Quote of the Day: Democracy is a Delusion that the Majority is Master of Itself

participatory democracy became fashionable in the 19th century. The main reason was probably because it is easier to squeeze and bamboozle a citizen than it is a subject. The real genius of modern democracy is that it makes the citizen feel that the government and its workings are somehow the product of his own aspirations. If he wants more money for his retirement, he presumes he can get is — provided only that enough fellow citizens share his desire. If he wants to go to war, that too is up to him and his fellow voters. If he wants to spend more money on space exploration or ban people from saying prayers in bars, the majority — of which he feels he should be part — can do that too.

There is hardly anything he and his fellow lumpenvoters cannot do — just so long as they are of one mind on the subject. That is why you so often hear people say, ‘If we could only get together on this…” They believe solidarity is the key to success. Whatever the majority wants, it gets.

Even kings had bits in their mouths and a hand on the reins. According to the “divine right of kings” doctrine, a king was a servant of God. A king was subject as well as monarch. God himself had given them the post; they could not refuse it. Nor could they refuse to carry out the job on the terms that they believed God had prescribed. God could pull on the reins whenever He wanted.

Often, monarchs were ridden by those who claimed to represent God. In the famous example from the 11th century, Pope Gregory VII got into a dispute with Henry IV, the Holy Roman Emperor. Henry was excommunicated. How much harm Gregory’s excommunication would do him, Henry might not have known. But he didn’t want to find out. He dressed as a penitent and waited three days outside the Pope’s refuge at Canossa. Then he was admitted and forgiven.

The democratic majority, on the other hand, recognizes no authority — temporal, constitutional nor religious — that can stand in its way. And thus it deludes itself to thinking that it is the master of itself, its own government and its own fate.

“The government is all of us,” said Hillary Clinton.

This from Bill Bonner, founder and president of the Agora Publishing, in one of his latest articles published at the Agora’s Daily Reckoning website.

In reality, participatory democracy is the manipulation of the delusional majority to serve the interests of the political minority.