Democracy Sucks

Quote of the Day in recognition of Inauguration Day 2021:

“After this election, the U.S. will never (ever) again be able to lecture another country on how to hold elections.”
- Daniel McAdams

If I am surprised at anything regarding the 2020 election, it is about how many people were surprised at finding out about the amount of corruption, manipulation, and shenanigans of the election process. And about the evil of the political party machines, government actors, and media. Of course they are corrupt — there is a tremendous amount of power at stake.

Both Trump and Biden are symptoms, symbols, and signs of the problem. They, themselves, are not actually the problem. Nor is either a solution.

The fundamental problem is the ludicrous amount of unlawful (i.e. unconstitutional) power that Congress, SCOTUS, the individual states, and ultimately what We the People have handed our presidents and allowed them to get away with. This is not what the Founders envisioned. It is not what they wrote and ratified in the highest law of the land.

The problem is the exercise of and attraction to this power by both presidents and the political party machines. Power is what triggers the corruption, manipulation, and shenanigans. Without the power, the incentives are essentially gone.

History shows the solution cannot involve “voting the bums out.” I have watched this being tried for decades regarding the federal government. It hasn’t done anything. Power continues to expand. The size and cost of government continues its steady rise regardless of the party or person in the White House.

School board and sheriff elections are important, but the president? The party in power? It doesn’t matter as much as many people think.

In the long run, for the fundamental problem of excessive size of government, voting and the party in power haven’t mattered at all. A clear, simple, numeric way to measure size of the general government in D.C. is the amount of money spent. The party affiliation of the person in the White House shows little to no significant difference going back a century or more. The last four years set new high records on spending and borrowing, as nearly every four-year term does. Evidently, voting doesn’t do anything about this. A reasonable conclusion is that something else needs to be done.

Without limiting the power of the office of president, all of history says we should expect to see an increase in size of government, increase in the amount of corruption, and increase in election shenanigans. Power itself triggers corruption.

As Daniel McAdams pointed out, the U.S. is going to have a tough time spreading democracy by teaching other people how to hold elections. Or by bombing other countries into instituting a fair democracy with free elections with the U.S. as an example. For those who don’t know of him, Daniel was Ron Paul’s chief of staff in Congress, and he is currently co-host of Ron’s YouTube show.

As the quote ascribed to Ben Franklin in 1759 said: “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.” We are lambs being taken out to lunch by democratic elections.

Anyone thinking that a “vote the bums out” strategy will fix D.C. will likely be disappointed in the end. The word “democracy” appears nowhere in the U.S. Constitution or Bill of Rights for a good reason; the Founders avoided democracy like the COVID. They knew that democracy sucks.