Every man and every body of men on earth, possesses the right of self-government. They receive it with their being from the hand of nature. Individuals exercise it by their single will, collections of men by that of their majority.
—Thomas Jefferson. Opinion on the Residence Bill, July 15, 1790.
The morality of democracy derives from the individual’s right to decide how to live his own life. This right, when the individual is living in a group, is exercised by participating equally in the making of collective decisions on questions which affect the group. However, demo-cracy has two major flaws:
- Dissenters are dragged along with the verdict of the majority.
- The more people in an electorate, the more theoretical, and less actual control the individual has over his own destiny.
The first flaw denies democracy any claim to be the standard by which the morality of laws can be judged. The second flaw means the larger the population and the more centralized the government, the greater its immorality. This ranks the current federal apparatus of the United States (Only to the grievous extent it oversteps the bounds of its necessary functions.), the European Union, and Communist China alongside the old Soviet Union in terms of morality.
