Save California: After the Flag Waving, a Serious Look at Our Troubled Republic

 

Hi Arthur, For those of us who have witnessed the steady slide of societal decay and have watched with alarm the ever-increasing occurrences of godless, animalistic anarchy, celebrating the 250th birthday of our country is more like celebrating an ideal than a reality. For if the Constitution of the United States of America guarantees you freedom of speech and freedom of religion and freedom of self-defense and the right to be fairly judged in the courts, and your guaranteed pre-constitutional, God-given, natural liberties are parental rights and property rights and medical freedom, yet today's American culture threatens, oppresses, punishes, or eliminates your rights and liberties, we must ask: Is our constitutional republic alive or dead?

Since most Americans are government-schooled, with today's universities teaching young people to hate America, we're now faced with many "Americans" who actually hate the wonderful goodness that our U.S. founding fathers gave us. According to a CNN poll released June 17, 2026: Only 29% of Democrats are "very proud" to be an American Only 27% of Democrats said they'd fly the U.S. flag on Independence Day And a June 19-22 survey by The Economist/YouGov found only 8% of Democrats think the United States is the greatest country in the world. As Breitbart reported June 29: Opinions vary significantly among political parties. Republicans are far more likely to describe America as the greatest country – 52 percent – followed by 28 percent of Republicans who said it is “among the greatest” countries. Democrats, however, do not feel as proud. Only eight percent of Democrats describe America as the “greatest” country, while 16 percent said it is “among the greatest.” Stunningly, a plurality of Democrats, 23 percent, describe America as “worse than average” compared to other countries, and 15 percent said the U.S. is “among the worst.” Four percent said America is “the worst” altogether. And to top it off, a June 30 - July 2 YouGov survey found Democrats value the "Black Lives Matter" flag more than the American flag (74% to 72%). So, did America really reach 250 years, or is that its "body" only, and the "mind, heart, and soul" of America actually died decades ago -- but with God's grace and patience, has a chance to return and be restored? This question is neither radical nor cynical. Because historically, the average "life" of a civilization is either 200 or 250 years. As researcher Michael R. Cronin wrote: The Tytler Cycle warns that democracies tend to follow a predictable path from liberty to decline due to human nature and fiscal irresponsibility, with a commonly cited average lifespan of around 200 years. Sir John Glubb’s later research on empires suggested a slightly longer but still finite average of about 250 years. Both frameworks are frequently used today to analyze the trajectory of the United States as it approaches and passes its 250th anniversary in 2026. In 2016, writer Reginald Pulliam quoted historian Alexander Fraser Tytler's solemn observation that a civilization's decay begins with forgetting God, triggered by the love of money replacing the love of God: According to Lord Tytler, a Scottish Historian, the average age of the world's democracies is around 200 years. After two hundred years, the nations collapse due to various economic policies and [are] followed by a dictatorship. Lord Tytler identified "Eight Stages of a Democracy", from beginning to end. The eight stages go from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependence, and finally from dependence back to bondage. Life and our universe moves in cycles, and history is no different. So, in our Democratic form of a Republic, which stage do you suppose we are in? Another valid question is, if the United States of America was founded as a constitutional republic, is it still that today, and if not, when did we lose it? Our U.S. founding father and 2nd U.S. president, John Adams, a strong Christian, wrote these solemn words: "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." If Adams' words are true, it's arguable and logical that America ceased being a constitutional republic in the early 1900s, nearly 150 years after its founding. Here's evidence suggesting it: 1. Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat who was the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921, disliked how the Constitution limited the federal government, so he brutally attacked and redefined the Constitution. Judge Andrew Napolitano explains the damage that Woodrow Wilson did: America from its founding to the early part of the 20th century more or less enjoyed the James Madison model for the federal government. Under this model, the federal government could only legislate, regulate, spend and govern in the 16 discrete areas of human behavior that the Constitution delegated to it. All other areas of human behavior were left free to individual choices or governance by the states. From and after Wilson’s presidency, the Madisonian model was replaced by the Wilsonian one. Under this model, the feds could legislate, regulate, spend and govern in any areas of human behavior for which there was a national political will, except for those areas that are expressly prohibited to them by the Constitution. It would take another generation before the courts fully caught up to this, during which they gradually permitted Congress basically to write any law, regulate any behavior, spend any money, tax any event and intrude upon any relationship so long as it did not confront an express constitutional prohibition. 