Bryan Caplan notes that Barney Frank gave another example of what he calls democratic fundamentalism:
If you don’t want politics in this process, you probably shouldn’t be handing it over to 535 politicians. That’s democracy.The first sentence, of course, is rhetorical: Don’t hand things over to 535 politicians?! Ridiculous!
The second sentence is where the fundamentalism shines through: So what if we paid $100B in pork/bribes to pass this bailout? Since we did it democratically, you have no business criticizing us.
Notice: If someone said, “So the economy’s tanking. That’s capitalism,” everyone would assume the speaker wanted to limit capitalism. But when someone says, “That’s democracy,” we assume the speaker wants to end the conversation. Democracy is truly the sacred cow of the modern world.