"Democracy Is a Terrible System, Period"by Douglas French
"The election year of 2012 reminds us of the sheer waste and lunacy of democracy. Like soccer’s World Cup or the Summer or Winter Olympics, presidential elections in the United States come every four years. The campaign is a carnival that begins the minute after a winner is declared in November. Each successive campaign is said to be dirtier than the last. Each candidate touts change and hope, but delivers neither. No matter who wins, the government is elected, every time. Thousands of bureaucrats march off to work the day after the election no matter who wins. Four years later, the same government employees will likely go to bed early on election night not caring who wins, because their jobs, which stand in the way of freedom each and every day, will be unaffected by the election results. The citizenry is pummeled with public service announcements to “make your voice heard.” It is your civic duty to vote. You have nothing to complain about if you don’t. But, in fact, government wants you to vote, but then sit down and shut up. Leave the governing to the professionals, while you pound your chest and wave Old Glory.
There are thousands of elections every year. Political positions from constable to governor are elected constantly. So with all of these layers of democracy - this great thing that America spends so many lives and so much money exporting - is America freer? With this constant turnover of political blood, is business allowed to operate unfettered? After all, we are led to believe democracy is synonymous with freedom. No democracy, no freedom.
America was attacked on Sept. 11 because they hate us for our freedoms, we’re told. America is so free it has the highest incarceration rate in the world, with 750 prisoners per 100,000 citizens. More than 2.3 million people are locked up, and many more millions are on probation. Is this is the upside of this great thing - democracy?
The Federal Register, a publication with all the country’s (federal, nonclassified) rules is now over 81,000 pages long. President Obama’s Affordable Care Act is 906 pages. The Dodd-Frank Act totals 849 pages. Once upon a time, in 1913, the Federal Reserve was created with only 31 pages. The U.S. Constitution required only six pages. Democracy is getting wordier. The more words, the more pages, the more rules, the less free we become. But we still have democracy, so we must be the luckiest people in the world. This is the greatest nation in the world… because of democracy. Because we have a say.
The idea of democracy is sacrosanct. To question it implies that you are in favor of despotism and tyranny. Democracy fans conveniently ignore the fact that despots and tyrants are freely elected every year.
President Hugo Chavez retained power in Venezuela this year, winning comfortably despite running his country’s economy into the ground with his socialist revolution of nationalizing key industries, tight exchange controls, and price controls on certain basic goods.
As the European economy continued to lurch toward meltdown, French voters elected Francois Hollande in 2012. The first three things Hollande did were raise the minimum wage, reduce the retirement age from 62 to 60, and raise the top tax rate to 75%. A conspiracy theorist would assume Hollande is deliberately trying to demolish what’s left of the French economy with these policies.
In Moscow, Vladimir Putin was again elected president of Russia. Despite police repression and the thuggery of the previous Putin regime, pro-Putin rallies were much more popular than anti-Putin rallies. “This is the time to build a bridge to Putin, before the most talented people move out of Russia,” said curator Marat Gelman.
As the United States elections draw near, the incumbent president is leading or tied in the polls. In his four years, he has not really deviated from his predecessor’s policies that were generally reviled by those in his party. He has presided over the largest expansion in public debt in world history, with the result being economic growth that is the weakest since the Great Depression. And this guy is likely to win. If he doesn’t, his opponent will govern just as he (and the ones before him) did.
Those of us paying attention are left to merely sigh and roll our eyes, reminded of H.L. Mencken’s line, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” Meanwhile, democracy continues on unquestioned. The politicians may be crooked, the taxes ruinous, the bureaucracy unwieldy, and the regulations outrageous, but the source of these outcomes is never questioned. The hope of democracy depends on the idea that all we need is the right people in power.
If democracy isn’t working, it’s not democracy’s fault. The problem is only that the right people have not been elected yet. This theory has been tested for hundreds of years and the results are the same, yet people still hope and believe. The worst rise to the top in politics, F.A. Hayek explained. To be elected, politicians must appeal to the least intelligent and most gullible. And because democracy makes politics and power available to everyone, it attracts those seeking status, fame, glory, recognition, attention, appreciation, dignity, and even dominance. The right people will never be attracted to politics, only the wrong people will.”- http://dailyreckoning.com/•“The more one analyses people, the more all reasons for analysis disappear. Sooner or later one comes to that dreadful universal thing called human nature.” - Oscar Wilde•
"Animal Farm"by George OrwellBiographical note: "George Orwell, 1903-1950, was the pen name used by British author and journalist Eric Arthur Blair. During most of his professional life time Orwell was best known for his journalism, both in the British press and in books such as "Homage to Catalonia," describing his activities during the Spanish Civil War, and "Down and Out in Paris and London," describing a period of poverty in these cities. Orwell is best remembered today for two of his novels, "Animal Farm" and "Nineteen Eighty-Four."