2. Then, Democrat Franklin Roosevelt became president in 1933, and quickly grew a mammoth-sized federal government and eliminated the gold standard. As Conservapedia reports: ...FDR remains a hero to liberals and heavily criticized by conservatives for shifting the nation to the Left, growing the federal government, imposing regulations on business, following a no-growth economic policy, catering to labor unions, and building a permanent New Deal Coalition. Conservatives further disagree with Roosevelt's concealment of his declining health from American voters in the 1944 election, and Roosevelt's weak stance towards the Communist Soviet Union which enabled it to gain control over Eastern Europe for the following half-century. His New Deal was a very large, complex interlocking set of programs designed to produce relief (especially government jobs for the unemployed), recovery (of the economy), and reform (by which he meant regulation of Wall Street, banks and transportation), as well as Reelection (in 1936, 1940 and 1944) and Realignment of the Fifth Party System. Conservatives strongly opposed many, but not all, of the New Deal programs. Conservatives abolished most of the relief programs when unemployment practically ended during World War II. Most of the regulations on business were ended about 1975–85, except for the regulation of Wall Street by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which still exists. The major surviving program is Social Security, which Congress passed in 1935. Conservatives at the time denounced his bids for presidential power, including building a national political machine through the WPA (it lasted from 1935 to 1943), attempting to take control of the Supreme Court by adding new liberal judges (an attempt which failed, 1937), and trying to purge the Democratic party of moderate-to-conservative congressmen (an attempt which failed in 1938). The failures of those attempts can be attributed to the Conservative Coalition which emerged in Congress in 1937 as a coalition of most northern Republicans and most Southern Democrats. 3. And then in the early 1960s, the Democrats and RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) on the U.S. Supreme Court killed off corporate Bible reading and prayer in American "public school" classrooms. Is it any wonder that theft is rampant today? For the majority of American schoolchildren, through the 1950s, were taught the Ten Commandments from Exodus 20:1-17 -- until the unconstitutional SCOTUS redefined "establishment" and "religion" in the First Amendment. As accurately reported here, in 1947, the U.S. Supreme Court redefined "establishment" in order to begin banning Christianity in the laws: On June 25, 1962 and a year later on June 17, 1963 this country has staggered from a wound that it has never really recovered from. You might scratch your head and wonder what that might be. These two dates will live in infamy in this nation along with one from February 10, 1947. These dates are when Christianity in America was rejected in the public square and in the schools. In February 10, 1947, the US Supreme Court decided the case of Everson v Board of Education. It changed the Establishment Clause in the 1st Amendment’s meaning from not establishing a National Religion to the current interpretation. The way the US Government treats religion is that one can’t practice it in public. The Court used 8 words out of context of a President Thomas Jefferson Letter that was written to the Danbury Baptist Church in 1801. This decision is one that the US Supreme Court needs to overturn along with the ones above from 1962 & 1963. On June 25, 1962, the US Supreme Court decided that a 22 word prayer was unconstitutional in the case of Engel v Vitale. “Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence on Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our country.” — the 22 word prayer that was the subject of the school prayer ban. On June 17, 1963, the US Supreme Court decided in Abington School District v Schempp that Bible Study could not occur in Public Schools. Since those cases SAT & ACT scores have taken a nose dive. So, as we celebrate the 250th "birthday" of our country, let's remember the Bible-based founding of America, which made America great -- and blessed by God. Because the Bible defines “freedom” to mean a) freedom from the bondage of sin, and b) freedom to obey God without punishment.  This second definition was the rallying cry of our U.S. founding fathers, who desired biblical values rather than the tyrannical theft committed against them by the British Crown. Our founders called this independence. So, Americans don't need "freedom" as the world defines it (which is to do whatever you want, which is the modus operandi of criminals and anarchists). Instead, we need freedom from sin. Because, for this nation to be protected and blessed by God again, people need to see the Bible as their standard of truth, confess and repent of their sins, trust in Savior Jesus Christ to forgive them, and experience true freedom from the bondage of various sins. And then, if most Americans, as John Adams described, become "a moral and religious people," they can give us back our constitutional republic. It's definitely worth fighting for!

