History
Up until the beginning of the 18th century, the word ‘democracy’ was regarded as some kind of insult which could result in a duel with pistols or swords. Things moved on, however, and with the introduction of universal franchise at the beginning of the 20th century, especially votes for women, we have now arrived at the stage where democracy is the only possible civilised form of government. Most countries around the world have adopted various forms of democracy as the best way of choosing their governments. The results of the democratic movements have not been promising, and the following is a rogue’s gallery of infamous leaders who managed to win elections:
- Benito Mussolini (1924)
- Adolf Hitler & the Nazis (1932)[1]
- Stalin (1937)
- Pol Pot & the Khmer Rouge (1976)
- Robert Mugabe (2013)
It is arguable, of course, that all the above without exception achieved success at the ballot box through coercion, bribery or persecution of their political adversaries. The temptation to neutralise political opposition is so normal that it goes on, even today, and in countries which we would normally regard as ‘Westernised.’ Politicians do not normally lock up their opponents nowadays, but they do the next best thing, and that is to tell bare faced lies to the electorate and promise all kinds of financial inducements to secure their support. I am referring to tax cuts and increased public expenditure, the promises of which are so rash and unrealistic that, no sooner has the new government taken over, a massive ‘back-peddling’ process begins. This leaves few people in any doubt that all the pre-electoral promises were, to put it mildly, insincere. We have now arrived at a situation, in 2025, where politicians who tell the truth about anything would lose an election.
Do democratic elections work?
There is a belief amongst our political intelligentsia that, so long as people support the ruling party and secure power for it at an election, then it doesn’t really matter that the reasons for voting in a particular way were wildly mistaken. For example, I knew a person who voted Conservative because she had been informed that this party was going to reintroduce capital punishment. Long may she continue to be deluded! It is her vote that counts. This leads me onto a subject which has exercised me for many years, and that is this: if someone votes for a political party under a misapprehension (such as the death penalty) or as a result of being lied to (tax cuts and increase in public spending) then can that person honestly be regarded as a supporter of the government? If a government has won an election owing to persecution of its enemies, lying, or wildly misplaced hopes, can it honestly claim to have electoral support? The answer must be a plain ‘no,’ and yet this is the government which we are stuck with for five years, during which time it can be as dictatorial and authoritative as it likes. If the answer is ‘yes’ then one can hardly object to Hitler and Stalin, and the others, on the grounds that they commanded public support, however criminally it was obtained. It was not for no reason that Lord Hailsham once described our system as an ‘electoral dictatorship.’ Others have maintained that the good old British electoral system is the best there is, despite the obvious shortcomings which I have illustrated above.
A divided society
There is little doubt now that general elections divide society in such a way that political debate is conducted on an ad hominum basis. In other words, the refusal to accept an opposing view of a matter is summarised as follows: “Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he? After all, he’s only a Labour supporter.” It is very unusual to hear civilised and informed debate in the media when it takes place between national political rivals. Constructive debate can only occur if there is an established common ground between the opposing parties. This applies to any debate between anyone. If, as is the case, politicians, or even members of one’s own family refuse to acknowledge a certain common ground between them then the ensuing discussion is usually pointless and destructive. Neither side will have the grace to acknowledge the justification of the other’s cause, leading to a slanging match. This is purely the result of our adversarial election system.
The Brexit debate
Much water has flowed under the bridge since the United Kingdom tore itself apart during the debate over whether we should leave the European Union. When our Prime Minister, David Cameron, called for a national plebiscite on the question of whether we should remain or leave, the airwaves were dominated by hours of hot debate between the protagonists and antagonists. Again, the mutual rejection in principle to the views of the opposing side led to much confusion, not to say bad blood. The poor British electorate were expected to make sense of all this and decide by means of a pencil stub and a scrap of paper in the voting booth. Now, it is one thing to vote on election day, having experienced the activities of a government over the last five years – that is bad enough. But to be expected to make a definite decision about whether to stay in or leave the European Union is quite another. Who is right? Who is wrong? How will a decision affect me either way? These are impossible questions and, as usual, the electorate narrowly voted to leave the EU. But upon what grounds? They were being asked, effectively, to make up their minds on something which may, or may not, happen sometime in the future. It is almost the same as asking people to vote on the result of the next Grand National steeplechase.
