Simple Democracy Is the Existential Threat

Pull their strings and the chorus of talking heads all sing the same tune: “Donald Trump poses an existential threat to our democracy.” Even the sycophant sloganistas at the National Catholic Reporter headline with: “Biden’s debate disaster leaves democracy in peril.”

To that, I say, “Great!” Even the smallest of minds knows that the difference between a simple democracy and a republic is vast. A simple democracy makes a simple majority the masters of the minority. There are no present-day simple democracies, save perhaps the brutal goings-on within the communist parties of the various communist states. 

What stands between us and the brutality of the majority, of course, is our Constitution. Most republics have some semblance of a constitution, but ours is exemplary in that it enshrines natural law and claims that the state has no domain in the area of “inalienable rights”; that is, that rights are granted by God, not by the state, who should be but the defender of those rights.  

Our constitutional republic is not the “democracy” that this progressive siren chorus fears losing. They fear losing that simple democracy that has been creeping past the Constitution for decades. They fear, most of all, losing their ability to thwart it by means of bureaucratic mandates and legislation from the bench. Biden, like FDR before him, has stated his willingness to “pack the court” to get his way.

These folks despise our Constitution simply because it limits their power over us, the people, and they are terrified of the new Supreme Court decision concerning the so-called Chevron doctrine. Here’s what the fine legal minds at CNN have to say about it: 

A major Supreme Court ruling Friday that shifted power from the executive branch to the judiciary stands to transform how the federal government works.

By overturning a 1984 precedent, the court’s conservative majority has made countless regulations vulnerable to legal challenge. The types of executive branch moves that the ruling jeopardizes include a plan to put Wi-Fi on school buses, a new ban on noncompete clauses, health care coverage rules being implemented through Obamacare, and the latest plan to forgive student loan debt.

The Supreme Court ruling could boost efforts by conservatives who have taken aim at the Biden Environmental Protection Agency’s rules limiting planet-warming pollution from vehicles, oil and gas wells and pipelines, and power plants.

“There is no substantive area that this doctrine does not touch,” said Kent Barnett, a University of Georgia School of Law professor who specializes in administrative law.

The so-called Chevron doctrine—named after the case, Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council—told courts to defer to an agency’s interpretation of a statute in circumstances in which the law in question is vaguely written. The precedent is deeply entrenched in administrative law, with Republican and Democratic administrations alike using it to shield regulatory action from legal attack.

And? I’m still waiting to hear the downside. 

The Court giveth and the Court taketh away. It’s not like they legislated from the bench, something for which CNN and its ilk have a long-standing affection. This is quite the opposite. The Supreme Court took nothing from the executive branch; they are merely demanding clarity from the halls of Congress, not word mush that unelected bureaucrats can interpret to their liking. 

The executive department is there to execute the law, not to interpret it. Past deference—of both the legislative branch and the judicial branch—to bureaucratic tyranny is what has given our presidency an air of royalty and is threatening not our democracy but our republic. A simple democracy is the monarchy of the simple majority. 

Ironically, on the heels of this landmark ruling comes, from the administration of King Biden, a new Title IX directive concerning transgenders in schools, with an August 1 deadline for implementation no less. Noncompliant school districts will find that enacting it is “a condition of receiving Federal funds.” For our local school district, this is around seven percent of their budget, or about 1.3 million. How many million were we taxed to get that one million back? I’m not going to make this article about money, but government inefficiency is proverbial. 

The link to the document provided by the U.S. Department of Education is still for the “unofficial” version (we can’t see an official version when enactment is twenty days away? What?!—government efficiency?). And oh, by the way, it’s only 1,577 pages. I can’t imagine why I haven’t found time to read it, but I can tell you that the word transgender appears sixty-five times, the word gender 422 times, and the word sex, 4,884 times. However, this article is not about what Title IX now says about gender; it’s about the fact that it says anything at all about gender. 

And does anyone really believe that members of either the House or the Senate have read this document? They don’t even read new laws they are passing, much less revisions to the existing ones made by bureaucrats—just ask Nancy we-have-to-pass-it-so-we-can-see-what’s-in-it Pelosi. 

It’s long past time that bureaucracy gets out of the business of writing law. What could be a more egregious usurpation of the separation of powers? I once contacted my congressman about something—I don’t remember what—and in his response he advised that I contact the bureau that was handling the matter. I may have cursed in the process of telling him what I thought of that advice. I don’t vote for bureaucrats, and they don’t answer to me; in fact, it seems that they answer to nearly no one.  It’s long past time that bureaucracy gets out of the business of writing law.Tweet This

This constant changing of regulations is, of course, a type of lawfare. There are only so many nonprofits set up to defend the Constitution, and they all have limited resources—a reality that the enemies of the Constitution are relying upon.

All of this is no small sin against the Catholic value of subsidiarity. I know, it’s not an everyday word. Of it, the etymology website etymonline.com says: “quality of being subsidiary,” 1936, from German Subsidiarität, paraphrasing the Latin of Pius XI in his Quadragesimo Anno of 1931; see subsidiary + -ity.

Subsidiarity is a simple notion. Of it, Merriam Webster says: a principle in social organization holding that functions which are performed effectively by subordinate or local organizations belong more properly to them than to a dominant central organization.

While it is a Catholic value, it certainly is not a new concept. The American Constitution tells us, via the 10th Amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Subsidiarity is the law of the land—an American value. 

The Constitution does not grant our federal government the power to police bathrooms in local schools. It may be argued that the withholding of funds is a soft form of enforcement. If you think that that somehow is not a slap in the face to the constitutional principle, you’re too far down the road to Marxism for me to write anything that will enlighten you. 

So egregious and intimidating in mere size and scope are the federal mandates that there is an industry built around writing school policies that are in compliance with federal and state regulations. Ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking it? Give me a break! Maintaining that knowledge is physically impossible for an individual, for no one can read at the required speed—certainly no one in Congress!— we have an industry built on keeping us from getting sued or jailed. Innocent until proven guilty?—You have to pay to maintain that innocence.

The lawyer for our local school board advised the board that, if they did not make compliant changes to their school policy, they would be opening themselves to potential lawsuits for not complying with a federal statute. See how this works? Never mind that, on its face, said federal statute is unconstitutional. It’s all just more lawfare. 

And yet, let’s get real. It would be bad enough if this was, in fact, a tyranny of the majority, but nobody really believes that. This is a tyranny of powerful manipulators who hold a majority of the population in fear by threats of withholding funds, lawsuits, and a plethora of other coercive tactics, the like of which we witnessed during the plandemic. It is this tyranny of manipulators that is the pseudo-simple democracy that the removal of Joe Biden places in great peril. Please, Lord, may it come to pass.