Author Terry Pratchett got it right when he said, “The intelligence of that creature known as a crowd is the square root of the number of people in it.” Milling crowds, with their noisy rhetoric and shallow thinking, do not produce Pulitzer prize winners or Nobel laureates. To the contrary, crowds hunt down and destroy great souls who think independently of the crowd’s ideology.
Crowds stifle creativity, originality and the quest for truth and authenticity. Crowds are averse to any thought or action that does not reinforce their existing biases. Crowds begin dumb and only become dumber.
For all the talk of individuality in American society original thinkers are hard to find. Crowds tend to establish and monitor the boundaries of acceptable public discourse and jealously control the realm of what is allowable thinking. Crowd-think limits perspectives, and if a great soul dare climb a newly discovered ledge from which to seek a different perspective, he is promptly pushed from his perch. The footing of an original thinker is never sure.
This mindset is not a recent development in America. Nineteenth-century French critic Alexis de Tocqueville in his evaluation of the recently formed United States observed, “I do not know any country where, in general, less independence of mind and genuine freedom of discussion reign than in America.” Apparently there existed an 1800s eqivalent of Americans chanting “USA! USA!” long before our present-day, synchronized hordes at professional sporting events.
“We the people” was often little more than the dangerous crowd. The wisest of the founding fathers recognized this and sought to incorporate into the American political system a check on the people. Two of those checks were a U S. Senate elected by state legislatures, not the people, and the electoral college. “The people” began directly electing senators with ratification of the 17th amendment in 1913. Most recently the mob has called for replacing the electoral college with the popular vote, a move that would further empower the tyrannical majority and threaten to eliminate the check of a calm, deliberate minority viewpoint.
We should be slow to remove any check on simple majorities. “The nuclear option” was never a good idea but will be Harry Reid’s enduring legacy. Mobs must be resisted, whether in the Senate or in the streets.
Why? Because, for “The people”, it’s never about justice, regardless of their propganda about freedom and rights. The people are about power, an endless accumulation of power to socialist or nationalists ends. They take over institutions, appoint priests to proclaim sacred their collective dogma and marshal state powers to codify their views. The mob’s democratic declarations become the law and are given legitimacy through the sanction of religion and state. In such a social and political environment, the free thinker risks being marked a heretic or an outlaw should he speak truth that contradicts the legalized mob. It makes no difference if Christians or Islamists, socialists or nationalists, deliver the golden tablets to the state alter; freedom suffers.
Having gained control of the church/state apparatus, “the people” marshal the education system to indoctrinate its citizenry into acceptable, “normal” thinking. The parameters of sanity and morality are firmly established. The curriculum of normality instills in the people unquestioning obedience and a rush to the intellectual and moral mean. Our education system produces a society thar kills its prophets, silences its poets and frustrates its geniuses for the sake of sameness. Sameness is the highest value. They preach diversity, but do not be confused; it is sameness.
Normality is a disease, and mediocrity is its symptom. The military lowers its physical fitness bar to maintain its force. The Church abandons high tradition in order to fill its empty pews. Universities matriculate and graduate inadequate students in order to ensure a steady stream of tuition dollars. The new normal, like the crowd, becomes less intelligent, less fit, and less holy.
The political winds in America today are stirring up a familiar but dangerous call for more democracy on the left and populism on the right , toward placing greater trust in the people. I have been to Wal-Mart and witnessed zombie consumerism. I have flipped through the cable TV channels offered to please the decadent mass audiences. I am familiar with the movies that draw key demographics to the theaters. I have seen the people. They are the crowd, and they are growing dumber, less fit and less holy – less capable of selecting good government. Did I mention the mob wants to lower the voting age to 16? More democracy is not the answer. God save the electoral college.
Wherever a crowd is gathered, physical danger and spiritual disorder attend. The crowd gathers to be entertained and is easily bored. The crowd is looking for something to do, as if there is nothing worthy and beautiful to do in life without the titillation of television, live sports and social media. For no other reason than a cheap thrill, the crowd easily works itself into a frenzy. Screaming and chanting rioters raise pitchforks and torches and proceed to burn down entire neighborhoods and destroy lives. Judge Kavanaugh and Nick Sandmann are castigated, while Jussie Smollett becomes a hero of the people.
“Power to the people” drives intelligent, free thinkers underground, fleeing the wrath to come. Beware the crowd, always seeking a victim to justify its existence. That victim is likely you, if you have ever produced an independent thought. Stay clear of the crowd.
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