This ranks with one of the stupidest things I have seen John McCain do – condemning the ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood–led government in Egypt and calling for cutting off aid to the military in that country. The Egyptian military has been the anchor of stability in that country and has helped maintain a culture of tolerance. The Muslim Brotherhood, on the other hand, ever since they were elected, has been clamping down on the liberties of the people. Charles Krauthammer mentioned this evening on Special Report that in one year, Mohamed Morsi had more prosecutions of journalists and activists than Hosni Mubarek’s government had in thirty years.
The root of the problem to me seems to be a dumbing down of our political vocabulary. Democracy has been elevated to be the highest ideal. I think this has happened because to statists like John McCain, this is their refuge, their justification for taking away our liberty. Liberty used to be the rallying cry. Statists are uncomfortable with the concept of liberty. They like taking it away, little by little, under the excuse that it is being done by leaders who were elected, so that makes it okay.
I would rather live under a king who granted me the freedoms we have enshrined in our Bill of Rights and the right to my own property than to live in a democracy where they voted to take away my property and the culture didn’t allow dissent. Liberty, to me, is the golden ideal, and democracy is usually the best vehicle for insuring that, provided the culture is one that allows liberty.
We have tyrants all over the world who have been supposedly duly elected. I believe it was Stalin who said that it wasn’t the people who voted who decided the outcome of elections but rather the people who counted the votes. Democracy can be manipulated. Liberty is real.
Which is why, I think, Senator McCain is in love with democracy but not liberty.
Click here to visit the Liberty Musings conservative politics home page.
