Why Liberty is more important than Democracy

Philosophical Slog stuff has a tradition of trying to be more long-term. But tonight’s little essay tackles one of the great circles we will almost certainly have to try and square between now and 2020ish: which is more important, democracy or liberty?

The two things are, naturally, not mutually exclusive. Nevertheless, I often find it odd that democracy as a form of government is somehow held in higher esteem than the liberty that should always be afforded to the citizen. Citizens are human beings, whereas government is an essentially abstract concept. Flesh and blood is higher up my list of things to respect than philosophy about how life-forms should be told what to do.

There are umpteen faults with democracy, but perhaps the greatest of these is the contemporary assumption that all things democratic must be good. Just because the American Constitution says it is ‘self evident’ that all men are created equal does not make the statement correct. It clearly isn’t. First up, half of them are women – a major oversight by the Founding Fathers. And second, we are not all physically the same, mentally equal or endowed with the same narrow skills. The democratic definition of equality is anthropological, neuroscientific, and sociological bollocks.

That said, it does not follow that more respect should be applied to those with all their limbs present, and in possession of an IQ over 140. If disabled people have a contribution to make physically and mentally, they are equally (if not more) deserving of our respect for what they might achieve. However, to offer the same rights of voting, general opinion, reproduction and influence to people of abnormally low intelligence and/or congenital insanity would be an entirely Labour Party policy, aka idiotic.

This principle has already been diluted by the EU, which has imposed upon us the potty idea that those incarcerated on account of criminality should retain the Vote. Such a belief is antithetical to the original concept of Greek democracy – viz, only citizens should have the right to vote. But citizenship is a right to be attained, not awarded automatically. (Those now keen to make immigrants learn about the responsibilities that go with British citizenship should not deny that dictate to those born here: surely, to do so would be favouritism of an unacceptable kind.)

Our culture has become one in which most things are declared ‘a Right’. Not only is this silly – the kids of rich parents often illustrate that opinion rather well – the idea that an obscure species on the edge of one Galaxy has some kind of God-given right to anything (or even a God worth talking about) is ridiculous. Healthy civilisations ‘test’ their citizens to see what they can contribute, and then reward them – or otherwise – accordingly. It is for this reason that I advocate tax based on contribution to society, not income: of course it would be difficult to construct, but then if it was easy, everyone would be doing it without a second thought. The easy way to do something is almost never the best.

Why should anyone have ‘the right’ to vote? Is voting a Divine activity, or merely the process by which we choose – usually very badly – our leaders? The Divine Right of Kings was ditched in Great Britain after 1689. This was done because Kings made decisions involving war and taxes and so forth that were many country miles away from divine. Daft, despicable and maybe even dire, but not divine.

So why do Dean and Bianca, residents of Adverse Camber in the country of Suffix, have a Divine Right to vote? They don’t. Do they have a unique dimension of opinion likely to worth the ‘award’ of a vote? Possibly: until we test them, we don’t know. Few people know this, but The Old Grey Whistle Test (a TV programme featuring Rock with a Brain, from the days when one looked forward to an evening’s telly) got its title from the way the Tamla Motown label chose to go with a track or not, if the Board was locked in disagreement. There was an old black guy with grey hair who came in each afternoon to sweep all the public areas in the company building. This bloke was a serious aficionado of soul and Tamla quality, and so they’d play the track over the office loudspeakers while he was at work with broom and bucket. If within 36 hours he was whistling the track, they released it. He was old, he was grey, and he whistled. It was a marvellously unimpeachable basis on which to base the definition of an electorate.

The West no longer has that. It is anaesthetised by drivel about universal equality and affirmative action to make up the numbers….to the extent that – to repeat the lunacy – we give the vote to anti-social clowns who steal, beat up, pimp, rape and murder. One of my greatest  joys is to point this out to ‘committed’ feminists.

