The Most Dangerous Democratic Delusion
Democracy is a system of government under which the people are automatically liable for whatever the government does to them. Many of the most deadly errors of contemporary political thinking stem from the notion that in a democracy the government is the people, so there is scant reason to worry about protecting citizens from the government.
Throughout western history, tyrants and would-be tyrants have sought to browbeat the citizens into obedience by telling them that they are only obeying themselves — regardless of how much the citizens disagree with the government’s edicts. Thomas Hobbes explained in 1652:
Because every subject is by this institution the author of all the actions, and judgments of the sovereign instituted; it follows, that whatsoever he doth, it can be no injury to any of his subjects; nor ought he to be by any of them accused of injustice. But by this Institution of a commonwealth, every particular man is author of all the sovereign doth; and consequently he that complaineth of injury from his sovereign, complained of that whereof he himself is author.
Hobbes sought civil peace by imposing an almost unlimited duty of submission via the sham that people are responsible for whatever government does to them: thus, government can never do the people wrong: thus, people never have a right to resist the government. Unfortunately, Hobbes’s canard has become standard equipment in the rhetorical armory of many rulers of democratic states.
A long history of abuses
In 1798, President John Adams pushed through Congress the Alien and Sedition Acts, which empowered Adams to suppress free speech and imprison without trial any critic of the federal government. When the citizens of Westmoreland County, Virginia, petitioned Adams in 1798 complaining of the acts, President Adams responded by denouncing the citizens: “The declaration that Our People are hostile to a government made by themselves, for themselves, and conducted by themselves, is an insult.” Adams’s response to the people of Westmoreland County — few of whom had voted for Adams — was the classic trick of a would-be democratic tyrant. Virginia had been unwilling to ratify the Constitution until a Bill of Rights had been added to safeguard free speech, among other rights.
Yet even though Adams openly suppressed free speech, he still claimed a right to not only the citizen’s abject obedience but also a right to be above criticism for suppressing their freedom. Kentucky and Virginia enacted resolutions declaring the sedition act null and void; the Kentucky resolution observed that the doctrine “that the general government is the exclusive judge of the extent of the powers delegated to it [is] nothing short of despotism; since the discretion of those who administer the government, and not the Constitution, would be the measure of their powers.”
President Theodore Roosevelt, speaking in Asheville, North Carolina, on September 9, 1902, proclaimed: “The government is us; we are the government, you and I.” Yet, at the time, Roosevelt was using the American military to brutally crush a rebellion in the Philippines, which had been conquered by the Un
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LewRockwell.com is a libertarian website that publishes articles, essays, and blog posts advocating for minimal government, free markets, and individual liberty. The site was founded by Lew Rockwell, an American libertarian political commentator, activist, and former congressional staffer. The website often features content that is critical of mainstream politics, state intervention, and foreign policy, among other topics. It is a platform frequently used to disseminate Austrian economics, a school of economic thought that is popular among some libertarians.
