WINSTON Churchill famously quipped that democracy is the worst possible form of government, except for all the alternatives. It seems that everybody knows this quote, but nobody gets the point. Under the Bush Administration's vision of forcefully "democratizing" the Middle East, the public has rekindled its passionate love affair with the idea of democratic government. Lest we lose ourselves in the labyrinths of our passion, there are two things we must remember. First, democracy is merely a necessary evil. It might be the best of all possible forms of government because it's the least susceptible to abuses of power -- but it still is highly susceptible. And second, due to this susceptibility, even democratic governments must be strictly limited if they are to remain just.
The essence of government is to govern -- to make people do things they don't want to do. Whether it's paying taxes, joining the military during a draft, obeying traffic laws, or refraining from stealing one another's property, the government has a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence to force people's actions. It's generally agreed that some government is necessary -- to stop people from killing each other, for example -- but a dilemma naturally arises as to who should be in control of the enormous coercive power of the state.
Under a democracy, "the people" are supposedly in control. The reins of power are thrown to the whim of the ballot box, to be taken up by the eager hands of the prevailing majority. Some people seem to think that this is enough to ensure a just government. But just imagine: if 51 people vote to enslave 49 of their peers, their mere vote surely doesn't grant them the right to start rolling out the shackles. This would constitute a majoritarian abuse of power. So, if it is admitted that there is a standard of justice that is above the decisions of democratic process, then a new question arises. The issue is no longer who should hold power. The question becomes, what is the proper sphere in which this power should be applied?
From the above example, we see that democratic decisions can't be justified if they infringe upon other peoples' basic rights. And, in general, a person has the right not to be told what to do, except in cases that prevent him from interfering with someone else. You can't tell your friend what he has to eat for lunch, for example, but you can tell him to refrain from stealing your car. If there's any value to the notion of freedom, then people can rightfully do whatever they want, so long as they don't interfere with the life of anybody else.
Now, if you're unjustly told to do something you don't want to do, it doesn't matter for your purposes whether you're being commanded by a despot or by the majority of your fellow citizens. Your freedom is being unjustly trampled, whether by a democracy or a king. In fact, the only way a government could be justified -- democracy or not -- would be if it only gave you commands in order to prevent you from interfering with others.
It's more than just pedantry at this point to note that the U.S. government is not even a democracy. In fact, we're governed by a small elite of lawmakers who we routinely elect out of fields of equally undesirable candidates, and who reliably advocate wealthy special interests over unarticulated public interests. Realistically speaking, direct democracy just wouldn't work in a country as large as ours. Out of necessity, we live under a republic, which is just a fancy name for an oligarchy with some accountability. This makes the case for limited government even stronger, since it highlights the fact that oftentimes, the government won't even act the way the majority wants, much less the minority.
When citizens hear democracy referred to as "government by the people" or "self-governance," they often believe naively that this means people actually govern themselves in democratic societies. Nothing could be further from the truth. At best, democracy means the rule of the minority by the whim of the majority. Often, it means the rule of everybody by the tyranny of special interest. That is why justice is fundamentally anti-democratic -- because peoples' lives cannot be trusted to any particular type of government, but only to a limited government.
(Anthony Dick's column appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at adick@cavalierdaily.com)
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