It is nice when current events allow you to hammer home a philosophical lesson, in this case, it is the danger of package deals.  By package deals I mean the phrase as Ayn Rand meant it:

[Package-dealing employs] the shabby old gimmick of equating opposites by substituting nonessentials for their essential characteristics, obliterating differences. – “How to Read (and Not to Write), The Ayn Rand Letter, I, 26, 3

The particular package deal that got hammered home for me recently is the concept of democracy.  The original definition of democracy was simple majority rule.  You still see this in at least some dictionary definitions.  Webster’s online dictionary gives as the first definition:

a : government by the people; especially : rule of the majority
b : a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections

Notice that missing from this definition is any mention of inalienable individual rights.  In a true democracy, i.e. under majority rule, there are no such rights, only those which the majority chooses to allow.  The clearest example of this was ancient Athens where Socrates, deemed to be a corrupting influence, was sentenced to death by majority vote.  So much for the right to life in a democracy.

Peter Schwartz says in his lecture “Clarity in Conceptualization: The Art of Identifying “Package-Deals”“, available at the Ayn Rand e-store, that while the concept of democracy is explicitly stated more or less as above, implicitly the concept relies on the example of the United States, where government is constrained by a constitution designed to protect individual rights.  It relies on this example, and that of other Western democracies, to show that democracy is a good thing.  So the package deal is referring to the United States, Iran, Cuba and Venezuela all as democracies by focusing on the non-essential feature of voting while ignoring or downplaying the actual essential feature of the protection of individual rights.   The package deal ultimately equates voting with the good.

We saw an excellent example of this package deal in action in Egypt two years ago with the “Arab Spring.”  There were calls for democratic elections but little, as far as I can recall, in this country saying there had to be a respect for individual rights.  Rather there was much talk about how the Egyptian people have the right to democratically choose their form of government, even if it was based on religious law (Shariah) or other forms Americans might not think of as a proper foundation.  So even though such a government might have a total lack of respect for the individual, it would still be put in the same “democratic” basket as the United States.  After all, the people would have voted for it.

As events unfolded Morsi, who at various points during his campaign called for such rights violations as barring women and non-Muslims from the presidency on the basis of Islamic law as well as for a council of Muslim scholars to advise the parliament, presumably with the goal of ensuring that secular law was in step with Shariah, was elected president.  (As another example of Shariah, apparently the government of Saudi Arabia announced that non-Muslims who eat, drink or smoke in public during Ramadan may lose their jobs and be expelled from the country.  So much for the freedom of religion.)  As President, Morsi continued this trend, giving himself essentially dictatorial powers and increasingly restricting the role of the opposition in the government.

Even as the people of Egypt are demonstrating in the millions and the military removed Morsi from power, we are seeing the package deal in action.  In news report after report, Morsi is described as “the first democratically elected president” in Egypt, implicitly putting him in the same category as American Presidents, British Prime Ministers and so forth.  Never mind his rather explicit disdain for individual rights, he was elected by the people and that is apparently all that matters.

This package deal does not just apply in other countries, but is widely at work here in the United States.  In this week’s Economist magazine there is an article about the recent Supreme Court decision regarding gay marriage and how that affected Proposition 8 in California, the referendum banning gay marriage that was struck down by the California Supreme Court as unconstitutional.  The subtitle of the article gives eloquent evidence of the package deal at work:  “Does the Supreme Court’s gay-marriage ruling threaten direct democracy?”  Throughout the article is the assumption that direct democracy is a good thing.  As the concluding sentence in the first paragraph puts it:

The Supreme Court, in upholding the right of gays to marry in California, may have weakened direct democracy throughout America, some fear.

Note that in this case the individual rights of some were being denied because a slender majority of voters, 52% (oddly, roughly the same percentage who voted for Morsi in Egypt), decided they should not have them.  Whatever your thoughts on the issue of gay rights, and for the record I am for equal rights before the law for everyone, this should be a scary scenario.

Imagine that all the women in California got together and decided that men can’t be trusted to carry guns and voted that it was illegal for men to own guns.  Women are 50.3% of the population, a majority, so under the reasoning of Prop 8 this would be a valid law.  Or perhaps all those under 65 voted and decided that those over 65 should not be allowed to drive or hold jobs.  After all those under 65 are 88% of the population, a vast majority, so this should be valid, right?

I could continue with other examples, but I hope the principle is clear.  Without a regard for individual rights, the rights enshrined in our Declaration of Independence, voting is pretty meaningless.

So when you hear or read an “expert” or pundit talking about “democracy,” ask yourself what they really mean.  Do they mean simply majority rule or do they mean a system where an elected government is constitutionally constrained to respect the rights of the individual?  Do not let them package these essentially different things together.

After all, it is not all about voting.