Hong Kong’s current “Umbrella
Revolution” is a vibrant protest movement led by
young people who are demanding more political freedom. The movement was begun
by a group called Occupy Central With Love & Peace, which is led by Hong
Kong University law professor Benny Tai. The movement earned its nickname in
honor of the umbrellas that its members carry as a way of repelling pepper
spray that government officers have employed against protesters. What the
members of the “Umbrella Revolution” want is democracy. They seek the ability
to nominate and directly elect the leader of Hong Kong—known as the Chief
Executive. As it currently stands, candidates for Hong Kong’s Chief Executive
must be vetted by a group of “tycoons, oligarchs and pro-Beijing
figures.”
It seems inevitable that the “Umbrella Movement” will be put down by
Beijing. There are frightening indications
that China may declare martial law in Hong Kong and use the military to crush
the protest movement. If history is any indication, the “Umbrella Movement” may
be ended in a violent manner as were the protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
Hong Kong’s current Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying justifies the
practice of collectivist oligarchs choosing Hong Kong’s leaders. He argues that
the democratic reform proposed by the “Umbrella Movement” is unacceptable
because it would give poorer residents a dominant voice in politics. Leung
claims that the current anti-democratic political process in Hong Kong will
“insulate Hong Kong’s next chief executive from popular pressure to create a
welfare state and allow the government to implement more business-friendly
policies to address economic inequality.”
Does Leung’s point have any validity at all? John Adams coined the
phrase “tyranny of the majority,” which Alexis de Tocqueville later popularized
in his book Democracy in America. The genius of
the American form of Constitutional Republic is that it prevents tyranny of the
majority by which 51% of voters would have the power to do whatever they wished
to the remaining 49%. It has often been said:
“A democracy can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote
themselves largess from the public treasury.” Would poor Hong Kong citizens
inevitably force their elected leaders to turn the famously free market city
into a welfare state?
The interesting thing is that there is a tension between Hong Kong’s
free market economics and Beijing’s totalitarianism. Creating a collectivist
welfare state in which a large percentage of the population is dependent on the
central government for bread and circuses is one of the most efficient ways to
ensure that the government will retain and increase its power. Hong Kong’s free
market economic policies are likely to eventually further increase affluence
and create a populace that is less dependent on government, and hence less
afraid to stand up to it.
Tyranny of the majority and the populist desire of the poor for a
welfare state are only dangers when there is not a Constitution that protects
the nation from such things. The American welfare state was not created until
the Supreme Court stopped enforcing the letter of the Constitution. Fear of
economic tyranny of the impoverished majority is not a valid excuse for Hong
Kong to deny its citizens democratic reform. Leung is defending one form of
Collectivism in which a group of corporatist and governmental
“philosopher-kings” dominate the people. The bogeyman that Leung fearmongers
against is a communist one in which a 21st century Marxist “philosopher-king”
version of Mao and his or her cronies will dominate the people in the name of
the people. What Hong Kong needs to do is defend free markets and the economic
rule of law while granting even greater democratic reforms and social freedoms
to its people. Freedom and the fair enforcement of the rule of law in defense
of natural rights to life, liberty, and property is the recipe for affluence.
Oligarchy will always eventually stifle wealth and impoverish the people as it
did in China and North Korea.
(For a much more detailed discussion of how Individualism and freedom
lead to affluence while Collectivism leads to poverty, read my new book The Real Culture War: Individualism
vs. Collectivism & How Bill O’Reilly Got It All Wrong. Available
now on Amazon
in both print
and Kindle.)
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