Small Government Democracy

Here's something that has bothered me for some time. I have heard people argue that democracy is not the best government because democracy fails as soon as the people realize that they can vote for themselves anything they want. Democracy ultimately leads to big government. Therefore, democracy must be severly limited. It is true that democracy must be held back to prevent mob tyranny (which is why our system places the rights of the individual above the power of the people), and that democracy does not work without a wise and moral populous. However, this particular argument about the shortcomings of democracy is wrong. The people cannot simply vote for whatever they want because they will have to pay for it. Crunchy Con Rod Dreher touched on this in a post today about Conservative arguments that Huckabee is not a true Conservative. Neither are mainstream Republicans, Dreher argues,

My disgust with Bush and the late, unlamented Republican Congress is not that they spent so much money (though that's part of it). My real disgust is that they spent on credit. If the people want big government, then the politicians are going to give it to them, despite (in the GOP's case) their rhetorical pose against it. But if they're fiscally responsible, then they ought to pay for it, and not hide from the voters the cost of what they demand. If politicians told people that they can have this shiny new program, but they were going to have to give up something else, either in terms of a spending cut or a new tax, to get it, then government would limit itself naturally.

Exactly right. Democracy naturally limits government. The GOP was expanding government without paying for it. The people saw the problem with this and voted the GOP out. It is the Republican establishment, not Huckabee, who have been betraying Conservatism. They have twisted the Conservative principle of fiscal responsibility into a policy of free money. This is their failure, not democracy's. Huckabee, on the other hand, saw as governor of Arkansas that you actually have to pay for government, which is why he raised taxes to pay for better roads and schools (with the people's consent, I might add). At the end of his term, the Arkansas state government had a surplus, which he said should go back to the people in the form of a tax cut. That sounds more like a Conservative to me than Bush or the Republican Congress. Which is why Dreher argues that the attacks of the GOP establishment on Huckabee's record are weak. He doesn't use the word, but I will: they are hypocritical.

I suppose it could be argued that limiting democracy is a sure way to get a larger, more intrusive government. Under a democratic-republic with universal suffrage such as ours, everybody is a part of the governing class and everybody shares the burden of government. If democracy is limited, then it would be possible for the governing class to vote for anything they want and pass the cost on to those outside their class. But, I'm not going to bother with that argument for now. Suffice it to say: a democratic-republic naturally limits government and probably does it better than any other system.

–J.E. Heath
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