On Monday, eccentric billionaire Elon Musk offered to buy Twitter for $43 billion cash. This enormous offer came just days after Musk purchased a 9.2% stake in the company following his concerns that Twitter was not adhering to free speech principles. In a regulatory filing Musk claimed that “free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy.”
One would expect that such a generous and principled offer would be met with widespread applause. However, those who claim to be the most fervent defenders of democracy are also those who are the most opposed to Musk’s ability to buy Twitter.
Ironically, columns from the Jeff Bezos owned Washington Post have been the most vocal in their antipathy towards Musk. In a piece by Tim O’Brien that was originally published on Bloomberg News (also owned by a billionaire), O’brien claimed that “If anything, Twitter’s moderation has been too permissive, but Musk claims the opposite, and says the company has somehow inhibited his free speech. No one should buy that line — and Musk shouldn’t buy Twitter. His goal is not free expression, but control.”
The irony of O’Brien’s assertion is clear to anyone who isn’t blinded by ideology. His statement began by decrying Musk’s reduction of speech restrictions and then proceeded to accuse him of wanting to control people.
Washington Post columnist Max Boot also spewed vitriolic anger by claiming that “Anyone who thinks the problem with social media is too much content moderation, rather than too little, should not own one of the most powerful platforms online.” In short, many in the establishment media believe that more censorship is the answer to a robust democracy.
What this represents is the hollowness of the term democracy. Democracy is not a comprehensive system but merely the act of being able to vote. If all channels of communication are controlled by biased individuals and schools are infiltrated by people wishing to indoctrinate children, democracy can still exist. As long as people are still able to vote, there has technically not been any breach of democracy.
However, America was not founded to be a democracy. It was created as a republic with democratic principles. The term republic stems from the Latin words res publica meaning “the public thing.”
In a republic, citizens are subject to a legal system that secures their rights and defines their responsibilities. Democratic systems are inevitably a part of this, given the difficulty of having a “public thing” without the input of citizens.
However, in a republic democracy is not seen as absolute or infallible. Contrary to conventional wisdom, it was those who were most in favor of total democracy that were the defenders of slavery. In his first political speech, future Democratic president and fervent defender of slavery, James K. Polk called for the implementation of a national popular election for the presidency.
By contrast Abraham Lincoln and his abolitionist allies took a more sanguine view of democracy. According to author Michael Gerhardt, Lincoln opposed the notion that popular sovereignty was a proper way to decide the issue of slavery, because he believed that some rights should be safe from the majority. It was not right that Southern black men should remain in bondage because the white majority voted to keep them enslaved. Rather, they possessed God-given rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that could not be rightfully taken from them.
The fetishization of democracy by the ruling class represents a shift away from traditional notions of American governance. Freedom and democracy are no longer synonymous because those who claim to be the most fervent defenders of democracy have become the antagonists of freedom. If Americans wish to preserve their freedom they cannot merely demand democracy. They must defend the Constitutional Republic that has been handed down to them.
Well said.