Taxation and Voting

Taxation and Voting

Thomas Allen

In The United States Unmasked: A Search into the Causes of the Rise and Progress of These States, and an Exposure Of Their Present Material and Moral Condition (London, Ontario: J. H. Vivian, 1878), pages 129 –131, G. Manigault  explains why suffrage needs to be limited to people who pay a minimum amount of direct taxes:

The colonies quarrelled with the mother country because they were taxed by its parliament in which they were not represented, “No taxation without representation!” This sounds like a safeguard to one’s rights; yet it is but a half truth, valueless and deceptive until you add the suppressed half to it. “No representation without taxation!”

Government is a necessary agency. Society cannot do without it. But it is a costly and burdensome agent; and moreover one whose powers have often been grossly abused and perverted from their true objects. Yet its powers must be entrusted to some person, or persons, or class of persons. The only class of persons to whom the ultimate control over the government can be entrusted with reasonable hope of good results, is that which furnishes the means of supporting the government, and feels the burden of its costly maintenance. This class are the tax-payers, the holders of visible, tangible property, which cannot hide itself from taxation. This class has a direct and obvious interest in watching the government and the officials who administer its powers—in checking extravagance and enforcing economy and honesty in government expenditure; for they furnish the means. They have every motive for watching that the operations of government are directed to the protection of the rights and the redress of the wrongs of individuals, and the safety of the community — and not perverted to purposes for which it was not created. For this class have not only personal and social rights, like other people, but they possess vast acquired and vested rights peculiarly apt to suffer from the neglect or abuses, or perversion of government; rights, on the protection and security of which the welfare and civilization of the country depend. This class may be very numerous, or may consist of comparatively few, according to the circumstances of the particular country. But in every civilized country it forms but a minority, and usually a small minority of the people in it. Yet their right to be intrusted with the ultimate control over the government and its officials will not be hard to see when we have considered two other suppositions. 1st, That of one man being the imposer, collector, and expender of taxes. 2nd, That while the property-holders pay the taxes, those who hold no property and pay no taxes, should impose them. Do not say that this is an impossible case. But it is certain to prove a ruinous arrangement. These imposers of the taxes have no motive for enforcing on the government economy and honesty in its expenditures. They may become interested in its extravagance, its dishonesty, and in the perversion of its powers. Is not this what has happened in the United States? 

The individual States originally had in their political organization this safe-guard against the extravagance, dishonesty, and perversion of their governments. We believe that in every one, certainly in nearly all of them the franchise was limited to the freeholder, a basis of political power wide enough to secure attention to the protection of the personal and social rights of every citizen, choice enough to secure that all who ultimately controlled the government and its officials, should have a direct interest in preserving that government from corruption, and the perversion of its powers. Accordingly these State governments were, for many years, efficient without becoming burdensome or corrupt.

Thus, when the privilege of voting and holding public office is limited to people who pay a minimum amount of direct taxes, governments are frugal and prudent. They are limited and kept within tight bounds. As a result, liberty is protected and flourishes. However, when suffrage is nearly universal as it is today, governments grow without bounds, taxes become exceedingly burdensome, debts explode to unpayable heights, and liberty fades.

Copyright © 2026 by Thomas Coley Allen

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A Letter: Freedom American Style

A Letter: Freedom American Style

Thomas Allen

[Editor’s note: The following is a letter written in 1989 to the editor of The Franklin Times.]

