Exclusive to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

This is the second part of a three part series. The first part is Why Is Democracy Destroying the World?.

And so we come to that alternative form of government that can, temporarily at least, hold kings, dictators, and the bad territorial democracies at bay. And protect us individuals from majorities.

For example, the well-designed Republic crafted by the U.S. founders. That's what's defined and created by The U.S. Constitution. It's what many of us pledged allegiance to in school like this - - -

"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands."

Notice we did not pledge allegiance to a democracy.

Given the nature of government-in-general - - -

"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence; it is force, and like fire, makes a dangerous servant and a fearful master." --George Washington

"The State represents violence in a concentrated and organized form. The individual has a soul, but as the State is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence." --Mohandas K. Gandhi

- - - coming up with a safe government of any kind is clearly a serious challenge.

Because of the economic interests that want to use them for their own ends and the psychopathic personalities governments attract -- not to mention mandatory "dues" and membership -- crafting a durable democracy-proof Republic is particularly difficult.

For starters, it requires an iron-clad set of rules specifically designed to confine, limit, bind, and control the minions elected and/or hired to operate and administer it.

Those rules must keep the minions from transforming the dangerous servant into a fearful master which would then serve those psychopathic personalities and economic interests that want to use it for their own ends but screw the rest of us.

And then, keeping the following in mind - - -

"Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms [of government] those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny;" --Thomas Jefferson, 1778

- - - it requires eternal vigilence through succeeding generations to keep the minions obeying those iron-clad rules.

And it's particularly difficult to keep them under control in a democracy, even when the minions start out well-intentioned. Indigenous Bolivian President Evo Morales for example - - -

When I worked with him [Boliva's president Evo Morales], I witnessed how he listened to his people, and they saw him as a brother not an elitist. Yet in later years, Morales focused power around his personality, reneged on promises, and made contradictory accommodations with some elite interests. He lost a referendum seeking a fourth term for presidency, but maneuvered around that decision. These errors immersed the country in political crises, and split leftists, including some indigenous peoples. --The Threat of Peace…, Strategic Culture

Despite the difficulties, it's particularly important to keep the minions under control because, remember, territorial governments make it difficult to quit the group or withhold "dues" once they do get out of control.

And once they do, as another of our earlier American ancestors warned,

"No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session." --Surrogate Judge Gideon J. Tucker and/or Mark Twain

From the Ninth and Tenth amendments to The U.S. Constitution, you can get a pretty good idea of just how appropriately distrustful the framers were of the minions and how serious they were about keeping them under control - - -

Amendment IX: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

In other words, the minions can't use the fact we didn't list all your rights to deny you the ones we didn't list - - - and the U.S. Government minions have only the powers we specifically listed in The Constitution and no others.

As you can tell, the minions now almost completely ignore both Amendments and have for a long time.

So we don't need a government to protect us so much as we need something to protect us from government -- and the folks who are attracted to it.

The U.S. Constitution was quite a good attempt at doing just that.

What's enabled the U.S.A. to survive this long is that until the turn of the 20th Century -- 1913 is a good marker as you'll see -- the minions elected and hired to administer the Republic for the most part followed The Constitution's rules confining, limiting and binding them.

Fortunately, a little of that limited Republic still lingers on.

Unfortunately, it's fading fast. To get a down-and-dirty read on the rate of decline, if you had Googled "our democracy" on January 6, 2020, you would have found about 6,980,000 hits while "our republic" got only 1,650,000, less than 24% as many.

So while we're not a full-blown democracy yet, according to that metric, we're more than 75% there.

So, can we add "The United States of America" to the Endangered Democracies list? Will it go full totalitarian?

Is the Republic being converted to "our democracy" by mistake or is it by design?

And that brings us back to democracy with the obvious question: "Which idiots would want to transform a well-crafted Republic into a doomed democracy?" And why?

And why would folks go along with it?

Here's the first clue - - -

...the model has discovered a fundamental flaw in democratic society. It shows that in any society of even moderate complexity, making decisions by majority rule gives power not to the people, but to professionals who know how to manipulate political procedures to their advantage. --P.D. Straffin, "Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Implications" (1994)

The venerable Iron Law of Oligarchy is more blunt.

So it's not the voters in a democratic society who control things. Instead, it's the "professionals who know how to manipulate political procedures."

Those professional manipulators include especially those psychopathic personalities attracted to government and those economic interests that want to use it for their own ends.

As you may have noticed, eventually the successful manipulators evolve almost exclusively into those special interests which can afford to make huge campaign bribes to get the minions elected and to hire one or more professional lobbyists to influence them even further.

