Stand Alone Pages on 'Musings of an Old Curmudgeon'

12 February 2018

Why Socrates Hated Democracy

I don't know that I have ever believed in democracy, tho' my reasons are a bit different from Socrates'. As a Christian, even as a boy, I believed that all power comes from God. As I looked at the democratic system that has developed since the French Revolution, which I generally refer to as 'Jacobin democracy', one man, one vote and a universal franchise, I realised that to accept democracy was to deny that very basic truth.

Inevitably (and if any of my readers think there are exceptions, please comment), all modern democracies eventually devolve to the philosophic view that vox populi, vox Dei, 'the voice of the people [is] the voice of God'. The great legal positivist (Wikipedia article on Legal Postivism), Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1902 to 1932, once said that the law against murder was simply a 'municipal ordinance' that could be repealed by a vote of the people!

As the Chevalier Charles Coulombe is fond of pointing out, no 'undemocratic' King of past ages ever imagined he had the power to redefine marriage, as the 'democratic' States General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands did in 2000, forcing Her Majesty Queen Beatrix to sign the Act into law.

Thus, it is my considered opinion after over half a century of reading, research, and rumination on the question of democracy that it is a viciously evil system, undoubtedly hatched in the depths of hell and foisted on fallen Man.

We’re used to thinking hugely well of democracy. But interestingly,
one of the wisest people who ever lived, Socrates, had deep suspicions of it.

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