Re: Down with Democracy!

Seth David Schoen (schoen@uclink4.Berkeley.EDU)
16 Dec 1997 06:35:32 GMT 

Daniel C. Burton writes:

>I think we should have an anti-democracy protest next semester.  People
>who actually believe in government can just protest unlimited democracy,
>and people like me can go all-out and promote anarchy.  We can have a
>little democarcy efficy on a hangman's noose. 
>
>With all the pro-democracy dissidents around the world in the news, why
>not organize a few anti-democracy dissidents in the USA?
>
>Go up on the shock value props and on the good ideas and I imagine we'd
>get quite a bit of attention.
>
>With all those boring protests out on Sproul on this or that boring issue,
>why not do something interesting like protest against democracy?
>
>(We could organize a front organization like "Cal Anti-Democracy
>Dissidents" if necessary.)

I think this is a good idea.

When I was at a debate tournament arguing an anarchism case in a debate
round, our opponents were offended, and I was heckling them (in keeping
with the rule of parliamentary debate).  Later, someone asked me what all
the fuss was over, and I said "They had the nerve to stand up on the
anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and defend democracy."

In protesting against democracy, though, we should make very clear that
it's not an authoritarian anti-democracy protest.  After all, most of the
pro-democracy protesters who get the media attention _are_ pro-freedom
protesters; they don't take it far enough, but they _do_ want more political
freedom than they are receiving in their current conditions.  So we don't
want to be counterproductive by accidentally being mistaken for promoting
the other side.  (Of course, the shock value is very beneficial.)  We _do_
want more civil liberties, we just don't think that they have to do with
"majority rule", and we see many cases in which "majority rule" has hurt
freedom by promoting a tyranny of the majority.

Democracy has the potential to _inhibit_ free expression, for example, by
making it politically expedient for Congress to embrace a "tough on porn"
or McCarthyist stance.  In many parts of the country, democracy continues
to hurt gay rights.  (I was around in my native Northampton, MA, for the
Domestic Partnership Ordinance, DPO, which would have extended the same
city benefits to married gay couples extended to heterosexual gay couples,
and you should have seen the hysteria the local social conservatives
whipped up to "fight the imposition on our family values" -- and good old
democracy, with a little pressure from religion, continued the same regime
of discrimination against gays and lesbians.  And this is Northampton, a
city widely known for being liberal in every sense!)

In our debate, we wanted to paint a picture of democracies' political life as
characterized by tyrannies of majorities, of the current coalition of groups
which had taken a majority wielding the power to dictate to everyone else,
until the next cycle came around.  The fascists tend to want to see this
replaced by a tyranny of the minority (because they feel they're more
enlightened); we, I assume, would generally like to see it replaced by
a tyranny of ... no one!

So I would certainly approve of an anti-democracy protest and be an
enthusiastic participant.

"It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed
by a majority... From the absolute will of an entire people there is no
appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason."  Lord Acton (not a libertarian,
but certainly the author of a nice quotation here)

-- 
   Seth David Schoen L&S '01 (undeclared) / schoen@uclink4.berkeley.edu
Magna dis immortalibus habenda est atque huic ipsi Iovi Statori, antiquissimo
custodi huius urbis, gratia, quod hanc tam taetram, tam horribilem tamque
infestam rei publicae pestem totiens iam effugimus.  -- Cicero, in Catilinam I