December 13, 2005

The downward path to ruin.

Mr. Nyquist quotes H.L. Mencken as saying that “Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage.” Mr. Nyquist's own view is that "History teaches that democracy is the declining form of authority, tending toward degeneracy."

Given the popularity of tabloid newspapers ("WWII bomber found on moon!"), the constitutional illiteracy of the vast majority of Americans, the sacred status of the government-devised Ponzi scheme known as Social Security, the electoral success of Bill Clinton, the near success of John Kerry, and the slow slide into the maw of the Leviathan State, it's difficult to hold out much hope for the future of liberty in the U.S., let alone our ability to formulate a long-range strategy ("Axis of Evil???") for national survival in this era of feel good multiculturalism and the recrudescence of Islam.

Mr. Nyquist pretty much nails it with his thought about "the downward path to ruin."

In the 18th century, voting was not conceived as a “natural right,” wrote Lecky, “but a right conferred by legislation on grounds of expediency, or … for the benefit of the state.” Voting was initially the prerogative of landowners. . . . In the days of the Founding Fathers, representative government was not (as Lincoln later suggested) “of the people, by the people, for the people….” It was “of property, by property, for property.” It was a logical development when, during the 19th century, those who wanted to overthrow the existing order took aim at property. Giving a sidelong wink to socialism and communism, the most subversive attack on property may be found in the call to universal suffrage. It is not that the enfranchised masses immediately vote to “expropriate the expropriators” and redistribute a country’s wealth. The downward path to ruin involves countless gradations, thousands of little compromises brought into being by town councils and courts, all the way up to the national legislature.
"Democracy vs. Property." By J. R. Nyquist, Financial Sense Online, 12/9/05 (emphasis added).

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