March 2007

Democracy or Liberty

This article, or we call it a "column" by Walter E. Williams, professor at George Mason University in Washington, D.C. came out on Wednesday, February 28, 2007. It's interesting to see that DEMOCRACY and LIBERTY are not the same thing:

Does democracy really deserve the praise it receives? According to Webster's Dictionary, democracy is defined as "government by the people; especially: rule of the majority." What's so great about majority rule? Let's look at majority rule, as a decision-making tool, and ask how many of our choices we would like settled by what a majority likes.

Would you want the kind of car that you own to be decided through a democratic process, or would you prefer purchasing any car you please? Ask that same question about decisions such as where you live, what clothes you purchase, what food you eat, what entertainment you enjoy and what wines you drink. I'm sure that if anyone suggested that these choices be subject to a democratic process, you'd deem it tyranny.

I'm not alone in seeing democracy as a variant of tyranny. James Madison, the father of our Constitution, said that in a pure democracy, "there is nothing to check the inducement to sacrifice the weaker party or the obnoxious individual." At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Edmund Randolph said, "...that in tracing these evils to their origin every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy." John Adams said, "Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." Chief Justice John Marshall observed, "Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos."

Our founders intended for us to have a limited republican form of government where rights precede government and there is rule of law. Citizens, as well as government officials, are accountable to the same laws. Government intervenes in civil society only to protect its citizens against force and fraud but does not intervene in the cases of peaceable, voluntary exchange. By contrast, in a democracy, the majority rules either directly or through its elected representatives. The law is whatever the government deems it to be. Rights may be granted or taken away.

Clearly, we need government, and that means there must be collective decision-making. Alert to the dangers of majority rule, the Constitution's framers inserted several anti-majority rules. In order to amend the Constitution, it requires a two-thirds vote of both Houses, or two-thirds of state legislatures, to propose an amendment, and requires three-fourths of state legislatures for ratification. Election of the president is not done by a majority popular vote but by the Electoral College.

Part of the reason for having two houses of Congress is that it places an obstacle to majority rule. Fifty-one senators can block the wishes of 435 representatives and 49 senators. The Constitution gives the president a veto to thwart the power of 535 members of Congress. It takes two-thirds of both houses of Congress to override the president's veto.

In Federalist Paper No. 10, James Madison wrote, "Measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority." That's another way of saying that one of the primary dangers of majority rule is that it confers an aura of legitimacy and respectability on acts that would otherwise be deemed tyrannical. Liberty and democracy are not synonymous and could actually be opposites.

Dr. Williams serves on the faculty of George Mason University as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics and is the author of More Liberty Means Less Government: Our Founders Knew This Well.

I Love You ....

Love needs to be EXPRESSED, especially in marriage relationships.

From the newspaper this articles comes from Tokyo:

Aging Japanese husbands struggle to breathe life back into their marriages:

Mitsutoshi Fukatsu has been with his wife for three decades, but their lives have grown apart. As a busy stationmaster in central Japan, he has usually come home only to eat, bathe and sleep.

Now with retirement looming, the 56-year-old wants to get to know his wife better. He started calling her by her name, Setsuko, instead of just grunting. And he says he recently learned a new phrase: "I Love You."

Fukatsu is among a small but growing group of men who took part in Japan's second annual "Beloved Wives Day" last week in hopes of salvaging their marriages by doing something different -- paying attention to their wives.

"For about a year now, I've been starting to help out with the housework," Fukatsu said. "I can't stay at my company forever. I have to return home. But right now, I don't feel like I have a place there."

Last year, the Japan Adoring Husbands Association set itself up and designated January 31 as a day for men to return home at the unusually early hour of 8 p.m., look into their wives' eyes and say, "Thank you."

The movement is small--about 230 people posted messages on the group's Web page about this year's event. But it represents quite a change for a generation of Japanese men taught to care about their companies first and their wives a distant second.

Among the forces driving the change are demographics and money. This year, the first postwar baby boomers will reach 60 and retire, meaning an unprecedented number of men will have to abandon their home-away-from-home -- the all-consuming office -- and spend more time with their wives.

Meanwhile, an impending law change gives a housewife a bigger share of her husband's pension, which could trigger a surge in divorces as long-neglected women take the money and run. (Japan's divorce rate is relatively low but the numjer has increased more than 60% from 1985 to 2005. Divorce among those married for more than 20 years has grown the fastest, nearly doubling since 1985, with separation more likely to be initiated by women. That leaves their ex-husbands to face a lonely old age in a country where the average malelifespan is over 78, one of the world's longest.

Sadao Ito, 67, wishes he had been more sensitive to his wife's feelings. She left him seven years ago, just as he was facing retirement from a busy office job in the northern city of Sendai. Even the couple's daughter and two sons blame him for the breakup, Ito said.

"My wife took care of me so well. She made me breakfast every day, and did all the housework. But I never did anything in return," he said. Ito now acts as a volunteer advisor to the Adoring Husbands Association.

"Repent, repent, repent. That what I do every day," Ito said. "My wife didn't take a single family album with her. I realized then that I had driven her away."

Tsumagoi is marketing itself as a romantic destination for married couples. Last year, it invited couples to an event called "Shout Your Love from the Middle of a Cabbage Patch" -- where husbands took turns hollering romantic messages in Tsumagoi's wide open fields. About 100 people came.

That was where the stationmaster finally told his wife, "Aishiteru" (I love you) -- rehearsing it 20 times.

"I had never told Setsuko I love her -- not like that. But now I want to say it more often...It feels nice," he said.