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Democracy Isn't the Problem — Democracies Are the Problem |
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Dear reader, |
Yesterday's issue centered upon the state of the world's democracies. |
In that issue I cited Mr. James Madison, the United States Constitution's unofficial father: |
Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention… Democracies |
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have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. |
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I could have summoned fellow founder John Adams… who was equally contemptuous of democracy. |
Thus he thundered that "Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself." |
The issue drew a heavy mail. |
"We're Not a Democracy, You Idiot!" |
Many readers rapped me smartly upon the knuckles for labeling the United States a democracy. |
For example, reader C.T. dealt with me as follows: |
"We're not a democracy, you idiot. Democracy is mob rule. We're a constitutional republic designed to constrain democracy, while still giving the people the right to choose their leaders. Get it right." |
Many others issued similar chidings. |
Yet I have read my Federalist Papers. I have taken the American system of government under close study. |
I am aware the United States is not a pure democracy. |
Yet does the United States of 2026 more resemble a constitutional republic — or a democracy? |
Have you examined the nation's finances? And its debt levels? |
What sort of republic would back itself into so tight a corner? |
Yet a democracy would. |
Meantime, what constitutional constraints truly bind and shackle us? |
And so we are largely presented with a distinction without a difference, as the phrase runs. |
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The Constitution Is Merely a "Parchment Barrier" |
I am fond to cite 19th-century individualist Lysander Spooner: |
Whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain — that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it… |
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This he wrote in the 19th century. |
Imagine what old Lysander would think of the 21st-century Constitution… before World Wars I and II… before the New Deal… before the Great Society and civil rights legislation breathed so much life into the thing… that it is nearly dead. |
Thus I maintain that the present United States is more democracy than constitutional republic. |
Yet let us revisit Mr. Adams: "Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself." |
Yet is it true? Is it necessarily in the nature of democracy to waste itself? To exhaust itself? |
Indeed… to murder itself? |
As I have before, today I contend that democracy itself may not be at fault. |
Rather, I contend that individual democracies may be at fault. |
The Virtue of Athenian Democracy |
Consider: Golden Age Athens — famously a democracy — amassed a vast public treasury. |
This fantastic hoard remained unmolested outside of wartime. |
The democratic citizens of Athens were free to vote themselves the manna as they pleased. |
Yet they did not. They never extended their hands and rotated their palms skyward. They kept them in their pockets. |
Author Freeman Tilden, from his 1935 masterwork A World in Debt: |
At one time the Athenians had in their citadel more than 10,000 talents of silver [roughly $206 million in 2024 dollars]; and what is more significant, they did not tap the resources until forced by the necessity of war. |
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Here Mr. Tilden cites 18th-century British philosopher David Hume: |
What an ambitious and high-spirited people was this, to collect and keep in their treasury a sum which it was every day in the power of the citizens, by a single vote, to distribute among themselves! |
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Yet they did not do it. |
Nor did Athens — to its everlasting praise — take to swindle when it was in a bad way. |
It did not clip coins, for example. Tilden: |
The most brilliant democrats that ever lived, the Athenians… never, as free men, indulged in the final madness of debasing their currency: They never became swindlers… Athens rose in trade by means of establishing good credit and by safeguarding the honor of her coin. |
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In the most terrible years of her history, when the treasury was empty… she was indeed obliged to strike emergency coins of gold and bronze, but never consented to debase her coinage. |
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The American Example |
Has the United States safeguarded the honor of its coin? |
Does a streetwalker safeguard the honor of her virtue? |
Yet the question arises, as I have asked before: |
Were the ancients stamped from nobler metal? Had they greater virtue than us moderns? |
Imagine the United States Treasury loaded to the gunwales with gold. |
Next imagine its doors thrown open to the American public — with its golden bounty theirs for the asking. |
Then imagine the American people refusing the invitation… and walking away. |
Can you imagine it? I cannot imagine it. |
Nor can I guarantee I would refuse the invitation and walk away. |
Why should I hold my fellow citizens to a separate standard? |
Not All Democracies Are Equal |
The capital fact nonetheless remains: Athenians amassed, in dollar terms, a $206 million surplus. |
Americans, meantime, have amassed a $38.7 trillion debt. That debt is on track to scale $64 in 10 years. |
Both the United States and Athens share democracy in common. |
Yet the one saved. The other squanders. |
Can we then claim that democracy — by its nature — wastes itself, exhausts itself and murders itself? |
If we consider the Athenian example… we cannot. Thus I file a tort with Mr. Adams. |
Perhaps the defect locates not in democracy itself. |
Perhaps the defect locates in us. |
Brian Maher |
for Freedom Financial News |
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