by J.B. Shurk, GATESTONE • April 12, 2024 at 5:00 am
- If you live in a “democracy” where everyone routinely votes to censor and imprison one another, you still live in a police state.
- The word “democracy” appears to have become polite shorthand for insisting that an insular minority in control of the American government always knows what is best for the vast, unrepresented majority. Even worse, it sometimes seems nothing more than a convenient disguise for camouflaging abuses of power.
The American system of government is a federation of sovereign states that retain inherent powers not specifically delegated to the national government. It is a republic that separates discrete powers among coequal and competing branches of government — namely the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial. It is a representative democracy that empowers the people to vote into office those who presumably will best serve their interests. Most importantly, it is a constitutional system that severely limits government’s authority and proscribes government agents from infringing upon freedoms retained by the people.
Just to be indisputably clear that the government is forbidden from rewriting its own delegated powers in such a way that they violate an American’s God-given liberties, the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution — the Bill of Rights — act as a redundancy measure and explicit warning to state actors not to infringe upon or water down the rights delineated there.
And to Orwells point East Germany in the good old days was known as the GDR. Guess what the D is for. Not to mention the R. Hate to say it though not looking much different from Canada or the US these days. Effective Democracy is not just about a free vote every four years which is a long time. It involves free speech and rule of law (as compared to rule of man-Trudeau-or men, Biden team of idiots) both of which are under advanced assault in Canada and US.
And democracy is labeled fascism. I’m reminded of this great satire by Caroline Glick, an ad for the now discredited Ayalet Shaked:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fpzrih1S6C0
“It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it; consequently, the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning.” – George Orwell. “Politics and the English Language.” (1946)