Tag Archives: democracy

Progressivism Has Always Been Authoritarian, Anti-Democratic, and Reactionary

Former President Donald Trump has survived yet another assassination attempt less than two weeks after a judge postponed his sentencing on thirty-four felony convictions related to hush money paid to Stormy Daniels. For the moment, all obstacles to Trump standing for the November presidential election seemed to be cleared away.

Trump’s supporters are reeling from what they perceive as the unprecedented assault on America’s republican norms. That’s understandable given the relative stability of electoral politics in the decades before Trump came on the scene. However, those of us who grew up in the 1970s remember the assassination attempts on Presidents Ford and Reagan just a few years after the successful assassinations of both President John Kennedy and his brother.

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People of my generation considered being shot at a normal part of the job for U.S. presidents and presidential candidates.

Nor are deep state machinations to remove a sitting president anything unprecedented. President Nixon was removed from office by a Naval intelligence officer posing as a reporter working with the number two man at the FBI. As with Trump, the media dutifully swayed the public against the popular president for reprisals that would be considered minor today, post-Snowden.

But many Americans believe something is fundamentally different about today’s Democratic Party establishment. Even some prominent Democrats see the party as breaking from its core values by repressing speech and undermining the democratic primaries to install Kamala Harris as its nominee.

Ironically, the truth is stranger than this fiction. The progressive movement has always been authoritarian, anti-democratic, and reactionary.

Since “save our democracy” is the call to arms (literally, for some of its deranged supporters) of today’s progressives, let us begin with progressivism being anti-democratic. Since the beginning of the movement, when it was led by Republicans, progressives have attempted to transfer power away from elected assemblies and to unelected bureaucrats or judges.

This began with the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. Although passed by Congress, it empowered an unelected board of commissioners to both set rates and conduct quasi-judicial proceedings to settle disputes. It set the precedent for Congress to unconstitutionally transfer both its own exclusive power to legislate and the judicial power to the executive.

The New Deal massively expanded on that precedent in creating myriad executive branch regulatory agencies that effectively usurped most legislative power from the elected Congress. This trend has metastasized ever since. Thus, when President Biden wanted to mandate Covid vaccines, he didn’t even bother to approach Congress. He went straight to a regulatory agency of unelected bureaucrats and directed it to write a new rule. No democracy needed.

Throughout the 20th century, progressives were fervent supporters of Supreme Court decisions that similarly usurped legislative power from the elected Congress. Where the Constitution clearly required an amendment for the federal government to exercise a new power, the unelected Supreme Court dutifully found that power hiding between the lines. This was just another way to avoid putting progressive ideas to a popular vote.

None of this is to say democracy is any guarantee of individual liberty. But it is preferable to the autocratic rule of an unelected oligarchy.

As far as being authoritarian, all political movements suffer from that defect, but the progressive movement particularly so. Apart from the obvious enormities of jailing journalists and political opponents during WWI and imprisoning Japanese Americans in concentration camps during WWII, progressivism is more fundamentally authoritarian in its modus operandi for achieving all its societal goals. Without exception, progressives seek to forcibly override the personal choices of individuals and replace them with regulations imposed by the state.

Where Thomas Jefferson famously defined liberty as “unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others,” Woodrow Wilson took a perverse turn on the “unobstructed” idea. In The New Freedom, he answers the question, “What is liberty?” as follows:

“You say of the locomotive that it runs free. What do you mean? You mean that its parts are so assembled and adjusted that friction is reduced to a minimum, and that it has perfect adjustment. We say of a boat skimming the water with light foot, “How free she runs,” when we mean, how perfectly she is adjusted to the force of the wind, how perfectly she obeys the great breath out of the heavens that fills her sails. Throw her head up into the wind and see how she will halt and stagger, how every sheet will shiver and her whole frame be shaken, how instantly she is “in irons,” in the expressive phrase of the sea. She is free only when you have let her fall off again and have recovered once more her nice adjustment to the forces she must obey and cannot defy.

