How modern liberalism destroys majority rule and self-government

From a discussion in 2006, a concise summing up of the problem.

I wrote:

Also, Mark D. said: “Liberal communities have no legitimate majorities. Liberal communities are merely a collection of individual human wills.” He points out to me in an e-mail that this means that “in liberal societies, two principles we take for granted no longer apply: (1) consent of the governed, and (2) rule by majority.”

This is profoundly troubling, and obviously true. It’s just a further application of our understanding that since liberalism says that only the individual and his desires matter, liberalism denies the legitimacy of the nation and its majority culture. But now we see that liberalism also denies the legitimacy of political majorities as well as of cultural majorities. Or, as Mark continues: “A majority party can rule so long as it affirms there is no majority. This is Blair’s England.”

And thus we arrive at the modern bureaucratic state, the ideal of which is the EU, and the current leading examples of which are Britain and France. Since only the individual and his will matter, and all individual wills are of equal value, no majority of individual wills can be allowed to force its will on any minority of individual wills. Therefore the society cannot be ruled on the basis of the consent of the majority, also known as the consent of the governed. The society must be run by a non-elected instrumentality that is independent of the governed, in order to protect the equality of all individual wills.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 06, 2009 05:34 AM | Send