FERGUSON, MISSOURI: THE UNEXAMINED EVIL

"A mob is no less a mob because they are with you."..........John Adams

We now have a name for what happened in Missouri; we call it,"The Ferguson Riots." We saw the riots in our living rooms. They came to us in living, violent, technicolor as people ran wild, burning, stealing, and effectively shutting down an American city and terrorizing its men, women, and children night after night. It reminded us again that a mob has no morality.

Property and business owners who had absolutely nothing to do with anyone or any organization involved in the grand jury's decision lost their means of making a living and spent many a terrified night while the riots defiled the streets of an American city. Some business owners stood in front of their property trying to defend it with guns, clubs, and in at least one case, their bare hands.

GET ME OUTTA HERE!

The authorities delayed the announcement of the decision of the grand jury until late in the day to make sure school children were safe at home in the face of what everyone knew would come. I know a bit about how the kids must have felt--I was once in an airport in Yugoslavia, watching the live news coverage of a riot in progress. I turned to a person sitting next to me and asked, "Where's that happening?" (The broadcast wasn't in English, so I had no idea.)

She said, "Here, outside." I chose to stay inside the cozy confines of the airport and pray for a fast plane to the USA.

A NEWSPAPER NUGGET

The television brought us the "Ferguson Riots," but a newspaper brought us something more soul-searching, something more profound, a nugget of intellectual food. During the course of the destructive, mindless rampage of groupthink, one of the rioters yelled, "This is democracy!"

Wait a minute. A mob bent on destroying everything in sight (except what it carts home as loot for the night) is democracy? Has the rioter lost his mind?

As I thought further about whether or not he'd lost his mind, I don't think he had. Why? Because that's what's they've taught us in our educational system, false though it be. They've taught us that the majority rules. 51% decides everything. The people have spoken in the streets.

DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY

I wonder if the rioter realizes that, if we were a democracy, the following men would never have been president: Lincoln in his first election, Woodrow Wilson in both elections, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Nixon in his first election, and Bill Clinton in both his elections. I wonder if he realizes why, in  18 elections, a candidate who got less than 50% of the vote became president. Of course he doesn't.

The Founders of America made it so that only the House of Representatives would be elected by a direct vote of the people. The President wouldn't be; the Supreme Court justices wouldn't be, and the members of the Senate wouldn't be. (The direct election of U. S. Senators came later in American history.)

Our Founders had a healthy distrust of democracy because mobs are its logical outcome. In a less dramatic example of mobocracy in a democracy, 51% of those who don't pay taxes could vote a tax increase on the 49% who do. Karl Marx said, "Democracy is the road to socialism." The reason he said that is because "Voting wealth out of the pockets of those who have it is socialism. Democracy is a system where the masses, those with less money than the minority group that has great wealth, vote for politicians who offer to take money from the wealthy minority and redistribute it to them in return for giving the politician their votes." ("Mises Daily," Nov. 7, 2011) To say it another way, according to the most famous quote about democracy: "Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner." But what people don't realize is that there should be no vote on "what's for dinner." In a democracy, there is such a vote.

Winston Churchill put it this way: “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”


And that's why our Founding Fathers didn't mold a democracy. They knew that democracy brought with it mobocracy and they knew it from their study of ancient history, in particular the old Greeks and Romans.

HOLD THE PHONE

Yet, thousands and thousands of churches insist on democracy as their way of doing things and the same evils and chaos accrue as we saw in the Ferguson riots, only not as violent. Characters are assassinated, rumors are circulated, and distrust abounds in a church ruled by the democrats (small "d").

The churches codify democracy into their constitutions and by-laws and wonder why they're having such constant turmoil, confusion, and one argument after another. Democracy, whether in the church or in the state, brings voting blocks, the taking of sides, secret meetings, the enlisting people to join the church so as to get their vote on the upcoming burning issue that's roiling in the church cauldron.

Groups within the church hold secret meetings to plot their next strategic move, they view the sheep  as votes for or against the upcoming motion. Constitutions are quoted or ignored, by-laws upheld or shoved aside as the various sides jockey for power. Democratic business meetings degenerate into accusations, name-calling, yelling and screaming, all "in the name of the Lord."

NERVOUS NELLIES

Prior to a controversial vote, the sheep suffer from sleepless nights, headaches, and gastronomic problems. As the meeting begins, the sheep may laugh at times, but it's a nervous laughter because the sheep are scared; they're wondering who's going to say what, who's going to leave angry, who's going to storm out of the meeting and slam what doors in the process. If the congregation is to vote at a meeting after the Sunday morning service, the most useless hour of the day is the time of the church service--no one is listening to the sermon because the meeting is getting closer and closer.

And then, when the meeting is over and the floor has been littered with bodies, when the next Sunday rolls around, everyone acts as if nothing has happened. But something has happened. A Ferguson, Missouri, has happened right there in their auditorium. The church is sick. Sadly, the sheep await the next business meeting when it will happen again. They don't know what's causing it (democracy) and they don't know how to meet without it.

The Bible never condones democracy for the church; we've imported it into the body of Christ. God's will is no more up for a vote than was the golden calf. Democracy is sacrosanct in the church. It is the unexamined evil.