    I hope that the amendments cited in Miss Simmons’ article, “Freedom, Our Most Precious Heritage,” was a misprint by the newspaper, and not in her original paper. The correct so-called “civil rights” amendments are the 13th, 14th, and 15th, which were adopted during Reconstruction. The latter two are hardly amendments to cite as expanding freedom considering that they were adopted at the point of bayonets. Such an adoption process is certainly not the substance of civil rights. Also, the legality of the 14th Amendment is highly questionable. The 15th Amendment expanded the franchise to Blacks, not the 24th, which eliminated the payment of taxes as a qualification for voting. [Contrariwise, the payment of a minimum direct tax should be a qualification for voting to assure that the voter is invested in the government.]
    Miss Simmons is correct in claiming that freedom is our most important heritage. However, she makes the common mistake of confusing freedom with voting. After all, the people in the Soviet Union voted. Only a true socialist would claim that they were free. Even the United States show that voting is no guarantor of freedom. The history of voting in the United States shows just the opposite. Freedom has declined as more people have been allowed to vote.
    If anyone doubts that freedom has been lost as more people have been given the vote, let him try to do the following:
    –    teach his children at home without doing it the way that the government approves,
    –    not support government institutions (public schools) that indoctrinate children with an ideology with which he disagrees,
    –    keep children without governmental approval,
    –    will his estate to his child if he never marries a person of a different race,
    –    divide his land among his children as he desires,
    –    use his land contrary to some governmental land use scheme (which has the effect of taking property without compensation),
    –    establish a scholarship fund for White Protestant males,
    –    buy a pistol without the government’s permission,
    –    carry a pistol in his pocket without governmental permission,
    –    put a mobile home on a lot in most towns,
    –    transport large sums of money out of the country without reporting it to the government,
    –    keep his financial affairs private,
    –    apportion representation in a State legislature on some basis other than representation of districts of equal population,
    –    make a living as a barber or doctor without the blessing of a government license,
    –    agree to work for someone for less than a governmentally fixed minimum wage,
    –    operate a business without one or more governmental licenses and permits,
    –    plant and sell more tobacco or wheat than some government bureaucrat allots,
    –    spend the 50 percent, which is five times more than God asks, of his income that the government taxes in the way that he thinks it should be spent.
And the list goes on ad infinitum. [This list was compiled in 1989. Today, the situation is even worse. For example, refusing to bake a cake for a homosexual “wedding” or having fewer rights than a common criminal when flying on a commercial airliner.]
    Our pre-civil rights amendment ancestors, with the obvious exception of slaves, enjoyed these and many more freedoms that we no longer have. As the history of the United States so adequately demonstrates, voting does not guarantee freedom. It does, however, show that after the privilege of voting extends beyond a certain point, it is extended at the cost of freedom. Freedom is no more secure in a democracy than it is in an autocracy or oligarchy.
    Freedom without the right to vote is infinitely preferable to the right to vote without freedom. Freedom is our most precious heritage, as Miss Simmons states, not voting.

Copyright © 1989, 2021 by Thomas C. Allen.

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A Letter: South Africa

A Letter: South Africa

Thomas Allen

[Editor’s note: The following is a letter written in 1986 responding to an article by Ms. Frances Kendall in Reason magazine.]

    The solution to South Africa's problem offered by Frances Kendall is interesting. If implemented, I would be surprised that her solution would work without some significant changes. Based on the information in her article, her solution contains several major flaws.
    First, she recommends drawing cantonal boundaries without regard to tribal or racial boundaries. Thus, she proposes to commit the same error that has been committed in the rest of Africa. The colonial powers drew political boundaries with little regard to tribal or ethnic boundaries. When they withdrew, the colonial boundaries remained. The result of this disregard for tribal and ethnic boundaries has led to oppression and bloodshed all over Africa. This has happened in spite of the constitutions that most of these countries have which guarantee all sorts of rights for the people. There is no reason to believe that South Africa would be any different. Besides, most Swiss cantons are racially, ethnically, and culturally homogeneous. The German-Swiss and French-Swiss have much more in common than do the Zulu and Xhosa, who are traditional enemies. They certainly have much more in common than these two tribes have with the Afrikaner.
    Another flaw is the erroneous belief that a bill of rights is compatible with democracy. A bill of rights is as antidemocratic as a true monarchy. In a democracy the majority rules. The will of the majority must prevail if democracy is to live. The purpose of a bill of rights is to limit the political power of the rulers, which in a democracy is the majority. But if the power of the majority is limited, i.e., the majority cannot change the bill of rights at its whim, then some sort of minority rule exists. Where a minority rules, a democracy cannot exist.
