{"id":21038,"date":"2024-11-04T08:05:34","date_gmt":"2024-11-04T13:05:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=21038"},"modified":"2024-11-04T08:52:14","modified_gmt":"2024-11-04T13:52:14","slug":"the-will-of-the-people-post-election-horror-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2024\/11\/04\/the-will-of-the-people-post-election-horror-show\/","title":{"rendered":"The \u201cWill of the People\u201d Post-Election Horror Show"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The \u201cWill of the People\u201d Post-Election Horror Show<\/strong><\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

By James Bovard<\/p>\n

On the morning after elections, many voters wake up and instinctively quote Dorothy Parker: \u201cWhat fresh hell is this?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWill of the people!\u201d is the correct answer \u2013 at least if a Democrat won the election. \u00a0Actually, the notion that election results represent the \u201cwill of the people\u201d is one of the most audacious triumphs of democratic propaganda.<\/p>\n

Ever since the Civil War era, presidents have periodically invoked \u201cwill of the people\u201d to sanctify their own power. \u00a0President Andrew Johnson declared in 1867 that \u201cthe appointing power\u201d – i.e., himself – \u201crepresents the collective majesty and speaks the will of the people.\u201d Johnson’s \u201cmajesty\u201d took a wallop two months later when he was impeached by the House of Representatives.\u00a0 Johnson, a notorious drunkard, barely survived a Senate vote that would have ended his reign.<\/p>\n

Almost a century ago, President Calvin Coolidge rolled out religious buncombe to consecrate the worship of vote counts. \u00a0In a 1926 speech on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, President Calvin Coolidge added God’s ballot to the election returns, declaring,\u00a0 \u201cWe hold that the duly authorized expression of the will of the people has a divine sanction.\u201d Unfortunately, God forgot to tell Coolidge to run for re-election.<\/p>\n

Franklin Roosevelt was perhaps the first president to invoke \u201cthe will of the people\u201d to sanctify every power grab. In a 1937 fireside chat, he denounced the Supreme Court for thwarting \u201cthe will of the people\u201d – which FDR supposedly incarnated because he had been re-elected the previous year.\u00a0 The court had struck down several New Deal laws as unconstitutional in part because they vested vast arbitrary power in federal bureaucrats. FDR sought to pack the Supreme Court with appointees to rubberstamp his policies, sparking a backlash that hobbled him until he pulled the nation into World War Two.<\/p>\n

FDR also bastardized \u201cwill of the people\u201d to sanctify tyranny by American allies.\u00a0 At the 1945 Yalta Conference, FDR co-signed a communique with Josef Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill that \u201cpledged to the earliest possible establishment through free elections of governments responsive to the will of the people\u201d in the former Axis nations and liberated countries of Europe.\u00a0 The secret deals cut at Yalta guaranteed that a hundred million lives in eastern and central Europe would be blighted by the Soviet boot.<\/p>\n

Invoking the \u201cwill of the people\u201d is the Washington version of elevator music.\u00a0<\/strong> In 2015, an Obama White House webpage declared, \u201cOur government provides online resources to help you learn more about how it works to enact the will of the people of the United States.\u201d The page listed links to a dozen other federal sites, including one not slavishly devoted to popular approval – the Central Intelligence Agency.<\/p>\n

In a December 2020 speech after being certified the winner of the presidential election, Joe Biden invoked \u201cwill of the people\u201d four times, proclaiming that \u201cthe will of the people prevailed<\/a>\u201d in the 2020 election. But where was the \u201cwill of the people\u201d discovered? At the bottom of an unmanned mystery ballot\u00a0<\/strong>drop box in Kenosha, Wisconsin<\/a>? The 2020 version of \u201cVox Populi, Vox Dei\u201d\u2019 is being deduced simply from the sum total of pieces of paper with a blot near Biden\u2019s name that happened to mysteriously turn up in a government bin or mailing address within a few days after the election.<\/p>\n

The January 6, 2021 Capitol Clash quickly became permanently linked to crimes against the Will of the People.\u00a0 In his 2021 inaugural address, Biden castigated<\/a> \u201ca riotous mob [that] thought they could use violence to silence the will of the people.\u201d But politicians invoked that same mob to justify silencing protesters for miles around the inauguration.\u00a0 Biden invoked the will of the people for a ceremony in which all Americans except a handful of political poohbahs were excluded.<\/strong>\u00a0 Biden prattled about his popular mandate while surrounded by barbed wire and thousands of National Guard troops.<\/p>\n

