Nov 19 2007
A Reminder To America On What To Be Thankful For
When liberals complain the US is bullying other nations, or that we are force our views on others and make them angry, it might be wise to read Mark Steyn’s take on Thanksgiving and America and note that we ARE the oldest democracy out there.
We know Eastern Europe was a totalitarian prison until the Nineties, but we forget that Mediterranean Europe (Greece, Spain, Portugal) has democratic roots going all the way back until, oh, the mid-Seventies; France and Germany’s constitutions date back barely half a century, Italy’s only to the 1940s, and Belgium’s goes back about 20 minutes, and currently it’s not clear whether even that latest rewrite remains operative. The U.S. Constitution is not only older than France’s, Germany’s, Italy’s or Spain’s constitution, it’s older than all of them put together.
(H/T Sister Toldjah). What looks like or feels like coercion to some is simply the continued reminder to those newer democracies still trying to gain their footing that our real results (compared to theirs) are hard to argue with. We gain momentum and leadership by doing, not whining about how unfair it is others had better ideas to sell.
There is still real frustration in Europe and elsewhere that Queens, Kings Dictators and benevolent Lords (oxymoron there) are not the best way to govern. There are people out there who fear democracy – it requires them to take responsibility for themselves. I noted this in Germany and the UK when I worked for a UK company. The people over there were frightened to have to make their own choices on healthcare, where we Americans are frightened to let those decisions go to some faceless bureaucrat.
It is because of our cultural roots people find the American experiment uncomfortable. For most of human history the Lord-Serf model has reigned. It is called many things from monarch to socialism and communism, but it is the same thing in essence. People relied on their Lord to provide for them, in return they produced something for the government. This is the historical tie Europe and Asia still feel most comfortable with.
Now take America (and Canada and Australia and South America) and you see a different cultural base. In these areas people explored and tamed continents. They had no government to rely on, so they relied on each other. They relied on family and community. They became self-sufficient. They produced for themselves and others (not just others). The incentive was clear – produce something people wanted by choice (not dictated) and you succeeded beyond all expectations.
The fact is many of the world’s democracies do not have that pioneer spirit underpinning them. That is why Germany and France are slaves to their socialistic policies and are now in the throws of transportations strikes. They don’t get the full picture of democracy yet. The Eastern European states do because they came out of decades oppression by the state. They don’t trust central control and are more than happy to take some risks to avoid being controlled again.
And this is why many who lean left or old European fail to understand the power of the American model. It is a model that freed Europe and Asia and Russia from brutal oppression. And it is now freeing the Arab world in the ME, specifically Iraq.
To those whose world view and historic views are too limited, they cannot see what is happening in Iraq and why we are not imposing anything but giving a people a choice – which they are gladly taking. And it would take a free spirited democracy that is based on the self-motivation of the individual (as opposed to the policies of the bureaucracy) to really provide this choice. People do not sacrifice for policies (which is why the French are sitting on the sidelines in Iraq and we are not). They do sacrifice for ideas that do and will span generations.
Be thankful this Thanksgiving that we live in one of the few places on the planet that truly ‘get it’, and that we still have the will and the means to make life (and the future) better for the oppressed – in spite of all the whining from the wannabes and weak-kneed. Becuase I would rather be an American leading the path to a brighter future than a complainer who is being dragged along kicking and screaming.
I’m always amazed at the total lose of our language and heritage that has occured in my lifetime. It’s quite sad really, but if everyone says the same thing, it has to be true right?
No matter who wrote it, everywhere you go, people keep writting or speaking of our Democracy. It just has to be true then, right?
A Challenge: Find something, anything, in the Federalist Papers, etc. that says that the government set up in this country, was to be a democracy. Best of luck.
The problem that occurs with this is two fold.
1. No one is learning the truth about what this Country is, or what the intentions of it’s founders were.
2. Democracy is Majority Rule. Not a Majority of Representatives voting for something. It’s a majority of Citizens voting for something.
I suspect in 20 years only old timers will remember that we certainly are not Suppose to be a democracy, but rather a Representative Republic. And the writters and Commentaters on the Right are really to blame. For they gave into the notion, and now everyone says it.
Oh well, what ya gonna do?
Education never stops:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1259556/posts
The redefining of “democracy” is one of the most disastrous and potentially fatal blows America has ever suffered, and the most frustrating thing about it is that it is such a blatant lie. The simple truth is that America is not now, never was, and was never intended to be a “democracy.”
