- Principle 1: Stealing is Bad—Even for Barack Obama and Terrell Owens.
- Principle 2: Equality Sucks. . . . Literally
- Principle 3: Pride Leads to Captivity
- Principle 4: Teacher vs Cop
- Principle 5: Democracy is only a Means to an End
During my 2 years in the Air Force ROTC I noticed the common justification for America’s war in Iraq was “to spread democracy.” Sounds great, right? Only on the surface. Democracy in and of itself says nothing about a people’s freedom or level of justice.
Democracy is nothing more than *majority rule.* It can be just as coercive, monopolistic, and exclusive as any dictatorship. It’s not hard to imagine majorities exploiting minorities.
Democracy must be founded on guiding principles. These principles provide limits to what a majority can do. In the case of our country, The Constitution was intended to provide those limits. This *limited democracy* is known as a *republic* or *rule of law.*
Democracy is not an end goal; living peacefully and free from coercion is. Principle based democracy is a means for getting there (certainly not the only means.) One of my motivations for this blog is to convince you that principles of liberty are the foundation that made this country great but they are not an inherent part of democracy. If we don’t carefully abide by and protect our liberties we lose them. The irony, though, is that liberties are rarely taken from us. More often than not we use our democracy to give them away—think Patriot Act.