A lady asked Dr. Franklin Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy—A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it. From Secretary of War James McHenry's journal of the 1787 Constitutional Convention Jesus answered them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. And a slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever. Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed." Jesus Christ, Savior of the world and God in the flesh, in John 8:34-36

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Ben Sasse Wants to Make the US Senate Great Again (And I Could Not Agree More!)

US Senator Ben Sasse (R-Nebraska) is a consummate constitutionalist.

He does not do whatever President Trump wants, and he is not afraid to demand jealous safeguarding of the United States Senate and its institutions.

Indeed, the Framers of the United States Constitution never intended to the United States Senate to operate as an extension of the House of Representatives. The US Senate was never intended to be an extensive democratic chamber.

The US Senators were supposed to be elected by the legislatures, and they were supposed 

Make the Senate Great Again

To restore the world’s greatest deliberative body, we need to think big.

What would the Founding Fathers think of America if they came back to life? Their eyes would surely bug out first at our technology and wealth. But I suspect they’d also be stunned by the deformed structure of our government. The Congress they envisioned is all but dead. The Senate in particular is supposed to be the place where Americans hammer out our biggest challenges with debate. That hasn’t happened for decades—and the rot is bipartisan.

Many on the left think the problem is the filibuster, which requires a supermajority to end debate and enact most legislation. But ending the filibuster would allow political parties to change the direction of the country dramatically with a succession of shifting 51-49 votes. That’s a path to even more polarization and instability. The Senate’s culture needs dramatic change aimed at promoting debate, not ending it. Here are some ideas:

• Cut the cameras. Most of what happens in committee hearings isn’t oversight, it’s showmanship. Senators make speeches that get chopped up, shipped to home-state TV stations, and blasted across social media. They aren’t trying to learn from witnesses, uncover details, or improve legislation. They’re competing for sound bites.

There’s one notable exception: The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the majority of whose work is done in secret. Without posturing for cameras, Republicans and Democrats cooperate on some of America’s most complicated and urgent problems. Other committees could follow their example, while keeping transparency by making transcripts and real-time audio available to the public.

• Abolish standing committees. The Senate is supposed to be the world’s greatest deliberative body, but it operates on about 20 permanent fiefdoms. Dividing legislative work is important, but there’s no corporation that would tackle its problems by creating 20 permanent committees and running every decision through them. The Senate should instead create temporary two-year committees, each devoted to making real progress on one or two big problems. Committees should draw power from their accomplishments, not based on which industries need to supplicate before the gavel.

• Pack the floor. Serious debate happens only if senators show up. Ninety-nine percent of the time you see a senator talking on the floor, he’s speaking to a chamber with somewhere between zero and two colleagues present. The Senate’s rules privilege the majority, which controls the agenda and floor time. Senators ought to be packed on the floor having real debates. We can do that by changing the rules to allow committees to control some floor time. Elections have consequences, so the majority leader should control the majority of the Senate’s time, but committees should be able to command specific times for specific debates.

• Live together. A lot of time is spent demonizing the opposition, but most senators can get along quite well. Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii is as liberal as the day is long, but he’s my friend. Senators should live, eat, and meet in dormitories when the Senate is in session. It’s hard to demonize people you spend time with every day.

