What the Democrats’ Reactionary Views on Voting Actually Mean

The Democrats appear poised to win control of one or both houses of Congress. So it’s a good time to revisit the Democrats' reactionary designs on our electoral process, especially now that their party is increasingly captured by the radically counter-Enlightenment, Marxist-oriented anti-American Democratic Socialists of America, whose agenda includes totalitarian Democracy fundamentalism. 

In a leadup to Martin Luther King Jr. day, 2022, President Joe Biden gave a rousing speech in Georgia pushing his party’s so-called Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act,* which combines the Freedom to Vote Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. But this was no mere campaign-style speech. Biden dove right into the thick of political philosophy, reaching straight back to the Founding of America. In doing so, Biden clearly and explicitly exposed the reactionary premises of the Democratic Party.

After falsely claiming voting rights across America as under threat from laws like Georgia’s new voting law as, Biden’s philosophic treason comes into full view:

The filibuster has been weaponized and abused.

Today I’m making it clear: To protect our democracy, I support changing the Senate rules, whichever way they need to be changed — (applause) — to prevent a minority of senators from blocking action on voting rights.  (Applause.)  

When it comes to protecting majority rule in America, the majority should rule in the United States Senate.  

I make this announcement with careful deliberation, recognizing the fundamental right to vote is the right from which all other rights flow. [My emphasis]

This is nothing short of a repudiation of America and its Enlightenment roots. The Declaration of Independence states clearly, in these “magnificent words” as per Doctor Martin Luther King Jr., 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed . . . [my emphasis]

This is not mere rhetorical flourish. America has never been about majority rule. The idea of unalienable Rights and the government’s sole purpose to “to secure these rights” is deeply rooted in Enlightenment philosophy, led by John Locke, embraced by America’s Founding Fathers, and ultimately, clarified and solidified by 20th Century philosopher Ayn Rand. The principle of individual rights is derived from man’s individual nature as a rational being, and precedes government. The truth is the exact opposite of Biden’s reactionary formulation: Man’s  fundamental inalienable rights to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness are the rights from which all other rights—including the right to vote—flow.

After railing against Trump and his supporters for attempting to commandeer “the kind of power you see in totalitarian states, not in democracies,” Biden announces that rights are privileges granted by government, a foundational power of totalitarian states. This is not a power of constitutional republics such as, in its Founding ideals—the very same ideals drawn on by King in support of his Civil Rights Movement—the United States of America!

So what does it mean, in practice, when “the fundamental right to vote is the right from which all other rights flow?” It means majority rule. Mob rule. When rights flow from the right to vote, then all rights flow from the government—and the flow goes both ways.

• It means the “rights” of majorities to vote minorities into slavery, which was a plank of the antebellum Democratic Party. 

• It means the “rights” of majorities, or the majority’s elected representatives, to force unwilling citizens to fund political campaigns. 

• It means the power to vote in governments to grant “rights” to material benefits, such as healthcare or education, that take away the rights of the citizens who are forced to provide and/or fund them—selectively, as in the regulatory welfare state, or across the board, as in a fully socialist country

• It means the “right” of voters to install sharia law, violating the right to freedom of religion.

• It means that Jim Crow laws were legitimate, democratically legitimate. Those laws were established by elected representatives--and, for a time upheld by the courts.

• It means endorsing the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization overturning Roe v. Wade because it made a women’s right to abortion a matter of democratic vote rather than inalienable. 

That’s exactly the evil that the Founders abolished. When the British government began systematically to take away the colonists’ “rights of Englishmen,” the Founders realized that there must be a firmer foundation for rights than the benevolent whims (or lack of) of a King or other ruling authority, including the rule of elected legislatures. They found that firm foundation for the preservation of their rights in the theory of natural rights, a product of The Enlightenment; the theory that man by his very nature, and his relationship to broader nature, requires the freedom to take the actions necessary for the furtherance of his life, secured by, in the words of John Locke, inalienable individual rights.  

The Democratic Party, along with the Confederate intellectuals, rejected those principles by radically reinterpreting the Founding of America as a Democracy, not a constitutional republic. The Democrats haven’t changed their stripes. They claimed rights were grants of state authority, derived from the vote, rather than from the laws of nature, and their elected governments deprived blacks their rights—The fundamental right to vote is the right from which all other rights flow--or not flow, as elected representatives deemed to declare. Today, on Democratic Party reactionary premises, an entire country can be voted into socialist slavery. The Democratic Party has Democratic Socialists embedded within. Venezuela elected and re-elected socialist leaders Chavez and Madura, and rights were systematically stripped away--voted away--turning Venezuela into an unfree, impoverished basket case. 

