Libertarians and The Volcanic Horror of Majority Rule

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D.J. Tice

I sometimes wish I was a better person. But kind of like the famous Pacino line from “Godfather III” things just keep pulling me back in … to my dark, snarky place where a fundamental weakness of character allows me to be amused by the frustration and rage of others.

Like, for example, Minnesota’s Republicans fuming over all the insane legislation “triumphalist” Democrats have “rammed down our throats” this session, which ends today, thankfully for them. (IMHO) Exhibit “A” of their frustration came to my attention on the letters page of the Star Tribune yesterday. Here were a handful of clearly literate readers objecting to a column by the paper’s Op-Ed eminence grise, Doug Tice, a week earlier.

Having missed that one I dialed it up and began reading … and laughing. Now Doug is not a bad guy. In fact, a couple hundred years ago he was once my editor. But he’s very much of the old school, board room libertarian vein of cultural perspective. It’s a peculiar, rarefied academy of people who affect an above the fray, apart-from-the-madding crowd stance that is highly dependent on sustaining the status quo.

So, in a piece titled, “National Popular Vote would be popular folly” Doug commits a cardinal sin for status quo libertarians … he lets you see him sweat. This popular vote thing has set off his smoke alarms.

The topic is something I’ve written about before and one I seriously doubt more than 5% of the general public has ever heard of … the National Popular Vote Compact. At its essence its a means by which, after 247 years of “democracy” the United States would finally elect Presidents by … wait for it … the expressed will of the majority. In other words, this “folly” would neuter the Electoral College, by which if you’ve been paying attention lately, we got George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and the Iraq war followed soon thereafter by the Donald Trump hellscape of incompetence, fraud and insurrection.

Never minding that the United States is a, um, somewhat different place than it was in 1787 when the Electoral College was adapted to protect the rights of all those … landed, primarily white male … farmers, Tice launches his piece with the line about “triumphalist DFLers running the show” here in otherwise common-sense Minnesota and sustains a steady slide of frustration from there on out.

Among my favorites in the “letting them see you sweat” category are cracks about:

… “a scheme to alter the US Constitution” (echoes of Sam Alito on that one),

… DFLers “indulging nearly every iconoclastic impulse” and engaging in “volcanic progressivism”, (or put another way, “delivering what they told voters they would do”/elections matter)

… the Compact being “a fashionable liberal enthusiasm,” (a bit like conservatives reaching back to 16th century Europe to fortify an “originalist” interpretation of said Constitution)

… and how under this crazy, volcanic scheme the Compact would “introduce unprecedented instability and uncertainty into America’s basic political process” … unlike say the Supreme Court stepping in to hand the election to a guy by a partisan-line one-vote margin, or 70,000 votes across six states delivering unto us and the beloved Constitution a reality TV jackass who later suggested voiding that same Constitution to remain power … after coming up seven million short in the popular vote?

Common sense says you gotta preserve that kind of stability.

Tice goes on at great lengths to describe scenarios where, gasp! candidates might campaign hardest in places with … the most voters … and how Minnesota (and by extension, Wyoming and Kansas and Oklahoma) might not get as much attention as say, (insert hissing noises) California and New York.

As I say, knowing Doug a bit and following this Compact idea and the horror it inspires in conservatives who are well aware of their precarious hold on to minority rule in this country, I kept shaking my head and laughing. The candidate with the most votes wins? Insane! The (exclusively white, property-owning male) Fathers would never have agreed to such a thing!

In the end — for this session anyway — volcanic DFLers have delivered on dozens of promises they’ve made to Minnesota voters for decades, but until 2023 have been thwarted by Republicans. A crew who, if you look close, are currently operating with few if any credible policy goals — other than status-quo preserving obstruction.

But libertarians, with their dog-earred copies of Ayn Rand still tucked into their pilling cardigan pockets can take heart a while longer … the “real insurrection” of majority rule in the form of the National Popular Vote Compact needs several more state legislatures before it would take effect.

5 thoughts on “Libertarians and The Volcanic Horror of Majority Rule”

  1. … “a scheme to alter the US Constitution” (echoes of Sam Alito on that one)…

    The US Constitution has been altered (amended) 27 times so far, so any “originalist” arguments can be simply dismissed out of hand.

    This one time, an Amendment was both enacted and later repealed by a follow-up Amendment (my 9th grader tells me that their teacher totally skipped over this in Civics class, presumably because they’re all under age 21).

    This precedent means that even the 2nd Amendment can be amended.

  2. Thank goodness for still having the will to mine those dark, snarky places and for not allowing questionable theses to go unchallenged.

  3. Mr. Tice has had a peculiar reverence for the Electoral College for decades; I would like to show you the file I’ve accumulated on that. Tice has been courteous to me, altho rejecting most of what I submit. He’s got a few ideological pets, like Stephen Young and Chuck Chalberg, who get published more often, and in Young’s case, far beyond the 700-word limit on op-ed submissions. Mr.Young’s latest diatribe concocts a “stab-in-the-back” accusation against Henry Kissinger, of all people, and makes the indignant assertion that the USA lost the Vietnam War only because Kissinger sold out our otherwise-conquering military and our loyal colonial allies, and furthermore, HK even double-crossed that paragon of civic virtue and anti-communist integrity, Richard Nixon. So now it can be told! As for the electoral college, the great George Norris tried to abolish it; and that was also the first thing Hubert Humphrey attempted when he first entered the Senate in 1949; Herblock lampooned it as did other great 20th century editorial cartoonists; more proposed amendments to abolish the electoral college have been introduced than on any other subject; it never has worked as intended. The 12th, 20th, 22nd, and 25th Amendments have been adopted to clarify and better manage Presidential elections, terms of office, and succession questions—obviously, the Founders’ craftsmanship with respect to the Chief Executive hasn’t withstood the tests of time and the real forces of political history. Behind, or beneath, the pretended but farcical intellectual rationalization for the electoral college lurk the arrogant assumptions of aristocratic entitlement to govern their “inferiors,” jostling with the selfish, chauvinist sentiments of the old Know-Nothing Party, and the racism and xenophobia which made the KKK so phenomenally popular 100 years ago.

  5. Been cogitating on libertarians as elitists, which I think they really are, and wondering why the identity. I think it is because they think they are special (elite) because they were able to make it through at least one entire Ayn Rand book. And, of course, most libertarians have read them all, multiple times. Ugghhh.

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