While she’s mostly known for radical proposals such as confiscatory tax rates and the Green New Deal, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also made waves with recent comments about imposing “democracy” on the economy.
In a discussion last year at Ponoma College in California, I explained why majoritarianism is misguided.
For all intents and purposes, unchecked democracy gives 51 percent of the people a right to rape and pillage 49 percent of the people.
Thankfully, America’s Founders realized that approach was incompatible with individual liberty.
They drafted a Constitution that explicitly limited the power of politicians (and thus also limited the power of people who vote for politicians).
Why? Because they understood history.
Professor Victor Davis Hanson explains how they recognized the dangers of majoritarianism.
The half-millennia success of the stable Roman republican system inspired later French and British Enlightenment thinkers. Their abstract tripartite system of constitutional government stirred the Founding Fathers to concrete action. Americans originally were terrified of what 51 percent of the people in an unchecked democracy might do on any given day—and knew that ancient democracies had always become more not less radical and thus more unstable. For all the squabbles between Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Madison, they agreed that a republic, not a direct democracy, was a far safer and stable choice of governance. …We often think that a Bill of Rights was designed to protect Americans from monarchs and dictators. It certainly was. But the Founders were just as terrified of what that the majority of elected representatives without restraint might legally do on any given day to an individual citizen. …All consensual governments are prone to scary wild swings of mob-like emotion—and to demagogues who can almost rein in or goad the dêmos. But the Founders sought to make American government immune to Athenian-style craziness through a system of checks and balances that vented popular frenzies without a great deal of damage.
In a column for the Foundation for Economic Education, Professor Gary Galles explains the difference between liberty and democracy.
…far too little attention seems to be given to the differences between democracy—the process by which we select members of government—and liberty—the key to good government. …our Constitution and Bill of Rights…put some things beyond majority determination… Unfortunately, democracy…is entirely consistent with choices that destroy liberty…the growing reach of government makes our exercise of democracy an increasing threat to liberty, defending that liberty requires understanding the limits of democratic determination.
George Will, citing the work of Professor Randy Barnett, explains that the fight is – or should be – between statist majoritarians and libertarian constitutionalists.
Regarding jurisprudence, Democrats are merely results-oriented, interested in…expanding government’s power… Republicans…have grown lazily comfortable with rhetorical boilerplate in praise of “judicial restraint.” …all progressives are Hobbesians in that they say America is dedicated to a process — majoritarian decision-making that legitimates the government power it endorses. Not all Lockeans are libertarians, but all libertarians are Lockeans in that they say America is dedicated to a condition — liberty. …Lockeans favor rigorous judicial protection of certain individual rights — especially private property and freedom of contract — that define and protect the zone of sovereignty within which people are free to act as they please. Hobbesians say the American principle is the right of the majority to have its way. …Lockeans say the Constitution, properly construed and enforced by the judiciary, circumscribes the majoritarian principle by protecting all rights that are crucial to individual sovereignty. …Barnett says, yes, the Constitution — “the law that governs those who govern us” — is libertarian. And a Lockean president would nominate justices who would capaciously define and vigorously defend, against abuses by majoritarian government.
You don’t have to be a Randian to heartily endorse and embrace this sentiment (h/t: Libertarian Reddit).
The most cogent warning about majoritarianism comes from the great Thomas Sowell.
To emphasize the dangers of majoritarianism, I’ll close by simply citing Brazil in the past and Venezuela today.
P.S. Though I must admit that the Swiss are an example of how majoritarianism can lead to good outcomes.
P.P.S. I strongly encourage you to read what Walter Williams wrote on this topic.
