Notes: The Monday Taki post is up. This week is a post about the natural coercion that takes place in any democratic system. Sunday Thoughts is up behind the green door, covering some news items of the day. SubscribeStar and Substack.

It has become trite to point out that the lovers of democracy have a one way relationship with it. When the results of an election are favorable to the ruling class, they praise democracy. When the results are something other than what the rulers wanted, then you can no longer trust the process. The United States has spent the last six years torn between these two competing forces. The 2016 election was rigged while the 2020 election was the most bizarrely pure result ever.

We are about to get another dose of this in Europe as elections go the wrong way for the people who actually run Europe. In Sweden, the normally passive Swedes decided to send a very mild message to their ruling class by giving a bunch of votes to the Swedish Democrats. This allowed a moderate coalition to form up and depose the Social Democrats, which has been the ruling party for decades. For the usual suspects, this means snow Hitler is around the corner.

An honest assessment of the Swedish election would start with why it has taken so long for the Swedes to push back against the system. Decades of immigration have turned Sweden into the rape capital of Europe. Large swaths of Swedish cities have become no-go zones thanks to the migrants. The city of Malmo has become famous for its problem with grenade attacks. Rival gangs of migrants use their skills learned at home to turn the once peaceful city into a war zone.

At least some of the Swedes have decided that they can risk being called bad things in order to send a message. For this to happen, however, the Swedish Democrats had to drop all of their tough talk and position themselves as reformed heretics who will only gently rock the boat a tiny bit. It is a good reminder that whoever controls the moral framework, controls the moral consensus. In order to participate in democracy, you must submit to the moral consensus.

This past weekend, the Italians did the unthinkable and elected a female as the next leader of the country. Before the election, the unelected president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, warned the Italians that she has a particular set of skills and is not afraid to use them if they vote the wrong way. The Italians being Italian were happy to give her the now famous solute and vote for a block of right-of-center parties in Sunday’s elections.

Giorgia Meloni, head of the Brothers of Italy party, will be the next prime minister, as her party received about 25% of the vote. Salvini’s League and Berlusconi’s Forza Italia will give the coalition a majority of seats in both chambers. The Brothers of Italy managed just four percent of the vote in the prior election and has been viewed as a fringe party with little impact on Italian politics. Suddenly, their pro-family and anti-immigration message is resonating with Italians.

Of course, the usual suspects have branded Meloni a fascist. You see, anyone who falls outside the moral consensus is a fascist. To her credit, this has not had to desired effect on Meloni’s rhetoric. Her victory speech was refreshingly moral. “Yes to natural families, no to the LGBT lobby, yes to sexual identity, no to gender ideology, yes to the culture of life, no to the abyss of death, no to the violence of Islam, yes to safer borders, no to mass immigration, yes to work for our people”

The same people who tell Europeans they must heat their homes with candles and get used to cold showers in the name of democracy in Ukraine, will now set to work undermining these two democracies. The Swedish Democrats have been accused of apostacy with regards to Russia. Silvio Berlusconi has been accused of being a Putin ally by the usual suspects. It is not hard to see where this is going. If you vote the wrong way, you are on the side of Russia.

Getting back to Ursula von der Leyen, you can be sure she will start pressing the new governments to pray at the feet of the moral consensus. Her primary weapon is financial, which she is now using against Hungary. The voters there support Viktor Orbán, who is no fan of men in dresses chasing girls in public toilets. The EU has thus declared that Hungary is not really democratic, despite their democracy. This means the EU will not begin withholding tens of billions in money.

All of this should be familiar to Americans. Voters sent a message to the ruling class in 2016 when they put Donald Trump in the White House. The message was received and the ruling class has been making war on those voters ever since. In a democracy, a legitimate result is one that pleases the permanent ruling elite. Anything that even questions the elite moral consensus is a threat to our democracy. The Swedes and Italians are about to learn this lesson.

The reality of Western democracy is that it is a weird form of colonialism where the rulers demand regular affirmation from the ruled. The point of elections is for the people to thank their rulers for their service. The rulers are naturally offended when the voters fail to hold up their end of the bargain. The social compact in Western democracy is that the ruling class commands and the voters obey. Anything else is a threat to our democracy and requires any means necessary to thwart it.

This is why elections have had no impact on policy in America. This exhaustive study from 2014 makes plain that voting means nothing. “Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.” As the saying goes, there is no voting your way out of the problems of democracy.

It is not all bad news. The continued support for Trump in America and now the elections in Europe suggest the people are slowly beginning to slip free from the tentacles of the imposed moral consensus. Even the normally passive Swedes are starting to look their masters in the eye and ask, “who says?” If enough people begin to wake up from the nightmare of liberal democracy, they may begin to break free from the underlying morality of it.

What the West will need to save itself is not bureaucrats promising to worship a system, but leaders who understand it is not how, but who. It is not how decisions are made, but who makes them. For Italy to regain itself, it must be Italians who make the decisions, not Brussels bureaucrats. For America to reclaim its nature, it must be Americans making the decisions, not an alien managerial elite. The demon of democracy is it leads people to forget this basic reality of life.

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