    Another flaw is the absurd idea that the antidiscrimination provisions of the constitution would be used only against the central and cantonal governments, but not against private companies, associations, and individuals. One needs only to look at the Second Reconstruction of the South in the United States to see how ridiculous this concept is. During the Second Reconstruction of the South, antidiscrimination laws have been aimed as much at, or perhaps even more so, the private sector as they have been aimed at the State and local governments. There is no reason to believe that the Black rulers of South Africa would allow Whites even in a totally White canton to refuse to sell, rent, or provide services to a Black who enters or tries to enter that canton.
    She also proposes to allow communists and other terrorists to participate in formulating a new government for South Africa. Unless she desires despotic socialism, which she seems to abhor, allowing communists to participate is highly questionable. Although there may be one, I know of no instance in the third world where communists have been allowed to participate in formulating a government without the communists or at least despotic socialists eventually ruling.
    In her article, she offers no method to keep the central government from becoming more powerful by usurping the rights and powers of the cantonal governments and the people as the central government has done in the United States and, to a lesser degree perhaps, in Switzerland. Most likely, the usurpation would occur more quickly and more completely in South Africa for at least two reasons. First, there is no tradition of independent cantonal government. Second, her solution seems to require the central government to antedate or be created simultaneously with the cantonal governments; thus, the cantonal governments will appear to be creations of the central government.
    The only difference between her solution and the predictions of the prophets of doom is the method by which the Afrikaner will perish and the amount of time involved. If war comes as the prophets of doom predict, the Afrikaner may perish. But he will die like a man fighting for his race, culture, and homeland. (Oh, if only the rest of the West had this courage!) If her solution is implemented, the Afrikaner will surely perish. But he will die like a wimp as he is bred out of existence. (To die like wimps seems to be the insatiable desire of the West, not only for the Afrikaner, but for all that is European in race and culture.)
    There is, I believe, a better solution to the South Africa problem than the cantonal solution offered by Kendall, and that is, what I would term, the States’ rights’ solution, which, unlike her cantonal solution, requires true decentralization and dispersal of political power.
    First, the boundaries of the cantons should be drawn along tribal, ethnic, racial, cultural lines. This would ensure that the inhabitants of a given canton would have a common language, tradition, culture, heritage, etc. It would greatly reduce internal conflict within a canton.
    Next, instead of adopting a democratic form of government for the central and cantonal governments where rule is by the will of the majority, a republican form of government where rule is by law and where each important political faction and segment of society can be guaranteed some degree of representation should be adopted. The principle of “one man, one vote” should be abandoned. Representation should be proportioned primarily on the basis of the tax base and not on the basis of population. Voting should be weighted in accordance with the amount of taxes paid. The more taxes a person pays, the more votes he should have. This is the market concept of the more wealth a person has, the more “votes” he has in the market, applied to the political process.
    Perhaps the reason that Switzerland is among the freest of countries is that it was one of the last (maybe the last) in the non-Islamic world to grant suffrage to women. In the United States, the rapid acceleration in the growth of government and the decline of liberty began within a decade after women gained the “right” to vote. With few, if any, exceptions, as the franchise has expanded, the government has grown and liberty has declined. With political equality, democracy, has come economic equality, socialism. If liberty is one of Kendall’s objectives, democracy is not the panacea that she believes it to be. As John Randolph of Roanoke proclaimed “I am an aristocrat. I love liberty; I hate equality.” In other words, one can have liberty; one can have equality; one can have neither; but one can never have both.
    Perhaps the most important principle that needs adopting is Calhoun’s doctrine of concurrent majority. Under this principle, each canton would have the right and power to veto acts of the central government, as far as that canton is concerned, that are, in the opinion of the canton, unconstitutional or unduly infringe upon the rights of the canton and its citizens. This principle could be applied at the cantonal level where important segments of society could have the power to veto acts of the canton as far as the acts apply to that segment. Likewise, each canton should possess the ultimate veto and have the right to secede without molestation or armed conflict.
    To protect the cantons from the central government and to preserve their rights and the rights of their citizens, the cantonal governments should have control of a significant part of the armed forces.
    The plan proposed by Kendall probably will not solve South Africa’s problems. It will surely not save the Afrikaner. The plan that I have briefly outlined above may not solve South Africa’s problems either. However, it does offer the Afrikaner a much better chance of surviving. (I am convinced that the West will accept no solution short of turning South Africa into a Soviet colony with a Black-led puppet government.)
    As an unreconstructed Southerner, my sympathy and empathy are with the Afrikaner. I believe that Western civilization may well live or die with him. Just as the South stood against the world and fought and died for all the nobleness of Western civilization 125 years ago, so today does the Afrikaner. I wish him victory.

