The “Will of the People” is a Farce

The people are the heroes now, behemoth pulls the peasant's plow...

Originally published on October 7, 2016.

It is becoming increasingly apparent to all reasonable observers that democracy in the Western world is a failure as a stable governing system.  The reasons for this are obvious.  Democracy encourages interfactional conflicts within a political state as various special interest and racial pressure groups each seek to seize as much political power from each other as possible.  Indeed, democracy can be said to be a root cause of the current crisis we see in the Western nations in which they are being flooded with hostile and inassimilable foreigners from the Third World.  The reason they are being invited here is so that leaders of the Blue Empire can essentially replace the intractable native populations with (presumably) more pliable ones who will be open to socialism and globalism, which is essentially what Steve Sailer pointed out was taking place years ago in Bahrain and Libya.  From a stability and cohesion standpoint, democracy is toxic.  It’s a superfund site which can only be dealt with by digging it out of the earth in toto and burying it in a lead-lined vault for a hundred centuries.

One of the most serious intrinsic weaknesses of democracy is the prevalence of factionalism.  Now, no system is immune to this problem.  Even monarchies and aristocracies will see varying levels of infighting between factions.  However, this type of factionalism is usually confined to cliques which develop around various personalities in court, and rarely spills over into the nation at large.  Aristocratic factionalism is almost never something which affects the lives of the common people or which excites them to themselves “choose sides” and undermine the overall social cohesion and order in the nation.

The same cannot be said of democratic factionalism, however.  By its very nature, democratic factionalism seeks to mobilise large masses of ideologically motivated people in the service of a preferred political outcome.  Whereas monarchic/aristocratic systems usually contain built-in safeguards which act to prevent interfactional strife from escalating to open conflict, the history of democracy, whether ancient or modern, lacks these.  Hence, when a democratic system begins to break down, such as occurred in ancient 4th century Athens and in the German Weimar Republic between 1924 – 1932, it is not uncommon for open factional warfare even to take place.

The problem with democratic instability is compounded by the introduction of and mass loyalty to various ideologies such as the multitudinous shades of socialism, liberalism, communism, etc.  For many within a democracy, the ideology (and any associated political parties) become the object of loyalty.  This is seen in the United States with both major political parties, exemplified best with the Democrats (who will vote for their candidates no matter how unethical, corrupt, or destitute of morals they may be), but also with the “Never Trumper” style Republicans as well, who are perfectly willing to sacrifice the future of their nation on the altar of ideological purity.  Because faction and ideology are placed above the nation in loyalty, it becomes very easy for civil strife to break out in democracies.  Indeed, it has been said that democracy is really a form of civil war which (usually) results in fewer dead people.

In the modern (i.e. post-“Enlightenment”) era, there are two general philosophical underpinnings for universalistic democracy which can be found, in some form or fashion, permeating every argument for this form of government.

The first is the notion of the volonté générale, the “general will,” advanced by Rousseau and other French philosophes prior to the French Revolution, and which underlay the sixth Article of the revolutionary “Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen.”  This idea proposes that a democratic society, through the actions of each of its parts (or their “democratic” leaders, as became the case in revolutionary France), will arrive at an overall consensus for society, and that the individual is to be subsumed to this consensus which now is to become the will of all of the people within society.  This notion was rightly criticised by Hegel for the transitory and subjective nature of the “consensus” established by such a process.  Indeed, his observation that the “general will” made the reign of terror practically inevitable carries a great deal of weight when we observe the sort of excesses which have been carried out by revolutionaries (French, Russian, and otherwise) in the name of “the people.”

The other substructure for modern democracy is the utilitarian philosophy propounded by Jeremy Bentham and developed by other British philosophers such as John Stuart Mill and Henry Sidgwick.  In its essentials, utilitarianism has been boiled down to the aphorism, “The greatest good for the greatest number of people.”  This philosophy has also been justly criticised both for its subjectivity (who and what defines “good”?) and for its incipient support for “totalitarian democracy.”

Both of these philosophies, within the governmental sphere, essentially encourage a strict majoritarianism (or at least the façade of such).  The “general will” is whatever a majority decides at the time that it will be, and this decision is supposedly made on the basis of what is the greatest good for that majority (i.e. the greatest number) who decides upon that good.  While platitudes are often mouthed about “protecting the rights of the minority,” in practice this is not the case within revolutionary systems (or even, increasingly, within non-revolutionary democratic systems).  During the French Revolution, the “general will” was whatever the Directorate said it was, and if you dissented, you went to the guillotine.  In the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks decided what the “will of the proletariat” would be.  Even in modern day America, a small self-anointed oligarchy of democrats declare that homosexualism and transgenderism are “civil rights,” and thus “the will of the people” in our society, even though this is manifestly not the case.

