Monday, December 7, 2015

This Country Was Founded as a Republic, Not a Democracy, Because the Founding Fathers Knew Democracy Destroys

"There's no more terrible pain a man can endure than to see clearly and be able to do nothing." - Herodotus (quoting a Persian in 479 B.C., just before a disastrous battle)

The Founding Fathers, almost to a man, despised democracy. They had thousands of years of history at their disposal and knew that democracy almost invariably collapsed into tyranny. That’s why they founded this country as a republic (“If you can keep it,” as Benjamin Franklin commented).

Clearly our own ignorant (or perhaps know-nothing) politicians – and so-called “intellectuals” – apparently don’t know these things.

Ancient thinkers knew there were three basic types of government – monarchy, in which the king rules, then aristocracy, in which a select class of the privileged rule, then democracy, in which the people rule.

Each had its strengths and weaknesses. The Founding Fathers, knowing their history, tried our well-know mixed government, mixing all three types. It worked fairly well for a long time. It still works pretty well, even today (compare it to the huge chunk of the world Richard Maybury calls “Chaostan), but its flaws are becoming more obvious every day.

Now we have a buffoon of a President (who the hell voted for this faggot Commie - twice?) who thinks he has the right to act like a retarded king, so those at the beginning of this country who didn’t want a President have been shown to be right. And our political “aristocracy” (that “1%” everyone hates) showing no honor, has enriched themselves at the expense of everyone else. Even many of the people are trying to live at the expense of everyone else.

What we have is the worst aspects of all three types of government. Ancient thinkers didn’t describe this, because it hadn’t been tried before in their time. In fact, it was never tried until the founding of the United States.

Can we avoid the cyclical revolutions of history?

I honestly don’t know. We have something that has never happened before in the history of the world – advanced science and technology, verging more and more every day on an almost Arthur C. Clarkian magic.

We’ve almost become energy self-sufficient, which is a big plus for stability. So the hell with the oil producers in the Middle East – they can go back to buggering their goats, and each other, and sink back into the poverty is which their just due.

The internet is getting close to wiping out “traditional” education, and yay! for that. It’s a good thing because so much of our educational system is run by leftists – and their current hysterical shrieking is a sign they are on their way out.

3-D printing appears to be returning manufacturing to the home, and yay! for that, too.

What we have so far is the government trying to centralize everything, as governments always do. Then what’s left of our liberty-minded people are trying to decentralize things, as they always try to do.

There is a part of people that wants to be enslaved – think Moses and his tribe creating the Golden Calf. Then there is a part that wants to be free – think the founding of this country, which included having to fight a war.

“Fighting a war.” Sigh. That’s the problem. In order to remain free, people must always be diligent – to fight anything encroaching on their liberty. Eternally diligent, eternally fighting against those wishing to enslave them – and never giving up.

It’s not surprising at all that “not giving up” and remaining diligent is one of the Four Cardinal Virtues – fortitude, persistence, sometimes called courage.

2 comments:

Mindstorm said...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Switzerland - the Swiss have it good despite direct democracy, Bob.

Anonymous said...

How the system is organized makes a big difference. Switzerland is highly federalized- they have a multitude of de facto independent countries which cooperate on inter-Cantonal issues. Much of America was originally set up the same way- before 1964, many state legislatures were set up so that each town had the same number of representatives, regardless of population- call it "one sovereign entity, one vote". Under such a system, local voters effectively vote only on local issues, and the law recognizes sovereignty as effectively flowing upward from each independent local institution to the larger government, rather than being based on some abstract "will of the people", taken collectively. Moreover, urban areas usually have more wealth and power to begin with, so giving the rural districts a check on their power balances urban and rural interests very well. Representatives are better-known to their constituents and are a better reflection of local interests. The leading men of each district deal with each other directly, rather than trying to appeal to the largest number of ignorant boobs in other districts.

Pool all of the districts together into a "one-man, one-vote" system, or demand that districts be drawn according to population and revised every couple of elections, and the evils of democracy rush in pretty quickly.