For those of you who may be uncertain of who to vote for on Monday, or may be considering not voting, I have published a new recension of the essay in which I derive a simple heuristic for determining who to vote for in democratically elected government, as follows.
Government is, generally speaking, a political system by which a body of people are administered and regulated. As George Washington noted, “Government is not reason, it is not eloquence ~ it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearsome master”. Barry Goldwater said that “Government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away”.
Louis Brandeis said that “Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficial. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding”. Woody Allen said that “I believe there is something out there watching over us. Unfortunately, it’s the government”.
Democracy, as George Bernard Shaw noted, “is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few”. Oscar Wilde said that “Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people”. More exactly, perhaps, Thomas Jefferson said that “Democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine”.
Continue reading On the Matter of “Least Bad” Democracy.