• Cancel re-election. One of the biggest reasons Congress gives away its power to the executive branch is that it’s politically expedient for both parties to avoid the decisions that come from the work of legislating. Lawmakers are obsessed with staying in office, and one of the easiest ways to keep getting re-elected is by avoiding hard decisions. We ought to propose a constitutional amendment to limit every senator to one term, but we should double it from six years to 12. Senators who don’t have to worry about short-term popularity can work instead on long-term challenges.

If that’s a bridge too far, at least ban fundraising while the Senate is in session in Washington. It’s an everyday experience to sit down at a $2,000-a-plate lunch fundraiser and then run over to make committee votes. Lobbying is protected by the First Amendment, but it shouldn’t be the primary focus of senators when we’ve got work to do.

• Repeal the 17th Amendment. Ratified in 1913, it replaced the appointment of senators by state legislatures with direct election. Different states bring different solutions to the table, and that ought to be reflected in the Senate’s national debate. The old saying used to be that all politics is local, but today—thanks to the internet, 24/7 cable news and a cottage industry dedicated to political addiction—politics is polarized and national. That would change if state legislatures had direct control over who serves in the Senate.

• Sunset everything. For decades Pennsylvania Avenue has been a one-way street, as authority flowed from Congress to the executive branch. When the unelected bureaucracy gets power, it doesn’t let go. We ought to end that by having the Senate create a “super committee” dedicated to reviewing all such delegations of power over the past 80 years and then proposing legislation to sunset the authority of entire bureaucracies on a rolling basis. Does, say, the Health and Human Services Department ever answer for its aggressive regulatory lawmaking? Of course not. Sunset all its authority in 12 months and watch lawmakers start to make actual laws.

• Make a real budget. The power of the purse is Congress’s primary lever—and the area where Congress is most unserious. The budget process is completely broken, and every couple of months lawmakers are faced with a monumentally stupid decision: Shut the government down or spend 102% of what was spent last year, with no oversight. It’s an endless series of all-or-nothing brinkmanship fights—continuing resolutions, omnibus spending deals and debt-ceiling hikes. We ought to fix that with two-year budgeting that includes all federal spending, including on entitlements. We ought to end the distinction between appropriation and authorization. Legislation that authorizes federal action should also appropriate the money to pay for it.

These aren’t partisan proposals, because congressional dysfunction isn’t a partisan problem. Lawmakers—Republicans and Democrats—don’t make laws. Over years, Congress made the choice to shirk its duty and cede power to the executive branch. Recovery will be hard, but it’s time for Congress build some muscle and figure out how to serve the American people by doing our constitutionally mandated jobs again.

Mr. Sasse, a Republican, is a U.S. senator from Nebraska.

Here are my reflections on the above set of suggested reforms:

I agree with the vast majority of US Senator Ben Sasse's (R-Nebraska) suggested reforms.

The Senate’s culture needs dramatic change aimed at promoting debate, not ending it."

Agreed. Here are reforms that would restore the deliberative core of the US Senate:

1. Repeal the 17th Amendment. The Senate was designed to represent STATES, not individuals. Senators should not be elected by popular vote. The United States is not a democracy, although one chamber does indeed represent the more democratic impulse in the country: The House of Representatives

2. Cut the cameras. Hearings should be audio-recorded only (just like Supreme Court hearings), and transcripts can be provided afterwards. No more videos, no more playing to the cameras.

3. Abolish standing committees. YES! Every committee should be ad hoc (set up for a specific task, then decommissioned once the task is completed). Standing committees have allowed The Swamp to gain considerable power in Washington at the expense of the states and the people (cf. Ninth and Tenth Amendments)

4. "Pack the Floor" -- Senators need to show up and speak. Sasse points out that most US Senators speak on the floor to only one or two people. There is no real discussion or deliberation, just a lot of pontification and monologue. By extension, US Senators must be present when invoking a filibuster. They cannot "call in" to object to a legislative motion, and that alone suffices. Blue paper motions must also be scrapped. If a home state senator wants to block or delay a judicial or executive nominee, he needs to make the case to the entire body.