[…] P.S. Libertarians favor democracy, but we very much want to limit the size and scope of government. In other words, for everything other than genuine “public goods,” we prefer markets over majoritarianism. […]
[…] P.S. Luther’s point about the “progressive view of government” is not just a throwaway line. He’s referring to the mindset that first appeared during the “Progressive Era” of the early 1900s, when politicians such as Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilsondecided that government was a force for good (unlike America’s Founders, who gave us a Constitution based on the notion that government was a threat to liberty and needed to be restrained). […]
[…] P.S. Luther’s point about the “progressive view of government” is not just a throwaway line. He’s referring to the mindset that first appeared during the “Progressive Era” of the early 1900s, when politicians such as Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson decided that government was a force for good (unlike America’s Founders, who gave us a Constitution based on the notion that government was a threat to liberty and needed to be restrained). […]
[…] includes judges in my assessments of economic policy (though I may have to change my mind if they restore the Constitution’s protections of economic liberty and limits on the power of […]
[…] includes judges in my assessments of economic policy (though I may have to change my mind if they restore the Constitution’s protections of economic liberty and limits on the power of […]
[…] includes judges in my assessments of economic policy (though I may have to change my mind if they restore the Constitution’s protections of economic liberty and limits on the power of […]
[…] stated, I don’t like untrammeled majoritarianism, which occurs when 51 percent of voters can pillage 49 percent of […]
[…] Amen. Professor Galles is correct. […]
[…] I’m opposed to majoritarianism and because I want courts to defend and protect all parts of the Constitution, I put together this […]
[…] this interview from last October, I groused that the Supreme Court – largely thanks to statist Justices […]
[…] Garett’s book isn’t a manifesto about the American Constitution and its (sadly neglected) provisions designed to protect economic liberty. It doesn’t even mention my favorite part, […]
[…] government power to do good things without simultaneously giving it power to do bad things (hint: a good answer is the U.S. Constitution’s limits on the scope of government, at least back in the days when […]
[…] Founders produced such a system, but sadly the courts have failed to protect and preserve the Constitution’s […]
[…] advocate for democracy, either in this column or in the interview. That’s because I’m more concerned with protecting and promoting liberty. Yes, it’s good to have a democratic form of government. If I understand correctly, […]
[…] But he avoided trouble, thanks to majoritarianism. […]
[…] Indeed, the desire to get something for nothing is the Achilles Heel of democracy. […]
[…] Which is a good opportunity to remind everyone why America’s Founders were wise to create a republic rather than a majoritarian democracy. […]
since Clinton won the popular vote and lost the presidency under our current system… the socialist democrats are determined to subvert our Constitution and impose majoritarian rule on the nation… it seems the socialists want to “fundamentally transform America” from a Constitutional Republic into a majoritarian democracy… on it’s surface that may not seem like a great change… but it most assuredly is………………………
“On Tuesday, Nevada became the 15th state, along with the District of Columbia, to pass a measure that would grant its electoral college votes to the candidate that won the nationwide popular vote.”
“The objective is to have a group of states that in total control 270 electoral votes (the number needed to win the presidency) form a compact wherein each of them will agree to cast those votes based on the nationwide popular vote, regardless of how their own state’s citizens voted.”
“Kirk: The Electoral College Stands Between the Constitution and The Mob”
By Charlie Kirk
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/05/24/kirk-the-electoral-college-stands-between-the-constitution-and-the-mob/
[…] days ago, I wrote about how the Constitution was designed, in large part, to protect Americans from […]
we have a huge problem… and that’s a flawed educational system turning out legions of young voters who are clueless… not only do they not understand the intricacies of governmental systems… many of them have been victimized by indoctrination procedures… some of these folks don’t know how many minutes are in an hour… how many weeks in a month… they appear normal… and can manipulate technology… communicate at a rudimentary level… but some of them are functionally illiterate… if we add millions of under-educated foreign nationals to our voting rolls… it isn’t reasonable of us to expect them to understand the issues of the day or select competent professionals to deal with them… these folks can be easily manipulated by the socialists or other special interest groups until year by year… our country is transformed into a totalitarian socialist state…
“The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of ‘liberalism,’ they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.”
Norman Thomas
[…] « Majoritarianism and Democracy vs. Liberty and the Constitution […]
[…] The resulting social order provides space “within which the soul may make its own choices, and within which spiritual leaders and spiritual associations may do their own necessary and creative work”. He suggested that democratic capitalism has done rather well on the score of promoting spiritual and cultural life, in contrast with environmentalism and progressive leftism that we see on the march at present. The US and the West will not be undone by capitalism but by the erosion of the limited state defined by the founders of the US republic that is now under threat from Majoritorianism as sketched by Dan Mitchell in his latest column. […]
We were never so lightly taxes as we were under the King.
A prime example of unchecked, majority rule exists today in the form of large cities overruling, overlording is a better word, the rural parts of their respective state. Consider NYC and upstate New York, or Chicago and rural Illinois. You can identify several other examples. Most recently, many counties in Colorado, New Mexico, and other states, are claiming to be Second Amendment Sanctuary Counties to escape “Red Flag Laws” enacted in response to gun related problems in the big cities.