Democracy and mob rule
As democratic governments all over the world attempt to be in tune with public opinion (which places them on a course of moral retreat), they become the arbiters of the moral and social values of the electors. They cannot lead from the front and must, rather, follow what they imagine are the prevailing moral and social values of the people who elected them. They do this by enacting laws covering issues which, in normal times, were the province of the Catholic Church. We have now arrived at a situation where societies have abandoned religion and replaced it with worship of the law. We now have laws which regulate almost every facet of our existence, and some of these laws are utterly inhumane. This is because the law cannot take into account individual circumstances: we are all treated the same. The massive burden of legislation which we face ends up eroding man’s normal willingness to obey; this willingness to obey can only be effective through love and fear of God, leading to love of one’s own country and its institutions. Once we have established generations of citizens who have abandoned all pretence of religion, they will instead obey the law through motives of fear – either fear of being caught, fear of punishment, or both. The tragic results are plain to see: our prisons are full to bursting, our police forces hopelessly overstretched and demoralised, and even serious crime goes more or less unreported and unpunished. In the United Kingdom, if you are the unfortunate victim of a burglary, it is rare that the police will do any more than allocate you a reference number to enable you to claim on your insurance.
Hate crime
One of the results of democracy is, as I have said, the bending of governments to the whims and tastes of the people they govern. They do this by enacting laws which reflect common prejudices and bias. These laws are enforced massively by the police at the expense of the need to reduce and prevent real crime. The resultant fear of the mob, which is a characteristic of modern policing, causes them to overreact when activity, repellent to the mob, is reported to them. Countless incidents abound nowadays where the boys in blue arrest someone who made an ill-judged and hastily deleted remark on Facebook, for example. The fact that a person has never committed a real crime throughout their lives is of no concern to the police.
The illogicality of democracy
Whereas in earlier times, as I have said, to accuse someone of being a democrat was an insult leading to fisticuffs, nowadays, the opposite is true. To call someone ‘undemocratic’ is to vilify them and political leaders react angrily to such name-calling. And yet, does democracy really exist, can it exist? When I served as a district councillor, representing a few villages in the heart of Somerset, I saw no sign of democracy in the workings of the council. Because I belonged to a ‘minority’ party (which the Conservatives were in the 1990s), the majority ruling party, the Liberal Democrats, behaved as though we didn’t even exist. All the main decisions of the council were made in private by one or two leading councillors and presented to the main ruling committees, all with Liberal Democrat majorities, as a fait accompli. Whether it is parliament, the local authority, or even the synod of the Church of England, the ruling caucus can do whatever it likes because its rank-and-file members, not wishing to rock the boat and with an eye on their own career advancement, end up having to behave like ‘nodding donkeys.’ As a Catholic and the father of a large family I am utterly disenfranchised because no politician of any party values my opinions.
Democracy has been defined as follows: …asystem of government in which the people decide laws, policies, and major undertakings of a state or other polity. I’m afraid the people do no such thing! The ‘people’ only get a look in once every four of five years. We are ruled by a political elite whose only aim is not the welfare of the people but, rather, the determination to remain in power for as long as possible. This quotation taken from George Orwell’s 1984 sums it up perfectly: The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. I wonder whether Orwell had spent some time as a councillor in Somerset!
