Posted on 12/18/2007 4:30:58 AM PST by billorites
We also had property rights and slavery was always in contradiction to the principles of the Declaration.
Grasping Democracy is not the issue, grasping the idea of that the rights of the minority must be protected by the majority is.
That is why the Founders were anti-Democratic and constructed a Republic with checks and balances to ensure that the rights of the minority would not be violated.
Do not forget that Hilter was elected to power and as soon as he gained it, he suspended all rights.
Chavez just attempted the same thing in Venezuela and was thankfully narrowly defeated.
I am sure that contradiction was a great comfort to the people who were slaves for the first hundred years of our country's existence and second class citizens for the next hundred years. With regard to Iraq, its citizens have property rights, a representative democracy and no slavery or segregation - which means they are a couple of centuries ahead of where we started.
And by the way, Webster's defines the word 'democracy' as "Government exercised either directly by the people or through elected representatives."
I am sure that contradiction was a great comfort to the people who were slaves for the first hundred years of our country's existence and second class citizens for the next hundred years.
The point is that the Declaration stated the principles by which slaves were going to be freed, first in the North and later in the South.
As for Jim Crow, that was a violation of those rights and again, the principles of the Declaration were the ones appealed to end those abuses.
To have a Representative gov't, you have to have a moral foundation to build on.
Voting means very little without that.
With regard to Iraq, its citizens have property rights, a representative democracy and no slavery or segregation - which means they are a couple of centuries ahead of where we started.
The citizens have no property rights, they only own what the Government allows them to own.
they are still a largely divided people along ethnic and religious lines.
Only the presence of U.S. forces is keeping them from going at each other to avenge past wrongs.
And by the way, Webster's defines the word 'democracy' as "Government exercised either directly by the people or through elected representatives."
So?
A democracy can be direct, with people voting on each issue as they did in Athens, or it can be indirect, with people electing Representatives to vote for them.
That still doesn't change the fact that a Democracy is not a Republic, which guards against direct elections with checks and balances.
In our nation, we have different branches of government to keep the people from acting directly and immediatly in a democratic manner by simple majority rule.
Yet, artificially forcing the Iraqis to reach a definitive agreement on fundamental issues—such as autonomy for Kurdish and Shi’ite areas (federalism), the role of Islam and women in Iraqi society, and the fate of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk—will likely make any Iraqi Constitution as irrelevant as those of neighboring Arab states. On paper, many Arab states have liberal constitutions, but they do not have the political culture or institutions to sustain an open political system. If Iraq doesn’t descend into civil war quickly, perhaps the administration can pull off this façade and exit Iraq with some dignity.
http://www.antiwar.com/eland/?articleid=7049
Hitler was not elected to power, he was appointed Chancellor. The elections that followed brought the Nazi Party to power and were highly questionable.
He was appointed to power because the Nazi party gained a large number of seats in the Reichstag.
At the end of July the Nazi party gained almost 14,000,000 votes securing 230 seats in the Reichstag. Energised by the incredible results Hitler asked to be made Chancellor. Papen offered the position of Vice Chancellor but Hitler refused.
.... The Nazi party lost 34 seats in the November 1932 election but remained the Reichstag's largest party.... In November Papen left office and two months later secretly told Hitler that he still held considerable sway with Hindenburg and that he would make Hitler chancellor as long as he could be the vice chancellor. On 30 January Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of a coalition government comprised of the NSDAP-DNVP-Centre Party....Hitler soon moved to consolidate absolute power,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Accession_Question
So, the point was that the Nazi Party, under the leadership of Hilter, came to power legitimately, or at least under the cloak of legitimacy, but once in power, took total control.
So, a Democracy is only as strong as the peoples commitment to it, it cannot protect freedom if the people are willing to give their freedoms up for security.
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