Comments Elsewhere

Mark Fulwiler:

“I’m afraid democracy doesn’t “work” well anyplace—-it always end up as “mob rule” to some degree.”

“Here’s the bottom line: Once the majority figures out that they can use the ballot box and democracy to loot and oppress other people, they always do it. Always. And a written Constitution doesn’t offer much of a defense. Constitutions can be ignored or amended.”

I agree with you, Mark, that a rights-violating government doesn’t magically become OK just because there is popular input into it, and that the idea that protection of individual rights appears magically through the hocus-pocus of a plebiscite is silly. But the direction of critique here is a bit odd. It’s true that democracies can end in corruption and majoritarian looting of the minority. But how does that make them any different from any other political constitution? Certainly monarchies and oligarchies pretty quickly figured out that they could use minority rule to loot from the majority—and that written Constitutions were never much of a defense against them.

In fact, it’s true of any conceivable constitutional form that it could be corrupted and those with control over the guns could turn them on others. It’s even true of idealized anarcho-capitalist enforcement agencies. The will is free and people may end up choosing to do evil. The question is which constitutions are comparatively better and more resistant to encroachments on rights, and which ones are comparatively worse.

Is there any reason to think that rule by the many is comparatively worse than rule by the few, and more prone to rights-violating “mob rule” than rule by the few is prone to rights-violating cabal rule?

Or is this just a general complaint against the State as such, being applied to the limitations of democracy in this particular case? In that case, it’s a fair enough complaint, but it would be odd to suggest the other plausible alternatives for Iraq’s near future (e.g. a military colony headed by a U.S. proconsul or a tyranny run by some suitable client such as Allawi) are better, or even that they aren’t any worse.