All Posts Tagged With: "majority rule"

The Individual and the Community

Last May sociologist Amitai Etzioni participated in a debate hosted by the Cato Institute in which he argued against the classical-liberal theory as being too atomistic, excessively concerned with selfish individualism, and neglectful of the importance of community. He’s been making this point for 20 years, which is strange for two reasons: First, it isn’t [...]

26Oct2011 | Aeon J. Skoble | 1 comment | Continued

Where Does Your Vote Really Count?

To encourage us to participate in the political process, we are told that every vote counts. That is true if one is adding up the total votes, but what is the likelihood of any one person’s vote affecting the outcome of a presidential election? Simply put, it is equal to the probability that the person’s [...]

1Apr2009 | Walter E. Williams | 0 comments | Continued

Individualism Clashes with Cooperation? It Just Ain’t So!

Individualists get a bad rap in politics these days. That should come as no surprise; politics these days is dominated by electoral politics, and electoral politics is an essentially anti-individualistic enterprise. With free markets and other forms of voluntary association, people who can’t agree on what’s worthwhile can go their own ways. But the point [...]

20Jan2009 | Charles Johnson | 5 comments | Continued
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Fuzzy Thinking

George Orwell warned, “But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” That is the challenge—not allowing language and ill-defined terms to corrupt thought—that I face teaching economics to both graduate and undergraduate students. Terms that are widely used can have considerable emotional worth but little or no analytical value, ambiguous meaning, or unappreciated [...]

1Dec2008 | Walter E. Williams | 9 comments | Continued

Sad Democracy

During this presidential election year, it’s commonplace to sing paeans to the wonders of democracy. I, though, have never been able to join in this chorus. The principal reason is that I put no intrinsic value on democracy; what I value intrinsically is individual liberty. Democracy might have instrumental value if it is part of [...]

1Sep2008 | Donald J. Boudreaux | 1 comment | Continued

Faculty Unions Versus Academic Legitimacy

The faculty at Montana State University in Bozeman will soon vote on whether to unionize. If a majority vote yes, the school will gradually descend into academic mediocrity or worse. The vast majority of unionized faculty in higher education are employed in government colleges and universities. This is because in 1980 the U.S. Supreme Court, [...]

1Jun2008 | Charles W. Baird | 2 comments | Continued

Democracy or Republic?

Walter Williams is the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University. How often do we hear the claim that our nation is a democracy? Was a democratic form of government the vision of the Founders? As it turns out, the word democracy appears nowhere in the two most fundamental founding documents [...]

1Jun2007 | Walter E. Williams | 0 comments | Continued

Capitalism and Democracy

I recently heard a prominent American politician tell how a “chill” went up his spine when he heard someone question the importance of democracy. How could anyone doubt the value of democracy? he wondered. Fortunately, he said, he soon realized that by “democracy” his (European) interlocutor really meant “capitalism.” Whew, he thought, that’s all right, [...]

1Nov2006 | Arthur E. Foulkes | 1 comment | Continued

Democracy Versus Liberty

If a foreign power took over the United States and dictated that American citizens surrender 40 percent of their income, required them to submit to tens of thousands of different commands (many of which were effectively kept secret from them), prohibited many of them from using their land, and denied many the chance to find [...]

1Aug2006 | James Bovard | 2 comments | Continued

Mencken’s Wisdom

Donald Boudreaux (dboudrea@gmu.edu) is chairman of the economics department at George Mason University. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the death of H. L. Mencken (1880–1956). I wish that this Bard of Baltimore had lived far longer—past the age of Methuselah—so that those of us born after World War II could have enjoyed his [...]

1Jun2006 | Donald J. Boudreaux | 2 comments | Continued

Freedom and Majority Rule

The publisher of the London Times came to this country a few years after World War I. A banquet in his honor was held in New York City, and at the appropriate time Lord Northcliffe rose to his feet to propose a toast. Prohibition was in effect, you will recall, and the beverage customarily drunk [...]

1Jun2005 | Edmund A. Opitz | 0 comments | Continued

A Consensus Society

Russell Madden (rdmadden@earthlink.net) teaches writing at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and is a freelance writer. My wife and I last year completed a 5,000-mile road trip to Washington and back. A friend we visited in Seattle is a librarian in that city’s system. While we were there, she alerted us to the [...]

1Feb2005 | Russell Madden | 1 comment | Continued

The Golden Calf of Democracy

“Democracy,” H. L. Mencken once said, “is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” He also famously defined an election as “an advance auction sale of stolen goods.” Mencken was not opposed to democracy. He simply possessed a more sobering view of its limitations [...]

1Dec2004 | Lawrence W. Reed | 0 comments | Continued

Flight from Responsibility

Whenever I catch myself admiring a thinker, I find that he shares a trait with other thinkers I admire: an insistence on clear and honest language, a determination not to take metaphors literally. Apropos of this, September marks the 106th anniversary of the birth of FEE’s founding president, Leonard E. Read, a good time for [...]

1Sep2004 | Sheldon Richman | 2 comments | Continued

On "Elective Despotism"

In From Liberty to Democracy: The Transformation of American Government, Randall Holcombe writes: At the end of the twentieth century, Americans viewed their government very differently from the way it was viewed at the beginning of the nineteenth century. When the nation was founded, the federal government was viewed as a protector of individual rights, [...]

1Jan2004 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | Continued

The Birth of a Capitalist

This article is reprinted from the September 1955 issue of Ideas on Liberty. When the new superintendent came to the orphanage where I was reared, he found that we kids were not allowed to earn or have any spending money. So one of the first things he did was to tell us that if we [...]

1Dec2003 | Dean Russell | 1 comment | Continued

The Road to Liberty: Persuasion and Aggression

The author would like to thank Jan Lester and Paul Birch for helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. This is drawn from a lecture given at FEE in February. I would like to highlight two diametrically opposed ideas that I believe can help clarify our notion of liberty. Any specific human action can [...]

1Jun2003 | Gene Callahan | 1 comment | Continued
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