What is democracy? - The greater Good - The Greater Greed.

Guest Blogger: Cash Case

Dallas, Texas 

People are often very surprised to learn that we do not live in a democracy. We have been taught by uninformed teachers our whole lives that we do indeed live in a democracy. In actuality, we live in a republic.

Here’s the difference. In a democracy, the majority rules...seems fair enough, until you dig down into the thing just a bit. Majority rule works for somethings, sometimes. An example would be the elections we have been having for the last 236+ years. But it does not work for all things, and where the rights of the individual are concerned, it never works. Where the individual is concerned majority rule is a disaster.

Let’s look at an analogy.

A man purchases a piece of land in the middle of nowhere. He has the rightful ownership of this land. He builds a farm, marries and has children. He works the land and builds it into a nice farm that provides for him, his family and even has extra that he can store for when the weather doesn’t cooperate. His children grow and are now young men and they help their parents with the farm. He has put more than two decades into the land. Preparing the soil, building the farm management infrastructure and securing for himself and his family, a living.

Now someone, say a land developer comes by and sees what the framer has done and decides to purchase land near the farmer’s. This person then sells and builds homes on his land. Perfectly normal and fair.

The homes are purchased and a small town begins to grow. The people in the town organize themselves and create their own town council/city government. Again… perfectly normal.

Now a few years go by and the town has grown and the people in the town have voted themselves new taxes to pay for whatever they deem necessary. Everything is still good.

Now, at this point, the town is land locked. They need growth to increase the tax base to pay for the new shopping center that the town can’t live without. The city council looks around and says…”Hey that farmer guy has some great land. Let’s ask him to sell us his land. They do, the farmer declines, and now they have a problem.

The people want this shopping center, but the farmer wants his farm. It is his. He built it with his own sweat and blood to provide for his family and he has every right to it. The city council decides they are going to take his land for ‘the greater good’. They force the farmer from his land, and build their shopping center.

That’s democracy!

Nobody did anything wrong until the majority looked at the minority and said…”We want that.”

Some of you may read this and say, “What’s wrong with that?” They paid the farmer fair market value.”

Can they give the farmer back his 40 years? Can they give him back the ‘industry’ he created for his family? In a word, no.

Our founding fathers created a republic for this very reason, to protect the individual from the majority. They knew that a government would grow endlessly unless they did something to restrict it. That is what the constitution does for us. That’s its whole purpose, to protect the individual and by extension, the people from the governing body.

The rights of the individual are paramount to the continuation of the American way of life.

Ben Franklin said, “a democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.”

Without a republic, there is no liberty. Without liberty there is only tyranny.

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Copyright 2013. All rights reserved by Candace E. Salima.