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Posted on 11/15/2012 9:17:34 AM PST by ProgressingAmerica
In an interview that a lot of people missed, BBC interviewer Stephen Sackur has an exchange with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. (Video, Jun 21st 2010) Much of the interview is what you would expect, but one thing stands out:
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As is usual, when these people are in front of an audience that they perceive as friendly, they are more honest than they'd otherwise be.
And Hugo Chavez is not alone in this belief. Let's start with Woodrow Wilson.
"it is very clear that in fundamental theory socialism and democracy are almost if not quite one and the same"
("Socialism And Democracy", 1887)
Occupy Wall Street:
"The only way to have a genuinely democratic society would also be to abolish capitalism in this state"
(Occupy Strategy Session, March 2012)
Weather Underground:
"The struggle for self-determination has had two stages : (1 ) a united front against imperialism and for New Democracy (which is a joint dictatorship of anti-colonial classes led by the proletariat, the content of which a compromise between the interests of the proletariat and nationalist peasants , petit bourgeoisie and national bourgeoisie) ; and ( 2) developing out of the new democratic stage, socialism."
(You Don't Need A Weatherman To Know Which Way The Wind Blows, 1969.)
Van Jones/STORM Manifesto
"Like all effective organizations, STORM had to figure out how to support leadership while fostering democracy."
The manifesto "Reclaiming Revolution" is one of those which I recorded as an audiobook. If you want to understand Jones and the left, this manifesto is a great place to start. If you can't make time to read it, then you have the option listen to it. The STORM manifesto uses "Democracy" or "Democratic" 42 times.
And finally, the Fabian Society.
"She (Greece) fell before a united Macedon, even as Macedon fell before the larger unity of the Roman Empire. But did they not try a virtual Socialism in Athens? And while it endured, did it not produce an individuality elsewhere unequaled in the world?"
(William Dwight Porter Bliss, Founder of the American Branch of the Fabian Society. "Where Socialism was Tried" - November 11th, 1905.) In case you don't go read the article, he is indeed pointing to the birthplace proper of Democracy as his proof that Socialism has been tried. Athens, Greece.
The left's active definition of the word "Democracy" is "Socialism", and it has been for a very long time. They'll never announce it openly enough to make it into a dictionary,(or at least, every dictionary I've seen treats democracy and socialism as separate items) but it's pretty set in stone for me. They use a different language than we do and it's important to understand their language, if you truely want to stop them.
“That’s the foundation of our democracy” <<
.
Democracy??
Then we’re doomed. - We were supposed to have a representative Republic; democracy was the destructive force that the founders sought to defeat.
Possibly this is a nit, but the Founders saw no need to "defeat" democracy, since it didn't exist anywhere at the time.
They intended to keep democracy from developing, but that's not exactly the same thing as trying to defeat it.
Of course, just a few years after the Founding they got a good look at "democracy" in action with the French Revolution. It's hard to imagine a better object lesson as to the risks of democracy.
All representative Republics in the past have degenerated toward democracy, and then failed.
Dead people don’t vote in a Republic. They do in a Democracy due to the inherent flaws of letting a mob rule and scoundrels holding offices.
A quote from your last link gives us a glimpse of how socialists thought about the races of mankind in 1905:
“Says Dr. Francis Galton, of the highest authority in anthropological science, “A population of ninety thousand produced two men, Socrates and Phidias, whom the whole population of Europe has never equaled, and fourteen men of an ability to which the Anglo-Saxon race has only produced, in two thousand years, five equals.” He asserts that the average ability of the Athenian race was about as much above that of the English race as that race is above the African negro. This is a strong statement, and yet J. A. Symonds, one of the foremost literary and artistic critics of our own or of any day, favorably quotes it, and says that the population of classic Athens, taken as a whole, was perhaps as superior to ours as our race is to that of the Australian savage.”
Untrue. The franchise, even for federal elections, was established by the states. At the Founding the qualifications were quite diverse, with something like half the states, including NC(!), allowing free black men the franchise, and a couple, if I remember correctly, allowing some women to vote.
Over the next few decades the franchise in every state was broadened to include all white men, but restricted to exclude women in all states and blacks in almost all.
But the federal government wasn't involved in this process.
Possibly. Care to provide examples? Especially if you're going to use words like "all."
I would contend that a lot of representative democracies have failed, but a lot of them not from an excess of democracy. Often quite the opposite, with oligarchies or aristocracies gradually acquiring more power.
It also should be pointed out that there were no representative Republics in the ancient world. The novel idea of electing representatives to govern grew out of the middle ages.
Yeah right, Chavez. That’s what fought and won WWII. Ever hear of the Arsenal of Democracy? El Stupido!
Well if only white men were permitted to vote, we would not have the current occupant in the WH and trillions in debt.
“I have more to do for this country and these people.”
And Chavez thought: “And I intend to give it to these fools long and hard until they see the superiority of the Marxist revolution.”
Capitalism is impossible to sustain in a democracy once people lose the taste for freedom.
Once people figure out they outnumber the owner of the convenience store, its free beer until the beer runs out.
... unless the convenience store owner has an “assault weapon”.
True.
But we also wouldn’t be living up to the ideals expressed in our Declaration.
Which to some extent may indicate the flaws of those ideals when we attempt to put them into practice.
The political system of the Founding Fathers is based on the principle that in order to secure natural rights, governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Consent of the governed requires some sort of variant of democracy as opposed to absolutism or totalitarianism
It is the absurd propaganda of socialism that states that under socialism all economic decisions will be arrived at democratically.
You make my point for me.
Democracy must inexorably become oligarchy (which is a sort of self-appointed monarchy of committee).
On second thought, the ideals aren’t flawed, but the people who are needed to implement them are.
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