Copyright © 1986 by Thomas C. Allen.

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A Letter: Comparison of Secession of the Baltic States to the Southern States

A Letter: Comparison of Secession of the Baltic States to the Southern States

Thomas Allen

[Editor’s note: The following is a letter written in 1990 responding to Mr. Howard Ruff about an article that he wrote for his newsletter, “The Ruff Times.”]

    In your speech for Bush to give Gorbachev, your analogy with the Southern States fighting for freedom and independence fails on all points. Gorbachev is correct. He is analogous to Lincoln. The Soviet Union is analogous to the United States. The Baltic States are analogous to the Southern States.
    True, South Carolina voluntarily entered the Union. It had the right under the Tenth Amendment to voluntarily leave the Union. Nowhere did (and nowhere does) the United States Constitution deny a State the right to secede. Moreover, both Virginia and New York entered the Union on the expressed condition that they could leave it at will. Until 1861, almost every political scientist and political philosopher in America believed that a State had the legal right to secede freely in peace.
    True, South Carolina did not subject its ordinance of secession to a plebiscite. Some Southern States did, although their plebiscite would not qualify under your criteria because they were undemocratic in that they did not allow women or Blacks to vote, but what State or country did allow women and Blacks to vote in the mid-nineteenth century? South Carolina’s secession convention was popularly elected to consider secession as were all the other secession conventions in the other Southern States. Even without a plebiscite, the support, sacrifice, and loyalty shown by a majority of the woman and Blacks of the South for the cause of Southern independence showed that secession did have popular support even among the disfranchised.
    If denying women and Blacks the right to vote is to deny legitimacy to political action, then the action undertaken by Lincoln and the North would have to be illegal because neither woman nor Blacks were allowed to vote for or against Lincoln or other Northern political leaders. In fact, following your theory that secession is illegal unless supported by a plebiscite in which women and Blacks are allowed to vote, the founding of the United States was (and remains) illegal and unacceptable. The secession of the colonies from Great Britain was not supported by any plebiscite. Not only were women and Blacks not allowed to vote on the question, but neither were white male property owners. To follow your democratic argument to its logical conclusion, everything that the United States did politically before 1920 was illegal because women did not have the right to vote.
    False, Lincoln did not wage war to end slavery. Midway through the war when ending slavery became politically expedient, he did issue his Emancipation Proclamation. However, not only did he not have any legal authority to issue the proclamation, he did not free a single slave with it. His proclamation proclaimed freedom to slaves in areas under the control of the Confederate army while excluding slaves in areas under the control of the Union army.
    Lincoln opposed secession by the Southern States for many of the same reasons that Gorbachev opposes secession by the Baltic States.  Both lusted for power and empire. Still, more important, both wanted the wealth of the seceding States. Lincoln said that he did not care if the Southern States seceded if the United States continued to collect the taxes (tariffs).
    The modern Baltic States came into being in 1917/1918 when they seceded, with the help of Germany, from the Russian Empire just like the Southern Confederation came into being when several Southern States seceded from the United States and then formed the Confederate States of America. During World War II, Russia conquered her lost provinces of the Baltic States and reincorporated them into the Soviet Union just like the United States conquered the Southern States and reincorporated them into the United States. After 1940, the Baltic States became conquered territories just like the Southern States after in 1865. The Baltic States had less of a legal right to secede in 1917-1918 than the Southern States had in 1860-1861. The Baltic States have just as much or just as little right to secede as the Southern States have today.
    If the United States were to support the Baltic States, they would have to admit, if they were at least slightly honest, that they were wrong in subjugating the Southern States in 1861–1865. The Southern States had (and still have) just as much right to leave the United States as the Baltic States have to leave the Soviet Union.
    Another reason that the United States offer no support to the Baltic States is quid pro quo. Russia supported the United States in their suppression of Southern independence. Now the United States can return the favor by supporting the Soviet Union in its suppression of Baltic independence.
    Perhaps the most important reason that the United States refuse to support the Baltic States drive for independence is that the official foreign policy of the United States has been since World War I, and still is, to support and expand communism and the Soviet Empire at all cost to freedom. [With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States have replaced their support of the Soviet Union with support of China and have made China an industrial giant.]
    The United States should show the Soviet Union and the rest of the world by example how to treat secession. They should let the Southern States create a free and independent confederation of free and independent Southern State and let them go in peace and friendship. Then the Soviet Union could learn how to let go of the Baltic States. All that the United States have shown the Soviet Union and the rest of the world is how to stifle freedom and independence by stifling secession. [As events turned out, the reverse is true. The Soviet Union allowed the Baltic States to secede in peace and friendship. Thus, it gave the United States the example to follow in the treatment of seceding States. Will the United States learn from the now-defunct Soviet Union about the proper treatment of secession?]
    Gorbachev is correct in claiming that he is acting like Lincoln. The argument that he is not acting like Lincoln is an untenable, unconvincing, and invalid argument. To admit that Lincoln was a despot and his suppression of Southern independence was tyrannical and to argue that when Gorbachev emulates Lincoln, he is nothing more than a despot copying Lincoln’s tyrannical methods, is much more tenable, cogent, and valid.

Copyright © 1990, 2019 by Thomas C. Allen.

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Mencken on Disproportional Representation

