“Democracy.”
The word that has come to mean anything those who use it want it to mean.
“We must spread democracy to the world.”
“How can we still accept [pick your issue] in a democratic society?”
“That’s [pick your political or social vice] a violation of our democratic principles!”
And thus democracy becomes the epitomizing word describing any given desirable social or political outcome. Don’t like a Supreme Court decision? Democracy is at stake. Love a Supreme Court decision? They’re upholding democratic principles!
In reality, the word democracy has become meaningless in its overbroad application.
Its meaninglessness is a symptom—and thus a helpful teaching tool—of a far more important reality: that the pursuit of “democracy” is not what many people who use it really want.
Let me explain.
First, let’s actually visit the definition of democracy. From the Greek, we all recall from grade school, it means “rule of the many.” In its purest form, it is majority rule, more accurately defined as majority dictatorship. In theory, then, if 51% of voters decide to enslave the other 49%, then it is their prerogative. After all, it was a majority decision. Such extreme implications aside or even mitigated for, majority rule still implies some measure of coercion by the majority of those who favor a particular law, program, et cetera.
Many people—particularly progressives— favor that definition of the word when it suits their desired outcomes, though often it does not. So if that definition will not do, they would use the word “democracy” in a way that supports a particular social agenda. If evidence or even a strict vote demonstrates that the majority does not favor a particular vision or social outcome, then the word democracy must abandon its own definition and adopt something much different. Democracy, then, becomes a term used to defend a goal, whether that goal favors a majority or a minority.
It is used to defend either dictatorship of the majority or dictatorship of the minority.
To a classical liberal or a libertarian who favors the protection of individual liberty, pure democracy has historically proven to be a threat. For example, the classical liberal movement of the early 1800s in the German Confederation, eager to see the expansion of suffrage undo the autocratic power of the government, soon found that it spurred on the first major welfare state and the accompanying taxation as people began to vote for themselves privileges at the expense of others.
To the progressive who favors some particular social goal or outcome, and coercion must guide society to that goal or outcome, democracy is simply the word used to justify the means. So long as “the majority” favors their vision (even if this could be always accurately assessed) they have no problem with the use of force to coerce the “minority” to act in accordance with that vision.
This is the dictatorship of the majority.
But almost never is the true democratic principle of majority rule what matters to them. The progressives, masters at the manipulation of language (think of political correctness), use the word democracy to mean “equality”—usually forced, under threat of law or lawsuit. Make sure that the cake-baker suffers for the injustice of his discrimination to bake the cake for the gay wedding, they cry, lest he threaten “democracy.” For the progressive, their vision is the one that must be forced onto society because it is whatever society really needs, they claim, and in that, is “democratic.”
This is dictatorship of the progressive vision—dictatorship of the minority.
And both applications–dictatorship of the majority and dictatorship of the minority–are equally dangerous to individual liberty and to those whose views are not in line with whoever holds the banner of the state’s authority.