In fact, as six-term U.S. Senator John McCain explains, it's often those professional lobbyists who write the laws passed by the minions and, according to 26-term (52 year) U.S. Congressman John Conyers, the minions don't even read them anyway - - -

"We don't read most of the bills...that we pass."

Do you suppose they're passing too many? Rep. Conyers seems to think so. You will too if you keep reading.

But the pay-out for those who can afford to buy what has now obviously become bogus democracy is huge.

As Johnny Chung explained it,

"I see the White House is like a subway -- you have to put in coins to open the gates." --businessman Johnny Chung testifying to Congress in the 1997 Clinton fundraising scandal

The result is, as the quip goes, "We now have the best government money can buy."

When getting into the U.S. Presidential race for the first time, Barack Obama perfectly explains how bogus democracy works- - -

As Mr. Obama explains, the lobbyists and special interests "write the checks and you get stuck with the bill.... They think they own this government."

And once bogus democracy has over-written the Republic, they do.

It's clear then; it's not "our government" -- unless we can afford to make huge campaign bribes and hire at least one lobbyist.

So now the minions rarely even mention The Constitution and when they do, regularly demonstrate they have no idea that it was designed mainly to limit them, not empower them to muck around in everyone's business.

Corruption has set in as it always does when dues are no longer voluntary. Rather than the minions protecting us individuals and other minorities, we hear that standard bogus-democracy excuse for repression, "It's what the people want."

And it is of course. They just don't tell you which people want it. Unsurprisingly, it's almost always the people "who can afford to make huge campaign bribes ...and to hire one or more professional lobbyists." And the psychopaths.

And even in the rare instances the minions are paying attention and it really is what the majority wants, a minority still loses and there are often severe consequences as history will remind you shortly.

Now asserting The Constitution in court can get you a contempt of court charge and so the aberration is almost complete.

Unfortunately, all representative organizations are, over time, subject to this degradation. It just happens faster once "the majority rules" is used as the ruse.

It's this "It's what the people want" excuse that puts eternal vigilance to sleep, the dangerous servant's nose and first hump in the tent, and the violence and other malign behavior of modern governments at the disposal of psychopaths and special interests. And against freedom, liberty -- and we individuals.

Voting in a bogus democracy just creates the illusion that you have something to say about what's being done to you by the "professionals who know how to manipulate political procedures to their advantage." And, in a bogus democracy, your vote "just encourages the bastards."

So there is indeed power in voting, just not for the bamboozled voter pulling the levers at the local precinct on election day.

As this process morphs the well-crafted Republic into "our" bogus representative democracy, two main processes begin to propel it toward discord, discontent, disharmony, upheaval, chaos, political disaster -- and totalitarianism.

First, although we're now 75% majority rules bogus democracy, it's not the "unbridled majorities" that are causing the problems. Instead, it's the run-away minions which is much worse because they vote all the time.

And since this is a territorial democracy, every minion vote is winner-takes-all which means everyone in the geographical area is supposed to be bound by the result and is expected to pay the bills for it.

And with every vote, there's that minority that loses. The more votes, the more losers.

If the minions took a vote on ice cream, heaven forbid, and Vanilla won, "our democracy" would insist that all of us be limited to Vanilla, ultimately backed-up by prison cells and the police gun.

And undoubtedly, a so-called "black market" for Razzleberry and Bacon would evolve.

I know, ridiculous, isn't it?

But consider the folks who preferred alcoholic beverages during the failed 14-year attempt at alcohol prohibition in the 1920's territorial U.S. -- and the folks who want to smoke pot, even today in 2023 A.D.

Diversity can be, well, troubling. Why not force your personal biases on everyone? Especially when the minions claim it's "what the people want."

Let's do away with drunks says the WCTU . And pot smokers act funny.

And so, with the bogus "It's what the people want" excuse, the votes, laws, rules, regulations, orders and controls -- and taxes to pay for them -- pile up over time. So do the unhappy vote-losers and tax payers.

But as attempted alcohol and drug prohibition both conclusively prove -- and The Constitution took into account by protecting minorities -- that doesn't work because we humans don't homogenize well. Thank goodness!

The on-going attempt to homogenize us makes more and more of us repressed, depressed, unhappy. And turns us into enemies and sometimes violent. It's the Molyneaux "gun-in-the-room" Effect in full bloom.

And so we end up with that majority dissatisfied with democracy.

