It should come as no surprise that the Dems are inciting mobs to supposedly defend democracy. After all, direct democracy, which the donkeys adore, is mob rule hidden behind a façade of righteous majority decision making.
The United States has never been a direct democracy, because our founders understood that when all decisions are made by the majority, the mob will eventually forego the golden eggs, and eat the goose. Inevitably, the 51 percent will enslave the 49 percent (i.e. take the fruit of their labor). It’s a dynamic which California will almost certainly demonstrate this year, when it passes a ballot referendum to climb into a warm tub and open their wrists. They’re calling state suicide a wealth tax.
In its coastal wisdom, California’s constitution includes a legal means to practice direct democracy from time to time. It’s called a ballot proposition. If a mob advocacy group can get 5 percent of the population to sign a petition, they can force a vote to change or impose a statute (with 8 percent they can force a referendum on the state’s constitution). They could use it to fine surfing without a life preserver, or involuntarily commit habitual improper pronoun users, but instead they decided to use the direct democracy pitchfork to crash their economy.
The mob Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is collecting signatures to put a wealth confiscation referendum on November’s ballot. If they manage to get the referendum on the ballot, and they probably will, then a majority of California voters will decide if they’d like to eat the geese that lay the golden eggs of: investment, innovation, and employment. They’ll call the feast something like: The Making the Rich Pay Their Fair Share Day of Thanks. I note that the geese are less enthusiastic about the measure than the SEIU.
According to the NY Post, 60 percent of Californians have joined the flash mob coming for stuff that doesn’t belong to them. If the referendum passes, it will be the ultimate demonstration of majority tyranny over a minority – 23 million Californians, deciding to seize the property of 214 individuals (the number of billionaires in Cali). The measure will require California to seize 5 percent of every California billionaire’s net worth.
Is the mob likely to moderate its lust for free stuff paid for by other people? History would suggest that the California voters lack the wisdom to value the eggs over the fowl. They’re already the most heavily taxed state in the country, because they haven’t been able to resist looting the property of the productive. I doubt that their mindset will change before November. Certainly, the geese billionaires aren’t expecting the voters to defend their property rights. There is currently a gaggle of the obnoxiously rich, sprinting for the eastern border, and they’re taking their golden eggs with them. Over a trillion dollars of wealth has left the land of “fruits and nuts” in just the last few months. That’s a trillion bucks that will no longer build businesses, provide employment, or pay the Golden State’s exorbitant taxes.
But that won’t be the end of California’s Hunger Games experiment. When the billionaires are gone, there will still be bills for a bullet train to nowhere, and illegal alien medical expenses. That’s when the mob’s attention will shift from the ultra-wealthy to the mere-wealthy – the millionaires. Then, after the millionaires have joined the billionaires in Florida and Texas, the unemployed will come for the employed, with another ballot referendum pitchfork. Eventually, California will be left with people who have nothing, trying to live on the backs of others who also have nothing.
Our founders understood that supremacy of individual rights over mob impulses is necessary for social stability and peaceful self-governance. Hence, we were founded as a constitutional republic, designed to moderate the lusts of the majority. We choose wise leaders (yes, I know we’ve missed the “wise” mark) to govern us within the constraints of constitutional rights: free speech, free worship, self-defense, property rights, due process, etc. It is a system intended to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority.
While Cali is putting on a “flaws of direct democracy” infomercial, on the other coast New York is conducting an experiment in communism – a form of government capable of collapsing a society even faster than direct democracy. It skips the voting and jumps right to taking everything away from everyone, for redistribution by the politburo collective. Communism is already losing its luster just months after NY’s new mayor took office. With streets choked with homeless tents, garbage, and snow, the people of the Big Apple are learning quickly that like democracy, communism is great in theory, but not so shiny in reality.
What both communism and direct democracy advocates miss, is that society thrives when the productive thrive. The productive create wealth for everyone, when individual rights – including property rights – are protected. Both communism and direct democracy fail because they are based on collective rather than individual rights.
Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously said, “Our states are laboratories of democracy.” [Note: He was using “democracy” as a mnemonic substitute for “self-governance,” not as a reference to direct democracy.] It seems the labs on each coast have decided to conduct a couple of experiments at opposite ends of the self-governance axis.
The west coast is testing direct democracy: where the majority has control of everything. The east coast is testing communism, where “central planning” controls everything. Both systems deprive individuals of their rights, and are destined to fail. But never distracted by reality, the Democrat party would be happy to go either way, and it’s just hoping one of these experiments becomes an attractive sales pitch to give them power in the next election.
I think we need to buckle up – history tells us how both experiments will end. Flyover country is going to be getting bailout applications from both directions in a few years.
Author Bio: John Green is a retired engineer and political refugee from Minnesota, now residing in Idaho. He spent his career designing complex defense systems, developing high performance organizations, and doing corporate strategic planning. He is a contributor to American Thinker, The American Spectator, and the American Free News Network. He can be reached at greenjeg@gmail.com.
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Cannot wait for the headline:
TRUMP TO CALIFORNIA: DROP DEAD