Mencken on Disproportional Representation

Thomas Allen

    In 1926, H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) wrote Notes on Democracy in which he expressed his views on democracy and related issues. He was a journalist, satirist, and critic and a libertarian and one of the leaders of the Old Right. In his book, he describes disproportional representation, pages 97-107. Below is an overview of his discussion on disproportional representation; my comments are in brackets.
    Disproportional representation “is intimately bound up with this question of disfranchised classes, for it must be plain that a community whose votes, man for man, count for only half as much as the votes of another community is one in which half of the citizens are, to every practical intent, unable to vote at all.” An example is the U.S. Senate. Regardless of population, each State has two Senators and no more. Moreover, the votes of Senators from States with small populations are the same as States with large populations. [Some democrats have proposed proportioning Senators among the States based on population. With no Constitutional authority, the U.S. Supreme Court imposed its democratic desires on the States by requiring them to proportion the legislative districts of both houses based on population. Before that ukase, most States proportioned at least one house of their legislature based on nonpopulation considerations. Also, before the Supreme Court ruling, rural areas and urban areas had approximate equality in State legislatures. After the ruling, rural areas lost their equality as urban areas gain control of both houses in most State legislatures.] Mencken comments on this issue of disproportional representation in State legislatures.
    To overcome disproportional representation, “certain romantic fuglemen of so-called pure democracy . . . [came] forward with complicated remedies, all of which have been tried somewhere or other and failed miserably.” Mencken notes “that disproportional representation is not a device to nullify democracy, but simply a device to make it more workable.” Thus, in the United States, “the sovereign people have voluntarily sacrificed a moiety of the democratic theory in order to attain to a safer and more efficient practice.” [In a true republic, the majority lacks the power that Mencken describes. In a true republic, absolute political power resides in no individual or body — not even the largest majority. Checks and vetoes always exist to everyone’s and every group’s power.] If they so desire, they could get rid of all disproportional representation. [Lacking the patience to allow the people to change their disproportional representation systems in the States, the U.S. Supreme Court usurped their power and did it for them. Obviously, the Supreme Court did not trust the people with this decision for fear that the people would not abolish disproportional representation.]
    Most people prefer disproportional representation because of a “wish to counterbalance an advantage lying in the very nature of things.” It “is not a wish to give one voter an advantage over another.” [Apparently, the U.S. Supreme Court believed otherwise. Based on its philosophy of “one man, one vote,” it swept away disproportional representation of the State legislatures.] Mencken explains that urban areas have a natural advantage over rural areas. The proximity of people in urban areas enables them to form opinions more quickly and uniformly and to maintain a solid front than people in rural areas, who are spread out more. Thus, people in urban areas “show all of the characters of men in a compact mob, and the voters of the rural regions, dispersed and largely inarticulate, cannot hope to prevail against them by ordinary means. So the yokels are given disproportionally heavy representation by way of make-weight: it enables them to withstand the city stampede.” In spite of disproportional representation, “the majority under democracy remains the majority, whatever laws and constitutions may say to the contrary, and when its blood is up it can get anything it wants.”
    Mencken remarks, “Most of the so-called constitutional checks, in fact, have yielded, at one time or other, to its pressure. No one familiar with the history of the Supreme Court, for example, need be told that its vast and singular power to curb legislation has always been exercised with one eye on the election returns.” Early Supreme Court decisions have been “completely reversed afterwards, as the second thought of the plain people has differed from their first thought. This responsiveness to the shifts of popular opinion and passion is not alone due to the fact that the personnel of the court, owing to the high incidence of senile deterioration among its members, is constantly changing, and that the President and the Senators, in filling vacancies, are bound as practical politicians to consider the doctrines that happen to be fashionable in the cross-roads grocery stores and barbers’ shops. It is also due, and in no small measure, to the fact that the learned and puissant justices are, in the main, practical politicians themselves, and hence used to keeping their ears close to the grass roots.” [Thus, the United States have the “rule of men” and not the “rule of law,” which exists independent of even the largest majority.]
    Mencken writes, “In boom times, indeed, democracy is always very impatient of what used to be called natural rights. The typical democrat is quite willing to exchange any of the theoretical boons of freedom for something that he can use.” Continuing, Mencken adds, “In most cases, perhaps, he is averse to selling his vote for cash in hand, but that is mainly because the price offered is usually too low. He will sell it very willingly for a good job or for some advantage in his business. Offering him such bribes, in fact, is the chief occupation of all political parties under democracy, and of all professional politicians.” [The welfare state has given the politician another avenue of offering legal bribes at the taxpayers’ expense.]
    Whether ideal or not, democracy “works, and the people are actually sovereign.” The system works: “Any conceivable change in the laws could be effected without tampering with the fundamental scheme.” Therefore, the “inferior American [is hostile] to the thing called direct action — the darling of his equals in most other countries. He is against it, not merely because he is a coward and distrusts liberty, but also, and maybe mainly, because he believes that revolution, in the United States, is unnecessary — that any reform advocated by a respectable majority, or even by a determined minority, may be achieved peacefully and by constitutional means. In this belief he is right. The American people, keeping strictly within the Constitution, could do anything that the most soaring fancy suggested. They could, by a simple amendment of that hoary scripture, expropriate all the private property in the land, or they could expropriate parts of it and leave the rest in private hands; they have already, in fact, by tariff juggling, by Prohibition and by other devices, destroyed billions of dollars of property without compensation, and even without common politeness, and the Constitution still survives.” Mencken identifies many other things that the American people can do if they so willed. He provides a list of the horrendous actions that the sovereign people can lawfully do: “They could enfranchise aliens if they so desired, or children not taxed, or idiots, or the kine in the byres. They could disfranchise whole classes, e.g., metaphysicians or adulterers, or the entire population of given regions. [They disfranchised Southerners following the War for Southern Independence.] They have done such things. . . . Finally, they could, if they would, abandon the republican form of government altogether and set up a monarchy in place of it: during the late war [World War I] they actually did so in fact, though refraining from saying so frankly. They could do all of these things freely, and even legally, without departing in the slightest from the principles of their fundamental compact, and no exterior agency could make them do any of them unwillingly.” [Thus, they can make the likes of Stalin, Mao, Hitler, and Pol Pot look like saints.]
    Mencken adds, “The people, if they are actually sovereign, have a clear right to be wanton when the spirit moves them, and indifference to an issue is an expression of opinion about it. Thus . . . the masses are that part of the state which doesn’t know what it wants.” Next Mencken discusses what the people want: “What they want principally are safety and security. They want to be delivered from the bugaboos that ride them. They want to be soothed with mellifluous words. They want heroes to worship. They want the rough entertainment suitable to their simple minds. All of these things they want so badly that they are willing to sacrifice everything else in order to get them. . . .    The science of politics under democracy consists in trading with them, i.e., in hoodwinking and swindling them. In return for what they want, or for the mere appearance of what they want, they yield up what the politician wants, and what the enterprising minorities behind him want.” [Since 9-11, most people have wanted security. The powers behind the politicians, i.e., big money, the military-industrial complex, and the security complex, want ever-expanding wars and ever-expanding police state. In the name of security, the American people have received more wars and a growing police state. Thus, liberty dies under democracy.]

