‘No Kings’ crowds don’t want more democracy

Watching the “No Kings” protests, a friend commented: “Democracy dies when the other side wins. Another rule they wouldn’t want to have turned back on them.”

That does seem to be the animating spirit not only of the various marches around the country, but of the entire anti-Trump resistance.

President Donald Trump’s crime isn’t anything he’s said, or done, or even believed (which, all too often, anti-Trump protesters can’t cogently describe anyway).

As Batya Ungar-Sargon put it: “The ‘No Kings’ rally isn’t protesting Trump but rather the agenda the majority of America voted for. The Left isn’t protesting a king but their fellow Americans. They aren’t standing up for democracy — they are protesting against it.”

This is entirely correct. Trump isn’t a king; he’s a popularly elected president who won in something of a landslide, delivering exactly the policies that he promised the electorate.

A democracy is a political system in which the people periodically, by majority vote at the polls, select their rulers. The rulers then have absolute power to make whatever laws they please, by majority vote among themselves.

In a constitutional Republic, the people also, by majority vote at the polls, select rulers, who make laws by majority vote among themselves; but the rulers cannot make any laws they please because the Constitution severely restricts their lawmaking power.

The ideal of a democracy is universal equality. The ideal of a constitutional Republic is individual liberty.

In this century, great strides have been made toward the goal of subverting our Republic and transforming it into a democracy. One tactic of the subverters is subversion of language. By calling the United States a democracy until people thoughtlessly accept and use the term, totalitarians have obscured the real meaning of our principles of government.

— Dan Smoot Report, 1966

(I)t is very clear that in fundamental theory, socialism and democracy are almost, if not quite, one and the same. They both rest at bottom upon the absolute right of the community to determine its own destiny and that of its members. Men as communities are supreme over men as individuals. …

— Woodrow Wilson, Socialism and Democracy, 1887

Yes indeed, the so-called “No Kings” mini-protests want democracy, since it is the gateway to totalitarianism.

“The ‘No Kings’ rally isn’t protesting Trump but rather the agenda the majority of America voted for. The Left isn’t protesting a king but their fellow Americans. They aren’t standing up for democracy — they are protesting against it.

Exactly!

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