Religion

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Apriorian World rejects the absurdity of democracy at least in the conventional format There is no logical nor biblical basis for thinking voters have an inalienable right to assign Power of Attorney to a ruler. Nor do we have a duty to make ourselves complicit with those who do this. Indeed, not only is the idea of voting our rights away, absurd in and of itself, the idea that rational people would abdicate their right of dominion is frightening, unless they do not have this right and are actually looking for a way to justify removing this right from those who have it.

Few persons entertain the idea of democracy in its simple and original sense. What most of us think is democracy is now referred to as Direct Democracy. What liberals call democracy is more accurately referred to as representative democracy. In the U.S. the Electoral College a slightly more complex way to vote in a president. The Electors become the once removed electors of the President. 

The problem starts with the absurdity of every person having an equal say in the outcome of an election. This was never the way democracy worked. In Athens demos referred to the citizen with voting rights, but this did not cover everyone. The free citizen is a citizen who has earned the right to vote. Not everyone was qualified to vote. The idea that every single person in a democracy is equally entitled to vote has no rational basis and is a recent innovation. The idea of universal suffrage is not supported by the birthplace of democracy, Athens. In fact, ancient civilizations would find the idea of universal suffrage unfathomable.

Most tribes leave decisions to councils of men. The issue of war is the province of those who will be prosecuting the war. In Athens the same perspective was manifest regarding decisions about the public weal. Those who paid for the polity were the ones who voted on policy. This was to some degree or other, followed in many other nations including Britain and the U.S.. Voters were male landowners. Over time this more rational form of democracy was whittled away until it because the liberal absurdity in use today.

Liberals may claim male centered democracy or patriarchy is due to misogyny. Truth is not a major concern for liberal commentators. The rationale for patriarchy is more sensible than what misogyny as an explanatory principle conveys.

The primary consumer of public goods was, in ancient times, the primary voters. The vote was a demonstration of customer preference in a direct democracy. It was not so different from a group of persons buying a pizza voting on which pizza toppings to have with those persons chipping in being the ones permitted to choose a topping. The political vote was in this sense an extension of the market. The voter was the person who would be paying for the policies that would be put into place.

When the power of the nobles and gentrified landowner in Britain, gave way to capitalists and owners of commercial property the voting base was extended from nobles to landowners and to businessmen. The restriction of suffrage to the vote to males was founded on the vote being based on economic importance. Men were the property owners and the steward of the family assets and so were given the vote. 

Remember, there were no mail in ballots and for many periods, not even secret balloting. Voting could be and was a raucous occasion; an event which most woman would not have attended if invited.

This rationale was not defensible in an absolute or ethical sense. Woman also owned property and had a say in the disposition of assets. If not this was not justification for withholding suffrage. Possessing property does not make one productive or sensible. It was of course more rational to permit woman to own the equity they authored. This is in keeping with tradition. We own what we create as ordained by the author of the universe.

The argument voting ought not be based on merit or have any restriction attached, is of course an absurd assertion that is never actually enforced. Everything is regulated to some degree and there is no democracy anywhere that does not limit voting to defined categories regardless of how broad.

Perhaps before we say who ought to vote we learn what the purpose of the vote is. If all we vote for is a leader, who has the right to be involved in the process? Is universal suffrage defensible when all that is being done is assigning Power of Attorney to an acknowledged authority? Is the ability to suck in air and indicate a choice sufficient to be an elector? The voter is not just picking an extended care nurse. He or she is voting in someone who will be making policy for the nation. It is possible that given enough average persons, the best possible choice will emerge on average. Let’s face it, in most elections the voter has a 50/50 chance of getting it right. If electing the right person has any meaning in this context. It is not as if the candidate has unrestricted power once elected. There are limits to the power of all officials. This being said, it makes sense to make all politicians answerable to the electorate every few years. Though this tends to defeat the purpose of forcing restraint. When there are term limits the elected official knows in the last year he or she will not be held accountable. In this sense the moderating influence that facing the electorate is supposed to provide, is lost when the possibility of being elected is taken away.

