CAPITOL IDEAS: Democracy: A Little Goes a Long Way
Bethell, Tom
CAPITOL IDEAS TOM BETHELL Democracy: A Little Goes a Long Way HE PROBLEM WITH DEMOCRACY iS that we only hear the good news. Criticism is taboo. It's as though any discussion of its drawbacks...
...The universal franchise probably means that it can never be reduced...
...It is the opposite of statesmanlike...
...Perhaps politically active voting blocs can do the trick instead...
...See "Women's Suffrage and the Growth of the Welfare State," published by the National Center for Policy Analysis in 1999...
...It's as though any discussion of its drawbacks would be unpatriotic...
...The trouble with so many women (not all I hasten to add, but probably a majority) is that they think the function of government is to "help" whole classes of people...
...As Bagehot feared, government was delivered into the hands of people who knew little...
...He did the same thing with steel-import tariffs—intended to help his chances in steel-producing states...
...You could still say things like that in 1860, when he was editor of The Economist and parliamentary reform was being debated in England...
...It's not just that we have a government that has grown far too large...
...for so long...
...Government schools not working...
...In Switzerland, they couldn't vote until 1971...
...Monarchy, by this criterion, is preferable to democracy...
...It's probably true that both England and the United States were best governed in the early stages of democracy when the franchise was restricted...
...With the latest voting machines, the mufti and the mullahs will get the hang of it...
...No one foresaw that old folks would become such a drain...
...They lobby for the unlettered to enlist in their cause...
...The liberals continue to control it in many respects, and that puts them in effective control of what the masses think and what their representatives do...
...It will be everlasting, but it will benefit him politically just once, on November 2, 2004...
...Drivers are expected to pass driving tests, but the latest word from California is that illegal aliens can get driver's licenses...
...The latest idea, just below the surface and popular with Democrats, is that people should be allowed to vote even if they don't have citizenship...
...The international bureaucrats will oppose any such proposal, and the Bush administration will fear it...
...The idea that failing programs require more money is the first article of the liberal creed...
...Conservatives have been too complacent about all this, reposing their hopes in a gradual education of the masses...
...Why are less enlightened nations the way they are...
...As long as they believe it and the major media continue sending that message, the masses will believe it, too, and government will continue to expand...
...Send more money...
...A pet project of American liberalism in the past half century has been the expansion of the right to vote...
...We support Israel because it's "the only democracy in the region...
...With the masses admitted into the polling booths, government immediately began to undertake tasks inappropriate to its mission—providing for health-care and education, for example...
...Because they don't have elections...
...Bush fell for that one, too...
...They were (and remain) easy prey to demagogues who preach that government should perform many inappropriate functions: above all, the coercive transfer of wealth from some groups to others...
...But the mullahs might want to suggest to Ambassador Paul Bremer that they should be permitted to embark on democracy the same way we did...
...Otherwise they would vote themselves ever-increasing benefits...
...If women were disenfranTOM LTHELL chised, America would become politically much more conservative overnight...
...NOVEMBER 2003 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 43 Democracy is not majori rule but rule by public opinion...
...To help his reelection, he is prepared to saddle us with a potentially unlimited new entitlement...
...Voters in England and the U.S...
...It circumscribes elected officials with short time horizons...
...This tendency was feared by nineteenth century commentators such as Walter Bagehot, who wrote that enfranchising the masses would result in "the transfer of government to the hands of the poor, the untrained, and the ignorant...
...The educated classes vaguely assume that if America is good, it is because America is democratic...
...The costs imposed on steel-consumers everywhere else seem to have been overlooked...
...Even liberal reformers had their doubts...
...Iraq under American tutelage, we believe, is on its way to becoming a democracy...
...No candidate for public office anywhere would dare to suggest bringing back literacy tests or property qualifications...
...Here he engages in preemptive pandering to a large and politically potent class...
...Federal employees should be barred, voter registration should resemble a jury voirdire, and aspiring voters should bring their tax returns or be turned away at the door...
...Bagehot understood, as even liberal reformers did in the nineteenth century, that someone who votes for a parliamentary candidate is, pro tem, an officer of the state—comparable to a juror...
...As to the exclusion of women, which would appeal to Shiites and Sunnis alike, it will no doubt be unthinkable...
...Hazy slogans such as these act as substitutes for thought...
...Anyway, one lesson is that if we want to install democracy in places like Iraq, it would be more sensible to start out with a severely restricted franchise...
...The voters will see to that...
...The subsequent permanent expansion of the federal government will be of little concern because he won't be running for office again...
...The principle that the subsidized should not vote is a good one, of course, and it should be adopted across the board...
...N, Tom Bethel...
...This illustrates a key defect of democracy...
...A socialized world could not be achieved by tyranny...
...Now you know...
...As such, he should at least be literate and capable of passing some kind of a civics test...
...I am reluctant to impute wisdom to the masses, but they may indeed vaguely realize that a chief executive must be willing to do the unpopular thing and resist the expansionist tendencies of democracies and Democrats...
...Consider President Bush's desire to pay for seniors' prescription drugs...
...After women started voting, Switzerland's social-welfare spending jumped by 28 percent...
...were also 42 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 2003 expected to be "ratepayers," or to pay tax on property...
...They resemble nothing so much as umpires who have decided that a better role for umpires would be to help the losing team...
...Conservatives in the nineteenth century were right to be wary of expanding the franchise, but they were unsure how the problem would play out...
...Today, the imposition of any such condition for registration would be regarded as political blasphemy...
...They are willing, often eager, to vote for projects that will help their own reelection next year, even if these projects are undesirable for the nation in the long run...
...The same people who remain uninformed about the drawbacks of democracy are also unaware of how difficult it is to achieve it...
...Let's face it, votes for women means votes for liberals...
...Democracy is not majority rule but rule by public opinion...
...Maybe the fate of California's Governor Davis will prove to be instructive...
...The essentially unrestricted franchise we have in England and America is a comparative novelty...
...Have you ever wondered how Switzerland managed to stay out of all those dumb "caring" organizations like the U.N...
...Governments do need a popular branch to forestall tyranny, but it doesn't have to be elected by all the people...
...Voting "empowers" people and that's all to the good...
...They tend to lack the civic virtue of impartiality—the key quality required of a good judge...
...Those licenses will no doubt suffice to qualify them as voters...
...Liberals, on the other hand, see these problems as blessings because their goal is to expand government to the fullest...
...Today, we are all burdened by a government that is grossly overweight, a great sponge that sops up revenues and workers and turns them into idlers...
...How many women umpires do we see in football or baseball...
...John Stuart Mill, the leading liberal of his day and an early supporter of votes for women, thought it axiomatic that those on welfare should be disqualified from the voter rolls...
...In most European countries women couldn't vote until after World War I (1920 here...
...is a senior editor ofThe American Spectator...
Vol. 36 • November 2003 • No. 6
