Tyranny of the Ignorant and Lazy

Upon historical review of all forms of government, it’s hard to find a better model than democracy.  But that doesn’t mean it always works. In my house, pure democracy would have given 3 children majority rule and we would have had cotton-candy and cheezits for every meal, watched TV and played video games all day, never visited the dentist, and only gone to school 1-2 days a week when they had pizza in the cafeteria. Most of us wouldn’t try to defend that as a ‘responsible environment’.   As parents, we are supposed to make responsible decisions for our dependents to protect and promote their health, development and well-being. And that, in fact, is the criteria we use to determine whether to remove kids from neglectful or abusive homes and put them is protective custody. Notice that the democratic balance of power between the kids and parents is not a factor in these decisions, only the welfare of the children. Seems reasonable, right?  So why do we abandon that philosophy regarding the dependents of our society? 

To quote George Bernard Shaw, “A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.”  When you get enough Pauls to outnumber the Peters, democracy transforms into a mob of dependents that exercise their majority power to demand more and more until all the Peters are extinct; strikingly similar to the way parasites destroy their hosts.  “Leaders” become merely administrators of entitlement programs.  Innovation loses its rewards, economic achievement is penalized, and we are reduced to a nation of fat, lazy children who become dependent on a government wet nurse rather than accepting responsibility for ourselves. 

I don’t claim yet to have a better solution than democracy, but we know what happens when we let the children decide for themselves what they want.