Human freedom consists in perfect adjustments of human interests and human activities and human energies.”

Where Jefferson saw government as the obstructor of liberty, Wilson saw it as the “adjuster” of human activity. This “adjustment,” of course, is regardless of the individual’s will or rights. Only by allowing the government to adjust your activities can you truly be free.

Monstrous.

That progressivism is reactionary would probably surprise Americans the most. But it is nonetheless true. Calling the movement “progressive” follows the proud American tradition of giving your party or movement a name opposite to its nature. The Federalists weren’t in favor of federalism; they were nationalists. The Anti-Federalists were in favor of federalism. The Whig Party were quite the opposite of the British party after which they were named. And progressivism isn’t about progress; it’s about returning to an earlier, illiberal past.

Read the rest on Tom’s Substack…

Tom Mullen is the author of It’s the Fed, Stupid and Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?

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It’s Not Democracy That’s Dying; It’s Our Anti-Democratic Safeguards

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Everyone is worried about “our democracy.” The left believes Donald Trump is trying to destroy it by challenging the results of the 2020 presidential election, aided by state legislatures controlled by his party passing stricter voter identification and ballot verification laws.

The right believes the Democratic Party is trying to destroy democracy by stuffing ballot boxes with illegitimate votes and flooding the country with undocumented immigrants who will either vote illegally themselves or have children who will eventually vote Democrat.

They all agree on one thing. Our democracy is in peril, and it must be saved.

Certainly, if there was enough fraud to change the results of any election, that is a problem. But what is tearing our society apart is not destruction of our democracy, because we don’t live in a democracy. And it isn’t just a republic, either. All “republic” means is that the people elect representatives to perform the various functions of government. North Korea is a republic; China is a republic. Neither are countries in which most Americans would want to live.

No, what made the American system better was not its democratic elections or republican form but it’s anti-democratic safeguards. The Constitution allows for representatives to be elected democratically – although only the House of Representatives was originally by direct vote of the people – but the rest of its provisions are there to protect us from democracy.

The bicameral legislature, presidential veto, separation of powers, and strictly enumerated powers are all intended to protect individuals from what democratically elected representatives might do.

The Bill of Rights is completely anti-democratic. Its articles say the democratically elected Congress shall make no law regarding the establishment of religion, shall not infringe the rights of free speech, or to bear arms. They say the democratically elected executive shall not conduct unreasonable searches, punish you without due process, etc.

The key to all the so-called “checks and balances” in the Constitution is they set up adversarial processes that must occur before power is exercised.

Older readers may remember the Schoolhouse Rock cartoon, “I’m Just a Bill.” It attempts to educate youngsters on all the hoops a bill must jump through to become a law. While clever, the problem with its tone is the strong implication that the bill failing to become a law is regrettable, even tragic.

That the Constitution makes it difficult to pass a law is a feature, not a bug.

The popular sentiment that Congress “isn’t getting anything done” springs from the same misconception. When a bill is proposed and subsequently either dies in committee or fails to pass a general vote, Congress did indeed “get something done.” It vetted the proposition to require or prohibit some human activity by force and (usually wisely) declined to do so. That’s as much “getting something done” as passing the bill – and usually ages better.

Yet, while still professing fidelity to the Constitution, federal legislators have passed many laws allowing the executive branch to bypass this entire process and effectively legislate by fiat. If you’re wondering how President Trump could levy a tariff (a tax) on imports without a law passed by Congress, it’s because Congress passed the Trade Act of 1974, effectively allowing the president to exercise this power exclusively delegated to Congress if, in his sole judgment, “any existing duties or other import restrictions of any foreign country or the United States are unduly burdening and restricting the foreign trade of the United States.”

The National Emergencies Act similarly transfers legislative power to the president by his merely declaring an emergency to exist. Worse yet, the “state of emergency” doesn’t end until the president declares it is over or Congress passes a joint resolution to end it – which can be vetoed by the president!