That’s what you get when you declare that rights come from the state--that the fundamental right to vote is the right from which all other rights flow. As we can clearly see in theory and in practice, a government from which rights flow is also a government from which rights can recede. Biden has it backwards. In fact, in a Democracy as conceived by Biden, the right to vote is the “right” that puts all other rights at risk.

Then came the final outrage of Biden’s philosophic treason. Biden framed the debate over his Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act in apocalyptic demagoguery—as a choice of democracy over autocracy, light over shadows, justice over injustice; as a choice for or against voter suppression, election subversion, and democracy. With a straight face, Biden dropped the hammer on opponents:

So, I ask every elected official in America: How do you want to be remembered? 

At consequential moments in history, they present a choice: Do you want to be the si- — on the side of Dr. King or George Wallace?  Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor?  Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?

It was the Confederate intelligentsia that repudiated the ideal of inalienable individual rights, or natural rights theory, and reconceived America as a Democracy under which all rights flow from government—to protect their slavocracy. Who, then, is siding with the president of the slaveholding Confederacy, Jefferson Davis? Biden’s belief that “the fundamental right to vote is the right from which all other rights flow,” a principle upon which his Justice Department is basing its lawsuit against the state of Georgia over that state’s new election law, dovetails seamlessly with the philosophy of the Slave Power centered in Confederate States of America and its Democratic Party allies. 

To Joe Biden and the Democratic Party, election to political office in America is not an honorable job that entails doing the legal work of securing the fundamental rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness of its citizens. To today’s democratic socialist Democrats, like the antebellum Democrats and the Jim Crow Democrats and the welfare state Democrats, getting elected to political office is a license for totalitarian power—to the extent they can get away with it—to do the work of deciding what rights are, who gets them, who doesn’t, and to enforce those “rights” through legal coercion. While pretending to be on the side of mid-twentieth century civil rights crusaders, Biden is actually on the opposite side philosophically. Whereas Martin Luther King Jr., for all of his mixed and inconsistent politics, was squarely on the side of the Founding principles. Joe Biden has chosen the opposite side. 

In case you think this is hyperbole, consider that Biden’s view is precisely affirmed by his own Justice Department under Attorney General Merrick Garland, and by his Vice President, Kamala Harris, during her presidential candidacy. Since philosophy is the primary engine of history, who, then, is the real Protégé of Jefferson Davis? Add to this the fact that, as political scholar Michael Barone reminds us, “George Wallace, Bull Connor, and Jefferson Davis were all partisan Democrats.” 

There is plenty more that is bad about the Democrats’ attempt to enact their election reforms. I covered the bad elements in my post HR-1 is An Assault on Free Speech, Property Rights, Freedom of Conscience, and Privacy. Some version of the Democrats’ “Voting Rights” bill has been kicking around Congress for years. For now, it remains stalled. Let’s hope it never becomes law, and fight to kill it.

* (This bill remains stalled in Congress.)

Related Reading:

HR-1 is An Assault on Free Speech, Property Rights, Freedom of Conscience, and Privacy

The Democrats’ Anti-Free Speech Bill HR-1—the ‘For the People Act’—is Still a Threat

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

Harris's Unchanged anti-American Values

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

The Conscience of the Constitution: The Declaration of Independence and the Right to Liberty—Timothy Sandefur

America; Democracy or Republic or Both--Why it Matters

Understanding the Role of the Senate Filibuster

Jesse Jackson’s Big Lie: ‘American Democracy is Under Siege’

A New Textbook of Americanism: The Politics of Ayn Rand edited by Jonathan Hoenig

On Socialism and Democracy

This Post appeared on the Facebook page of The Federalist Papers:

DSA [Democratic Socialists of America] Co-Chair Megan Romer did Americans a favor by saying the quiet part out loud.

“We will win by making conditions so intolerable to the ruling class that they would rather give in to our demands than live with the disturbance we cause until we are able to fully seize power ourselves.” [Confirmed]

Read those words again.

This is not a call to persuade voters, win honest debates, or pass legislation through the normal democratic process. It is a declaration that socialists intend to deliberately make life intolerable until people surrender to their demands.

That is what socialists do.

They create disruption, resentment, fear, and economic pain, then present themselves as the solution to the misery they helped produce. The objective is not peaceful coexistence. The objective is power.

Americans should take this threat seriously.

When political activists block roads, occupy buildings, intimidate workers, interfere with law enforcement, destroy property, or attempt to shut down ordinary life, government officials cannot continue treating it as harmless protest. Peaceful protest is a constitutional right. Coercion, vandalism, threats, and organized lawlessness are not.