The tyranny of democracy
The government, once voted in, has more power than the Tudor monarchs. And yet, in spite of their claims to be representatives of the people, they take unilateral and harsh decisions which were never put before the electorate during the election campaign. I am referring to such things as the war in Iraq, removal of the winter fuel allowance, imposing Value Added Tax on private school fees and increases in employers’ National Insurance contributions. There are countless more examples of this, but the one action which really trumps all the others in terms of severity is the introduction of restrictions on civil liberties brought about by the COVID epidemic. Now, clearly the government had to react to this epidemic and yet it was able to marshal the population on a day-to-day basis, often without even consulting parliament. Is that democratic? I do not think so.
Godless democracy
One of the worst results of our democratic system is the rise of Godlessness amongst our political leaders. This Godlessness has resulted in the promotion by governments of a whole raft of measures which attack the natural law. As I said before, democratic governments do not lead, but instead they follow the mob, and so they pass laws which allow homosexual marriage, transgender rights and sex education in our schools. They happily indulge in pointless and unjustified foreign wars which in no way qualify as ‘just’ wars. Only a democratic government would happily engage our country in wars which cost the lives of millions of people. In 1914 the Emperor Franz-Joseph of Austria, the second to last Catholic emperor, devoted all his energies in the cause of peace between nations. He loved his country and his people, wishing to protect them from a war which he knew would result in the destruction of his empire and the decimation of a whole generation of young men. It was the atheistic Prussian-dominated German Empire which dragged Austria into the resulting conflagration. The Emperor died of a broken heart in 1916. Meanwhile, the “democracies” on both sides of that conflict – and to the present day – continue to promote more war to solve problems that can be resolved peacefully.
And the solution?
Things are now so bad that it is impossible to remedy the situation in any meaningful sense. Our politicians are so invested in the current status quo that it is unthinkable to turn the clock back. Besides this, man has turned his back on God for so long now that things can only get worse, more or less slowly – depending on who is governing us. Up until now, God has granted us our precious free will which we have perverted and attempted to manage our affairs as though he did not exist. He has said: “Okay, you think you can run your affairs without me, carry on! Let’s see the mess you make of it.” This is another crisis, hard on the heels of so many others, where God shows us that there is no human solution and this should force us on our knees and ask him to intervene to put things right. History has shown us that, where a country bows down to the true God and submits to His will, he will reward that country with peace and harmony. This is what happened in Portugal in 1917 after the apparitions at Fatima, where the country experienced decades of peace and plenty. Also, in Ecuador in the 19th century, under Gabriel Garcia Moreno, which was a Catholic confessional state. If, as individuals, we please God and submit to him, our reward is promised in the afterlife. However, if a country bends the knee towards God, He will reward it here and now. It is perfectly possible to have a democratic system which is pleasing to God, likewise also a monarchy or even a dictatorship. The difficulty arises when man rejects God and worships the religion of democracy, and that is what we have done.
What can we do?
God can intervene at any time, snap His fingers and put everything right. Normally, however, His interventions are dependent upon our willingness to receive Him, and currently, very few people even believe in Him, let alone submit to His divine will. We can learn from what happened in ancient Rome, however, when the arrival of the apostle Peter led, within a relatively short time, to the arrival of the first Christian Roman emperor, Constantine. The starting point in the recovery of our country is converting ourselves. Once that happens, our families will also convert, then the neighbours in our street, then our towns, our cities and then, finally, our countries. There is really no other way, as everything else has been tried! The process of recovery will not be completed in our lifetime, however, and many decades will pass before countries are reconciled to God. The point being, that if we start now, not by publishing videos on Youtube or standing for parliament, but by striving for holiness and the life of perfection via the Sacraments, this will attain for us our heavenly country where there is no democracy. It is important to know that the current malaise in our political system simply leads people to damnation. A peaceful Catholic country will lead to the salvation of millions of souls, souls who are currently in great danger.
Photo by Thomas Vogel on Unsplash
[1] Because the Nazis were the largest party in the Reichstag after the 1932 elections, Hitler was able to pass the enabling act in 1933, giving him absolute power.