After Biden\u2019s victory, the Washington elite talked as if there was practically a Holy Ghost of Democracy hovering above the Oval Office.\u00a0<\/strong> Many of the pundits who echoed Biden\u2019s or Harris\u2019s \u201cwill of the people\u201d invocations are also champions of Leviathan<\/a>. They hail \u201cdemocratic\u201d processes that enabled politicians to capture nearly unlimited government power to impose policies favored by the elite. Unquestioning submission has always been the most important commandment of the Beltway version of \u201ccivic religion.\u201d \u00a0\u201cDemocracy requires faith<\/a>,\u201d declared Washington Post<\/em> columnist Eugene Robinson, who yelped \u201cGod Bless the \u2018Deep State\u2019<\/a>\u201d a couple years earlier during the first Trump impeachment.<\/p>\n

Biden continued to milk \u201cwill of the people\u201d for all it was worth. In an August 26, 2022 Maryland campaign rally, Biden scoffed that \u201cMAGA Republicans\u2026 refuse to accept the will of the people. They embrace \u2014 embrace \u2014 political violence. They don\u2019t believe in democracy.\u201d Biden also denounced them for \u201csemi-fascism.\u201d A few days earlier, Biden had sent a small army of heavily-armed FBI agents to raid Donald Trump\u2019s Mar-a-Lago home, searching for government documents that Trump allegedly wrongfully possessed. The Biden administration and its allies used every smarmy lawfare trick in the book to seek to jail Trump to prevent him from running for re-election.<\/p>\n

Shortly after the 2022 mid-term congressional elections, Biden tweeted, \u201cThe recent elections made an emphatic statement that in America, the will of the people prevails.\u201d But was it the will of Millennials and Gen-Z voters to be bamboozled by Team Biden and the Democratic Party? <\/strong>Hopes for a red wave of Republican victories on Election Day were shattered by the 28% advantage that voters<\/a> in the 18-29 age group delivered to Democratic candidates. Legions of young voters were energized to vote Democratic by Biden\u2019s August 24, 2022 announcement that he was forgiving up to $20,000 of student debt per person; federal courts nullified that handout shortly after Election Day. Briahna Joy Gray, Bernie Sanders\u2019 2020 press secretary, believed that Team Biden intentionally betrayed young people with a bailout \u201cknowing it wasn\u2019t going anywhere [because] they relied on faulty legal<\/a> authority.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a 2023 White House speech on the second anniversary of the Capitol Clash, Biden wailed that \u201ca violent mob of insurrectionists\u2026vandalized sacred halls<\/a>,\u201d seeking to \u201coverthrow the will of the people and usurp the peaceful transfer of power.\u201d By that point, federal judges had struck down an armload of Biden\u2019s policies for trampling federal law or the Constitution, including his illegal Covid vaccine mandate for 84 million American adults.<\/p>\n

Vice President Kamala Harris followed Biden\u2019s rhetorical footsteps. In January 2022, Harris demanded Congress enact a bill to effectively permanently outlaw traditional precautions against election fraud: \u201cMake no mistake: There is nothing normal about laws that prevent the American people from exercising their constitutional right to vote. Two landmark voting rights bills sit before the Senate. The Senate must act to protect the will of the people<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a teleprompter speech near the White House last week, Harris denounced Donald Trump as \u201cthe person who stood in this very spot nearly four years ago and sent an armed mob to the Capital to overturn the will of the people<\/a> in fair and free election that he knew he lost.”\u00a0 But that mob was unarmed compared to the heavily-armed police forces on Capitol Hill.\u00a0 Harris also perennially lied about several police being killed that day; the only person killed was pro-Trump protestor Ashli Babbitt, shot at point-blank range by a cop who the media turned into a hero.<\/p>\n

In a television interview, Harris declared, “I cannot imagine any scenario where I would ever try to upend or undo the will of<\/a> the American people.” Asked about election result challenges, she replied, \u201cI mean we’ve got a lot of lawyers.”\u00a0 Harris did not divulge how lawyers became the ultimate guardians of the will of the people.\u00a0 Nor did Harris reveal why it was the \u201cwill of the people\u201d that she refused to answer almost any questions in press conferences or interviews about how she would use the vast power she sought to capture.<\/p>\n