Anyone who crosses that line should face arrest, prosecution, jail, civil liability, and every other lawful consequence available.

There can be no special exemption because the people causing the disruption claim to be pursuing “social justice.” A crime committed for socialism is still a crime.

The most revealing portion of Romer’s statement is the desire to “fully seize power.” That phrase should destroy the comforting fiction that the DSA is merely seeking a slightly larger welfare state. [My emphasis]

America was founded on limited government, private property, individual liberty, religious freedom, and the right of citizens to live without being ruled by an all-powerful political class.

Socialism attacks every one of those principles.

You cannot claim to love America while working to eliminate the freedoms that make America worth loving. You cannot praise democracy while planning to make life intolerable until your opponents submit.

Believe them when they tell us what they intend to do.

What consequences should people face when political disruption crosses the line into intimidation, destruction, or organized lawlessness?

Source: Commentary magazine, “The Misery Strategy”

The Federalist Papers followed this up in the comments with;

The people calling themselves the enemies of the “ruling class” rarely intend to surrender power once they obtain it. 

This is true. Although the “Democratic” in Democratic Socialism refers to totalitarian democracy—the hideous idea that the right to vote is the most fundamental right that confers on elected politicians unlimited power to do as they please without restraint because they are elected—that same democracy that got Socialism elected can work in reverse, throwing the Socialists out of office. So while the Democratic Socialists (or any dictatorship) will claim their despotic policies are legitimate because instituted democratically, they’ll never submit their rule to voters for continuing validation. After HAMAS won election in Gaza under President Bush’s “Forward Strategy of Freedom,” it immediately canceled all future elections. 

That is why, once in power, the DSA will never allow free and fair elections. They will never allow themselves to be voted out of power. They will either abandon elections altogether or allow only rigged elections (Their advocacy for public funding of elections is a step in that direction). This has been true of Socialism from Vladimir Lenin to Nicolas Maduro. Why? Because elections require certain individual rights—rights to free speech and press, private campaign financing, dissent and opposing ideas, honest debate, association, one-man-one-vote, and so on. For Socialists, it’s not only about power. It’s about principle. They are collectivists. As the 20th Century Socialist Robert L. Heilbroner acknowledged, individual rights fundamentally conflict with Socialism’s collective moral goal—central planning—and thus cannot be allowed. 

Heilbroner, a leading Socialist intellectual and best-selling socialist writer of the 20th century, had no illusions about what Socialism requires. In a Dissent magazine essay titled What is Socialism, Heilbroner wrote:

The rights of individuals to their Millian liberties [are] directly opposed to the basic social commitment to a deliberately embraced collective moral goal… Under socialism, every dissenting voice raises a threat similar to that raised under a democracy by those who preach antidemocracy.

In  The Nature and Logic of Capitalism by Heilbroner wrote; 

Political freedom in modern times has only appeared in capitalist states. Democratic liberties have not yet appeared in any nation that [is] fundamentally anti-capitalist, which is to say within the self-styled Marxist ambit. The . . . separation of realms [politics and economics] creates the essential conditions for political freedom because the state cannot enforce its will though economic sanctions, such as denying work to political dissidents.

Heilbroner also noted that “democratic liberties have not yet appeared, except fleetingly, in any nation that has declared itself to be fundamentally anticapitalist.”

Bolshevik  Communist Vladimir Lenin, the first head of the Soviet Union, banned all other parties and oppositions, internal Communist Party factions, an independent press, and free, fair, and open elections, on the principle that open dissent acted as a counter-revolutionary danger. Socialists use the liberties of free, Capitalist-oriented nations to come to power, then ban those liberties. Socialists can exploit capitalism’s “tolerance of dissent” to gain power, Heilbroner explains in What Is Socialism?, but then must not allow dissent to undermine their power. Once in power, socialists must understand that

Dissents, disagreements, and departures from norms then assume a far more threatening aspect than under bourgeois society, for they hold out the possibility of destroying the very commitment to a moral consensus by which socialist society differs from capitalist.

Nor can we wriggle off this hook by asserting that, among its moral commitments, socialism will choose to include the rights of individuals to their Millian liberties. For that celebration of individualism is directly opposed to the basic socialist commitment to a deliberately embraced collective moral goal.

