Never To Be Put Up For Vote; N. Hultberg

creeping over us. If we were to ask an ordinary American if he considers himself free and his government just (and if he were articulate), he would undoubtedly Mr. Hultberg is a freelance writer in San Diego. recite a long list of policies forced upon him by Washington and his own local city hall, ranging from ever increasing taxes and welfare to the incredible absurdities of mandatory co-ed gym classes, the banning of father and son picnics, and statemandated hiring of drug addicts and drunks. If we were to ask one of America's industrious small businessmen today if he considers himself free and his government just, he would (if he were politically aware) promptly reply, "Are you kid ding? I'm unfairly taxed, regulated, and controlled beyond belief by mindless government bureau crats. The forms to fill out for one year's operation alone are enough to swamp an army of secretaries and the most sophisticated computer I can afford to buy."

If we were to ask one of America's more money wise pensioners today if he considers himself free and his government just, we would be informed somewhat testily, "Certainly not. My savings are being systematically destroyed, a little bit more every year, by the 'paper aristocracy' and govern ment-induced inflation. Federal Reserve flim flammers are robbing me as surely as if they were to come into my local bank and steal a certain per centage of my savings account." How are we to account for such reactions? America doesn't have a visible dictator and is not like the Chinese, South Asian or Middle East tyrannies. How then can there be such widespread 372 disenchantment with the amount of freedom and justice we have in this country? The answer of course is that America does have a dictator, an invisible dictator. It is difficult for many to recog nize, for the dictator is not the President, or the Congress, or the Supreme Court. It is popular will.

What is the difference whether a government's dictates emanate from a single autocrat like Hitler, or from oligarchs like the Party in China, or from an electoral plurality as in America? If they are absolute dictates, arbitrarily arrived at, wide spread and cannot be disobeyed by the individual, then freedom no longer prevails. Today's high school civics classes laud the idea of "democracy" with pages of hosannas attesting to its charm. But our children would be better served with an introduction to H. L. Mencken's Noteson Democracy:"The aim of democracy is to break all ... free spirits to the common harness. It tries to iron them out, to pump them dry of self respect, to make docile John Does of them. The measure of its success is the extent to which such men are brought down, and made common. The measure of civilization is the extent to which they resist and survive. Thus the only sort of liberty that is real under democracy is the liberty of the have nots to destroy the liberty of the haves." 1 "[M]en of unusual intelligence and enterprise, men who regard their constitutional liberties seri ously and are willing to go to some risk and expense to defend them ... are inevitably unpop ular under democracy, for their qualities are qual ities that the mob wholly lacks, and is uneasily con scious of lacking."2 "Why should democracy rise against bribery? It is itself a form of wholesale bribery. In place of a government with a fixed purpose and a visible goal, it sets up a government that is a mere function of the mob's vagaries, and that maintains itself by constantly bargaining with those vagaries.