Democracy – It Works if you Work it, so Work it, it’s Worth it

Thomas Massie leaves an imprint. He is tall, good-looking, and takes up space in a Cape Town conference hall as he walks in with his cowboy boots, a commanding presence, and an entourage that includes his wife and sons.

Massie has been a member of the United States (US) House of Representatives, representing a district in Kentucky, since 2012. He has retained that position despite fierce opposition from President Donald Trump. As one of two “real” libertarians in the US Congress (the other one being Senator Rand Paul), he is fiercely individual.

I’ve had the opportunity to listen to Massie speak twice at the annual Libertarian Seminar, South Africa’s longest-running gathering of liberty-minded individuals. He attended the seminar last year in Midrand, and this year in November in Cape Town, the 40th celebration of the annual event. Other notable international libertarian speakers at this year’s event included Paul, economist Bryan Caplan, and libertarian “purist”, Dr Walter Block. Topics ranged from voter bias, rational ignorance, and how organised minorities can shape political outcomes and safeguard liberty in democratic societies.

Massie is building an off-grid house, follows his own rules on health and drinking raw milk, disregarding government regulations, and has consistently followed his own conscience in Congress, often in opposition to the Republican Party, to whom he pledges allegiance. He also does a mean Trump impression, delivered with great accuracy and humour, underplaying the extraordinary political pressure he is under from the president and the Republican Party.

“You are going to lose, Massie!” he says in a Trump voice. “You are going to lose so bad, like you’ve never lost before.”

Massie hasn’t lost yet, though, and now has funding via Project Freedom, which aims to counter the Trump offensive. He wears a debt counter, a device he designed as an engineer. It is always visible on his chest, to remind people that his job is to lighten the debt load on the American public. People are always staring at the row of electronic running numbers, to the extent that he must remind them to look him in the eyes when talking to him.

A woman once suggested to him that, if he wanted people to really look at the debt calculation, he put it on his belt buckle. The congressman chuckles at the story and the impact his debt counter has. He knows how to get his point across, combining a performative aspect with a firmness of principle and tenacity that is remarkable.

Stand out

Massie is not afraid to stand out in a crowd – even one of his own tribe – and has been dubbed ”Mr No” because he so frequently opposes spending bills others agree to, including the CARES Act (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security), a $2.2 trillion economic stimulus bill Massie felt was government overreach and spend, affording the government too much power. He was the only one opposing the bill.

"Congressman Massie has tested positive for being an asshole,” said former US Secretary of State John Kerry in 2020. “He must be quarantined to prevent the spread of his massive stupidity."

Massie laughs it off, winning his re-election campaigns by wide margins every time, even though straying from the Trump line on several important votes. Massie opposed Trump’s showcase public policy proposal, the Big Beautiful Bill Act, over concerns about the bill’s impact on the national debt. More recently, Massie drew widespread media attention over the Northern Hemisphere summer and autumn as the key Republican who successfully pushed to force a vote to require the Justice Department to release its records of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Trump opposed releasing the Epstein files until it became clear Congress would vote for their release anyway. The story behind how the Epstein files were released is the stuff movies are made of.

Gaining Support

Massie handled it like an election campaign, literally knocking on doors, one by one, gaining support. He used a little-known legality called the “discharge petition” to force the Bill to a vote. He had to get all the Democrats to support him first and then ended up in a position where he only needed two more votes, and then one. It came down to that.

On Trump’s instruction, “they” (including the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the head of National Intelligence Agency) took the voter to the Situation Room, the room we see in films when foreign forces attack the White House, putting pressure on the woman.

Massie sketches the scene with great flair. “What they didn’t know was that I briefed her in my office prior, so she was prepared for their onslaught.” They couldn’t crack her, and the matter proceeded to a vote. Massie also held press conferences on the steps of the White House to draw attention to the plight of the victims and survivors of Epstein, keeping the matter in the public and political space. One vote was enough to swing it. That was my greatest insight of the session – that the system still works.

Democracy and rules work. It works if you work it, so work it; it’s worth it. We know elections are rigged, propagandised, and politics is theatre. There are massive lobby groups in the US using money and influence via Political Action Committees (PACs) to exert political payback. It is so evenly fake on all sides that it is real.

Massie explained that congressmen are not as afraid of Trump as they are of his supporters, so the basic mechanisms of democracy hold. The people in power are very much aware of the people with the popular vote and the pitchforks.

While Massie’s opponents, and the super-PAC formed to destroy him, say they are concerned that he is interfering with Trump’s plan to save America, Massie feels he is doing the opposite by fighting for freedom and reduced government spending. He was asked about concerns that America seems to be drifting into a form of authoritarianism and socialism.

“Socialism might not be as bad as what we have now,” he replied. “What we have now is cronyism, oligarchy.”

Trump is a vengeful character, but Massie matches him in resilience and resourcefulness. The stage is set for an epic battle. Whichever side loses, democracy, for now, still wins.

Vivienne Vermaak is an award-winning investigative journalist, writer, and public speaker. She is a senior associate of The Free Market Foundation.