5. "Sunset everything", i.e. give regulatory or legislative action and commission assignments a 12-month time limit. There should be no bureaucratic process in place beyond one year. Every legislative action of such a caliber should have a required "sunset" clause. This reform from Senator Sasse is excellent.

6. I disagree with his call for term limits. No term limits for legislators. The best term limit is an election. Instead, we need to make it easier for every citizen to challenge incumbents. Enactment of recall for federal officials would be far more appropriate.

7. "Make a real budget ... We ought to end the distinction between appropriation and authorization. Legislation that authorizes federal action should also appropriate the money to pay for it." Yes. No more "all or nothing" budget bills which waste money on frivolous projects with no oversight.

The biggest reform needed, of course, is the full repeal of the 17th Amendment. Make America a Republic Again.

American Academy of Arts and Sciences-- Meeting in Los Angeles, Pepperdine University

On January 8th, 2019, I was invited to participate in a roundtable discussion at Pepperdine University with other community activists.

The keyt question focused on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship.

I received word about this event from a close friend in the academic world. He's a rock-steady conservative who has faced unprecedented persecution for researching issues and publishing the evidence. His conclusions do not align with the politicized agenda of universities today.

He has since fought back against the university that slandered him and had revoked his tenure. Since then, he has kept me in the loop to fight for the best of Los Angeles County and the state of California as a whole.

The Roundtable Discussion was quite eventful.

We covered lots of topics, like how we are active in our commuities to promote what is best for everyone. The discussion leaders wanted to focus on how we engage with the greater community as a whole.

During our time together, I pointed out that the United States is not a democracy, but a Republic, in which there is majority rule based on representative government, but that everyone's rights are protected, particularly through counter-majoritarian institutions like the Electoral College and the court system.

The discussion ended up turning to the value of citizenship itself, and how it's facing massive, rapid erosion in Los Angeles County.

Check out my friend Evan Chase, the previous President of the Beach Cities Republicans, now leader of the Better Angels Foundation:

Of course, I had my Make California Great Again hat!

 At the end of the discussion, the moderators asked for our thoughts on what we discussed, and what we had learned that day.

Here are my full remarks below:

Check this out!

Joel Pollack from Breitbart News was there, too!

Final Reflection

I really liked that the discussion went away from the easy discussion on "What are you doing in your community" to "What is hurting your communities, and what are you doing about it?"

We made sure that this issue of illegal immigration received proper attention.

We had a pretty good group of people at the meeting besides the two whom I mentioned above.

There was a professor there from one of the prestigious universities in the region. She told everyone that she had been a Democrat almost all her life, but when Obama got elected, she became a Republican. She taught her courses from a distinctly conservative point of view and did not hold back her love for the United States.

Other people in the group had headed partisan clubs, and there was one lady who headed a pro-Western Civilization community dedicated to doing what is best.

There were three black women, one black man, another Hispanic gentleman there, too, who pressed the necessity of engaging young people to embrace free enterprise.

There were three people of Jewish background who were attending the event, too, so no one could claim that there was no diversity in terms of ethnic background -- and yet the most important diversity in the room had to do with diversity of thought.

My favorite point occured when one of the women in the room said that the history of the United States is about white and black America reconciling over the history of slavery. I immediately countered that, as did another member of our discussion panel. 

This "white guilt" and race card narrative has gotten so old, so trite, and it pained me to hear this from a conservative commentator in the room. The fact is that the peculiar institution was not a monolith white-on-black problem.

There were black freedmen as much as there were white freedmen up to the Civil War. Black people even owned slaves although that sordid subject is one of the third rails of academia in history departments. The professor from a local university affirmed that the history of black America in the United States is much more diverse and complex than many realize.

In fact, one of the first slaves owners in continental North America was a black man! A prince from Gambia who came to the New World as an indentured servant, Anthony Johnston not only owned slaves, but wanted to ensure a legal framework to perpetuate slavery in colonial Virginia.

"White people" should not be walking around bearing the unfettered burden of slavery. This terrible institution is a human problem, not a stricltly American or "white" problem. 

