This Independence Day weekend, I’ll take a stand and say that confederate statues erected during the Jim Crow era to celebrate slavery and intimidate blacks should be torn down. But the decision to tear down a statue should be made democratically, not by mob rule.
When mobs started tearing down Confederate statues, people asked what would come next: would statues of Jefferson and Washington be torn down as well? Then statues of Jefferson and Washington were toppled in Portland.
Washington and Jefferson probably contributed more to human freedom than all but a handful of other people in the history of the world. But they owned slaves, so their statutes probably deserved it, right?
Then a mob tore down a statue of an abolitionist in Madison, as well as a monument to women’s rights. Protesters apparently believed it was unfair to have statues meant to inspire people to be better since the real world wasn’t as good as the statues implied.
Not just in the United States. A mob in France defaced a statue dedicated to the abolition of slavery in that country. Denmark’s famous mermaid statue was defaced with graffiti claiming it was racist. Back in Portland, protesters vandalized a statue of an elk that was put up as a memorial to Oregon’s diminishing herds (some of which have since recovered). Really, an elk?
The statue-vandalizing mobs, at least in the United States, were responding to another kind of mob: police mobs. Protected by the doctrine of qualified immunity (which my colleagues at the Cato Institute have been trying to abolish), police have killed blacks, whites, and others and often gotten away with it.
Let’s skp the debate over whether police mobbery is racist. There is systemic racism in our society, otherwise black per capita incomes wouldn’t be stuck at 58 percent of non-Hispanic white incomes, but it’s possible the police are equal opportunity mobsters. When Portland police killed a mentally-ill man named James Chasse, race wasn’t an issue and it was just as unjustified as the killing of George Floyd.
During the protests against police mobbery, the police have done their best to prove that they are as bad as the protesters say.
- When the mayor of Seattle banned the use of tear gas for 30 days, the police used it three days later.
- When violinists played a tribute to Elijah McClain, a black violinist who was killed by a police choke hold in Colorado, police in riot gear broke up the memorial.
- When Oregon’s Governor Kate Brown required that everyone wear masks in indoor public places, an Oregon state trooper, who nominally works for Brown, refused to do so, saying “F**k Kate Brown.”
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It is sadly ironic that someone has just published a book about how we would all be better off if we had less democracy and more rule by experts. According to the author, we should “trust elites a little more and trust the masses a little less.”
This is hard for me to accept since I’ve spent my career fighting elites who thought they knew best for everyone else and who just happened to benefit enormously from the decisions they made. Whether those elites were bureaucrats who sought to increase the power and budgets of their agencies or consultants who promoted projects that would increase their revenues or land-use activists who thought that taking people’s property rights was a cheap way of achieving their goal of herding most people into dense cities, the decisions they made or recommended were far from in the best interests of society. As in the case of toppling statues, the question always becomes: where do you draw the line between democratic rule and elite rule?
The answer is that elites and mobs will always rule in their own self-interest. Take the police, who’ve been given the job of protecting us from dangerous drugs (a job for which they are superbly unqualified, which is part of the problem). To fund that job, they’ve been given the power to take property from people who’ve been involved in drug crimes. The result is police disturbing people’s sleep in search of anyone carrying large sums of money, because in their “expert opinion” only people involved in the drug trade would have large amounts of money, so the police confiscate it without the bother of a jury trial or conviction.
Given a choice between mob rule, elite rule, and democratic rule, I’ll choose democracy every time. If there is anything wrong with democracy, it’s that we haven’t taught people what it’s real purpose is. The purpose of democracy is not to get to vote on whose money we steal to fund our favorite projects or whose property we take without compensation to support our favorite programs or whose opinions we get to silence because they don’t meet our definition of political correctness.
Instead, the real purpose of democracy is to allow us to defend ourselves against those who would take our money, our property, and our freedom to speak and publish and travel. As long as we remember that, we can have an open debate on whether it is appropriate to keep statues that were designed to celebrate oppression vs. statues that were designed to celebrate freedom even if the people in the statues weren’t perfect and I feel confident we will usually come to the right conclusion.
Democracy is mob rule.
The Founders designed a government that would resist mob rule. They didn’t anticipate how strong the mob could become.
Madison referred to impetuous mobs as factions, which he defined in “Federalist No. 10” as a group “united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” Factions arise, he believed, when public opinion forms and spreads quickly. But they can dissolve if the public is given time and space to consider long-term interests rather than short-term gratification. To prevent factions from distorting public policy and threatening liberty, Madison resolved to exclude the people from a direct role in government. That’s why the constitution was so written to define the functions of the government and the bill of rights to define what the government wasn’t supposed to do
Well said!
