The (False) Promise of Democracy

(Originally posted to the UMP Blog on October 10th, 2023)

Assassination of Julius Caesar during a meeting of the Senate beneath a statue of his rival Pompey Magnus

“Democracy is the best system for choosing the best leaders!”

“Democracy protects freedom!”

“Democracy is the best government ever devised!”

Or at least that is what so many of us are led to believe. If it were at all true, I’d be the first one in support of Democracy.

When someone says to a monarchist like myself, “Why would you want a king? Kings are stupid and inbred! Democracy gives you the best chance for the best government.” I can’t help but roll my eyes. Leaving aside that this belief should be blatantly false to anyone who has just a high school level history education, democracy does not in fact “guarantee” the best, by any metric. Certainly, I will freely admit that there can be found profoundly gifted democratic candidates and leaders, those individuals however are not a dime a dozen, such men and women are rare blue moons. They only come around at best once a generation and at worst once every century.

If democracy was the guarantor of good or successful governments, then it would logically follow that ALL democratic governments or politicians are the best leaders western history ever produced. Maria Theresia (Austria), Louis IX (France), Frederick II (Prussia), Elizabeth I (England), and George III (Great Britain) should all Beware! Their places in history are now to be challenged by the likes of Karl Nehammer, Emmanuel Macron, Olaf Scholz, Rishi Sunak, and Joseph Biden…Such a ludicrous comparison frankly speaks for itself.

Sometimes when confronted with this fact, proponents of democracy shift to a different tactic; democracy might not be the guarantor of good government or good leadership, but it allows you to remove bad leadership or unpopular leadership. This next myth is easily falsified by the rise of every demagogue in history! From Cromwell to Napoleon, Mussolini to Hitler. Even the approval ratings of the American congress compared to their re-election rates disproves this myth; never has an institution been so hated, yet the electorate cannot help but send the same people they claim to despise, over and over again, back into the “halls of power.” Demagogues and Dictators (the former inevitably becoming the later) so obviously wanting in morality and decency, yet their followers and broader populations had no problem supporting them. As far as congressmen/women go, I make no claim on their morals; I only observe that the citizens of the United States view congress with unrivaled contempt, yet there in the House and Senate they remain and continue to return.

But wait! There’s More! They try to change course once again, “It’s easy!” they say. “All we do is make those views illegal!” Ah, finally an answer to everything…Not really.

Making heterodox, or even strongly oppositional, views illegal offers a basic conundrum and solves nothing; it lies in stark contrast to the very idea of “freedom” itself. And freedom is something democrats are very adamant about defending, quick to remind everyone that only democracy offers freedom.

Democracy: the people rule! And the people deserve to get what they want (Good and Hard!).

Making certain political positions illegal means:

1) that democracy needs to be protected (and many self-described democrats have said as much), or in other terms “we don’t trust the demos enough to make the right choice.” In that you have agreement from this monarchist, the difference is that I freely admit it and they still pretend to believe in democracy. But it also has another key problem:

2) that such a list of perceived dangerous views (potentially even codified as dangerous) will inevitably continue to grow in scope. It has no natural limitation to the threats it sees coming. Any ideas or beliefs, including those that aren't even extreme, which are viewed as threats simply are threats. It’s a process of de-platforming and silencing, of being unable to address the opposition or combat them effectively, so it's just easier to crush their influence and visibility. Well, what do ya know! Happening now, isn’t it?

Democracy shall suffer no rival on this earth! Come to think of it, most (All to my knowledge) revolutionary ideas behave the exact same way.

Democracy does not guarantee good government, it does not guarantee good leadership, it does not guarantee my liberty as an individual, and can often threaten my liberty. The unchecked power of a democracy can often be just as corrosive as that of any dictatorship. Hopefully our modern world will start to understand this and start questioning these basic assumptions before we all run our ships right into the ground!

~ Augustus