What does make America stand out, however, is that we are the one country where white men died on fields of battle to end that evil institution. No other country has that kind of record. in which citizens, especially those who had been born in other countries to help form a new one, in which white men would bleed to make all men free.

Now that's civic activism at its most extreme!

Mr. Buchanan: We Are Not a Democracy—And the World Needs to Learn From Us

Economic nationalist Pat Buchanan opined last week that the United States’ fraught political climate is turning the world against democracy. In his article “How Democracy is Losing the Word”, he argued that our country’s sharply divided political culture, the corporate media’s obsession with Trump, plus authoritarian regimes’ economic successes were making democracy look bad. However, Buchanan’s repeat pessimism is based on a fundamental flaw, one which inadvertently exposes the very political and societal maladies he diagnosed that are generating upheaval in Europe, Canada, and throughout the Western World.

Early in his lamenting jeremiad, Buchanan writes: “And what will a watching world be thinking when it sees the once-great republic preoccupied with breaking yet another president?” But then he writes: “Among the reasons democracy is in discredit and retreat worldwide is that its exemplar and champion, the USA, is beginning to resemble France's Third Republic in its last days before World War II.” So, which is it, Pat? Is the United States a republic or a democracy? One of our Founding Fathers already answered this question: “A republic, if you can keep it.” The difference matters. Sadly, Buchanan’s seeming indifference to this fundamental distinction occurs often—and is too often overlooked.

Before debunking the so-called “crisis of democracy”, is it really true that the autocratic regimes he references are enjoying the peace and prosperity? China’s market economy within a brutal dictatorship is stalling big timev because of President Trump’s successful trade and tariff offensive. China’s militant repression against the Muslim Uighurs is disgusting Chinese and foreign nationals alike. Turkey has become a third-world dystopia, hardly a shining beacon of economic prosperity and national security.

But what else does Buchanan get wrong?

Despite the crises emerging in the corporate press, the United States is a remarkable testimony to good government, in that we are a republic. Counter-majoritarian institutions like the Electoral College and separate state government have ensured effective limits to very cultural malaise eating away at Europe. The corrupt media, for all its progressive posturing, could not stop Trump, either.

But why does Buchanan’s mix-up matter? How does his mistake inadvertently explain the reason for the Western Malaise he diagnoses?

First, let’s define the differences, which rest on more than who votes for whom. In a democracy, the rule of law is the rule of the majority, regardless of established norms and institutions.  In spite of the rights and responsibilities championed by Ancient Athens, the majority of Athenians voted for Socrates’ death because they didn’t like his views. The Wiemar Republic, a makeshift democracy assembled after Germany’s fall in World War I, transformed into a fascist tyranny under democratically elected Adolph Hitler.

To avoid these perverse outcomes, the American Framers disparaged democracy, which amounts to two wolves and a lamb voting on what—or rather who—is for dinner. Aristotle, himself a statist-elitist in Ancient Athens, described a republic as “rule by the many for the benefit of all”, in contrast to democracy, “rule by the many for the benefit of the many.” In a republic, the rule of law curbs the rule of the majority. Socrates would have received constitutional protections to disparage directly-elected rulers without fear. In a republic, no one is above the law, including the crowd as well as the individual ruler or the governing class.

The United States’ republican Constitution outlines institutions to channel as well as check and balance popular, aristocratic, and autocratic tendencies. Counter-majoritarian institutions like the US Supreme Court serve as final arbiters for legal disputes. State and local governments rebuff federal power. Enumerated powers and the Bill of Rights describe the boundaries for the government, not the people. These arrangements preserve individual liberty as well as local sovereignty, and both arrangements safeguard the interests of all.If the world is witnessing the demise of “democracy”, we should rejoice.

But will republicanism take its place? Anti-globalist protesters around the world may be rejecting “democracy”, but they need to understand why and agitate for something better. Populism in terms of policy outcomes is noteworthy. However, populism as the means for governing is not. Conservative and progressive nationalists plus the vast majority of the Yellow Jacket protestors understand that corporate interests and globalist activists have twisted democracy to their selfish ends. The answer does not lie in more “Power to the People”, but less power to the state. They must fight for natural law and natural rights, which means a constraint on government power altogether, not more democracy.

