Communistic Democracy
The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, by Ryszard Legutko, New York, New York: Encounter Books, 2016, 182 pages, hardcover.
It is well known that many of the Founding Fathers of this country were against the notion of democracy. Some spoke of democracy’s penchant for chaos and for destroying itself through economic folly. Some noted that, more often than not, democracy leads to tyranny. For example, Thomas Jefferson warned, “Democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine percent.” Similarly, Gouverneur Morris wrote, “We have seen the tumults of democracy terminate, in France, as they have everywhere terminated, in despotism.”
These quotations will shock some Americans who have been told endlessly that the United States is a “democracy” when, in reality, it was founded as a limited republic. Is there a difference? There is a substantial difference in that in a democracy, the passing whims of a majority can become law. In a limited republic, the majority is restrained by a constitution that protects the rights of all citizens. Thus, if a majority decides that it wishes to confiscate the firearms of all honest citizens so that only criminals and the government are armed, the Constitution makes that exceedingly difficult, if not impossible.
JBS Member or ShopJBS.org Customer?
Sign in with your ShopJBS.org account username and password or use that login to subscribe.
Subscribe Now
- 24 Issues Per Year
- Digital Edition Access
- Exclusive Subscriber Content
- Audio provided for all articles
- Unlimited access to past issues
- Cancel anytime.
- Renews automatically
Subscribe Now
- 24 Issues Per Year
- Print edition delivery (USA)
*Available Outside USA - Digital Edition Access
- Exclusive Subscriber Content
- Audio provided for all articles
- Unlimited access to past issues
- Cancel anytime.
- Renews automatically