John Adams, in a letter to John Taylor, wrote: “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”
James Madison said: “…democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”
Not only were our Founding Fathers adamantly opposed to creating a “democratic” system, they were unanimous in giving this nation a republic as its political system.
Alexander Hamilton, June 26, 1788, stated: “There are few positions more demonstrable than that there should be in every republic some permanent body to correct the prejudices, check the intemperate passions, and regulate the fluctuations of a popular assembly.”
Alexander Hamilton, also in 1788: “It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of society against the injustice of the other part.”
George Washington, April 30, 1789: “The…destiny of the republican model of government (is) justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally stacked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.”
Thomas Jefferson, March 11, 1790: “The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.”
Thomas Jefferson, 1791: “Government in a well constituted republic requires no belief from man beyond what his reason authorizes.”
Thomas Jefferson, July 30, 1795: “The revolution forced them (the “people of America” — author) to consider the subject for themselves, and the result was an universal conversion to republicanism.”
Thomas Jefferson, March 4, 1801: “If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form…”
Thomas Jefferson, Jan. 18, 1802: “The body of our people … have ever had the same object in view, to wit, the, maintenance of a federal, republican government…”
Thomas Jefferson, Jan. 13, 1813: “This is my belief of it; it is that on which I have acted…to administer the government according to its genuine republican principles…”
Thomas Jefferson, in the Anas: “He (John Adams — author) has since thoroughly seen that his constituents were devoted to republican government…”
Thomas Jefferson, in the Anas: “…and I fondly hope … that the motto of the standard to which our country will forever rally, will be ‘federal union, and republican government…”
As historians Charles Austin Beard and Mary Ritter Beard wrote (1939): “At no time, at no place, in solemn convention assembled, through no chosen agents, had the American people officially proclaimed the United States to be a democracy. The Constitution did not contain the word or any word lending countenance to it, except possibly the mention of ‘We the people,’ in the preamble … When the Constitution was framed, no respectable person called himself a democrat.”
Justifiably Afraid Of ‘Democracy’ — Indisputably, this nation was founded as a republic and its leaders were justifiably afraid of “democracy,” lest it destroy the nation they had risked their lives to establish.
And thus it officially was for a century and a half. As recently as in a 1928 U.S. Army training manual it was described thusly:
“Democracy: A government of the masses. Authority derived through mass meeting or any form of ‘direct’ expression. Results in mobocracy. Attitude towards laws is that the will of the majority shall regulate, whether it is based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice or impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences. Results in demagogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy.”
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” — George Santayana.
It may be too late to save America from its historically mandated fate, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try. And one thing we can all do is to quit propagating the “democracy” lie. We who know better can quit calling America a democracy and we can try to educate those who don’t know any better. Oh, yes. We can also call on those public leaders who keep repeating the lie to cease to do so. When the very people who invented “democracy” learn the error of their ways, what excuse can a modern educated person have for not knowing?
http://www.trimonline.org/website/deceived.htm
Have You Been Deceived?
Q. When the Founding Fathers established our government, they gave us:
(a) a democracy, or (b) a republic?
You have been deceived!
America is a republic – not a democracy!
Not only did our Founding Fathers establish a republic, they greatly feared democracy. James Madison, known as the father of the U.S. Constitution, wrote in “Essay #10” of The Federalist Papers: “… democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”
Although such an attitude will surprise most Americans, it is accurate.
The United States Constitution does not contain the word democracy. It does “guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government….” Also, when we recite the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag, we say, “to the Republic for which it stands,” and not “to the Democracy.”
The difference between a republic and a democracy was once widely understood in America. The U.S. War Department (superseded by the Department of Defense) taught that difference in a training manual (No. 2000-25) published on November 30, 1928. This official U.S. government document, used at the time for the training of American military personnel, said of democracy:
A government of the masses.
Authority derived through mass meeting or any other form of ‘direct’ expression.
Results in mobocracy.
Attitude toward property is communistic – negating property rights.
Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate, whether it be based upon deliberation
or governed by passion, prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences.
Results in demogogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy.”
It went on to state: “Our Constitutional fathers, familiar with the strength and weakness of both autocracy and democracy, with fixed principles definitely in mind, defined a representative republican form of government. They ‘made a very marked distinction between a republic and a democracy and said repeatedly and emphatically that they had founded a republic.’ ”
Don’t be deceived. America is a republic – not a democracy!