Pat Buchanan’s unintended confusion should concern us, since it reflects the underlying problems in the West. Younger generations around the world don’t know the difference between democracy and republicanism. They certainly don’t understand how democracy is inimical to individual and national liberty, while republicanism preserves both. The older (and newer) generation of reporters, liberal and conservative, don’t respect this difference, either, and their views are informing the public discussion as a whole. At the very least, conservative pundits who serve as the only source of good political science should understand this difference. It’s not ethnic nationalism, but republicanism that can Make the West Great Again.

If citizens in countries can’t distinguish between democracy’s failures and republican successes, these worldwide uprisings won’t accomplish lasting improvements. They rightly oppose the consequences of unfettered expansion of the state, and they are demanding that the governments be more responsive to “The People”. However, more government elected by “the people” will not bring about a limited government protecting citizens’ rights and safeguarding the nation from domestic insurrection and foreign invasion.

There is no demise of democracy in the United States, since we are not a democracy. Furthermore, Europe’s answers to open borders, higher taxes, diminished public safety, and cultural ennui sweeping those nations lie in the adoption of America’s republicanism: definition and protection of the natural rights of citizens, installation of principled checks and balances within government, and recognition of the nation-state to establish its borders, language, and culture—with a commitment to protect the Judeo-Christian principles that inspired the United States Constitution.

Democracy Does Not Protect Liberty: Constitutional Republicanism Does

The best way to ensure freedom is not through democracy.

The rule of the majority undermines the rights of the minority.

Natural rights belong to everyone, regardless of their race or ethnicity.

Natural rights drawn from a Divine Creator provide for our safety and security. We have a final identity in Him.

As for proper governance, democratic processes are not the best assurance for liberty.

The marketplace is, the forum of private, voluntary exchange provides the best means and medium for effective distribution of resources.

I was pleasantly surprised to find an article making this case for the marketplace vs. the democratic process right in the local paper!

If democracy is in ‘crisis,’ we should turn to the marketplace

Recently, catching up on email brought me across several references to a crisis in democracy. Clay R. Fuller had written that “One could fill a library with the books and reports regarding the ongoing ‘crisis’ of democracy.” In most, political democracy is treated as an ideal. Yet it is a seriously flawed ideal. In fact, as F. A. Hayek noted long ago, “all the inherited limitations on government power are breaking down before it … unlimited democracy … is the problem today.”

Democracy has been a necessary evil in certain ways for decades, for millenia. Who can forget that Socrates was put to death by the vote of the majority?

Democracies are bringing in more socialism, which is undermining liberty and freedom of property. Arizona had a state-wide initiative to force up the minimum wage, and for what? So that more robots would take jobs away from entry-level workers? Someone tell me how any of this is a good idea?

Perhaps the most blatant evidence is the frequency with which policies and candidates claiming majority support advance coercive measures that take from some to give to others. Such piracy violates universal moral and ethical condemnations of theft, so it cannot be an ideal.

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner. A Republic ensures that the lamb has a firearm.

There are, in fact, several ways political democracy falls short as an ideal. To be ideal, it would avoid violating individuals’ established rights. It would be responsive; people’s votes would have to matter. It would give people incentives to become well-informed and think carefully about policies. It would require powerful incentives to deter dishonesty and misrepresentation. It would also have to be limited in scope, as no one wants every issue that concerns them subject to majority determination.

This issue of voters' submission of voting--yes, people's votes tend not to matter in too many cases. If a majority, however slim, is the final factor for an electoral victory, what does one say to the 49.9% of people who voted one way and lost?

It is hard to think of government policies that do not violate some people’s rights. In fact, such  violations are often the main driver of policy (e.g., price controls). And those violations eviscerate the central function of a government advancing its citizens’ well-being–defending existing rights.

