Modified guest commentary. The position of The Price of Liberty, under Mama Liberty and now the current proprietors, is unchanged. Democracy is an evil and degenerate successor to republics, and soon slide into mob rule and then tyranny (an autocracy of some type). We do not say that democracies are not tyrannical: it is still the old libertarian parable of the lamb and two wolves voting on what to eat for lunch.

Modern democracies have a very distinct engine driving corruption within them, and it’s not what you’d expect. There are many drivers of government corruption, of course, but this one empowers corruption in ways that others do not and cannot.

Democracies and democratic republics, (always just a slightly more tolerable flavor of evil government) especially now, involve professional politicians. An even greater evil than many alternatives.

And politicians, to put it very directly, are the winners of popularity contests. In fact, if we’re to be honest about it, modern elections might best be described as a type of beauty pageant, or a “popularity pageant.” Actually, it might be interesting to have a fancy Greek name for that, turning democracy into something corresponding to pageant-ocracy. (Rule by the most popular, the most personable!)

(So, does that turn your stomach like it does ours?)

Be that as it may, our modern rule-of-pageant-winners affects even the political parties which control the various contestants (by providing or denying the funding they need to win). The party overlords prefer winners to losers, after all. (Regardless of what these overlords, the men and women behind the curtain, want.)

This brings us to our core issue: It used to be that the candidates in an election were expected to impress voters with their sensible and practical plans. They words they used to do so were delivered to voters in print; usually via newspapers. Thus in written form, their arguments could be slowly and carefully dissected. Because of that, people discussed them in a good deal of depth, which kept the overall operation honest, at least in significant ways. (Well, almost honest. Don’t forget the media moguls we’ve had since, oh, Benjamin Franklin?)

With the advent of radio that form of examination began to decline, and with the triumph of television it began to vanish. TV’s soundbites are immediately followed by other soundbites, which are followed by still more, ad nauseum. (Again, the stomach rebels!) Anything deeper than a surface examination is, by this process, interrupted by the next ‘important story.’ Time for adult-level examination is unobtainable within the television experience. (Which, in turn, delays or even prevents adult-style reflection and decisionmaking.)

It is the loss of close examination that allows the winners of popularity contests to get away with an endless train of lies and tricks. And since politicians love their payoffs (nearly all of them leave office wealthy, while rather few enter wealthy), the granting of favors has grown into a very large operation, legal or otherwise. (See how it all intertwines?)

True, talk radio examines the arguments of candidates at length, but it has become polarized to the point of limited value: Many people tune in so they can cheer for their team and trash the other, as much as they do to be informed. Cheering the home team tears us away from even-handed analysis and trashing the opponent is worse.

All of this boils down to one core statement:

Corruption in modern democracies is driven by the fact that votes can be purchased… that money does actually buy votes.

Mind you, this buying of votes I refer to is not a party operative distributing goodies outside of a polling station (or paying people to harvest ballots, etc.); I’m talking about the armies of media consultants, advertising specialists, linguistic analysts, the lords of social media campaigns, and so on: These people obtain votes for whomever is willing to pay them. (In many ways, this is even worse that the shoveling of welfare and infrastructure projects to communities and Beltway Bandits.)

The tragedy is that people vote as their manipulators wish them to vote.

So long as people vote based upon gotcha slogans, the squeezing of emotions and social media’s hyper-driven peer pressure – so long as they keep listening to people who are paid to secure their votes – the corruption will not end.

Those who care about civic virtue in America or any other quasi-democracy, henceforth, will have to teach people to not vote for anyone trying to convince them with emotional soundbites. Voters will have to actively turn away, refusing to accept manipulation.

We need to understand that we’re being manipulated by professionals… by well-paid professionals. We’ve all noticed these things, but most of us haven’t wanted to expend energy on them. But if we don’t do that, we’ll be abused in perpetuity.

Political soundbites aren’t just low-grade pollution, they are corruption itself. We must turn away.

(The bottom line? Enough is enough. It is time to confront them to their face. Yes, the media, and the election and campaign consultants: all the men and women behind that curtain and pushing and pulling the levers. Educate, talk back, deny their claims to reality and compassion and goodness.