Blowing Smoke: The Myths of “Democracy”
Democracy is government by the people, as opposed to rule by kings or dictators. After centuries of often oppressive monarchial rule, democratic reforms promised people input in the laws which govern them. It could be argued it has been an improvement.
But many mistakenly believe that democracy is the shield which protects individual rights from state overreach. This is a mistake. History has shown that democracy without a strong constitution to protect individual rights against majoritarian oppression is simply rule by the mob.
In the French Revolution, it was seen that the mob can be as cruel and capricious as any dictator,i and that individual rights fall to the crowd just as easily as to the whims of a king.
The Scriptures say that the heart of mankind is “deceitful above all things and desperately wicked” – Jeremiah 17:9. Direct democracy in France resulted in riots, orgies in the churches, and guillotines on nearly every street corner in the city of Paris. Citizens were accused and massacred on the slimmest allegation, the sentence carried out without due process or appeal.
Humanity is no different today. It is not more enlightened now. Direct democracy in the hands of Antifa, Extinction Rebellion or Black Lives Matter would result in nothing less than the re-creation of the French Revolution. The Roman Catholic Inquisition persecuted and tortured dissenters for centuries. If in charge today it would act no differently than it has in the past. The Puritans of England were known to be as intolerant as the Roman Catholic Inquisitors, but they lacked civil power to exercise their wicked aspirations.
For this reason, it is only when a good constitution is made the supreme law of the land, above the rule of either mobs or kings, above the maneuvers of politicians of the left or the right, that individual rights are safeguarded.
Another word for a strong constitutional government is republicanism.ii Contrary to popular belief, America is not a democracy, but rather a constitutional republic, which incorporates representative government and constitutionalism. The U.S. Constitution does not even use the word, “democracy”, but rather describes the American system of government as republican in nature.
In other words, the Founding Fathers designed the Constitution itself to be the supreme law of the land, over even the desires of the majority.
Let us return to today. In a world where people are losing their individual rights, the political invocation of democracy is often intended to pacify the populace while their rights are stripped away. There even appears to be some correlation between the size of the tyrant and the number of public references to “democracy” that he or she makes, as though tyranny can be offset with sufficient formulistic references to democracy.
For example, it is part of the communist playbook to assert that a totalitarian society is in fact a free and democratic society, when it is not. China claims its one-party authoritarian system is a “democracy” even though there are no meaningful political alternatives to the ruling power in China, and it cruelly stifles and punishes dissent.iii
Venezuela has “elections”, not because dictator Nicholas Maduro cares about representative government, but because he suspects token elections may help stave off greater international condemnation of his regime.iv
The Cuban government claims it is a “people’s democracy”.v
This is all naked, self-serving propaganda. And similar gaslighting is evident in the western world as freedom crumbles and western governments imitate their communist counterparts.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen says that she will implement a “European Democracy Shield” if re-elected, but this does not mean she will take steps to ensure robust public discussion, dissent, and criticism of the European Commission’s policies. Far from it. The “Democracy Shield’s” stated purpose, rather, is to “combat disinformation”,vi which we know is code for suppression of dissent and undesirable public discourse.
We recently saw how much the European Commission values individual rights when it suppressed “disinformation” during Covid by attempting to eliminate public disagreement with compulsory Covid vaccine mandates.vii
In Canada, a country with constitutional protections for individual rights that are unfortunately subject to a powerful override clause in section 1 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Justin Trudeau trampled on the rights of peaceful protesters who opposed vaccine mandates and Covid lockdowns, and did so in the name of protecting “democracy”.viii Wartime emergency legislation was invoked to prevent peaceful protests, and citizens were arrested and had their bank accounts frozen.ix These actions were consistent with Chinese authoritarianism, which Trudeau stated publicly that he appreciates.x
Like Ursula von der Leyen, Trudeau also talks big about how much he cares about democracy. He recently announced an C8.4 million dollar grant to study the impact of climate change in the southern hemisphere on democracy.xi
In 2022, Trudeau announced more funding for the G-7 Rapid Response Mechanism to strengthen coordination between countries in responding to threats to their democracies. The “mechanism” was created in 2018 to fight “disinformation and misinformation”, so-called.
If only there was a grant to study politicians who work for the WEF instead of the citizens who elected them, and the resultant impact on democracy.
The Biden administration frequently invokes democracy. In Joe Biden’s State of the Union Address in 2023, he stated, “Folks, there’s one reason why we’ve been able to do all of these things: our democracy itself.” But the Biden administration oversaw vast government collusion with social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube to censor Americans that disagreed with the state on lockdowns and Covid.xii
It’s strange how the same politicians who often trumpet their commitment to democracy rarely mention the constitutions which were created to limit their overreach against citizen’ rights.
The truth is that the western world is riddled with corruption. It doesn’t usually have one party rule, per se, but it has a corrupt and power hungry administrative state (a shadow branch of government not subject to the electorate), an increasingly dictatorial executive branch, and courts which fail to follow the rule of law established in their countries’ respective constitutions. It has leaders who have betrayed their electorate to globalist ambitions and who refuse to secure their own borders.xiii
Europe does not need a “Democracy Shield”. It needs recognition of the Creator’s gift of inalienable rights to every human being so that politicians can’t strip individuals of their rights of speech and religion. Safeguarding inalienable and intrinsic rights via constitutional protections is the greatest need in Europe, China, Venezuela, Cuba, Canada, and every other country in the world which claims to value individual rights.
Without these constitutional protections, assertions of democracy are just gaslighting from tyrants.
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i https://hannenabintuherland.com/europa/the-french-revolution-and-democratic-tyranny-a-study-of-mob-rule-hanne-nabintu-herland-wnd-column/
ii This is not a reference to the Republican Party, but rather to the principles of a republic which codifies the rule of law, and specifically the Constitution, as the highest law of the land.
iii https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/08/china/china-us-democracy-summit-mic-intl-hnk/index.html
iv https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/18/venezuela-election-sunday-nicolas-maduro-henri-falcon; https://apnews.com/article/venezuela-election-european-union-electoral-observers-maduro-5e05e255f0b67bf9f476aa7a1b889016 ;
v https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Politics_of_Cuba
vi https://reclaimthenet.org/eus-von-der-leyen-calls-for-more-censorship-amid-re-election-campaign
vii https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/coronavirus-response/fighting-disinformation_en
viii https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/11/trudeau-takes-disinformation-fight-to-europe-00016709
ix https://tnc.news/2024/01/23/federal-court-declares-trudeaus-emergencies-act-unconstitutional/
x https://www.themainewire.com/2022/02/justin-trudeau-said-he-admired-chinas-dictatorship-canadians-should-have-believed-him/
xi https://nationalpost.com/opinion/trudeau-pledge-democratic-decline-climate-change-study
xii https://nypost.com/2023/03/09/matt-taibbi-eviscerates-twitter-in-congressional-hearing/
xiii https://rumble.com/user/LibertyRUS
