Vol. 10 - On Mob Rule
“The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.”
– Edmund Burke, former Member of Parliament of the United Kingdom
The dangers of dictatorship, supreme control by Parliament, and the nature of liberty have been well established in my past volumes of the Alexandrian Papers, however, in the last few days I’ve seen a new danger – one that demands my return to caution our great Kingdom from going beyond the point of no return and causing itself to collapse.
Throughout history, it is well-known that nations have faced existential threats from kings, dictators, foreign enemies, and even nature itself. Often, people come together to form something new – a democracy of some sort, such as those found in the United Kingdom, United States, Redmont, and Alexandria.
Nonetheless, when unbridled passion runs the show, nations begin to face a new threat: mob rule – also known as tyranny of the majority. When large groups act not through law, reason, logic, and deliberation – but through raw emotion, anger, passion, impulse, and populism – society descends into chaos.
Redmont has had its day of chaos – the entire Government shut down, the towns seceded from their nation, and an unorganized militia terrorized the streets. Alexandria must never follow suit, as the rule of the crowd is not the same as the rule of the people. A free nation, such as ours, is governed by the slow deliberation of our Parliament, the laws which have been passed, the Ministers which enforce them, and the Chancery and Magistrate’s Court which interpret our laws.
A mob recognizes no such powers. The mob seeks immediate satisfaction, immediate punishment, immediate responses, and immediate victory. It does not consider the implications of its actions, nor the matters of justice and truth.
The mob abandons individual responsibility, and plays into your innate desire to feel like you belong. One who might normally act with restraint and humility will find themself swept up in the passions of the crowd, committing great moral wrongs in the name of a perverted sense of justice.
When you allow reason to yield to emotion and judgement to yield to passions, the nation loses its spirit. History is filled with examples of mobs destroying property, silencing dissent, persecuting minorities, and demanding punishment without trial. The tyrannical majority asks not if something is just, but if it is popular.
A Kingdom founded upon law cannot allow public outrage to become a substitute for justice. Courts exist to determine guilt, not crowds. The Parliament exists to debate and implement policy, not mobs in the street. The law must remain sovereign, even when it is inconvenient or unpopular. To surrender government to the loudest voices is to replace order with chaos.
For this reason, Alexandria must also view strikes, like those we saw in Redmont, with caution. While citizens can and should voice their anger and petition their government to make changes, strikes easily become instruments of coercion rather than persuasion. When the Government strikes and essential industries cease operations, it is the everyday citizen who bears the burden, and whose way of life is endangered.
A strike seeks not just to convince others of an argument, but to impose costs until demands are met. When these dangerous groups gain the ability to halt transportation, production, hospitals, police, and other public services, they gain great influence not through reasoned debate but through their capacity to disrupt society itself.
It stokes division among citizens who would otherwise see themselves as members of a common national community. Strikes seek to divide the Kingdom into competing factions which seek advantage over others, rather than cooperating and improving the nation through a sense of mutual duty.
Let Alexandria remain a nation governed by principle rather than passion. Let her laws stand above the demands of any crowd. Let disputes be settled by reason rather than disruption, and justice by courts rather than mobs.
For liberty survives only where law governs all, and where neither king nor crowd is permitted to rule without restraint.
– Veritas