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The Most Dangerous Democratic Delusion

 Democracy is a system of government under which the people are automatically liable for whatever the government does to them.

Many of the most deadly errors of contemporary political thinking stem from the notion that in a democracy the government is the people, so there is scant reason to worry about protecting citizens from the government.

Hobbes sought civil peace by imposing an almost unlimited duty of submission via the sham that people are responsible for whatever government does to them: thus, government can never do the people wrong: thus, people never have a right to resist the government.

Were citizens responsible for FDR's 1940 reelection campaign boasts about keeping America out of World War Two - or were they to blame of his secret machinations to drag the United States into that war the following year? President Lyndon Johnson declared on October 28, 1964: "Government is not an enemy of the people. Government is the people themselves." Yet it wasn't "The people" of Arkansas or Oklahoma who had lied about the Gulf of Tonkin incident to create a pretext to commence bombing a foreign nation.

If the people are the government, then should some specific private citizen be held personably blameworthy for each incomprehensible paragraph of a Federal Register notice, for each abusive IRS tax audit, and for each property seizure from an innocent owner by a zealous Justice Department attorney seeking "Good numbers" for his district? The notion that "You are the government" is simply a way to shift the guilt for every crime by the government onto every victim of government.

If the citizen is the government, why is there a stark distinction in federal law between the class of private citizen and government employee - with far harsher penalties for any person who shoves, threatens, or kills a federal employee than a private citizen? Why is it perfectly acceptable and routine procedure for government employees to lie to citizens but a federal crime for citizens to lie to the government? The notion that "The people are the government" is one of the biggest slanders that the average citizen will endure in his lifetime.

The most important issue is not whether the government rules in the name of the majority but how the government rules - whether its power is limited or unlimited.

https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/the-most-dangerous-democratic-delusion/

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