We can also dispel the delusion that Socialist rule can be anything but total. I quote Heilbroner from What Is Socialism? Page 344:

Socialists have always railed against the invidious striving of the market that forces individuals to subordinate their full personalities to narrow economic roles. Moreover, it is not only the motivations of capitalists that are at stake. . . The issue is the motivation of working people. For the market mechanism is not merely a means to profit. It is also a means to individual betterment by the maximization of one's income. Without this drive, the mechanism will not work. 

But is the drive for private gain compatible with the goal of socialism? I do not see how it can be. The market system, in order to function, requires attitudes of self-seeking that are in direct conflict with the goal of an "other-oriented" society. If socialism seeks to avoid both the anarchy and alienation of capitalism, it must seek to break the hold of the market, not merely over the economy but over the mind.' [Emphasis added.]

Get that? “. . . over the mind,” not only of capitalists but of working people. This is what Socialists mean when they express concern for the “working class”—to break their minds, and spirits, so as to make them “other-oriented” rather than strivers for self-betterment.

This dispels the notion that Socialism is for “working people.” This dispels the notion that Socialism is “only about economics.” Note, again, Romer’s choice of words—”until we are able to fully seize power ourselves.” fully seize power. Clearly, she’s not referring to elective power, which in America is limited. She’s referring to the day after the Democratic Socialists win electoral control of the presidency and Congress—at which point, Hitler style, they end the Constitutional checks on government power, abandon the Declaration of Independence, and establish—seize—full despotism, thus ending rightful liberty in America. That’s why there has never been—not in Soviet Russia; not in Red China; not in Castro’s Cuba; not in North Korea; not in modern Venezuela; not anywhere full Socialism has been established—anything but one-party totalitarianism under Socialism—and philosophically and logically never can be.

RELATED:

QUORA: ‘Would socialism be constitutional in the U. S.?’

Socialism's Totalitarian Nature Cannot Be Obscured by 'Democratic Socialism'

QUORA: ‘Is capitalism voluntary?’

Ralph Peters: “Mesmerized by Elections, We Forgot Freedom”, my essay for The Objective Standard

Mesmerized by Elections, the NJ Star-Ledger Forgot that Tyranny is Tyranny

Democratic Socialism: The Left Escalates America’s Journey to Totalitarianism

Socialism vs. Welfare Statism: Why These Terms Matter

New Jersey’s Racist John R. Lewis Voter Empowerment Act

New Jersey has gone full collectivist—especially racist—on the Democratic process. On July 2, 2026, Governor Mikie Sherrill signed the John R. Lewis Voter Empowerment Act.

What does that law do? According to the AI summary of BillTrack50,

This bill, known as the "John R. Lewis Voter Empowerment Act of New Jersey," aims to strengthen voting rights and prevent voter suppression and dilution, particularly for "protected classes" which include racial, color, or language-minority groups. It establishes the public policy of New Jersey to maximize voter participation and ensure equal opportunity for all eligible voters, especially those in protected classes, to engage in the political process. [my emphasis]

This is a reaction to the SCOTUS ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, which overturned a racially gerrymandered Congressional district because it violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibits voter discrimination on the basis of race, color, or membership in language minority groups. 

The Left’s hysterical mantra has been that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 has been neutered, eviscerated, weakened, or even repealed, even though no one’s rights have been weakened, compromised, or otherwise violated. We had, and still have, equal voting rights for all—the proverbial, ironclad rule “one man, one vote” principle.

No one has been restricted from “engaging in the political process,” which involves more than voting, like campaign donations, issue advocacy, campaigning for a candidate, or debating fellow citizens. (It’s interesting that Democrats would use that terminology, since it is they who would restrict people from engaging in the political process, through various campaign finance legal restrictions, and fighting to overturn pro-free speech SCOTUS rulings like Citizen’s United.)

So, what gives?

The Left has snuck in a sinister gimmick—switching the concept of voting rights from the individual to the collective. Reread the summary of the NJ law. There are no, and cannot be, “protected classes” in the United States of America. America is explicitly a nation built on the unalienable rights of the individual, not the group, and for which our government is legally bound to secure equally for all. But by the Left’s standards, certain groups or classes get the special privilege of being virtually guaranteed the election of politicians of its favored race, skin complexion, or language. (What of ideas, policy, character, or political philosophy of the candidates?) And what of the individuals who make up the dissenting minorities within those privileged classes, who have no such guarantee? What of un-”protected” classes? What of the equal protection of the laws? What is the unsaid premise behind such hideous laws as that of New Jersey, which are intended to rig certain elections in favor of certain politically privileged “protected” voting demographics? That unsaid premise amounts to, “All voters are equal, but some voters are more equal than others.”

