Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, Josef Stalin, and Adolf Hitler: democracy in action

In a recent commentary, we noted the famous quote about democracy usually attributed to Sir Winston.

In November 1947 Winston Churchill delivered a speech to the U.K. House of Commons. He made a memorable remark about democracy, but he employed the prefatory phrase “it has been said”. Thus, he signaled that the remark was already in circulation. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:¹

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time; but there is the broad feeling in our country that the people should rule, continuously rule, and that public opinion, expressed by all constitutional means, should shape, guide, and control the actions of Ministers who are their servants and not their masters.

Obviously, whatever his public statements, Sir Winston did not really believe this – not because he was a supporter of the British Monarchy and Imperialism, but because of his actions as PM, in which political opinion – when not actually molded by His Majesty’s Government – was routinely ignored.

In fact, a system which really fundamentally differed little from what was going on in not just the United States but in the Old Dominions of the Commonwealth (the British Empire), France, and the other few “democracies” (either republics or constitutional monarchies) which existed in the 1940s. And frankly, what had existed in the Third Reich and the (Fascist) Kingdom of Italy until 1945. To say nothing of Franco’s Kingdom of Spain and of course, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and their newly established “democratic republics” of Eastern Europe.

Every one of these regimes at one time or another claimed that they were “democratic” in nature: and they were right. At least for certain forms of “democracy” which have been invented/repeated over and over again in the world’s history. Hitler was elected to power “democratically” – that is, by majority rule. The Communists time and time again, in country after country, either were “elected” to power democratically, or held election after election in which their power was sustained by majority vote.

Our history books concentrate on the resistance to Adolf Hitler and the National Socialists. But the White Rose, the von Staffenberg conspiracy, and other efforts to overthrow Uncle Adolf were a very tiny minority of the people in Germany. And even in the puppet regimes (of Germany, such as Vichy France, and of the Soviets, such as Poland, etc.) “democratic elections” were held and a majority of voters sustained them. (Or so they claimed.)

In reality, at best, such elections (as here in most States and the FedGov elections) are pluralities. Why? Because of the number of people who do not (or are not allowed to, or cannot) vote. Secondly, because many of those who do vote for the winner (real or pretend) really wanted to vote for someone else but their preferred choice was not on the ballot.

Of course, the world is filled with cockamamy schemes to get more people to vote, give more choices, and “correct” the faults of democracy. Proportional voting, ranked choice voting, parliamentary schemes which put party apparachiks in, etc. are all just lipstick on a pig.

Democracy, as we anarchists and many minarchists have long pointed out, is two wolves and a pig voting on what to eat for lunch. (We don’t use “sheep” anymore in this parable, because we see how many sheep would join in the vote for themselves to be lunch, to “be fair” and “be sociable.”)

Furthermore, as Stalin is reported to have said, democracy is controlled by those who count the votes, not who votes or whom they vote for. And is based on the idea that a bunch of people are more intelligent than one person: true, but anyone who knows how to calculate the IQ of a committee (or council or legislature) knows you don’t calculate the IQ by addition but by division.

Hitler, Stalin, Roosevelt (both), Churchill, and hundreds of other despots, tyrants, and mass murderers have demonstrated the evils of democracy. Not that monarchy or dictatorship is really any better. But none can compete with the free market of ideas called individual liberty with personal responsibility. With self-governors willing and able to protect themselves and others from the majority, real or perceived, of any human mandatory government.

The truth is out there, but we don’t need to “find it.” We know the truth, and applying that truth will set us free.

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