For me, the right to vote is a kind of ‘mezzanine’ right along with citizenship. I’d make citizenship and discernment between tartan paint salesman/good person obligatory for every kid in the nation. I’d examine those kids about voting as a concept at age sixteen. Those who passed would get it, those who failed wouldn’t. I’d make the inability to vote a social blemish among one’s peers: and the right to vote something to which they aspired….pretty much like the driving test is today, really.

I do not doubt that a good 70+% of Brits would see these views as ‘fascist’ even beyond the imaginings of those whose every action and belief is innately fascist; but that’s because they’re in love with democracy – as opposed to liberty. It’s very easy indeed to pervert democracy; it’s damned difficult to offer people ersatz liberty.

That’s because liberty is a very different, and far more profound concept. It is a faith – a species faith – in the idea that no man has the right – Divine? – to incarcerate another without just cause. If you don’t make this a very important right at the outset of life to which we all have an equal access, then what you get is slavery, Tsarism, Nazism, Communism and every nasty ism known to Man. The gratuitous Lettre de Cachet was the most hated law in pre-Revolutionary France, and formed the basis of Dumas’ timeless novel The Count of Monte Christo. It was the ‘Divine Right’ of the Bourbons to bang-up anyone they didn’t like in the Chateau D’If, a prison based on the same rules as going into an online forum to try and work out why your comment thread system is temperamental.

Above all, liberty is the acceptance that, once born, a human baby is entitled to an even break, and to remain free as long as no crime against society has been committed: to have the same opportunities as everyone else, but also – if disabled – not to be told he or she is going for a bath, when what lies in wait is really Xylon-B. So why do I think liberty is more of a natural right than that of  ‘Having Your Say’? Simply because you can have your say, and be ignored…as most of us are in 2012. But if your protection against a steep gradient where the level playing field should be is encased in the Constitution – and there is an independent Judiciary fanatical about equality before the Law – then your life is far more likely to be fulfilling than in States where the authorities think otherwise…yet allow everyone to vote.

Remember: the Nazis suspended liberty, but not democracy. In April 1938, the Anschluss with Austria was enthusiastically voted for by 99.7% of Reich citizens. Austria’s official history notes that, ‘Although the outcome was undoubtedly influenced by Nazi intimidation, the Anschluss enjoyed broad popular support’. Did this render it less than international theft?

Readers should not impugn my motives: I am not arguing for an oligarchic democracy. How much of an oligarchy any State becomes rests with those who educate the citizens, and the degree to which the culture encourages individuals to oppose that. But a gratuitous dictatorship with full voting rights is perfectly possible. A totalitarian State with strictly observed citizen liberty before the law is by definition impossible.

There is, however, a dimension to my argument that many would find distasteful, and it is this: we must stop believing that every opinion is of equal worth. As the Americans are fond of observing, “Opinions are like assholes – everybody’s got one”. And as the late great comic George Burns remarked, “All those guys busy saying the President is a jerk – how come they’re all cutting hair and driving cabs?”

Plato felt that the basis of sound democracy was an informed electorate. He didn’t think liberty even came into it – but then he was gay, and didn’t get out much beyond his circle of Boys. He was wrong about liberty (in his age, slavery was felt to be a natural condition for 90% of humans) but he was right on the money when it comes to the importance of knowing WTF’s going on. He didn’t have a media-set in his time, which is why he was a genius for grasping that the Powers that Be will always have the power – should they desire it – to define what The Truth is. But the liberty to read a free press bringing bad guys to book is, to my way of thinking, far more important than the right to vote for either David Cameron or Ed Miliband: the liberty to cast a vote for people in the real world – and have that vote count – is in turn more telling than just having ‘a vote’ per se. If one’s choice is between a toff and a tit, it isn’t much of a voting right, is it?

In conclusion, I would argue that liberty can protect democracy, but the obverse clearly isn’t true. The right to vote is just one dimension of liberty. Hence my placing of greater importance upon liberty.

Discuss.