Copyright © 2017 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Mencken on the Popular Will

Mencken on the Popular Will

Thomas Allen

    In 1926, H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) wrote Notes on Democracy in which he expressed his views on democracy and related issues. He was a journalist, satirist, and critic and a libertarian and one of the leaders of the Old Right. In his book, he describes the popular will, pages 85-97. Below is an overview of his discussion of the popular will; my comments are in brackets.
    No distinction can be made between representative democracy and pure democracy in practice with the “constant conflicts between what is assumed to be the popular will and the self-interest of small but articulate and efficient groups, and that theoretical variety which would liberate and energize the popular will completely. The latter must remain purely theoretical for all time.” Moreover, an energized and liberated popular will is unlikely to change the “main outlines of the democratic process.”
    “What is genuinely important is not that the will of mankind in the mass should be formulated and made effective at all times and in every case, but simply that means should be provided for ascertaining and executing it in capital cases — that there shall be no immovable impediment to its execution when, by some prodigy of nature, it takes a coherent and apposite form. If, over and beyond that, a sufficient sense of its immanent and imminent potency remains to make politicians walk a bit warily, if the threat always hangs in the air that under x circumstances and on y day it may be heard from suddenly and devastatingly, then democracy is actually in being.” Mencken believes this is the case in the United States and Northwest Europe.
    Mencken notes that the people and the Pope checked the monarch’s power. If he oppressed his people too much, they could rise against him. Although a king, he was still “biologically only a man, with but one gullet to slit; and if the people were feeble or too craven to be dangerous, then there was always His Holiness of Rome to fear or other agents of the King of Kings; and if these ghostly mentors, too, were silent, then he had to reckon with his ministers, his courtiers, his soldiers, his doctors, and his women.” Thus, the power of the most despotic autocrat is limited. [Stalin probably died at the hands of his doctors while he was planning another purge. Hitler’s generals almost assassinated him.] Mencken remarks that the “Merovingian kings were certainly absolute, if absolutism has ever existed outside the dreams of historians; nevertheless, . . . their sovereignty was gradually undermined by the mayors of the palace, and finally taken from them altogether.” Likewise, the emperor of Japan “succumbed to the shoguns, who succumbed in their turn to a combination of territorial nobles and city capitalists.”
    Mencken comments “that the common people, under such a democracy as that which now prevails in the United States, are more completely sovereign in fact as well as in law, than any of these ancient despots. They may be seduced and enchained by a great variety of prehensile soothsayers, just as Henry VIII was seduced and enchained by his wives, but, like Henry again, they are quite free to throw off their chains whenever they please, and to chop off the heads of their seducers.” They can throw off their chains merely by “intimidating Congress, which never fails to leap when their growl is palpably in earnest. And if Congress stood out against them, they could do it anyhow, under protection of the jury system. The executioners, once acquitted, could not be molested more, save by illegal processes.” [Nearly all the common people underestimate the power that they have as a juror. A juror is accountable to no one — not the judge, the Supreme Court of the State or the United States, and certainly not the governor or president. If a juror finds that a law is repugnant or that it is being used unlawfully, he merely finds the accused not guilty — and if he has the courage, no power on earth can legally or lawfully force him to change his mind.]
    Next, Mencken comments on a paradox of democracy. Democrats often argue that democracy is incomplete if certain classes of people are not allowed to vote. Mencken remarks, “To argue thus is to argue against democracy itself, for if the majority has not the right to decide what qualifications shall be necessary to participate in its sovereignty, then it has no sovereignty at all.” Usually, the disfranchised class “is not actively eager, as a whole, for the ballot, and that its lack of interest in the matter is at least presumptive evidence of its general political incompetence.” Democracy came into existence by being “forced upon its beneficiaries by a small group of visionaries, all of them standing outside the class benefited.”
    As an example, Mencken uses giving women the vote. “The great masses of women in all countries were indifferent to the boon, and there was a considerable body that was cynically hostile. Perhaps a majority of the more ardent suffragists belonged biologically to neither sex.” He continues, “Giving women the ballot . . . has brought in none of the great reforms promised by the suffragists. It has substituted adultery for drunkenness as the principal divertissement at political conventions, but it has accomplished little else.” Moreover, “[t]he majority of women, when they vote at all, seem to vote unwillingly and without clear purpose; they are, perhaps, relatively too intelligent to have any faith in purely political remedies for the sorrows of the world. The minorities that show partisan keenness are chiefly made up of fat women with inattentive husbands; they are victimized easily by the male politicians, especially those who dress well, and are thus swallowed up by the great parties and lose all separate effectiveness. . . . The extension of the franchise has not changed the general nature of the political clown-show in the slightest. Campaigns are still made upon the same old issues, and offices go to the same old mountebanks, with a few Jezebels added to the corps to give it refinement.” [Little has changed since Mencken wrote this. What change that has occurred has been mostly for the worse. Often fear and security sells slightly better to women than to men, but probably not enough to make any real difference.]
    Mencken adds, “There is little reason for believing that the extension of the franchise to the classes that still remain in the dark would make government more delicately responsive to the general will. Such classes, as a matter of fact, are now so few and so small in numbers in all of the Western nations that they may be very conveniently disregarded.”
    Next, Mencken discusses the Black voter. Blacks who are actually disfranchised “may remove their disability by the simple device of moving away, as, in fact, hundreds of thousands have done. Their disfranchisement is thus not intrinsic and complete, but merely a function of their residence.” [For most Blacks that meant moving North since most Blacks lived in the South. However, the Yankee did not want them to move North; they wanted them to stay in their place.] Moreover, “the theory of the fundamental law is that the coloured folk may and do vote. This theory they could convert into a fact at any time by determined mass action.” [This was done in the 1960s through the fronts of the Communist party as part of the Second Reconstruction, when the United States again reminded the Southern States that they were merely conquered provinces of the United States.] If Blacks were not willing to fight for the vote, they did not deserve it. Not fighting for the vote, “convicts them of unfitness for citizenship in a democratic state, for the loftiest of all the rights of the citizen, by the democratic dogma, is that of the franchise, and whoever is not willing to fight for it, even at the cost of his last drop of gore, is surely not likely to exercise it with a proper sense of consecration after getting it.”
    No one argues that democracy in the United States is destroyed when millions of White citizens who are eligible to vote fail to do so. “The difference between these negligent whites and the disfranchised Negroes is only superficial.” For example, he writes, “In New York City thousands of freeborn Caucasians surrender it in order to avoid jury duty; in the South thousands of Negroes surrender it in order to avoid having their homes burned and their heads broken. The two motives are fundamentally identical; in each case the potential voter values his peace and security more than he values the boon for which the Fathers bled. He certainly has a right to choose.” [If one wants to avoid jury duty, he can accomplish that without giving up his vote. He merely lets the judge or prosecutor know that he believes in jury nullification. That belief will get him removed from the jury pool. However, this tactic may not work for civil suits as the violation of a law is usually not involved.]