It appears a solid rationale for democracy is missing. It is taken as axiomatic that people ought to have the power to vote. However, what does this mean and why is it taken to be an obvious truth? Even if we accept serious issues ought to be voted on what are the mechanics use? Is it a show of hands, secret ballots or do we vote in those who will vote on the issue? The power of the people is always curtailed. The more complicated the issue the less capable the people are in making a reasoned decision. The simpler the issue is made the less meaningful the vote. No matter how much theoretical power the people are said to have, the power always ends up at the top. Large numbers of persons cannot make meaningful choices. Democracy is good when voting on the toppings of a pizza, worse than useless when voting on complex issues such as legislation.

What would your position on democracy be if we adopted a more biblical perspective regarding government? If we believed we are to be obedient and restore the peace we have between God and us, what would be our response to a suggestion we ought to permit a majority of sinners choose which sinner would direct our lives for the next four years?

Did we see a time when the Jews voted in a leader? The Israelites were never a democracy. The judges were not chosen by lot, but by God. So were its kings. Moses did not get elected by an Electoral College and Jesus never campaigned as the Messiah apparent.

Perhaps we started off on the wrong foot. Maybe we wanted a solution to a problem we caused? Kings and autocrats of various types are useful for waging war but without them, war could not have been waged on the scale autocrats make possible. 

What is the purpose of democracy? Why do we think problems will be lessened if we engage everyone in an electoral process? 

Is the ability to wage war so important we need to vote in a person able to direct armies and war time economics? Do we need the state to provide social goods? War could be classed as a social good. Is the provision of social justice the purpose of the state? Does the state even have a purpose or is it something we think we need because it is what we are familiar with? What does it mean to take up our cross and follow Jesus? Is what Jesus designed for us something for governments to think about or is it just an issue that concerns citizens?

What we need to comprehend is that God never instituted democracy. There is a reason for this. The popular vote is essentially meaningless in and of itself. Without a good dose of tyranny democracy is a farce. In other words, there needs to be a mechanism for exploiting and oppressing the authors of equity for a vote to matter.

We can only collectively decide to spend someone else’s income if democracy is to be a worthwhile activity. If we all spend what we contributed, then democracy has been abandoned. This puts conservatives in an uncomfortable position regarding democracy. Anyone who claims to hate socialism yet supports democracy does not understand what they are saying. At minimum democratic votes installs a government. Governments do not make money and so are a drain on the community purse before they do anything. To do anything, to install a social agenda or enact legislation only compounds the problem. Once one has government one has socialism. The only question we get to ask and answer tin a general way through our vote, is how much socialism we are going to support.

Elections are actions in which a group of persons vote to share out a pool of resources or vote in a group of officials who will take chare of a pool of resources and administrate them for the benefit of the group of the benefit of the majority, depending on the size and structure of the group.

An election does not and cannot produce anything but positions regarding the disposition of wealth. Democracy in its simplest form is a group of persons deciding by majority decision how to divide an existing pie.

There is no way this can be reconciled with the basic principles of conservatives. We must learn to see conservatism as the defender of our ancient and honorable traditions. Democracy is a liberal conception. It is not right wing; it is not part of the traditional method of organizing or allocating resources.

To understand tradition and how it works one has to understand truth. Think of tradition as the original truth form. Truth was given to man as tradition. The truth written in our hearts is the sense that there is an original, way of living that is right. This is so even if we never knew what the right way to live was or what it means. This is the Golden Age; the past conservatives want to preserve. However, there is an awareness of what was lost but the details have been erased.

 Liberals are right when they say there never was a Golden Age. They are right, there was never a period in the past that ought to have been preserved. Historians can and perhaps do, search back in time for the Golden Age. They did not and will not find it. What liberals fail to realize is that there is no Golden Age in front of us either.

The Golden Age was a time when we were on the right track. This pathway has been lost and we are no longer even trying to find it. We have as both a church and as an apostate people, resigned ourselves to taking the path to destruction.