As I’ve written before, the entire New Deal constitutes an unconstitutional transfer of power from the legislature to the executive by allowing regulatory agencies to not only write their own regulations (legislate) but often usurp the judicial power by deciding disputes in their own administrative courts.

That’s why President Biden can mandate vaccines for businesses with over one hundred employees without new legislation from Congress. He can simply have OSHA require it through “regulation” – a euphemism for the executive branch legislating.

Needless to say, Congress cannot assign powers exclusively delegated to itself to another branch of the government, no matter how many legal or logical acrobatics Supreme Court justices have performed saying they can. There would be no need for Article V of the Constitution if Congress could merely override the separation of powers or other constitutional constraints with legislation. And the Constitution certainly provides for emergencies. There is no emergency more serious than war, for which the Constitution clearly provides.

Yet, no one blinks an eye when a president decides to bomb Syria (name one that hasn’t lately) without a declaration of war and in violation of the War Powers Resolution which specifically limits the president’s power to “introduce the United States Armed Forces into hostilities” to (1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.” [emphasis added]

The list of violations of the Constitution’s limitations on power and separation of those powers it does grant is too long to cover here. But they all have one thing in common: they eliminate adversarial processes capable of overriding the will of majority – of overriding democracy – to preserve liberty.

Everyone recognizes the political climate in the United States is toxic and many legitimately fear it will become violent. This isn’t because democracy is diminished. Rather, it is because the people of these states have tolerated the erosion or elimination of most restraints on democracy built into our Constitution.

My own view of the Constitution is much closer to Lysander Spooner’s than Madison’s or Jefferson’s. But as I said four years ago, the limits it places on federal power, especially in terms of the separation of powers between the federal and state governments, could prove useful in easing the pressure before the boiler explodes. While peaceful, full-scale secession from both the federal and state governments might be the philosophical ideal, it is much less likely than a “soft secession,” accomplished by simply enforcing the Constitution’s limits on federal government power.

That soft secession has already begun, although most of those seceding probably don’t realize they are doing so. Over half the states have nullified federal marijuana laws by passing state legislation legalizing their use for medical purposes, recreation, or both. Many blue state cities have declared themselves “sanctuary cities,” refusing to enforce federal immigration laws.

Most recently, Texas passed a law prohibiting abortion once a fetal heart rate is detectable, or more accurately clarifying laws prohibiting abortion never taken off the books after Roe v. Wade.

None of the federal laws or regulations in question are constitutional. They were all merely passed by Congress or enacted by executive edict and then, in some cases, “discovered” to be constitutional by the Supreme Court. Madison himself said regulating immigration was a power “no where delegated” to the federal government. And whether one considers abortion healthcare or homicide, the federal government isn’t given power over either.

Most people in red states have a visceral hatred for sanctuary cities, just as most in blue states hate the Texas abortion bill. And that’s just the point. These are matters that can only be dealt with locally. No supermajority of states ever has or ever will consent to the federal government imposing one policy in these areas over all the states.

The response to Covid-19 has followed the trend. In 2020, there was an increasingly diverse policy response as the pandemic progressed, with some states imposing severe lockdowns and mask mandates while others imposed less severe restrictions or none at all. South Dakota led the way in refusing from the start to close businesses or issue stay-at-home orders, followed by Florida in September 2020 and Iowa and Texas in early 2021.

As for President Biden’s vaccine mandate (announced but not yet written), Florida and Texas have already banned the mandates within their states, while South Dakota governor Kristi Noem took the most libertarian approach in neither mandating nor banning vaccine mandates for private businesses. Meanwhile, New York’s governor Kathy Hochul has ordered all healthcare workers in her state to get the vaccine and is prepared to call in National Guard personnel to replace those who don’t comply.

Many fear violent conflict resulting from state nullification of federal laws or regulations. But we haven’t seen that over nullification of marijuana prohibition and we wouldn’t likely see it when state governments take similar action on other issues.

