Resist Democracy, Embrace Liberty

I am cautiously optimistic that it’s only a matter of time now before the Trump presidency will end, bringing other members of his administration down with him. When that day arrives, what happens to the “Resistance?"

So said Karen Haskin, president of STAND Central NJ, a “ nonpartisan, pro-democracy group working to educate and empower New Jersey voters and residents,” according to her New Jersey Star-Ledger guest column of January 6, 2019, ‘Resistance’ leader: Trump’s presidency will end very soon, but it won’t mean our work is done.

It’s really a Leftist activist group, and Hasken lays out an agenda to keep the so-called Trump Resistance” going after Trump because, she says, although “We formed in response to the election of Donald Trump, . . . we understand that New Jersey and the nation’s problems did not start with the election.

That last statement is true. She goes on:

When I look at the pre-Trump era, I am reminded of growing economic inequality, legally enforced racism, and socially enforced gender inequality. People were getting pulled over for “driving while black” before this president. The FBI documented that white supremacists worked in our police forces before Trump. Like the people who glorify the 1950s -- except for that pesky little Jim Crow problem -- the people who long for the pre-Trump era are speaking from positions of privilege.

What’s to resist after Trump. An alleged push to roll back the nation to the era of this litany of horrors.

That, of course, is a straw man. The Left loves to paint America’s past as racist and unjust, rather than the steady, hard-fought march toward equality of freedom and justice that it actually is--until, that is, the Progressive reaction began. What’s on Haskin's agenda? Standard moderate Leftist stuff, like defending public education against efforts to “dismantle” it--a stealth attack on parental school choice. She also embraces more radical Leftist items, like the collectivist, un-American call for an “immigration policy for the future that takes into account historical inequalities and restorative justice,” which is based on the racist idea that collective group guilt is passed on through the genes or blood, and must be rectified by punishing innocent people living today who had nothing to do with past injustices in order to reward people living today who are not victims of the past injustices.

I left these comments:

True, “the nation’s problems did not start with the [2016] election.” It started over a century ago with the “Progressive Era,” which began the transition of America away from a republic that prioritized individual rights to a democracy that prioritized democratic--that is, government--control.

The obsession with voting is very unhealthy. The one vote that really counts is your right to choose. Democracy takes away that crucial personal “vote”--your individual rights--in exchange for a useless political vote, one buried among millions. Case in point: Empowering voters, but denying parents school choice (“we don’t want our public education system dismantled”). A parent with a better idea for her child’s education should not have to wait for electoral permission to act on those ideas for her child. No individual should have to wait for permission from an election, or “our representatives”, or “communities and organizations to build strong coalitions” or some other vague collective to make personal, individual life choices in education or other values of her life.  

Count me out of this fight for “our democracy.” Democracy is a totalitarian concept—a slide backward to the era prior to the American Revolution, when government was our master rather than our agent for securing our individual freedom. Reestablishing republicanism does not mean a return to legally enforced racism, Jim Crow, or the like. Those types of injustices were, in fact, imposed by elected governments--manifestations of democratic, not republican, principles. Freedom and justice is not secured by the right to vote. Freedom and justice is the right to live your life, and act on your choices, regardless of anyone else’s vote and without coercive interference by any government official, elected or otherwise.

Related Reading:

The Real Conflict Undergirding the Kavanaugh Fight: Democracism versus Republicanism

Democracy Fundamentalism vs. Americanism

Voting Rights are Not the ‘Most Fundamental Right’—or Even a Fundamental Right

Democracy is Democracy

Rights and Democracy

Constitutional Republicanism: A Counter-Argument to Barbara Rank’s Ode to Democracy

Our Republican Constitution: Securing the Liberty and Sovereignty of We the People Hardcover by Randy E. Barnett