That’s about the best explanation I’ve read for this situation. The unaccountable administrators and judges are now ruling Europe and are very close to achieving total control here in the US. The trappings and appearance of democratic rule are maintained, even to the point of holding meaningless elections, but the policies will be those of the small ruling class.

No offense intended, but I thought this was already understood.

This is why it’s so important to understand what happened in the South. Most Southerners were not, and never were, fighting in the first place to maintain slavery (Civil War) or the domination of the white man over the black man (Jim Crow). The principle they were fighting for was a political one: democratic majority rule vice the imposition of law by “higher authority.” As Mr. Auster says, both principles can’t be honored at the same time; one or the other of them has to give. In the South, it was recognized that, whether one supported the institution of slavery or not, the imposition of law by force was antithetical to everything their Revolutionary Fathers had fought for. Thus, they saw themselves as fighting not only for their particular economic and social cause, but for the integrity of the Constitution and the “American way” itself.

Which leaves conservatives and traditionalists in the strange position of defending (tenatively) the ideals of democracy.

Yep. There are no easy answers. You’ve got to come down on one side or the other. Most conservatives today come down on the side of imposed authority, with the idea being that the imposition of good laws is a good thing (and no doubt about it, that’s true), whereas the imposition of bad laws (i.e. what the liberals want to do) is a bad thing.

The alternative view—my view—is that the will of the people in their various States should rule. If the people of State X want to live under bad laws, so be it. Let them live under bad laws. At least the infection in that case will be limited to a relatively small area and the hope will always remain that the good example of their neighbors might someday encourage them to change. As it is, we are caught in this titanic, winner-takes-all struggle between two huge, unwieldy masses of people attempting to impose their will upon each other. It’s insane, in my view, and can come to no good in the end. I say restore Constitutional government in this country, trust in the good judgment of the people as our forebears did, and let them live as they will.

William Penn in his Pennsylvania ‘Frame of Government’ of 1682:

“Men side with their passions against their reason, and their sinister interests have so strong a bias upon their minds, that they lean to them against the good of the things they know… .

“ANY GOVERNMENT IS FREE TO THE PEOPLE UNDER IT (whatever be the frame) WHERE THE LAWS RULE, AND THE PEOPLE ARE A PARTY TO THOSE LAWS, and more than this is a tyranny, oligarchy, or confusion … a loose and depraved people (which is the question) love laws and an administration like themselves. That, therefore, which makes a good constitution, must keep it, viz.: men of wisdom and virtue, qualities, that because they descend not with worldly inheritances, must be carefully propagated by a virtuous education of youth; …” (Emphasis supplied by William Penn.)

And from para 15 of Virginia’s Bill of Rights, June 12, 1776, by Mr. Mason:

“That no free Government, or the Blessing of Liberty, can be preserved to any People but by a firm Adherence to Justice, Moderation, Temperance, Frugality, and Virtue, and by frequent Recurrence to fundamental Principles.”

Prophetic summaries.

A very good analysis of democracy. I do, however, want to point out the concept of social democracy, in contrast to liberal democracy. There are many adherants to social democracy in the world today (unfortanately). It differs in that instead of liberal values it incorporates socialist values, such as a redistribution of wealth instead of capitalism, etc.

Marbury v. Madison (1803) was the Supreme Court decision that provided the explicit legal justification for all subsequent Court decisions declaring acts of Congress unconstitutional.

The outgoing President, John Adams, had appointed some judges including William Marbury near the end of his term, but the Secretary of State, James Madison, owed his allegiance to the incoming Jefferson administration, which was of a different political party than John Adams.

The incoming Jeffersonian Congress repealed the law authorizing the appointments, and Jefferson cooperated with his party by refusing (through his Secretary of State ,William Marbury) to seat the judges.

So the Supreme Court (i.e., John Marshall, as there was only one justice in those days) DECLARED Congress’ act unconstitutional and said the Court COULD order Madison—a member of the Executive Branch—to seat Marbury and the other judges. Thus, the Court became supreme in one sense over the other two branches and has remained that way for almost two centuries.

Funny thing. Knowing that Jefferson would refuse to obey the Court and wanting to avoid a weakening of the Court, Marshall constructed a loophole and never issued an order. (HE found that CONGRESS had exceeded its Constitutional authority in enacting an earlier law giving Marshall the authority to carry out Marshall’s decision.)

