The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
— Winston Churchill
A republic protects the rights of the individual to be free from coercion. A democracy votes away rights for some individuals, and votes rights in favor of others.
In a republic, there are democratically elected officials. But these officials do not exist to decide who has rights and who does not. The officials exist to enforce the rights of the individual embodied by a nation’s Constitution and Bill of Rights.
America has morphed into a pure democracy. While there is still lip service to individual rights and a Constitution, these are only employed when it’s convenient to vote away rights for some while installing new rights for others.
The current President has taken things a step further. If he can’t get the rights he wants by democratic vote, then he’ll simply issue his edicts by executive fiat. He has dropped the pretense that we’re even a democracy. He is paving the way for dictatorship.
But the thing to understand is that a pure democracy is nothing more than mob rule. It’s its own kind of dictatorship.
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