Exalting \u201cthe will of the people\u201d\u00a0 is another sign of American democracy\u2019s downward spiral.<\/strong> The Founding Fathers designed the Constitution to perpetually trump periodic vote counts and leash every winning politician. At the time of the American Revolution, elections were viewed as tools to defend against rulers\u2014kings, ministers, or any other petty tyrant. Law professor John Phillip Reid observed, \u201cEighteenth-century representation was primarily an institution of restraint<\/a> on governmental power.\u201d\u00a0 Presidential candidates in the early 1800s competed by fervently pledging fealty to the Constitution. \u00a0But nowadays, rather than serving as leashes, elections are propellants.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The \u201cwill of the people\u201d encourages the delusion that ballots have magical powers to constrain politicians in the subsequent year<\/strong>s. Americans are encouraged to believe that their vote on Election Day somehow guarantees that the subsequent ten thousand actions by the president, Congress, and federal agencies will embody their wishes, spoken or otherwise, known or unknown. In reality, the more edicts the feds issue, the less likely that the decrees will have any connection to popular preferences. Political campaign promises are even less legally binding than a Tinder tryst\u2019s pledge to stay in touch.<\/p>\n

The \u201cwill of the people\u201d is often simply a measure of how many people fell for which campaign lies, how many people were frightened by which campaign ads, and which red herrings worked on which target audiences. Rather than the \u201cwill of the people,\u201d election results are often only a snapshot of transient mass delusions.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWill of the people\u201d provides pre-absolution for any abuse of power by a winning politician. It is a political flag of convenience for aspiring despots of every creed and party.\u00a0 It is a deference-inducing phrase to make people think \u201cyou are doing it to yourselves.\u201d\u00a0 Ironically, politicians never discover that the \u201cwill of the people\u201d ordains that they should have less power over everyone else.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWill of the people\u201d is one of those intellectual circus-shell games in which freedom almost always loses. \u00a0Pious prattle aside, \u201cconsent or be shot\u201d is still the prevailing notion of democracy in Washington.<\/strong><\/p>\n

If Kamala Harris wins on Tuesday, Americans will endlessly be told they must submit because her decrees are the incarnation of the \u201cwill of the people.\u201d And if Trump wins, Americans will be hectored about their duty to resist Hitler. The only certainty is that cynics will win either way.<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The \u201cWill of the People\u201d Post-Election Horror Show By James Bovard On the morning after elections, many voters wake up and instinctively quote Dorothy Parker: \u201cWhat fresh hell is this?\u201d \u201cWill of the people!\u201d is the correct answer \u2013 at least if a Democrat won the election. \u00a0Actually, the notion that election results represent the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21039,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2028,4415,801,2124,3402,1693,2935,2249,987,52,753,4416,4414,236,750,504,202,2652,4413,2021,27,910,3388,833,4412,2746],"class_list":["post-21038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-andrew-johnson","tag-ballot-drp-box-yalta","tag-bernie-sanders","tag-biden","tag-briahna-joy-gray","tag-calvin-coolidge","tag-capitol-clash","tag-churchill","tag-deep-state","tag-democracy","tag-donald-trump","tag-dorothy-parker","tag-eugene-robinson","tag-fdr","tag-founding-fathers","tag-franklin-roosevelt","tag-fraud","tag-january-6","tag-john-philip-reid","tag-kamala-harris","tag-lying","tag-stalin","tag-student-loans","tag-washington-post","tag-will-of-the-peope","tag-wisconsin"],"yoast_head":"\nThe \u201cWill of the People\u201d Post-Election Horror Show - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\""Will of the People" is one of the most common and most fraudulent invocations by politicians nowadays\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2024\/11\/04\/the-will-of-the-people-post-election-horror-show\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The \u201cWill of the People\u201d Post-Election Horror Show - James Bovard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\""Will of the People" is one of the most common and most fraudulent invocations by politicians nowadays\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2024\/11\/04\/the-will-of-the-people-post-election-horror-show\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"James Bovard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jim.bovard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2024-11-04T13:05:34+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2024-11-04T13:52:14+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/JPB-libertarian-institute-art-work-by-them-Will-of-the-People-Depositphotos_417575394_S.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1000\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"667\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jim\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@jimbovard\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Jim\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"9 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/2024\\\/11\\\/04\\\/the-will-of-the-people-post-election-horror-show\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/2024\\\/11\\\/04\\\/the-will-of-the-people-post-election-horror-show\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Jim\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/79550830ad81c14be529a2c37469974f\"},\"headline\":\"The \u201cWill of the People\u201d Post-Election Horror Show\",\"datePublished\":\"2024-11-04T13:05:34+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2024-11-04T13:52:14+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/2024\\\/11\\\/04\\\/the-will-of-the-people-post-election-horror-show\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":1737,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/2024\\\/11\\\/04\\\/the-will-of-the-people-post-election-horror-show\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2024\\\/11\\\/JPB-libertarian-institute-art-work-by-them-Will-of-the-People-Depositphotos_417575394_S.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Andrew Johnson\",\"ballot drp box. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \\\"the roving inspector general of the modern state\\\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \\\"one-man truth squad.\\\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \\\"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\\\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. 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