Things have not changed much. Democrats are refusing to seat Bush’s judicial appointments.

When feeling that all is lost, we can remember that aid can come from unlooked for places. Maybe Bush will ignore a Supreme Court decision and alter American history drastically and in such a way as to aid traditionalists. So it is best that we study, write, and disseminate the ideas found here.

We can’t deflate when hearing,
It’ll never change.
The lottery of fate requires a ticket.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Mr. Jefferson expressed his chagrin that Marbury v. Madison “is continually cited by bench and bar, as if it were settled law, without any animadversion on its being merely an _obiter_ dissertation of the Chief Justice.” (Letter to William Johnson, June 12, 1823)

But this problem goes back much further. In a 1953 speech by R. Carter Pittman, he noted, “We are taught that … America has no constitutional or legal history back of 1776; that there was a _hiatus_ of 150 years, and that we must look back to laws and institutions developed in the Parliament and in the courts, customs and Privy Council of a little island 3,000 miles from American shores, during that one and one-half centuries… .

“Against a backgroud of English history the case of Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137, might be considered revolutionary, but this is America. Against the background of American history and the Constitution that grew out of it, that decision was juvenile, commonplace, and humdrum. That we should be taught that John Marshall was a new Columbus charting an unknown sea, is a reflection upon the intelligence and learning of the teacher. The only thing remarkable about that case is the fact that we consider it so, unless we consider how remarkable is was that Marshall lacked the courage of his forefathers for a frontal assault, and tiptoed to his goal through a side door.”

Mr. Murgos wrote: “Maybe Bush will ignore a Supreme Court decision and alter American history drastically”

Most of us might recall that President Jackson did just that after Worcester v. Georgia, 1832, where the Supreme Court had ruled on behalf of the Cherokee Nation: “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it!”

By chance I came upon my article on Lawrence v. Texas, “The sodomy decision: liberalism supreme and triumphant,” http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/001566.html of which the first sentence reads:

“The unelected judges of the Supreme Court have taken the central credo of modern liberalism—do what you will, so long as it’s consensual—and made it the supreme law of the land.”

The Lawrence decision is, of course, a top example of my present thesis that democracy-as-individual-rights is superceding democracy-as-majority-rule. The quote points to an essential connection between the two forms of democracy: they are both based on the notion of _consent_. The consent of the individual parties to a private act is what establishes the right to engage in that act; the consent of the majority of the people is what establishes the legitimacy of a law and of the government as a whole And, as I said, clearly the first form of consent is steadily vanquishing the second form today.

Of course, my analysis in the present article is only of two aspects of liberalism. Another aspect is group rights. So, in addition to modern liberalism deciding that democracy-as-individual-rights must prevail over democracy-as-majority-rule, it must also choose between different categories of individual rights, as well as between individual rights and group rights. In many cases, democracy-as-proportional-group-representation prevails over democracy-as-individual-rights. And once again “consent” seems to be the key concept. As is suggested in O’Connor’s culminating argument in Grutter, a society cannot be said to be expressing the consent of its people (or, in any case, a society will not long keep their consent), unless there is proportional group representation in every area of society including judgeships, legislatures, commissioned officers in the armed forces, and so on.

Is EVERYTHING about Lawrence and Roe v. Wade with you people? .

Alcibiades said that to the types of democracy under discussion we should add social democracy, involving redistribution of wealth.

Taking his suggestion we could break down the types like this:

1. Democracy as majority rule.

2. Democracy as rights, which consists of

a. Democracy as individual rights (which is still in keeping with a classical liberal understanding of democracy).

But then there are two socialistic forms of democracy:

b. Democracy as “social” democracy or “economic” democracy, meaning equality of results for individuals.

c. Democracy as group rights, meaning equality of results for ethnic and racial groups.

Finally, let me make it clear that the aim is not simply to maintain democracy-as-majority-rule against democracy-as-individual rights (or against democracy-as-group-rights), since both majority rule and individual rights represent an uncontained will to power. The point is to have a mixed constitutional order, in which both majority rule and individual rights have a place, but are balanced and contained by other forces and principles. Without such an overarching order, as I said, the likelihood is that individual rights will gradually wipe out majority rule, and then individual rights will mutate into economic rights and group rights, until the society is living under an unaccountable bureaucratic regime imposing various forms of equality of results on the whole society.