Copyright © 2017 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Biblical Principles of a Quality Leader

 Biblical Principles of a Quality Leader

 Thomas Allen

    America and the rest of the Western world have been cursed with incompetent, treacherous, unscrupulous, unprincipled, despotic and even traitorous scoundrels as leaders for much of the twentieth century. Such leaders have not only dominated government, but they have also dominated business, labor, entertainment, religion, and education. They have become the Establishment of the Western world. Why is it that good men seldom achieve important or powerful leadership positions? The answer is that the basic Biblical principles for a leader are being violated.

    The Bible provides basic principles that must be followed if acceptable quality leaders are to be obtained. A nation is to “provide out of all the people [of that nation] able men, such as fear Yahweh, men of truth, hating covetousness” (Exodus 18:21). The nation is told not to “set a Stranger over thee, which is not thy brother” (Deuteronomy 17:15). (Nation means a people having a common origin, i.e., of the same race, language, and tradition and capable of forming or constituting a nation-state.) A good leader must meet these basic qualifications. The people should not accept or allow leaders who fail to meet them to rule over them in government, business, labor, religion, education, or any other organization. In the United States, the people have elected a president who violates every one of these principles.

    “Able men” means the ability to govern the people according to the laws of God as revealed in the Bible. Anyone who does not oppose such sins as abortion, adultery, and sodomy does not govern according to God’s law and is not an able man. Anyone who deliberately deceives the people, as do most politicians, by promising what they know that they cannot deliver, such as ever-expanding entitlement programs, is a liar and not fit for office. Likewise, those who tell the voters what they want to hear to get their votes, but who governs or votes consistently contrary to his campaign promises, is a liar and not fit for office.