Description: Power corrupts, but absolute power corrupts absolutely- and this is vividly and eloquently proved in Orwell's short novel. "Animal Farm" is a simple fable of great symbolic value, and as Orwell himself explained: "it is the history of a revolution that went wrong." The novel can be seen as the historical analysis of the causes of the failure of communism, or as a mere fairy-tale; in any case it tells a good story that aims to prove that human nature and diversity prevent people from being equal and happy, or at least equally happy.
"Animal Farm" tells the simple and tragic story of what happens when the oppressed farm animals rebel, drive out Mr. Jones, the farmer, and attempt to rule the farm themselves, on an equal basis. What the animals seem to have aimed at was a utopian sort of communism, where each would work according to his capacity, respecting the needs of others. The venture failed, and "Animal Farm" ended up being a dictatorship of pigs, who were the brightest, and most idle of the animals.
Orwell's mastery lies in his presentation of the horrors of totalitarian regimes, and his analysis of communism put to practice, through satire and simple story-telling. The structure of the novel is skillfully organized, and the careful reader may, for example, detect the causes of the unworkability of communism even from the first chapter. This is deduced from Orwell's description of the various animals as they enter the barn and take their seats to listen to the revolutionary preaching of Old Major, father of communism in Animal Farm. Each animal has different features and attitude; the pigs, for example, "settled down in the straw immediately in front of the platform", which is a hint on their future role, whereas Clover, the affectionate horse" made a sort of wall" with her foreleg to protect some ducklings.
So, it appears that the revolution was doomed from the beginning, even though it began in idealistic optimism as expressed by the motto" no animal must ever tyrannize over his own kind. Weak or strong, clever or simple, we are all brothers. "When the animals drive out Mr. Jones, they create their "Seven Commandments" which ensure equality and prosperity for all the animals. The pigs, however, being the natural leaders, managed to reverse the commandments, and through terror and propaganda establish the rule of an elite of pigs, under the leadership of Napoleon, the most revered and sinister pig.
"Animal Farm" successfully presents how the mechanism of propaganda and brainwashing works in totalitarian regimes, by showing how the pigs could make the other animals believe practically anything. Responsible for the propaganda was Squealer, a pig that "could turn black into white." Squealer managed to change the rule from "all animals are equal" to "all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others." He managed to convince the other animals that it was for their sake that the pigs ate most of the apples and drank most of the milk, that leadership was "heavy responsibility" and therefore the animals should be thankful to Napoleon, that what they saw may have been something they "dreamed", and when everything else failed he would use the threat of "Jones returning" to silence the animals. In this simple but effective way, Orwell presents the tragedy and confusion of thought control to the extent that one seems better off simply believing that "Napoleon is always right".
Orwell's criticism of the role of the Church is also very effective. In Animal Farm, the Church is represented by Moses, a tame raven, who talks of "Sugarcandy Mountain", a happy country in the sky "where we poor animals shall rest forever from our labors". It is interesting to observe that when Old Major was first preaching revolutionary communism, Moses was sleeping in the barn, which satirizes the Church being caught asleep by communism. It is also important to note that the pig-dictators allowed and indirectly encouraged Moses; it seems that it suited the pigs to have the animals dreaming of a better life after death so that they wouldn't attempt to have a better life while still alive...
In "Animal Farm," Orwell describes how power turned the pigs from simple "comrades" to ruthless dictators who managed to walk on two legs, and carry whips. The story maybe seen as an analysis of the Soviet regime, or as a warning against political power games of an absolute nature and totalitarianism in general. For this reason, the story ends with a hair-raising warning to all humankind: "The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again: but already it was impossible to say which was which."
FREE direct download, in PDF format, of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm" is here:
- http://www.msxnet.org/orwell/print/animal_farm.pdf
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