Rather than a recipe for violence, more widespread soft secession from the present, unconstitutional system would allow the two dominant political tribes to stand down from their current, confrontational posture. And it would allow the rest of us to at least “pick our poison” in terms of which less-than-ideal system we would prefer.

Most important, it would save us all from what we have now: democracy run amok.

Tom Mullen is the author of Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness? Part One and A Return to Common Sense: Reawakening Liberty in the Inhabitants of America.

Ron Paul’s caucus strategy is authentic republicanism

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TAMPA, March 19, 2012 – Give yourself a test. Without doing a web search or whipping out that pocket U.S. Constitution that a wild-eyed Tea Partier handed you, fill in the blank in the following sentence: The U.S. Constitution guarantees to every state in the union a _____form of government.

If you are like ninety percent of the American electorate, you answered “democratic” and you were wrong. The answer is “a republican form of government.” There is an important difference between the two and one would think that the Republican Party would know it. Instead, they are identical to their rivals in not only ignoring the distinction but promoting democracy instead.

In a democracy, the will of the majority is the law. Fifty-one percent of the vote empowers the winners to exercise any power they wish. Not so in a republic. The reason that the founders constructed a constitutional republic was to protect Americans from democracy.

That may sound like sacrilege to most 21^st century Americans, but it’s true. Benjamin Franklin mused that democracy was like “two wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for dinner.” Thomas Jefferson said that when majorities oppress an individual they “break up the foundations of society.”

Republicanism is the logical form of government for conservatives. Conservatism at its best protects property rights from an unchecked majority plundering the individual. Liberalism at its best protects property rights from the wealthy conspiring with the government to plunder the masses. At their worst, both conservatism and liberalism legitimize plunder; the former for the few, the latter for the many.

Ron Paul’s presidential campaign strategy is rooted in republicanism. He has deliberately focused his efforts on the states that hold caucuses instead of primaries because caucuses do not let the majority rule unchecked. Instead of merely pulling a few levers behind a curtain, caucus participants must complete a multi-tiered process that occurs for months after the popular vote before being chosen for the national convention. Who can doubt that these delegates are more informed than the typical primary voter? The essence of republicanism is for reason to triumph over the transient passion of the majority.

Paul’s platform likewise represents what is best about conservatism. Without exception, it protects the individual from oppression by the majority. He is the only Republican presidential candidate that has actually said the words “role of government” during any debate. That’s because he is the only candidate that seems to recognize that the government’s role is limited; that even a majority vote cannot sanction it to exercise power beyond those limits. Throughout all of human history, conservatives have defended this principle against the ungoverned passion of the majority.

Yet, conservatives today sound just like liberals when they decry Paul’s supporters using the republican nature of the caucuses to overturn the decisions of uninformed majorities. Their opposition to both Paul’s platform and his political strategy begs the question: Does the Republican Party still believe in a republican form of government? Do they still believe that the power of the majority has limits? Or are they just Democrats with a different supporter base?

George W. Bush never once referred to the United States of America as “a republic.” He consistently referred to it as “a democracy” and like Woodrow Wilson claimed to be defending democracy all over the world. If he was representative of what the Republican Party now stands for, then how is it substantively different from the Democratic Party?

These same questions apply to the issues. If the Republican Party truly favors the big government alternatives to Ron Paul, candidates who all supported the expansion of the federal government in the past and who refuse to commit to any meaningful cuts now, then what is the debate about?

The federal government doesn’t need a manicure. It needs reconstructive surgery. Make that deconstructive surgery. You don’t turn $1.5 trillion deficits into surpluses by tweaking the way that federal departments are managed. You do so by completely eliminating departments and redefining the role of government. Only Ron Paul is proposing to do so. If there is anything left of what made the Republican Party different from the Democrats, they should support both Ron Paul’s platform and his political strategy.