Consider all the upheaval, chaos, mayhem murder and world-record incarceration caused by U.S. governments vainly trying to prevent folks from drinking booze and smoking pot.

Not all democratic votes have such dramatic effects, but you can be pretty sure there's another group of disaffected losers with every ballot.

Let's put some numbers into the equation.

In the U.S.A. -- in "our democracy" -- approximately 40,000 new laws -- to say nothing of rules, regulations, orders and controls -- go into effect every year.

The Code of Federal Regulations alone includes over one-million (1,000,000) restrictions.

Equally as disruptive, this proliferation of laws -- and the rules, regulations orders and controls that go with them -- dilute and discredit the few laws that make sense.

As the quip goes, "Ten commandments were good enough for God, what the Hell are WE doing?"

In the vain attempt to enforce all these bogus democratic rules-mentality repressive obsessions, you obviously need more and more enforcement personnel.

And as the work-load mushrooms into impossibility and the helpful folks select themselves out, the character of those remaining personnel morphs from previously helpful "Peace Officers" into intimidating and sometimes murderous and accurately named LEOs (Law Enforcement Officers) instead. They begin to assault and kill citizens rather than keeping the peace.

And BTW, Police [now the LEOs] Have No Duty to Protect You, Federal Court Affirms Yet Again.

Folks begin to talk about living in a police state and while there's still lip-service to freedom, folks forget what it feels like to be free, and the young never know.

Eventually, LEOs become assassination targets.

Because of the case-load caused by all the laws, trial by jury -- designed to protect minorities -- becomes unworkable and so the establishment replaces it with plea blackmail -- they call it plea bargain -- and only about 2% of cases that aren't dismissed ever see a jury.

And even then, the "justice" establishment uses voir dire to stack all it's juries and so nearly snuffs-out jury nullification, one of the most powerful minority protections built-in to The Constitution.

Using plea blackmail, overzealous interrogations often convince people who didn't commit the crime to confess anyway. So, while innocent folks go to prison and may even be executed -- and the real perp runs free -- it makes the law-and-order industry stats look good.

There are so many laws, it's plausibly estimated that the average American, mostly unknowingly, commits three felonies a day.

With that statistic in mind, it should be no surprise that the U.S.A. holds by far the world record for per-capita incarceration.

In the "freest country in the world," about 1 in 31 Americans is in prison, on probation or on parole, two out-of-three for victimless "crimes." We're so far ahead in the race to incarcerate, no other country is even visible in the rear-view mirror.

The other side of that coin is that, since we're all guilty of some fake "felony" or other -- and the NSA likely has the evidence recorded from your device -- we can be threatened, blackmailed, and/or persecuted by the establishment at will.

While this phase of "our democracy" is just beginning to bite, you regularly see the ground truth in cop shows when a LEO threatens someone with arrest on some technicality if they don't kow-tow.

Look what they're doing (2023 A.D.), even to rich-man Trump, his family, and particularly his associates.

So the first key to our disaffection with democracy is all the laws, rules, regulations, orders and controls etc. that accumulate in a bogus winner-takes-all territorial democracy and the chaos they cause. The deteriorating deportment of the minions and those they hire to enforce all those legislative emissions tip folks off they're in a rapidly deteriorating police state and well on the way to discord, discontent, disharmony, upheaval, chaos, and political disaster.

And this isn't unique to the U.S.A., just more pronounced -- because we've been around longer.

But there's that second key leading to political disaster. It involves your "dues," present and future, and the economic parasites that feed on 'em - - -

While by no means the only economic interest that manipulates government for fun and profit, Central Bankers are the most egregious -- and they're also central to why democracy is destroying the world.

The Central Bank scheme is simple: Just get governments to create you as a monopoly and then borrow money from you, exclusively at first.

Such loans are highly desirable because governments borrow huge amounts and they're super-safe because, like the Mafia and other protection rackets, governments extort their "dues" money from "their" citizens as "taxes" with threats, intimidation, and if necessary, actual use of the taxman's gun.

The biggest and most successful running example is the IRS/Federal-Reserve swindle in the U.S.. It was pioneered by early U.S. banksters and perfected in Nicaragua and other central American countries around the turn of the 20th Century, then gradually up-scaled and "improved" here in the U.S. beginning in 1913. You can find a very rough history of that quite interesting evolution here: SILENT PARTNERS.

The result is a memetic machine that operates as a reverse Robin Hood with the Central Banks as the nexus. It takes from everyone, especially poorer folks, and gives to the professionals who know how to manipulate political procedures to their advantage.

