The Dangerous Totalitarian Premise Underpinning the Justice Department’s Suit Against Georgia’s New Election Law

In Justice Department Sues Georgia Over New Voting Restrictions, Claiming Discriminatory Intent, Reason’s C.J. Ciaramella reports

The Justice Department filed a civil rights lawsuit today challenging several portions of Georgia's contentious new voting law, which the Justice Department alleges were enacted with the intent "to deny or abridge the right of Black Georgians to vote on account of race or color."

In a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, the Justice Department alleges that portions of Georgia's Senate Bill 202, enacted into law in March, violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits discriminatory voting laws.

But allegations of discrimination are not the fundamental danger behind this lawsuit. ((I think the racial discrimination charge is bogus and politically motivated.) The philosophy that underpins the Justice Department’s lawsuit is the real danger. 

"The right of all eligible citizens to vote is the central pillar of our democracy, the right from which all other rights ultimately flow," Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a press release. "This lawsuit is the first step of many we are taking to ensure that all eligible voters can cast a vote; that all lawful votes are counted; and that every voter has access to accurate information."

My Emphasis.

The idea that voting is "the right from which all other rights ultimately flow” is a dangerous totalitarian premise. It implies that our liberty rights are the property of the state, to be granted, denied, or rescinded by the state, simply because the government has been elected. 

A free society, and America itself, depends on protecting individual rights from all forms of tyranny, including majoritarian or electoral tyranny. This issue lies at the heart of the long-running Democracy-vs.-Republic controversy. But the Declaration of Independence is clear: Our fundamental rights are “unalienable” -- meaning are not subject to the whims of the government or of elections. While it’s true that “The right of all eligible citizens to vote is the central pillar of our democracy,” our democracy is itself limited by our fundamental rights to life, and liberty--rights that include freedom of speech, property rights, a jury trial of our peers, protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, and others.

It's not surprising that the Biden Justice Department is using this inverted understanding of rights. It is, after all, the Democratic Party. Democrats believe that anyone's rights can be subordinated to and/or abrogated by any government policy so long as the policy is enacted by elected officials or their bureaucratic proxies. That is what voting as “the right from which all other rights ultimately flow" means. If voting is primary, then the antebellum Southern States were justified in claiming that slavery should be decided by a vote of the residents of each state, a position that the Democratic Party endorsed at its inception in 1828.

Isn’t the rejection of the idea that rights come from government a central catalyst that drove the American Revolution? Yes. The colonists had long considered themselves English, with the rights of Englishmen. But when the Crown started systematically infringing the colonists' rights in the 1760s, the colonists recognized the danger: If a government, in their case a king and the British parliament, could grant rights, it could just as easily take them away. So they turned toward a firmer foundation for their rights. They turned to the Enlightenment thinkers, especially John Locke, the first thinker to recognize what has become known as the natural rights of man, every individual man. The Democratic Party, from its founding in 1828, never recognized natural rights. It has been a reactionary force undermining America from its founding in 1828, when its Southern wing openly defended slavery and its more “moderate” Northern faction adopted the view that slavery should be determined democratically, at the state level, by popular vote!

Yes, the Democratic Party once endorsed the position that a majority can vote a minority into slavery! This is what it means to say that "The right of all eligible citizens to vote is . . . the right from which all other rights ultimately flow"--or not flow!

This is contrary to the principles of a free society, and to what the Founders created. As explicitly established in the Declaration of Independence, individual rights come before government, the establishment of which is designed “to secure these rights, which in turn necessitates voting; the requirement of the government “deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” If rights ultimately flow from elected governments, then they are arbitrary constructs dependent upon political whim. Such “rights” are not, in fact, rights. They are privileges awarded on the expediency of the last election to ever-shifting politically powerful voting constituencies. 

As John Locke teaches, and as Ayn Rand confirms and solidifies, rights are moral principles that derive from the fact that man is a being guided by reason, and thus must be free to use his reason to guide his life. Unless you believe that government created reason, you cannot logically claim that “The right of all eligible citizens to vote is . . . the right from which all other rights ultimately flow.” Under that premise, with everyone’s liberty and property at risk in every election, elections become increasingly contentious battles, ultimately disintegrating into paralysis, chaos, and ultimately violent tribal conflict. Without an objective standard of inalienable rights that is always beyond the electoral fist, it can be no other way. 

Strictly speaking, the right of all eligible citizens to vote is a central pillar of our democratic process. But democracy is not the central pillar of a free society. 

It’s no surprise that Democrats are so obsessed with voting. With little respect for the nature-based inalienability of individual rights, they see winning elections as a path to unlimited power. The fact is, a civil free society depends on understanding a vital, rock-solid truth: Voting Rights are Not the ‘Most Fundamental Right’—or Even a Fundamental Right. A government, even an elected government, that can determine who has rights, what those rights are, and can alter or abolish rights at will is a totalitarian state. That’s the terrible end from which the idea that voting rights is “the right from which all other rights ultimately flow” leads. Totalitarian tyranny flows from the premise that rights come from the government. 

Related Reading:

America's Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It by C. Bradley Thompson

Statistical Disparities Don’t Proof Discrimination in Voter ID Laws

Freedom Is Not About the Right to Vote, So I’m Voting Anti-Democrat Across the Board

16 Year Old Voters? How About 21?

The Vote: Get Off Your Butt and Register—But Keep the Nanny State Out of It

Related Viewing:

What Are Rights and Where Do They Come From? by Harry Binswanger