Difference between revisions of "A Non-Libertarian FAQ"
From Critiques Of Libertarianism
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; "Democracy is like three wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for lunch." | ; "Democracy is like three wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for lunch." | ||
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| + | : This one is often misattributed to Benjamin Franklin, but has not been found in print before 1990. | ||
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| + | : The obvious rejoinder is that prey always vastly outnumber predators, so the example is really stupid. | ||
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| + | : But Isaiah Berlin pointed out that you don't need democracy for the wolves to eat sheep: "Freedom for the wolves means death for the sheep." | ||
: We are not a simple democracy: we are a constitutional, representative democratic republic: there are not direct elections of laws and there is a constitution that limits what laws can be enacted. Extend the analogy to take that into account and lo and behold, it becomes: "deciding what to have for lunch that is not one of us." | : We are not a simple democracy: we are a constitutional, representative democratic republic: there are not direct elections of laws and there is a constitution that limits what laws can be enacted. Extend the analogy to take that into account and lo and behold, it becomes: "deciding what to have for lunch that is not one of us." | ||
