"By giving the government unlimited powers,
the most arbitrary rule can be made legal;
and in this way a democracy may set up the most complete despotism imaginable . . .
perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting
themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant
has made our generation understand that to choose one's government
is not necessarily to secure freedom . . .
it’s possible for a dictator to govern in a liberal way.
And it’s also possible for a democracy to govern with a total lack of liberalism . . .
I prefer a liberal dictator to democratic government lacking liberalism."
Hayek.
Canada’s Parliament is an instance of Representative Democracy, the American government is supposed to be of a different type: it is a Republic with a constitutionally-restricted representative regime of checks and balances. The important distinguishing feature of the two is Rule Majority – a binary decision governance – the selection of one of two alternatives, based on which has more than half the votes. It is an ostensible trade-off between the benefits of majority rule and other values important to a democratic society such as liberty and protecting minorities. A democracy theoretically embraces it. A Republic in the abstract restricts the majority and forswears to protect the individual by the separation of powers. What has happened in the USA and Canada is in some ways an opposite result: it is an example that sometimes our best intentions and constitutional definitions are flattened by history. Canada tends in part to operate as a Republic. Voters select the Members of Parliament who after the election are expected to operate on their own best judgement for what is good for their constituents, and ideally their nation. In Canada, lobbyists, direct democratic public action and referendums seldom play a major role in political affairs. The public in fact frowns on them as illiberal.
The USA tends to operate on poll-driven majority rule with lobbyists and social activists gaining premier access to the political process. A few influential money supporters all but hand-pick the candidates. The people have a key-lack of political control over the system as a whole. In other words, the intent of the constitution of the American Republic is being wholly thwarted by a devolution into direct majority rule, lobbyists and activists. Closed institutions with any authority at all are now being criticized as non-democratic, even the most important ones like the judicial and executive branches of government.
Canada’s trouble is that the “No” vote is the largest political block in the country, that is, the part of the eligible electorate who don’t show up to vote. However, by its nature it is ignored by the system and bemoaned by Canadian political scientists. As I explain in The “No” Political Party, “no” to politicians in Canada means apathy not satisfaction. Dissenters and pressure groups are given more voice than they warrant to fill the supposed windfall void of indifference. Democracy is from the top down with our politicians trying to save us from ourselves. Pressure groups outmanoeuvre the middle class in a rather fraudulent, if legal, fashion. In political terms, minorities have their voices heard above the regular din due to the fact of the Canadian middle class deaf-ear syndrome. (We’re busy doing other things, but get us angry and we’ll put a stop to it).
Demomatosis:
The Phenomenon of Democratic Alienation
Voter Disinclination
And Loss of Faith in Public Institutions;
It Has Spread Around the Industrialized West.
Demomatosis is a disease which affects established democracies; it is a pandemic polical virus, COVID - 101, well at least we don't have to destroy the global tourist industry to fight it. The virus originated from that old Jeffersonian conceit that the cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy. It is also a false notion among voters that equality of opportunity means opinions are equal and that true democracy amounts to egalitarianism. Demomatosis causes ballot propositions, special initiatives and recalls. It produces intellectual listlessness in the citizenry and yields people to believe that merit and money aren’t qualities naturally drawn to one another or that achieving economic independence isn’t an individual’s moral responsibility anymore, or that politics has devolved into a corrupt plutocracy and that wealth in general is evil, i.e., it is to be feared. Sometimes it produces the outright hatred of liberty. It also produces an erroneous belief that democracy is so superior to all forms of autocracy that it is without sin, that it can sleep with the thugs of the world like Saddam Hussein, Reza Pahlavi, (the Shah of Iran) and Ferdinand Marcos and be forgiven it’s crimes against other peoples' liberty. As well, it fashions the belief that government itself can cure all social ills and that the state is a "real" thing like a person.
There is no State.
There's only a Collection of Individuals.
The problem, as Alexis De Tocqueville long ago showed, is that, ‘All authority originates in the will of the majority, when clearly the majority can be, and is, often mistaken: Unlimited power is itself a bad and dangerous thing. Human beings are not competent to exercise it with discretion.’ This problem is to be remembered about apparent majorities in a democracy. They must have plenty of critics. These must be heard, not shunned by the majority or the state as anti-democratic, independent journalists such as Glenn Greenwald, Edward Snowden and Julian Assange.
It would also be best to keep in mind by democratic activists, (i.e., the religious right and the progressive left), that more access, and/or direct democracy often leads to less liberty for the individual. Liberal democrats and cultural conservatives, who intellectually tolerate and promote larger states, should keep in mind that there are often unscrupulous ‘Machiavellian’ power-brokers in our midst. They appear even at the highest levels and for their own self-interest and aggrandizement, will operate, given the right atmosphere and circumstances, secretly and unconstitutionally to defy the will of the people. These ‘types’ morally undercut democracy’s legitimate claim to be every person’s birthright. Henry Kissinger was such a person.
When the Smoot-Harley Tariff Act, (1930), was introduced, a petition from 10,000 economists urged President Hoover to veto it; instead, he signed the legislation into law, (June 1930). And that's all you need to know about politicians being economic-ignoramuses. Stupid then, stupid now in Trump's America. This will be nothing less than an economic worldwide disaster and Canada's only options are the ones I've repeatedly mentioned in my articles. Subsidize the hurt with tax incentives; immediately install free trade across the Provinces & the rest of the world, and don't get into a tariff war with the U.S. The very opposite of what Canada is planning to do. What Pierre Poilievre will do when he comes into office, we'll see. I have some hope because he has at least read Thomas Sowell. But as Sowell has said, "The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics."
Other quotes from Sowell,
especially on Tariffs include:
"Setting in place tariffs will 'cut down' on the overall volume of international trade
. . . other countries will already be taking retaliatory measures
. . . the net result is that all of the countries put together are going to lose
. . . tariffs that save jobs in the steel industry mean higher steel prices,
which in turn means fewer sales of American steel products around the world
and losses of far more jobs than are saved."
Committing to open societies does not mean one must embrace all aspects of democracy and laissez-faire economics. Large government, freely elected or not, will tend to be unwieldy and should be avoided as much as possible by the citizenry. Progressives incline to whine. Rightists lean toward un-charitableness in government. Young social activists who believe their voice is more important than others and claim that they’re always grossly unrepresented by the system are in a sense arrogant, but Rightists who are cultural radicals and not real fiscal conservatives are the most annoying of the voting public. Their policy is to tell other adults how to behave in ethical terms. It’s insulting to those who are managing their life fine without them.
Big government includes not only Leftists with welfare agendas, but Rightists with cultural ones, and by 2026, vice versa. The decline of American democracy is also directly tied to the corruption of its two main political parties. They both embrace power without regard to the loss of liberty in either the cultural or economic meanings, the American constitution be damned. Poor America! Their backing of an in-your-face Palestinian genocide, the reckless tariffs on all its allies and its embrace of economic restrictions across the globe. It all harkens to a disastrous Trump era, especially the deportation of people legally in America over free-speech issues. BTW: In my mind, there is no doubt the President Trump directly effected the Canadian April national election of 2025. The conservatives were widely expected to sweep all of Canada with the historic plunge in the polls of the exceedingly unpopular Justin Trudeau; however, fate worked it's serendipity: the threat of tariffs came like a storm, then Trump tweeted about Canada becoming the 51st state, the following predictable & sudden surge of Canadian patriotism, the ascension of Mark Carney as the new Liberal leader, the Ontario Conservative sweep of Doug Ford in Ontario in February 2025, and the triumph of state-supported mass media propaganda in Canada during the election period.
