Here’s a position even I consider too strong. But as poetry, it’s hard to beat. From Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People:
The majority never has right on its side. Never, I say! That is one of these social lies against which an independent, intelligent men must wage war. Who is it that constitute the majority of the population in a country? Is it the clever folk, or the stupid? I don’t imagine you will dispute the fact that at present the stupid people are in an absolutely overwhelming majority all the world over. But, good Lord!–you can never pretend that it is right that the stupid folk should govern the clever ones I (Uproar and cries.) Oh, yes–you can shout me down, I know! But you cannot answer me. The majority has might on its side–unfortunately; but right it has not. I am in the right–I and a few other scattered individuals. The minority is always in the right.
Kind of makes we wonder what Robin would say.
READER COMMENTS
Lori
Apr 28 2011 at 6:24pm
The majority doesn’t come close to having might on its side. All ‘democratic’ debate is filtered through commercial media to fit a right vs. center narrative, and all policymakers are dependent on special interests, which are mostly business interests, but I’ll dignify the right wing talking point by conceding that labor unions are also involved in campaign financing.
Libertarians and other conservatives are constantly harping on about the stupidity of the masses, or some other exercise in egalitarianism-bashing. And they call us ‘elitists.’
Clark
Apr 28 2011 at 6:44pm
The majority never have right on their side. The majority of people believe this. Is this a variation of the liar’s paradox? (grin)
Josh W.
Apr 28 2011 at 7:23pm
@Lori
Do you oppose any type of paternalistic regulation? It’s only consistent with your comment.
MikeP
Apr 28 2011 at 7:47pm
Even Ayn Rand took a softer position than Ibsen in We the Living…
ajb
Apr 28 2011 at 11:51pm
The Left has it both ways. They claim to support the masses while promoting systems that always happen to empower the bureaucratic, cognitive, political and educational elites who “of course” are wielding this power for the general public.
I prefer to dismiss both the left and the pro-immigration libertarians.
Hume
Apr 29 2011 at 12:45pm
Bryan,
In society, there are vast disagreements over the ends of government, the individual, and “society” in general. How ought we to reconcile these disagreements? An assertion of privileged insights into objective truth vis-a-vis morality and justice is besides the point. How ought masses of individuals who live in proximity to each other to decide on such issues of ends? This has nothing to do with voter ignorance, which usually regards means/ends reasoning.
Chris Koresko
Apr 29 2011 at 2:50pm
If the problems to be addressed by policy are too complicated for even the most clever to find good solutions for, then there’s no reason to think that government by the clever would be better than government by the stupid. Clever people are often just better at coming up with and articulating rationalizations for doing what their prejudices dictate.
I suspect this gets to the reason Bill Buckley once said he’d rather be governed by people chosen arbitrarily from a phone book than by Harvard faculty.
What we ought to work for is government by the wise.
BZ
Apr 29 2011 at 7:20pm
Hmm… why must the majority, a group, or even an individual be right or wrong, per se? If I learned anything from your book, it’s that the majority is wrong about some things most of the time. But, despite my educational achievements, my sister knows what my nephew is eating for supper on any given night far better than I do!
vt
Apr 29 2011 at 8:56pm
This reminded me of minority games:
Rob 禪狼
Apr 30 2011 at 8:24am
Libertarians and other ‘conservatives’? Since when are libertarians conservative in any way? That some interests are parallel is more an indication that some conservatives are leaning more towards liberty and less towards the version of statism that they usually prefer. Libertarianism is far more liberal than whatever contradictory philosophies “progressive” ideologies comprise – Malignant compassion, forced subsidy, central planning, soft but pervasive authoritarianism, and the illusion of self-rule via the democratic process.
Rob 禪狼
Apr 30 2011 at 8:24am
Libertarians and other ‘conservatives’? Since when are libertarians conservative in any way? That some interests are parallel is more an indication that some conservatives are leaning more towards liberty and less towards the version of statism that they usually prefer. Libertarianism is far more liberal than whatever contradictory philosophies “progressive” ideologies comprise – Malignant compassion, forced subsidy, central planning, soft but pervasive authoritarianism, and the illusion of self-rule via the democratic process.
Chris Koresko
Apr 30 2011 at 5:50pm
Rob 禪狼 Since when are libertarians conservative in any way?
What American conservatives are trying to conserve is mostly the vision of limited government enshrined in the Constitution. That’s not precisely toe-the-line Libertarianism, but it has a lot more in common with it than the Progressive alternative does.
From the perspective of a Progressive, a libertarian looks a lot like a conservative.
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