Waving palms and singing songs, the crowd cheered the arrival of their Messiah riding a donkey. A week later that same mob cheered his trial and crucifixion. The rocks held their peace.
A cutesy bumper sticker (back when cars had bumpers) needlessly proclaimed: God plus one equals a majority. As if God needed either.
But a selfie-nation, obsessed with opinion polls, confuses popularity with morality. And statues that bothered no one for a hundred years, this same mob now finds offensive because… well, everyone else thinks so, too.
Funny how the groupthink group doesn’t quite know what to think until it knows what the rest of the groupthink group thinks.
Mr. Smith Goes to the Circus
Democracy may be a lot like running a circus from the monkey cage, but (to ad-lib HL Mencken) at least monkeys don’t snap selfies while toppling statues of PT Barnum.
The Founders feared a three-ring democracy as much as the circus of a monarchy. So, they crafted a system of governance that was never meant to be either. The Constitution was designed to protect the minority from the majority. And not just with a Bill of Rights, which came later.
Sure… they established the House to be a very democratic institution (sort of). The people’s voice must still be filtered through their representatives. But the Senate never was. And despite some ill-advised 17th Amendment tinkering, it is never still.
The quite undemocratic Senate was designed to represent the states directly, more so than not, and the people of those states indirectly, or not at all. So insistent of this were the Framers that they cemented this set-up in Article V: The constitution of the Senate cannot be altered even by Constitutional amendment.
Every Vote does not Count
The entire purpose of much-maligned and misunderstood Electoral College was to protect the people from whichever way the wind blows. And in spite of being a bit clunky, it has done just that.
…mostly. The Presidency cannot be gamed by cobbling together classes of voters but States of voters. With smaller states given a greater voice (proportionately, mind you) than larger states, while protecting the rest of us from a concentration of the self-absorbed on the seaboards.
Rocking the Vote
What is democracy? but the selfish voting to protect themselves from everyone else who are voting to protect themselves from everyone else. Okay… a representative’s vote may also be his own, but it’s cast for the benefit of those who cannot.
Every opinion is not valid. Every voice does not need to be heard. And more monkeys than less does nothing to enrich the circus. It’s just more poop in the sawdust.
When asked what form of government the people were given, Benjamin Franklin answered: “A Republic, if you can keep it from those silly snowflakes.”
The majority assumes an air of morality because they are the majority. But they’re rarely ever right. And that’s aw’right by them, so long as everyone else understands that it’s “winner takes all”. Only chumps would allow right an’ wrong to be decided by a carnival of chimps, rather than a Higher Authority.
Jefferson’s Declaration notably affirmed truth to be self-evident. Truth can be ignored but cannot be made untrue. Truth just is, even if held by just one. One plus God.
And should the whole world hold its peace, the rocks would cry out.
Sonrise
The aroma of freshly-brewed arabica beans and a sizzling cast iron skillet beckons. Coffee, dark. Sweeten to taste.
Let’s Eat Grandma
Hold up on that blue haired buffet, we need a quick powwow with the shoot eating panda.
Not for rose. But what’s in a name?
What’s in a name? Would an overall’d farm lad straw hat and cap gun, sneak into a Saturday matinee double-play featuring Marion Morrison in Soggy Oatmeal followed by Not Jane Russell and the Rather Harmless Man?
Right Turn from the Left Lane 