they just need to be sold on whatever the idea is.
So this is not freedom.
It's sold as freedom.
Whatever replaces it someday, whenever it happens, you know, the goal must be that politicians cannot just do whatever they want as long as they convince people that the majority supports it.
Very good.
You know, the one thing that happens if you move away from this dedication to majoritarianism and the ruling of a mob more or less, well, you have to replace it with something.
And the principle of liberty is there, but not talked about very much.
And that means that things are done voluntarily.
The voluntary operation between individuals in economic terms as well as trying to get along with other countries.
Things have to be voluntary.
Nobody is supposed to be the boss.
And this way, if you try to get the majority, what they're trying to grab is being the boss.
Well, the majority says this, this, and this, not realizing what they're really up to.
And the people who have been victimized by the system already, you know, are told that you have to go along with this or they're going to destroy democracy.
Of course, that's where the problem is.
The people, the 51% are in charge.
The 49% are being pushed around and they keep getting poorer.
But what has happened, though, in the process, they had to eliminate some of the roadblocks to this.
And the educational system, the political system, and the need for operating an imperfect system like we've had is they had to smooth this over by, you know, getting rid of like the Department of Justice.
Just think if you had a good justice system, would you be able to solve some of these problems?
But most Americans now don't even believe in the Department of Justice.
How about the FBI?
How much respect did the FB get?
And they respect and they deserve very little.
And they're supposed to help provide for this order.
But it's actually being used against us because whether it's in elections or whatever, the Department of Justice, the FBI, for years now, I have mentioned and talked about, you know, in a republic and under the Constitution, where do we get all the authority for this?
Chris mentioned, well, they don't even mention democracy in the Constitution, but they don't mention the FBI in the Constitution either.
That's a national police force.
They don't mention the CIA and the various things go on and the control of our universities because that's where the real control comes from.
Because one thing I noticed when I was in Washington, because I studied some economics in college, I was very interested in it.
But it was only later on that I came across, because it was too confusing to me, I came across Austrian economics.
I said, this is different.
This is different.
And it's very rare to find more now than it was back then.
But the main university is, especially since they get government money, you can't do that.
Do you have any big major universities that teach that the Federal Reserve is not constitutional?
The Growing Demand for Natural Law00:02:48
Ought to get rid of it.
No, you don't have that.
They teach that you do.
And people, and there's a coalition between these economists at the big universities that are financed by the government.
Thousands, or at least hundreds, of economists do papers in support of the Federal Reserve, and they do this research for them.
They make money, the college benefits, and it just is an endorsement for the system.
But that system's falling apart.
So, this is why we should be prepared because this system is falling apart.
They're not all some are going to say, Well, we have too much nihilism because people claim that you can't find truth.
You guys are wasting your time, it's not available to us, and we have to decide what is truth.
And authoritarians usually say the political party defines what truth is.
Others say that we'll have a vote on it, and that'll define the truth.
But no, it isn't.
And they do not talk about, and I think that you won't hear of an answer if people don't at least recognize that there is a higher law, a natural law, that's far superior than what is said, what is given to us through our government right now.
So, and that has been known since the beginning of time, that there is a natural instinct to know what some of the basic rules are.
It's amazing to me that the earliest writings in all of history recognized that killing, lying, cheating, and stealing was not morally correct, and they had severe punishments for that.
But because when time and the recording of our history, we're well aware of the natural law and the higher law.
But that is not paid much attention to.
And now it's the law of the jungle, the law of the majority, and they're not doing a very good job.
So, I think people should pay more attention to it and try to improve this situation and try to pick up where the founders tried to guide us because we have slowly but subtly avoided doing anything the founders suggested.
And that is why we live in a lawless world right now.
And it's defined by majoritarianism, unfortunately.
So, I do promote the cause of liberty, and I believe that there's room for everybody to participate in it.
I think that the numbers who truly understand this, and believe it, the numbers are growing.
But right now, the number of people suffering from the old system are getting very, very nervous because they don't know how people will how we're going to pull out of this until we understand what the cause of liberty is all about.