Yet, this must invariably be the case in a majoritarian and democratic system.  Simply put, the notion of a “general will of the people” in any real and concrete sense of the term is an impossibility.  You will never find any large group of people – whether city-state or continent-spanning empire – in total agreement on even a single issue, which is what is necessary to actually have a “general” will in any reasonable meaning of that expression.  Even in areas of broad agreement, there will be significant portions of the populace who will dissent.  No act of government and no choice of society can purport to be “generally” representative of the will of the whole population.  In place of an actual “general” will you will invariably find the will of those who use demotism to obtain political power, which is portrayed as “the will of the people.”  Equally as invariable will be the use of the apparatus of the state to punish dissenters.  Since a public policy choice is “the will of the people,” those who dissent may then be classified for the purposes of ethical and legal justification as “not people” or “traitors to the people,” and dealt with accordingly.

As such, democracies invariably find themselves captured (if not created) by cabals of radical Left progressive factionalists who use the system to persecute and destroy any who dissent from their radical agenda.  “Social democracy” may spread the process out over a number of decades, but as we’re seeing in Europe and the rest of the Western world, the process still results in the same end as the quicker revolutionary approach.  In nearly every case, the “will of the people” is not, and the whole question of consulting the people – a spurious proposition at best – ends up being a complete farce.  Democratic “leaders” know this to be the case, but find the appeals to “the people” to be a useful tool in granting themselves supposed legitimacy.  It is no surprise that the peoples of the West find themselves under the thumb of economic policies not of their choosing, oppressed by “foreign guests” not of their choosing, and having rammed down their throats sociosexual policies not of their choosing.

Some will argue that democracy is really a good idea, it just hasn’t been implemented in the right way.  This, of course, is the same argument often advanced for communism, that it hasn’t worked yet only because the “right people” haven’t tried.  And it fails for the same reason.  Communism hasn’t worked because it inherently cannot work.  It is simply too contrary to human nature and natural reason to be successful.  Likewise, democracy, in the long term, is an inherently unworkable proposition simply because it relies upon premises which are out of accord with reality.

The simple fact of the matter is that no matter how much modern man may repeat the equalitarian mantras about everyone being equal and everyone deserving an equal voice, the fact of the matter is that the vast, vast majority of people in our Western societies – as with any other – are simply not fitted for nor capable of genuine self-government.  Most people simply cannot handle being given a share of governing power, and are prone to abuse it and misunderstand it when they do possess it.

A share in government, of whatever sort, carries with it duties and responsibilities that correspond with the privilege of possessing it.  It is the responsibility of those in power to rule in such a way as to advance the good of the nation, both for the present generation and for those to come.  When those in power do not do so, but instead rule for their own personal aggrandisement and pleasure, that is rightly called “tyranny.”  “Tyrant” is a word that describes the quality of government, not its constituted organisation.  One who rules singly (a king, for instance) is not necessarily a tyrant.  One who rules for their own good, rather than for the genuine benefit of the nation, IS a tyrant.   And there need not be a corrupted monarchy or aristocracy to have a tyranny.  Democracies are perfectly capable of producing them as well.

The problem with democracy is that it encourages the sort of corrupted self-interest in the exercise of governing power which is the very opposite of good government and which is the very definition of tyranny.  This is the case whether we’re talking about members of a progressive cabal who rule (such as we see in the United States, for instance) so as to enrich themselves through government graft and corruption, or the voters who vote for politicians who promise them bigger and bigger checks drawn from the national treasury.  It has been observed that democracies will last only as long as it takes for the unscrupulous and morally bankrupted portion of “the people” to reach a majority so that they can consistently vote themselves benefits from the public dole.   There is no empirical evidence to date to suggest that this is wrong.

The reason for this, in turn, is that most people in a society simply do not, and will not, invest the time, effort, and work needed to craft themselves into the sort of natural aristocrats who would rightfully deserve a share in the governing power.  America’s founders, at various points, proposed that the democratically-tending constitutional system they were creating would require the citizenry to be both moral and well-informed.  Neither of these even remotely describe the American population today, nor the populations of practically any other Western nation, either.  For a democracy to have any hope of working, the large majority of its people must be willing to forgo short-term self-interest in favour of longer-term goals.  This is yet another reason why American democracy is now bound to fail – as the national IQ continues to decline, time preferences will continue to shorten and shortsightedness in public policy will continue to get worse.  Simply put, the American people (and those of the rest of the West) continue to become even less capable of making the almost impossible happen.

This is why the future belongs to the authoritarians, no matter how much the “muh constertooshun” crowd tries to fight it.  While democracy does not work, monarchy and aristocracy have long and venerable histories as successful governing philosophies.  This is because these systems concentrate governing power into the hands of a few or into one – and these few individuals tend to be the natural aristocrats who have proven their superiority over the masses.  Further, there is no real reason to think that if the great masses of the people were not constantly being roiled by demagogues and “political reformers,” that they would have any real interest in governing anywise.  Simply put, most people, if they have their football games and their blockbuster movies, would be perfectly content letting others make the hard decisions.   Democracy is bound to fail.  Let us be ready for when it does.