On the Misunderstanding of Democracy
The word “Democracy” is not synonymous with “good.”
In this surprisingly unenlightened day and age, the children of the village have begun using the word fascism to mean “bad” and the word democracy to mean “good.” Fascism is the easier word to understand. Mussolini’s Italy, Hitler’s Germany, Franco’s Spain, and Antonescu’s Romania were all examples of true fascism, and all served as horrific examples of humanity at its worst. The Fascist governments perpetrated one of the greatest evils in our history, World War II. Even for Spain, which did not participate directly in the war and its attached atrocities, the horrors perpetrated during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 are not to be sneezed at.
Fine. Fascism has always stood for evil, and evil is baked into fascist ideology.
But is democracy really equivalent to “good”? Alas, I must take issue with that.
Democracy means the rule of the majority. Demos means “the common people” in ancient Greek, and by definition, the common people make up the majority of any civilization. Democracy is the rejection of the rule of the minority and an embracing of populism. No autocrats, tyrants, or dictators rule a democracy; the people rule a democracy–or rather, the people decide who is to rule them.
But a true democracy means that the majority always wins. If the majority decides that everyone is having pizza for dinner, then you’re having pizza. Now, a good democracy will have protections for the minority. A good democracy will have a gluten-free slice, a slice with fake cheese, and a kosher slice; but you will still be eating pizza.
And if you don’t like pizza, you’re out of luck.
If a majority elects a vile antisemite, or a toddler, or Mecha-Stalin, to rule you, then they must rule. To disallow a ruler that the majority has elected would be autocracy, the ruling of the many by the few. Democracy is the rule of the few by the many.
So what is a minority to do? They cannot seize control and rule the majority; that would be autocracy. The minority cannot dictate policy in a democracy. The majority dictates policy, and more importantly, dictates the protections afforded to the minority; so the only recourse to the minority is to go somewhere where they are the majority.
If a minority does not wish to be dictated to by the majority, they must either overthrow the democracy to install minority rule, or leave and go somewhere where they are the majority, and where they can dictate policy.
The Jews of America are a minority, and a miniscule minority at that. The majority (at least in the city of New York) calls for antisemitism, and does not wish to afford our minority with protections, and in a democracy, that is the choice that preserves the democracy. You can call it disgraceful, antisemitic, evil, and shortsighted, and I will agree, but to dictate to the many that our will–the will for everyone to stop being such nasty antisemites–be adopted, is a totalitarian infringement on the democracy of the United States.
If you don’t like being the minority ruled over by an uncaring majority, you should move to Israel, where you are the majority. You dictate policy, you choose your leaders, and you decide what balance between minority protection and rule of the people fits best.