Conservatives may choose to continue voting and engaging in political activity, if they choose. It will not change anything. Elections always give the advantage to those who can offer the most attractive bribe.  Elections cannot be won unless the party and candidate is willing to compromise their faith. We know what is right and wrong because we are all heirs to what is true. No one goes into politics feeling good about the choices they have. Politics is always a process of making the best of a bad situation. 

Elections can help push the agenda of the right forward, but politics cannot solve the problem that is politics. To solve the political problem, we need to address economics of the church.

Apriorians believe in logic and truth and that logic and truth are clearly presented in Scripture. They are also written on our heart. Believers follow what the truths of their heart tell them, confirmed and substantiated by Scripture.

That these truths exist and are real is proven by the inability of anyone to formulate an alternative to them. We are without excuse because there is no alternative set of facts or competitive set of values or principles. There is no world system that can compete with the truths of the Bible. If we go a different way than that set out by the Bible and that the logic of reality requires us to do, we pick a poor second place and a path full of hardship and false choices.

Who has a dollar and gives this to someone, without carefully questioning if the purchase ought to be made? No one can inhabit our perspective and value structure. We know we have to make our own choices when it comes to allocating the money we earn. However, we as a people have laid aside all pretence of caution to permit wolves to live among us and lead us along paths of their choosing. We keep no accounts regarding the transactions done in our name, and forget there is a ledger that cannot be done away with.

Imagine a false prophet arising among us and claiming to understand our needs. We appoint him to be a king over us. This king leads us into war. He takes from the weak to embellish his palaces and reward his consorts and sycophants. Has he, by promising to lead us, taken our sin upon himself?

Because we march behind him in his legions are we absolved of culpability for what we do in his name? Will we as servants never be called to account because of whom we serve?

The Bible says the blind who follow the blind fall into the pit. None are so blind as those who choose not to see. Perhaps God does not believe those who claim innocence or lack of culpability for following orders.

The church is the heir to the truth because we live the truth that defines existence. We cannot pretend the political system makes sense when no one believes in or trusts it or those who engage in the practice e of it. If politicians truly believed in democracy they would put everything to the vote. Individual choice would be discarded. Democracy, as we are sold it, is a sham, a scam, even a joke. It is a ploy to divest us of power and make us complicit in our subjection to the state. 

We know it is wrong for a person to steal what we have but we authorize the state to steal what others have. We then put up with them taking what we have in the hope and expectation that we will get back more than we gave.  We think the state absolves us from being Good Samaritans. Charity is made an option provided through the state, rather than an obligation we must fulfill. 

We cannot compromise truth and win against the odds. God owns truth and He owns reality. There is no asset in existence that we created, not individually and not collectively. We are not the Creator, and no one has a claim on anything natural. Who then gave the state, the explorer, the entrepreneur or anyone else, the right to take from God what is His?

Does calling a forest private property transfer ownership really? Can a legal title make something physical attach itself to the title holder? Can the august body of a king or the sanctified authority of a state legislature, achieve sufficient majesty to give title the world, to one individual out of the billions on earth? 

If there is no way to confirm we own the geography of the planet then how is ownership managed? Who has authority to parcel out the world? There is only one source of ownership and that is authorship. Gods Himself only claims what he has authored. He claims nothing beyond what His Word brought into being. We can claim nothing that proceeded out of our mind or from our hands.

Authorship defines ownership. No man creates nature, but we add value. We are owners of the value we create but not the thing that we added value to.

All workers are worthy of their wages and we are all legitimately owed the value we create. This is provided as equity. Equity is the value added to the asset through our labor. The equity added to assets gives us the means to validate The Labor Theory of value. 

The Golden Rule is an injunction not a suggestion or jurisprudential hindrance to ill-advised behaviour. We must do in a positive sense what we want others to do. We have to take the lead. We have to be as Jesus. Jesus never complained others were not doing what he would like them to do, he did what he would have others do. This is why we need to follow him, not show him what good behaviour looks like.

We do not get to define justice and morality for God. Jesus is our model person writ large. If we were following truth we would be as Jesus. Jesus did not vote nor did he run for election. All he did was be Jesus. We must be like Jesus and be created and add value to the things of God to build the church.