Experts are human and fallible, and just as susceptible to ideology as any other. Just look at the two top scientific advisers to the British Prime Minister, who advocated “herd immunity” (i.e. laissez-faire, not waiting for a vaccine that would provide controlled herd immunity) as a strategy for dealing with the Covid-19 crisis, i.e. the exact same policy Sweden adopted, to disastrous effect.
Fortunately, the PM, never a stickler for consistency, make the right call and reversed that policy a week later.
Why the advisers made that recommendation is not known, and indeed the actual experts, as opposed to the establishment stalwart advisors, wrote an open letter to object against the policy. That said, a certain amount of callousness towards the vulnerable, widespread among the socially darwinian English elite, no doubt played a role in blithely dismissing the human toll of merely attempting to “flatten the curve”. The advisors draped themselves in the authority of science to peddle their favored approach, while actually ignoring working scientists.
When Europeans arrived in North America, it was a coast to coast slave market. Practically the only interaction some of the indigenous tribes had with each other was war and slave raiding and trading. The slaves were often tortured to death for fun and practice. Within 400 years, European settlers ended it. You are welcome. There is little evidence that there are any pre slavery civilizations in Africa, it is part of African culture. The Arabs took to it like champions, part of Islam. James Watt and Jethro Tull did more to end slavery than all the black activists in history.
So, to start with, I’ll bet that you probably believe Columbus and other European settlers to simply have committed mass genocide against Native Americans…sorry; Indigenous.
But here’s the truth: While there were many examples of brutal warfare between Europeans and Native Americans, neither side actually committed genocide; in fact, there was never an outright policy of Indian extermination.
The Native Americans were mostly wiped out through infectious diseases that the settlers had inadvertently brought with them. Of the estimated 250,000 natives in Hispaniola, Columbus’s first stop in the Americas in 1492, new infectious diseases wiped out a staggering 95% of their population by 1517. When Columbus arrived, the islands were inhabited by two main tribes: the Arawaks, who were passive and friendly, and the Caribs, who were vicious cannibals. The Arawaks actually lived in fear of the Caribs for—you guessed it—the reasons being that they hunted them down to enslave them and eat them. Yes—eat them. Ironically, we get the name “Caribbean Islands” from those famous people-eaters.
The only way settlers were able to conquer this land was through the help of Native Americans who teamed up with them to settle the score with other tribes who were even bigger.
Pre-Columbian societies waged war CONSTANTLY. When two neolithic societies encounter one another…….warfare is inevitable.
And lastly without white people there wouldn’t even be any “Indians”. Namely because thanks to new archaelological and mitochondrial DNA we know “indians” derive their ancestry from two consecutive groups; Asian’s in the russia/mongolia region and caucasians who intermingled before they came across the ice bridge to the new world 11,000 years ago.
When settlers gave guns to the natives the first thing they did with them was go after and kill their own kind.
Fast forward to today, China is now arming Africa with heavy metal to do the same.
There is systemic racism in our society, otherwise black per capita incomes wouldn’t be stuck at 58 percent of non-Hispanic white incomes…
Disparate outcomes do not imply disparate treatment. In the US, as in many other places, group differences in incomes tend to track differences in educational attainment levels and other forms of human capital formation. In my state, white adults are about 80% more likely to have a college education (at least a bachelor’s degree) than black adults.
And this probably understates the differences in education levels, since 1) this is only one type of attainment measure — there is also the matter of adults with significantly less education (i.e. less than high school level) who are more disadvantaged in the labor market now than they were a half-century ago, and 2) it doesn’t account for the differences in the types of degrees being awarded to those who do complete some higher education. Someone who earns a degree in industrial engineering or computer science is likely to have much better earning prospects upon graduation than someone who gets a degree in social work or Chicano studies.
Also, using per capita income as a measure to compare across groups can be biased by differences in the composition of those groups. The black population is on average significantly younger than the white population, which means that a larger share of the population is either not in the workforce or still in the early part of their career when their earnings will be lower.
LazyReader,
“Democracy is mob rule.”
Webster’s definition of mob: “a large and disorderly crowd of people, especially : one bent on riotous or destructive action.”
That doesn’t sound like a democracy to me. Mobs may be “large” but they rarely are a majority and they don’t take votes of have debates. As several people in Madison, Wisconsin found, anyone who questions what they do is likely to be beat up.