There are no, and can logically never be, such a thing as collectivized voting rights, or collectivized rights of any kind. As the great American philosopher Ayn Rand has observed, 

Any group or collective, large or small, is only a number of individuals. A group can have no rights other than the rights of its individual members. In a free society, the rights of any group are derived from the rights of its members through their voluntary, individual choice and contractual agreement, and are merely the application of these individual rights to a specific undertaking. Every legitimate group undertaking is based on the participants' right of free association and free trade. (By legitimate, I mean: noncriminal and freely formed, that is, a group which no one was forced to join.)

The notion of collective rights (the notion that rights belong to groups, not to individuals) means that rights belong to some men, but not to others; that some men have the right to dispose of others in any manner they please and that the criterion of such privileged position consists of numerical superiority.

Nothing can ever justify or validate such a doctrine and no one ever has. Like the altruist morality from which it is derived, this doctrine rests on mysticism: either on the old-fashioned mysticism of faith in supernatural edicts, like The Divine Right of Kings or on the social mystique of modern collectivists who see society as a super-organism, as some supernatural entity apart from and superior to the sum of its individual members.

Of course, the “protected classes” are created by political fiat—i.e., by force—in which no individual member of that group was given a chance to consent or not. Thus, the “protected classes” are groups of individuals who are forced to join, whether they choose to or not.

Oh, well. It makes perfect sense from the standpoint of the Left’s long-held tribal narrative—That so-called “people of color” are an inferior human breed who need government favoritism to make it in a free society. As I noted in a Facebook post:

The violent Leftist reaction to the ruling also affirms the fundamental racial/collectivist orientation of the Left and the Democratic Party (I deliberately chose the NYT article to demonstrate this). That political block sees every issue through a lens of race. But, MEMO to the Left: dark skinned people are INDIVIDUALS, each with a mind of their own, capable of deciding FOR THEMSELVES how to vote, just like every other person. They are not some homogenous colored herd with some collective brain that they must be told they must follow.

Don’t believe the way most of the press is characterizing this ruling. This [SCOTUS] decision is a great outcome.

To demonstrate how the misrepresentation gets traction, consider the wording of these clips. From Supreme Court no ‘rubber stamp’ for Trump, Kagan says

While standing up for her conservative colleagues, Kagan did express disappointment with many of the Supreme Court’s recent decisions, including what she termed the “evisceration of the Voting Rights Act.” 

The link connects to a Politico report:

From Supreme Court limits Voting Rights Act

The Supreme Court significantly narrowed a key provision of the Voting Rights Act in a 6-3 ruling Wednesday, further eroding the impact of the landmark civil rights-era law.

For decades, Section 2 — a provision that broadly outlawed discrimination in voting on the basis of race — has been interpreted to allow, and sometimes demand, the use of race-conscious data in redistricting, to protect the voting power of minorities.

Note the glaring contradiction. The “key provision” that was allegedly “significantly narrowed” was Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. But it was not actually Section 2 that was narrowed. It was a particular interpretation of Section 2—an interpretation that actually twisted the Voting Rights Act “to allow, and sometimes demand, the use of race-conscious data in redistricting, to protect the voting power of minorities” rather than individuals, a provision that is not found anywhere in the actual 1965 Act. What does the Act actually say?

Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act “prohibits voting practices or procedures [like redistricting?] that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or membership in one of the language minority groups identified in Section 4(f)(2) of the Act. Most of the cases arising under Section 2 since its enactment involved challenges to at-large election schemes, but the section's prohibition against discrimination in voting applies nationwide to any voting standard, practice, or procedure that results in the denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen to vote on account of race, color, or membership in a language minority group. Section 2 is permanent and has no expiration date as do certain other provisions of the Voting Rights Act. [My emphasis]

New Jersey’s new John R. Lewis Voter Empowerment Act, which is intended as a counterweight to the “voter suppressing” SCOTUS ruling, is actually a hideous law that actually weakens the voting rights of individuals.

Clearly, Politico’s reporting is the most accurate. Note that the Act refers to “the right of any citizen to vote,” NOT the “right” of any citizen to rig an election so someone of his race or color can win. No citizen’s right to cast his vote was denied, abridged, or “eviscerated” by the SCOTUS ruling in Louisiana v. Callais. What was eviscerated was the hideous practice of race-based redistricting—a resounding victory for the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the equal right of all citizens to vote.

Related Reading:

Woke Redistricting Madness in NJ

Did SCOTUS Promote or Reject Racism in Alabama Redistricting Case?

Individualism vs. Collectivism: Our Future, Our Choice by Craig Biddle for The objective Standard