"Economic Hitman" John Perkins explains the updated scam and how it deals with foreign minions who are reluctant to indebt their citizens to the international moneyed interests and their political procedure manipulators here.

In the context of destruction of The Republic, note that until passage of the Income Tax in tandem with the Federal Reserve Act in 1913, Washington D.C. lived perfectly well on import tariffs and excise taxes alone.

So at first, the minions didn't try to directly rip us flesh-and-blood residents off with the so-called personal income tax. That was outlawed in the body of The Constitution. It still is. Like this - - -

"No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration hereinbefore directed to be taken." --UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION, Article I, Section 9.

The income tax, when applied to flesh-and-blood residents, is a direct tax because as a flesh-and-blood person, you can't pass it on to anyone. So, the key is, is it "laid ...in Proportion to the Census?" If not, it's outlawed by The Constitution as above, and cannot and does not apply to flesh-and-blood Americans.

The 16th Amendment? Its "income tax" is an excise tax and applies mainly to corporations, ultimately the price their owners pay for the government's legal system limiting their liability. When you sign your 1040 form, you volunteer to be taxed as if you are a privileged corporation.

Before the IRS/Federal-Reserve swindle , the minions were limited because they didn't have a Central Bank eager to lend them money -- or a big chunk of their citizens' future income-tax "dues" and future labor as collateral for those loans.

Keep in mind the banksters don't want to be paid back, they just want to keep collecting that super-safe interest.

The simple way to expose this swindle is to ask, "Why do governments keep borrowing instead of paying cash?"

By styling these loans as the "National Debt," the banksters made sure there was no escaping the payments -- not even by death or personal bankruptcy -- because the "National Debt" is automatically passed on to the kids, grand kids, and the yet unborn through taxes.

As the quip goes, "We used to pay-off the mortgage and leave our kids the farm, now we mortgage the farm and leave our kids the payments."

That's a major clue to why the banksters are the second key to democracy destroying the world - - - and the final disaster lurches into view.

See, if the minions want to get re-elected, there's a limit to the amount of "dues" they can extort from their bamboozled citizens and voters, even when about a third of the extortions are hidden. So they borrow instead. Because the kids, grand kids, and yet unborn -- who will get the bill -- can't vote.

But we're the grand kids and those bills are now coming due.

In the U.S. as of mid 2020 A.D., the National Debt is about $26 trillion and growing rapidly. If you trust government figures, you can find the "Debt to The Penny" HERE

But that's not the only debt the minions have passed on to the kids, grand kids and yet unborn.

Remember those programs the minions passed to get re-elected, even sometimes ones the "unbridled majorities" may have wanted? Ones that may have been written by lobbyists and not read by the minions?

While there are a bunch of these, we only need to look at two to see the magnitude of the problem here in the U.S.A.

According to Forbes in 2017, the combined bill for Medicare and, via the Social "Security" Ponzi scheme, promised by the U.S. Government to old folks -- who were taxed in advance by F.I.C.A. to pay for it -- includes over $200-trillion in "unfunded liabilities." That means the minions have no serious idea where that money will come from.

Somehow, they'll have to try to extort it from the kids, grand kids, and the yet unborn. Or default on the promise.

Think of the federal government as a gigantic [social] insurance company with a sideline business in national defense and homeland security. This particular insurance company, it turns out, has made personal promises to its policyholders that have a current value ...in excess of the revenues it expects to receive. An insurance company with cash accounting is not really an insurance company at all," he added, "it's an accident waiting to happen." -Peter Fisher, U.S. under secretary of the Treasury for domestic finance, Russell On Gold, Dow Theory Letters, 22 November, 2002

If you have your heart medicine and tranquilizers handy -- and your firearms safely out of reach -- you can find a dynamic and good-enough-for-government-work balance sheet of the situation HERE.

The bottom line is, that to get re-elected, the politicians pass the compounding costs of government on to the kids, grand kids and yet unborn, mostly as the "national debt" and unfunded Social "Security" and Medicare obligations.

The Second of three parts. They are:

1. Why Is Democracy Destroying the World?: Part One
2. Why Is Democracy Destroying the World?: A More Durable Form of Government
3. Why Is Democracy Destroying the World?: Intergenerational Warfare anyone?

= = = =

L. Reichard White [send him mail] taught physics and the philosophy of science, designed and built a house, ran for Nevada State Senate, served two terms on the Libertarian National Committee, managed a theater company, etc. For the next few decades, he supported his writing habit by beating casinos at their own games. His hobby, though, is explaining things he wishes someone had explained to him. You can find a few of his other explanations listed here.