Democracies aren’t perfect, but they allow for orderly debate. The most perfect democracy is the free market: you get to vote as often as you want, you pay only for what you vote for, and you don’t have to pay for what other people vote for.
Democracies aren’t perfect. That’s why only democratic principles are established to influcence laws, not sanctioned as rule of law.
As long as 50.1% can vote for or in favor of something. The 49.9% are oppressed. Democracy can vote away the rights of individuals; in fact history full of it.
“A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.”
? Thomas Jefferson
The ideal government is one where democratic principles reign supreme, waging a constant battle with tyrannical fear. Anarchy and Totalitarianism in a tug of war.
I have a hard time believing that if there wasn’t civil unrest and mob rule that any of these statues would be coming down. Especially knowing that black people have been clamoring for a number of them to be removed but conservatives have been opposing any such change see Monument Ave (Richmond), Nathan Bedford Forrest Bust (Nashville), State of Mississippi Flag, Nathan Bedford Forrest Statue (Memphis).
This isn’t about statues. They’re tearing down statues of abolitionists and even black patriots…
Now we know; in China’s cultural purge; the first thing they disposed of was “The Past” This is the first stage of marxist anarchy.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EcNWManWkAMSjxQ?format=jpg&name=medium
In Catalonia, the Marxists slaughtered the anarchists.
Communisms biggest cheerleaders become the first corpses, first they cultivate a revolutionary mentality
then they eliminate the revolutionaries to make sure it doesn’t happen again. I pity those poor fools…
First of all, neither Sweden nor the UK initially promoted a “laissez-faire” approach to managing COVID-19. Both advocated for more modest policies to limit its transmission: things like hand washing, social distancing, and advising vulnerable groups to avoid crowded situations.
The UK reversed course based on some garbage forecasts (which have since had to be walked back multiple times by their authors) generated in an unpublished paper at UCL. Very little actual science went into these forecasts.
The resulting lockdown imposed by the UK government largely failed to control the spread of the virus, including to vulnerable populations, and as a result the UK has at present the 4th-highest fatality rate in Europe (and two of those four are microstates — Andorra and San Marino), higher than Spain, Italy and Sweden.
Whether they admit it or not, all countries are ultimately practicing a herd immunity strategy in the long run. Whether that relies on the development of a vaccine or through broader spread of the virus through the population, the end result is the same. Both strategies contain uncertainties and risks. One is just more forthright about them.
Despite some of the nonsensical rage associated with the protests when you look at what blacks, and ultimately poor and working people have to deal with the reaction makes some amount of sense. Although the media portray the protests are relating mostly to police brutality, the bigger issue is that the ruling class, whether they call themselves liberal or conservative have been working hard for decades to squeeze those under them in every way imagine. Granted blacks and minorities are disproportionately targeted however it affects all demographics. As the Antiplanner’s work clearly notes when the elites push for disastrous expensive plans that only hurt others, people ultimately don’t like it. Although I think with some groups whether they be on the right or the left there is some confusion as to the exact origins of their woe, its still obvious to me at least that people are increasingly fed up with the current management and lack of respect they have for most people. One example that directly relates to the black community can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIghbrn5yfI. Ironically its the same mentality that is driving the planners thinking in “progressive” cities which have effectively driven out poor and minority residents. As Winston Churchill once aptly put: “democracy is the worst best system.” The system either responds with logical civil inputs or if that does not work with other more blunt ones.
Sketter,
A lot of statues are coming down as a result of democratic action (city councils, county commissions, etc.). Maybe it took some protest marches for it to happen, but the violence doesn’t help and may even hurt.
I think we can confidently say that it did take protest marches (and maybe even some rioting) for it to happen unless you think it is a coincidence that all these statues are coming down at around the same time when they have been up for 100+ years.
Yes you can say that it was a result of democratic action that these statues are coming down and ignore the movement that has been pushing for these changes but that would be like saying it was democratic action that passed the civil rights act of 1968 and ignore the civil rights movement or saying that it was democratic action that passed the 19th amendment giving mainly white women the right to vote and ignore the suffrage movement. We know that there have been people protesting and making their demands known for these changes that shouldn’t be ignored or dismissed.
Because elites are being mentioned, I will throw in my two cents. It is not a coincidence that a date observed by a certain grievance-obsessed people falls on July 3rd, and they are trying to get the statues and name of a certain King Louis IX removed (the city of St. Louis is named after Louis IX, and there is a nascent move to rename it). More here, ironically enough, from a screed they wrote on one of their own websites:
https://www.aish.com/jw/s/When-King-Louis-IX-Burned-the-Talmud.html