Posted on 10/24/2013 6:01:20 AM PDT by marshmallow
A true democracy, is a failed construct, anyone who’s studied history knows this.
Ping for later
About half of what I read .. even here in FR, is; invent a situation, make it a problem, ask a question about it, and either .. solve the problem or ... toss it out for the barrooms to buzz on.
While USS AMERICA sinks.
The Framers agreed with a lot of this—that’s why we live in a Republic—not a democracy.
HEY PREACHER FOR SATAN... WE KNOW THAT... THAT IS WHY OUR FOUNDERS SPURNED DEMOCRACY AND GAVE US A CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC. NOW BACK INTO YOUR RAT HOLE.
The original "democracy" was that of ancient Athens. I know very little about the subject, but as I understand it, it was not a "pure democracy" as we define it today but more of an oligarchy. Perhaps it was merely the Greek counterpart of the Latin res publica.
Democracy is the worst form of government, except for any other that has been tried from time to time.
Communism and Naziism are honest about the millions they intend to kill. Socialism lies, but still manages to kill millions.
Sign me up for a republic.
You have two cows.
With Socialism, the government steals one and gives it to your neighbor.
With Fascism, the government steals both, and promises to sell you milk.
With Communism the government steals both, and promises to give you milk.
With Naziism, the government steals both cows and shoots you.
with Anarchism, you shoot the government agent and steal another cow.
With Capitalism, you sell one cow and buy a bull.
We need just enough Anarchism so that Capitalism is free to do its good work.
True democracy is a fatally flawed system, and always will be it is why we were given a republic, though anymore I feel we’ve lost it.
In Athens they had an interesting way of voting.
People put the name they wanted for office on a pottery shard. The shards were put into 12 white pots whith numbers on them. A black pot had shards with the numbers 1 through 12 on it. A shard from the black pot was selected at random, and all the votes from the pots not selected were thrown out. The selected votes were redistributed into the 12 white pots, and the process was repeated until a single name was chosen.
They also did the same thing with votes to ostracize.
The idea was, given that not many could count very high, there wasn’t much trust in totaling up the votes. They could see which pot was selected. There wasn’t much reason for vote fraud, as “The G-ds” were able to control who was selected by any vote. Yet, getting lots of votes did make your candidates election more likely.
Women didn’t vote. Slaves didn’t vote. Foreigners didn’t vote. Yet the franchise was widely held, for the standards of the time.
We have taken the republic back before. Wilson was a tyrant and used the war powers to insinuate the government into states (federal race discrimination) and to take over the economy in all sorts of rotten ways.
And under Harding we had the ‘end of war’ induced recession that was the the deepist on record, but also the shortest on record. The leftists of the time never forgave Harding for shuting down their socialist masterpiece.
I understand that the franchise was limited to certain people, which is why the original "democracy" was not a "democracy" in the modern understanding of the term.
Gosh, he must be right, after all only the rich have cell phones.....oops.
Well, only the rich have computers....oops.
Well only the rich have cars....oops.
Well only the rich can take plane flights...oops.
Must be more of that deception thing.
In early america you stood in line to see your town clerk, told him how you voted, and he marked it down on a big leger book.
After doing it all day, he would in theory know how everyone voted, but would be bound by duty (I know, imagine that now!) to not disclose it.
At the end of the day, the votes were tallied in the ledger book and a letter with the result was sent to the appropriate authority.
This is why you see people saying idiotic things like "fascism (or Falangism, Nazism, etc) was a left-wing movement." They try to define the political spectrum in other cultures and other times in terms of the issues that define the Right and Left in America today. While they're at it, perhaps they can inform us whether Athenians or Spartans were Democrats or Republicans in the Peloponnesian war?
Well, if you look at the two city-states critically, Athens would have leaned more toward liberalism while Sparta leaned more toward Conservatism. We’re talking shades of gray here, however.
I could agree with this, but I'd add the fact that Sparta was also by far the more collectivist society while Athens was more individualistic. This underscores how the claim that individualism = rightwing and collectivism = leftwing is nonsense, since you can have both leftwing and rightwing collectivism, or left and rightwing individualism.
Thank you so much for saying that (I've often longed to but chickened out)! Yes, the John Birch Society's claim that "right" means small government individualism while "left" means big government collectivism applies only in our country, and sometimes not then. Plus, it was a ploy to dissassociate themselves from right wingers elsewhere who embarrassed them.
The JBS claim that "Nazism is left wing" is refuted by the very fact that so many American palaeoconservatives promote the very same ideas and sometimes the works of Fascist and Nazi writers. Implying that Spanish Falangism (of even the pre-Franco variety) was "left wing" simply serves to discredit us.
I admire your courage. Prepare to get piled on.
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