    Not only has the President (Clinton was president when this was written; it is also applicable to those who followed him) not opposed abortion or sodomy, he has used the power of his office to advance them. Not only has he failed to condemn adultery, he has a reputation for being a practicing adulterer. He has promised ever-expanding entitlement programs and has used such promises as a vote-buying scheme. He campaigns as a new moderate Democrat but advocates old-time liberal Democratic programs.

    “Such as fear Yahweh” means reverential trust in God, the Father of Jesus. Hence, only Christians are qualified to rule over Christians. John describes the type of person who fears God: “Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son. Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father: (but) he that acknowledgeth the Son hath the Father also.” (1 John 2:22-23). “Whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God. He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son. If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed: For he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds” (2 John 9-11). Thus, a Christian, one who possesses reverential trust in God, acknowledges Jesus as his Lord and Savior (2 Peter 1:11, 1 John 4:14) and as the only begotten Son of God (John 3:18). He strives to live by the teachings of Jesus.

    If the President fears God, he has done a good job of concealing the fact. His actions of supporting abortion (even partial-birth abortion, which is virtually infanticide) and catering to homosexuals are contrary to the teaching of Jesus. Based on his actions, he is not fit to govern Christians.

    “Men of truth” means an honest, truthful person. When he speaks, he speaks frankly. He “tells it like it is.” He does not use evasive double talk. The positions he takes are on the side of truth, i.e., according to God’s law.

    As pointed out above, the President is not a man of truth. (Some people believe that he is incapable of knowing the difference between the truth and a lie.) Again he fails to meet God’s criteria for a good leader.

    “Hating covetousness” means despising covetousness, greed, and envy. It means, “Honest men who scorn unjust profits.” — Moffatt. It means, “Honest men, with an aversion to improper gain.” — Smith and Goodspeed. Anyone who preaches covetousness or envy to gain office does not hate covetousness. Anyone who promises to use or does use the public treasury to gain office does not hate covetousness. Such people are not fit for leadership positions.

    The President certainly does not hate covetousness. He adores covetousness and envy. They are the backbone of his campaign and policies. He does not shy from using the public treasury to buy votes.

    Most conservatives would agree that a high-quality leader must be an able man (although many would fear or abhor using God’s law to decide who is an able man), a man of truth, and a hater of covetousness. However, rare is the conservative who would include reverential trust in God. Even rarer still are conservatives who claim that this God in whom reverential trust is placed is the Father of Jesus, so great is their fear of being accused of anti-Semitism. As small as this number is, it towers over the minuscule number of conservatives who would openly support the fifth principle: Only Whites should rule Whites. They possess an immeasurable and uncontrollable fear of being called a racist. To be politically correct is better than to be scripturally correct.

    “Not a stranger” means “not of another race.” Stranger means a person of foreign extraction, i.e., a person of a different race. It does not mean a foreigner in the sense of a person who is a citizen or subject of a foreign country who is visiting or temporarily residing in this country. It refers to a person residing permanently in this country who is of a different race, i.e., for the United States, a non-White. For Whites to be ruled by non-Whites is a curse and results from violating God’s laws: “But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of Yahweh thy God, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which I command thee this day; that all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee: The stranger that is within thee shall get up above thee very high; and thou shalt come down very low. . . . he shall be the head, and thou shalt be the tail.” (Deuteronomy 28:15,43,44). Any White person who sacrifices the interest and welfare of his race to that of an alien race violates this principle. He is a traitor and his rule is worse than that of an alien, who at least remains loyal to his own race.

    The current President follows the path blazed by every president since Hoover of scarifying the White race to the non-White races. Prime examples are the various “civil right” laws and affirmative action programs. No one who would sacrifice his own race for the benefit of another race should be allowed to rule.

    A White Christian should never vote for or support anyone who does not meet these five criteria. He should only vote for or support candidates for public office who show the ability to govern people according to God’s law. who are Christians (they have shown their Christianity by their deeds, but they do not boast about their deeds), who are honest and truthful and openly stand for the truth as taught by the Bible, who abhor covetousness, greed, envy, and vote buying, especially with the public treasury, and who is White and does not betray the White race. A White Christian should not vote for or support the lesser of evils. To do so is to support and promote evil. If his only choice is between “the lesser of two evils,” he should abstain. (Perhaps this explains the decline in voter turnout. When the voters are offered the choice between the lesser of evils, why bother to vote? The result will only be evil. Abstaining is better.)

    The violation of these five basic criteria by those in leadership explains the decline of America and the rest of the Western world. It explains the moral and spiritual decay. It explains why although parties and leaders change not much else changes. Civilization continues to decline. Only when enough of God’s people cease supporting leaders who do not abide by these five basic principles will things improve. Only then will people who do abide by them will rise to a position of leadership.

Copyright © 1999 by Thomas Coley Allen. 

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