Is ‘majority rule’ moral even when the majority don’t want freedom?

By David McElroy · October 24, 2011

When Somali’s parliament unanimously agreed two years ago to make Islamic sharia law the basis of their country’s legal system, it was a clear demonstration of democracy in action. That’s a picture of the happy vote. At the same time, it was a serious limitation on individual freedom. So which matters? Democracy or freedom?

Most people mistakenly believe that freedom and democracy are the same things. I’ve talked about this before. The U.S. government is clearly confused about the issue, though. It uses our tax money around the world to support rebellions that will supposedly bring about democracy in more and more places. But if the vast majority of people want something other than freedom — and they want to enact laws to repress other people — why is this a good thing?

The latest example of this is in Libya. The United States spent $1.1 billion over throwing the old dictator (and other western powers spent even more), but there are worrisome signs that the new people aren’t exactly interested in individual liberty. The head of the new Libyan government said over the weekend that sharia law is going to be the foundation of the new country’s law. The same was true under the old regime, but the new regime is signaling that it’s going to go even further in forcing people to behave as their version of good Muslims — or else.

Why are western governments obsessed with majoritarian systems? I think it’s largely ignorance, but I suspect it’s something else, too. You can measure democracy in a mathematical way. You can’t measure freedom so easily. The bureaucratic mind likes things that it can quantify and compare and model. You can do that with a system that allocates power across a population in numerical ways and then operates in a mechanical way. There’s a role for bureaucrats in that. They have no role of importance when the priority is to say, “Hey, don’t tell people how to run their lives.”

The ignorance is harder to explain. The Founding Fathers of this country certainly had no intention of setting up a democracy. They were adamant about that. Today, most people don’t even understand the difference between a democracy and a republic, much less the difference between democracy and freedom. My suspicion is that it is related to the takeover of the educational establishment by the progressives from the era of John Dewey forward. They believed in democracy. The didn’t really believe in individual freedom, at least not certain kinds. I think their ideas slowly came to be accepted as gospel in textbooks and in teacher training.

Sunday, a friend of mine took exception to me referring to the people of this country being brainwashed into believing they have a duty to pay taxes, but I don’t know why anyone would be offended by that. The government-run compulsory education system spends 12 or 13 years indoctrinating most children — sometimes overtly and sometimes subtly — to believe in the glories of majority rule and in supporting the current system (and its ideals). If that’s not brainwashing, I’m not sure what is.

It’s immoral to set up rules to force people to live the way you want them to live. The fact that the majority of your neighbors want it that way doesn’t make it any less immoral. Politicians don’t even think about it anymore. They just talk about democracy — and then wonder why “the people’s will” so frequently produces things that are totally anathema to us. It’s irrational, but I don’t know how to change it.

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Spring always reminds me how glorious blue skies and green leaves can be. When I was in the second grade, Mrs. Arnold chastised me for using those colors together. She said they didn’t match. Mrs. Arnold had very specific rules about which colors could be used together. We couldn’t deviate from her rules. When I used green and blue together in one of my class drawings, she forced me to do it over, since she said those colors shouldn’t be used together. I was a polite and obedient child, but I asked her why they didn’t match — since God used them together in nature. She was exasperated and told me to follow her rules. So when I see glorious beauty which mixes green and blue — such as this photo I took just outside my office Friday afternoon — it always reminds me of Mrs. Arnold. It reminds me that she was wrong. And it’s a good reminder for us all. There are established rules about a lot of things. Many of those are good rules. But if an expert tells you something and you know he’s wrong, you might need to take a chance. He might be just as mistaken as Mrs. Arnold was.

In the coming months and years, we’re going to need inventive and productive people pursuing things that matter. We’re going to need smart and self-directed men and women who will find ideas and create enterprises that will help bypass the political class and build a new and better society. But everything I see in media right now seems geared toward telling people how to entertain and amuse themselves. The stories are full of advice about what to binge on Netflix and what games you should be playing while you’re stuck at home. We desperately need to ignore this advice and be looking toward building new futures instead. Being passive consumers got us where we are today. It’s time that we reclaim our former role — the one that made this country wealthy — as productive and free people who build far more than we consume. This could be a great opportunity for those who will take it. Turn off Netflix. Put down the video game controller. We need new ideas, new achievements, new goals — not more coach potatoes. This is the time to be thinking and creating and planning for the future that you and I both want.

The better I know myself, the more I realize that my core fault — and the source of many other failings in me — is that of believing on a deep level that everyone and everything in my world must be perfect, especially me. If I had seen any of this in myself as recently as 10 years ago, I would have dismissed it as a small failing that showed up only every now and then, but I now see it as the wellspring from which my other sins are born. It’s such an insidious belief — and one that can look on the surface like a reasonable desire to be good and right — that it’s hard to acknowledge it as the inner cancer it is. But until I understood this, it was always going to be impossible for me to get over my deep shame about my imperfection or to accept the love of another person, because she is bound to be flawed, too.

If it’s not yet spring where you are, you can at least enjoy 60 seconds of spring in the South with me. This was just outside my office late Thursday afternoon. Don’t you need a relaxing break today? See it on YouTube by clicking here.

It pays to be nice to the employees at Walmart — and everywhere else, for that matter. I was just in Walmart to buy some kitty litter when one of the employees called me over with a conspiratorial tone: “Hey, David, do you need some toilet paper?” she almost whispered. She had found a giant package hidden somewhere and she said she had been saving it for someone she really liked. So I’m the proud new owner of 24 additional mega rolls of toilet paper, which are worth something like $748 on the black market. On a more serious note, be good to people when you have a chance, as this employee was for me. And remember that people remember the way you treat them. I wouldn’t have treated this woman and her co-workers a bit differently in the past if I’d known she would someday do me this small favor, but there are benefits to treating people well, even if that’s not your purpose. Be good to each other.

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