Policies imposed by majority violate not just the rights of the minority, but the rights of all citizens! How true that is.

Despite volumes of democracy-extolling rhetoric, virtually no one’s vote changes the results. Name one time your vote for or against a candidate or initiative altered the electoral outcome. Results are not responsive to individual preferences.

I would disagree with this argument on a surface level. I voted for President Trump, and President Trump won. I voted for Assemblyman David Hadley (R-Torrance) in 2014, and he won. I voted for him in 2016 and he lost. The issue has a lot to do not just with voting, but how many people are voting. With those outcomes in mind, other factors play such a large factor in outcomes, not just my own voting.

Further, voters face binary yes/no votes on initiatives or A/B votes on candidates representing bundles of policies and promises. That is far from giving voters power to effectively exercise their desires. The least harmful option, not the most preferred, is frequently chosen.

Good point. The lack of choice, the lack of chosen outcomes, the lack of specific preferences is a problem. Every voter, if the individual chooses to vote, gets boxed into some pretty meager choices. That's how many voters felt during the Presidential election.

Most voters also face very limited incentives to consider policies carefully, illustrated by vast numbers who don’t even know their political representatives’ names. That is largely because individuals’ market voting with their dollars changes their outcomes — better matching their circumstances and preferences — while public policy voting almost never does, but also because more complex policy issues are more difficult to evaluate than private choices.

This part of the article is the most enlightened, the most profound. A voter must spend so much time, energy, and resources figuring out who to vote for, and yet one's exercise of the voter franchise by itself is quite slight.

What's the point of voting when you perceive that your one little vote amounts to just about ... nothing?

Politics also imposes fewer effective constraints on dishonesty and misrepresentation than market arrangements. Beyond greater “customer” ignorance, politics has no truth-in-advertising laws, money-back guarantees or effective warrantees. Politicians’ wares are not easily evaluated. They are primarily plausible-sounding stories about candidates’ intentions, which they cannot accomplish alone, backed with the every-ready excuse that failures represented the best deal actually possible. There is frequently no more than one “electable” competitor to keep you honest, and that is frequently limited only to election season.

Wow. So profound and so sad at the same time. People say just about anything to get elected, but they never follow through. They don't have to follow through! They got elected, and I as a voter cannot recall them or get my "money" back, so to speak!

In political democracy, a majority can also force its preferences on any issue upon all those who disagree. That is why our founders adopted constraints on majority abuse, such as limited, delegated powers and the Bill of Rights. However, those constraints have largely been undermined today.

And a reminder: we are not a democracy, but a republic! Christopher Buskirk wrote in the Washington Post how we are witnessing a restoration of Little R republicanism, a true restraint on the power of the state, specifically the federal government.

We need more of this, not less.

In contrast to political democracy, free market capitalism, which reflects democratic self-government, represents a far better ideal.

The final government ideal would be to have as little as possible decided by the government, and as much as possible in our lives settled by personal choice and marketplace engagement.

Its system of exclusively voluntary cooperation based on self-ownership requires that property rights be respected; no majority can violate owners’ rights. Individuals’ dollar votes change their outcomes, even when their preferences are not the majority’s preferences, generating the further advantage of making them far better informed than about politics. There also are more mechanisms providing honesty and accountability.

Markets, freedom are a better metric for change and accountability. We need more of that. One of the most important aspects is that efforts and outcomes must respond to what people want. Government does not do that well, unless there is a lot of mobilization and force.

Holding out democracy as an ideal overlooks the question of whether market democracy or political democracy better serves citizens. A very strong argument can be made that a superior form is to remove virtually all decisions and policies we need not share in common (almost all of them, beyond the mutual protection of our rights) from government dictation, and let people exercise self-government, protected by their unalienable rights.

Which decisions do not belong to the government? Decisions which we do not share with others. We all share a need for public safety, water, street services, etc.

But not much else. In the end, the best safeguard for our liberty is not democracy, but constitutional republicanism, precisely because it limits the power of the government no matter who enters into power.