Democracy Ain't What It Used to Be

A court has ruled that Brexit must first go through the Parliament, a ruling which many Remainers hope will derail the Brexit and thus the will of the people.  You see, the electorate is too stupid to know what is good for it.  Undermining the vote of the people is pretty common these days.

In California in 2000, the voters approved Prop 22 (61% in favor, 38% opposed), a law that banned same sex marriage.  The Mayor of San Francisco openly ignored the ban and various state courts eventually ruled that the law was unconstitutional.  So in 2008 the voters approved Prop 8 (52% in favor, 48% opposed) a constitutional amendment that banned same sex marriage.  As an amendment, this was automatically constitutional on the grounds of state law, so opponents went to a US District Court which found it unconstitutional as regards federal law.  The State of California refused to appeal the decision and citizens didn't have 'standing' to appeal the case.  Therefore, Prop 8 was overturned.

 

In 2010, there was a special election to fill the Senate seat of Edward 'Ted' Kennedy.  A big part of the campaign was the Republican claiming that Scott Brown would be the 41st vote against Obamacare.  The hyper-blue state of Massachusetts elected its first Republican Senator in more than 30 years to stop the Affordable Care Act.  Getting the message, the Congress used parliamentary legerdemain to pass it anyway.  How has that worked out?

 

Throughout the Western Democracies, the governments are ignoring the voters.  Angela Merkel in Germany has seen her party walloped in elections and yet is still in favor of mass immigration.  Nativist parties are rising because the supposedly moderate parties are marching their nations to bankruptcy and cultural suicide.

 

Kemalist Turkey has died and Sultan Erdogan is sowing the seeds of a new Ottoman Empire.  Erdogan saw democracy as a tram that you take to your exit and then get off.  The voters gave him enough power that he no longer needs their consent.

 

Rulers resent that they require voter consent.  They have had years to devise means of bypassing that requirement and yet they are astonished by the rise of Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, UKIP, et al.  If you ignore the voters for long enough, you will likely spark a revolution.  Currently, the revolutions are still being fought at the ballot box but continued bypassing will lead to less civilized means of revolution.

 

Ignore the voter at your peril.