what's the reason some wealthy people oppose democracy?

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(clicky)is the reason some wealthy people oppose democracy deeper than we think?

from The Guardian-
“The advocacy arm of the Heritage Foundation, the powerful conservative think tank based in Washington, spent more than $5m on lobbying in 2021 as it worked to block federal voting rights legislation and advance an ambitious plan to spread its far-right agenda calling for aggressive voter suppression measures in battleground states.”

mildly paraphrasing from the article-
"William F. Buckley postulated that if the middle-class and minorities became too wealthy, they’d feel the safety and freedom to throw themselves actively into our political processes, as rich people had historically done. That expansion of democracy... would produce an absolute collapse of our nation’s social order — producing chaos, riots, and possibly even the end of the republic."
so there you have it, the modern right wing is basically opposed to "too much democracy." it's fine among themselves but not for the rest of us, we have to be kept in our place because in the words of Edmund Burke, to do otherwise is a "violation of the natural order of things."

No such thing as too much democracy.

This article does not offer any proof that the heritage foundation is trying to suppress voting rights. It tries rather elaborately to postulate a historical narrative of a conservative conspiracy against the voting rights of the working class and the middle class. But it doesn't explain how the heritage foundation is doing it in particular.

With the Google research I did it seems that the foundation is promoting regulations about voting integrity in order to fight voting fraud. And apparently very successfully, also with liberal politicians. It doesn't seem like a suppression of democracy to me.

Last edited by Dengashinobi on 20 Jan 2023, 8:54 am, edited 1 time in total.

Anything that "reeks of socialism," which "democracy" sometimes does from the viewpoint of some conservatives----is deemed worthy of scorn by these people.

I agree with that. Socialism is the Achilles heel of democracy. See what happened in Venezuela.

there was NO voting fraud in this past election, that has been documented ad nauseum. but there also has been well-documented attempts by the right wing to suppress voter turnout in neighborhoods full of people they don't like [POC and working class]. how would you explain laws making it illegal to give water to voters standing in long manufactured [by the state GOP] lines? what good could that possibly do other than to discourage democratic voters which is indeed [also well-documented] considered a good thing in GOP circles.

There were accusations by conservatives that there has been widespread elections fraud. There were documented instances but we don't know if it was widespread enough to have an impact on the outcome of the elections. I am sure conservatives cheat as well, as soon as they are given the opportunity. Hilary Clinton also accused the republicans for fraud when she lost the elections. That's why an increase in the security of the voting process is needed.

Why would not giving water to voters suppress their vote, can't they bring their own water? If they don't drink water they can't vote for some reason? And also why would it suppress only the democrat voters and not the conservative ones as well?

I'm NOT talking about Venezuela.

It's not a black and white situation.

You have people complaining about helping people who need help......and that giving people help when they have, say, lost their home in a fire, reeks of "socialism."

I've already stated, many times, my abhorrence to both abject socialism and abject fascism.

Just because a government might want to help the downtrodden----doesn't mean it's "socialism."

Socialism is NOT when the government does stuff.

It is when the workers own and control the means of production like factories and farms.

and the community as a whole, but doesn't that also bump a bit into the definition of communism, like communism is a further step? either way, i'm all for it. when i was in the army, we all recognized it was essentially communist in that the gov't owned us and everything else around us.

Communism is the same thing except it abolishes money and the state.

Socialism keeps them intact.

for the sake of democracy, the high and mighty need to be taken down several pegs.

You mean supporting totalitarism and oligarchy?
Protections and preserving status quo.

by keeping the rest of us under their thumb.

Thank you for reminding the thread of this. Often this is overlooked.

Within a democracy people are within their rights to vote for or to expand the state's social safety net.

Then socialism was never implemented. I don't recall any instance in history where this has happened