Mitt Romney recently made a statement that 47% of Americans, those currently dependent on the state, will vote for Obama no matter what. Needless to say Romney’s opponents are in a tizzy over this statement. As much as I hate the man I have to agree with Jeffery Tucker:
Cover the kids’ ears! Hide their eyes! Shuffle the weak and frail from the room! A politician running for president has uttered a heresy that brings into question the holy grail of democratic politics. Romney has failed to pretend as if the country is one big happy family that uses our glorious voting system to discover ever better ways of governing ourselves.
Which is to say that Romney made a gaffe.
You know the definition of a political gaffe: inadvertent and unscripted truth. That’s what the supposed scandal of Romney’s off-the-cuff comments amounts to. He told potential donors an unvarnished truth that everyone knows but which is not part of the official civic creed of the land of the free:
Nobody wants to hear the truth. Romney, after stating the truth (probably for the first time ever), is being lambasted. People are up in arms. How dare Romney point out that a large portion of the American population is receiving government subsidies?
We really need to look at the current situation in America for what it is, the inevitable side effect of democracy:
The implied model here is that modern democracy is a system that enables mass confiscation of wealth by some from others. And who can doubt it? In older monarchical systems, only a tiny elite was privileged to steal from everyone else, and if they stole too much, people would get angry and overthrow them.
Democracy solved the problem by granting everyone the privilege once reserved to elites. Now we can all steal from each other, and even from ourselves. This way, it is no longer clear who the enemy is. We don’t know whom to blame when things get bad. There is no one to overthrow but ourselves.
Democracy has ensured that a large potion of the population is currently taking wealth from another portion. This is the reality that Americans either want to ignore or sugarcoat. I think I’m starting to understand why politicians always lie, when they actually tell the truth they’re crucified by the public. Come to think about it the public’s reaction to the truth is understandable as well. Whether you want to call this country a representative republic or a democracy the people feel they are in charge so when an ill is pointed out they take it as an accusation that they’ve personally screwed up. Considering that fact it’s no surprise that lies are now preferred over truth.