Bill passes along a link to an article by Hans-Herman Hoppe the author of Democracy: The God That Failed. Hoppe makes the oft-noted point that in a democracy people soon learn that they can, through judicious use of their ballot, seize wealth which belongs to others and distribute it among themselves. He also writes that:
"...the selection of government rulers by means of popular elections makes it nearly impossible that a good or harmless person could ever rise to the top. Prime ministers and presidents are selected for their proven efficiency as morally uninhibited demagogues. Thus, democracy virtually assures that only bad and dangerous men will ever rise to the top of government. Indeed, as a result of free political competition and selection, those who rise will become increasingly bad and dangerous individuals...."
Viewpoint shares the concern that demagogues find much fertile soil to till among the lower classes in democracies, but even so, Hoppe's statement here seems a bit hyperbolic. Contrary to what he avers, representative democracy in a structural context of checks and balances is the best system of those devised by man for avoiding the ascension of ruthless tyrants to positions of power. At least a search of the historical record doesn't offer much evidence that there's a better way.
Rather than quibble with Hoppe's claim, however, we wish to call our readers' attention to a great passage he quotes from H.L. Mencken. It's worth reproducing in full here:
"Politicians seldom, if ever, get [into public office] by merit alone, at least in democratic states. Sometimes, to be sure, it happens, but only by a kind of miracle. They are chosen normally for quite different reasons, the chief of which is simply their power to impress and enchant the intellectually underprivileged....Will any of them venture to tell the plain truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about the situation of the country, foreign or domestic? Will any of them refrain from promises that he knows he can't fulfill - that no human being could fulfill? Will any of them utter a word, however obvious, that will alarm or alienate any of the huge pack of morons who cluster at the public trough, wallowing in the pap that grows thinner and thinner, hoping against hope? Answer: maybe for a few weeks at the start.... But not after the issue is fairly joined, and the struggle is on in earnest.... They will all promise every man, woman and child in the country whatever he, she or it wants. They'll all be roving the land looking for chances to make the rich poor, to remedy the irremediable, to succor the unsuccorable, to unscramble the unscrambleable, to dephlogisticate the undephlogisticable. They will all be curing warts by saying words over them, and paying off the national debt with money no one will have to earn. When one of them demonstrates that twice two is five, another will prove that it is six, six and a half, ten, twenty, n. In brief, they will divest themselves from their character as sensible, candid and truthful men, and simply become candidates for office, bent only on collaring votes. They will all know by then, even supposing that some of them don't know it now, that votes are collared under democracy, not by talking sense but by talking nonsense, and they will apply themselves to the job with a hearty yo-heave-ho. Most of them, before the uproar is over, will actually convince themselves. The winner will be whoever promises the most with the least probability of delivering anything."
We wish we would have come across this gem during the recent political campaign. It's a remarkably vivid description of one of the candidates in particular.