Jun 19 2007
When is Democracy Not Democracy ?
By Ivor Hughes
6/19/07
That question is soon answered … Democracy is not Democracy if one votes for the wrong party… for the one… that the manipulating parties refused to deal with.
A case in point was the political victory of Hamas… that told the story… that rang the Palestinian bell. But it is sure that the sound it made was not to Israeli taste… Since that time Britain… America and Israel have funded Fatah with money and arms via the Egyptian back door… this under American duress… Look at the murderous assault on Lebanon backed by Britain and the U.S. .. It is this double dealing and its historical injustices that are rooted in the foundation of Israel as a Nation with their apartheid and megalomaniac attitude that counts a non Jewish life as inconsequential.
There has been 60 years of brutality and genocidal behavior toward the Palestinians… and the Palestinian Christians… Bethlehem is a virtual no-go area. The arrogance that persuades the Israeli’s to ignore U.N. directives… the arrogance that persuades them to kill their allies (USS Liberty) and shell and kill troops of the U.N. peace keeping force… it is this contempt for International law which has led to this current political configuration.
Symbolically the Israelis have been sowing dragons teeth for 60 years or more… the violence has spawned yet more violence… but this time it is not randomly sporadic… it is organized violence .. well-versed in guerrilla tactics violence… well armed with surveillance drone capability.. There is a new air in Gaza… The People have Spoken! ….that is real Democracy my Friend.
Politics is a dirty mangy pack of dogs guarding their corporate masters… since when do they truly speak for the people? How many shamelessly lie against the interests of those who placed them in power? Higher up… where there are dangerous levels of Methane afflatus in the air… they are playing mega-bucks at so many dollars per life… not to mention the cost of equipping that life… to kill another life… it is we that are the fodder in this evil game. It is we the people that pay for this insanity with our children’s bodies and the taxes that support the madness.
Is it not time? …that those that fail to obey the wishes of an electorate should be pursued into the Justice System… Breach of Contract .. you write the charge… The Palestinians of Gaza have spoken… they have had enough of the brutal feudal despotism that has been inflicted on them… they have had enough of the land theft and the apartheid and the Gulags… they have had enough of the Israeli brutality and the collective punishment such as the bombing of Gaza’s Electricity Supply and the crippling of the water and sewage systems.
Israel must wake up and see … the bogey man is under the bed … Hamas has espoused the same philosophy toward the Jews in Palestine… as the Israeli philosophy directed at the Arabs in Israel… they both have hard line positions… both of those positions revolve around one word … ‘Hegemony’ .. Israelis ‘Nuclear Option’… is not on the table because it would suicide a lot of Jewish lives … Hamas have already demonstrated their mettle in South Lebanon and the ability to cripple an Israeli Gun Boat.
This situation has come about because of the very clearly defined policy of genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians… it is all well documented… unspoken bestiality whilst Britain and America pointedly look the other way… Iraq is the living proof of a war that Israel cannot win even with the direct intervention of Britain and the U.S… Again Iraq is proof of that… It is time for some serious talking because If Democracy is not the will of the people… then what the hell is Democracy?
There are no democracies in the entire world. The world is run by the Gods of money. End of story!
“Representative” democracy is a sham and always has been.
No-one duped the American people, the American people
have always wanted to be duped. Like Margaret Thatcher
in Britain they’re just hoping to make it onto the right
side of the sham. She succeeded because she concentrated
on the game, millions fail because it’s easier to pretend
a little flutter on the Lotto is all the effort you need.
Its true, Hamas is everything the American Patriot foklore is about, of the people, for the people, brave courageous fighters who will resist the oppressor to the last drop of their blood. This is the same stuff of George Washington, Robin Hood, yet they are reviled and collectively murdered in exactly the same way as in Nazi Germany. Their only fault and weakness that is exploited against them is the cruelty with which they act as understandable as it is, release your hostages, treat the wounded of both sides with care, never turn your gun on an unarmed person or one of your own side. This would win you millions of friends around the world and cast the Zionist’s and their supporters in such a harsh light, they would turn to dust as do all vampires
I would argue for a distinction between ‘open dictatorships’ like Nationalist Socialist Germany, where everyone knew the country was not a ‘democracy,’ and ‘veiled dictatorships’ like the UK, the US and Australia, in which people experience dictatorship at every level but where, thanks to the regular charade of elections, people are conditioned into thinking that they live under ‘democracy.’ The difference between the two is really negligible: in the latter, you can get away with a lot more grumbling about the government. It doesn’t do any good, but I suppose it helps you feel better. These days I feel more and more that I would rather be living under a nationalist dictatorship that a globlist ‘democracy.’
When is ‘democracy’ not democracy?
ans: almost all of the time.
America is Corporate Socialism, not democracy.
[…] Read more Democracy […]
A very good article and a point well made but there is one crucial point missing. This may only be a matter of perception but it is vital so bear with me.
The perception of the many people living in the ‘West’ is as follows:
The most radical elements of the Palestinians want to anihilate the Jews and their sate, kill as may as they can and if necessary die in the effort. They would want this even if there was no oppression beyond the loss of territory. At the same time they do not have the military capability to achieve this.
The most radical elements in Israel don’t care if the Palestinians live or die as long as they don’t get in the way of a greater Jewish state. While caring nothing if Palestinians are oppressed or killed they would not cross the road to kill a Palestinian unless they saw a threat. Israel has the military capability to anihilate the Palestinians but they choose not to for obvious political reasons.
While this perception remains and no overwhelming evidence appears to challenge it, support for Israel will always seem the safer bet and the Zionists will always win the argument with western politicians and diplomats. These are people who understand politics and want to deal with people who are suceptible to politics. Because most of them are not democrats they really don’t understand democracy or freedom or that anything is too important to sell out and so they will never understand the Palestinian cause.
@Giordan Smith
There’s another difference between “open dictatorship” and “veiled dictatorship”. Namely, in a “open dictatorship” the people know they live in a dictatorship. So perhaps, if ever, they unite, start a revolution and overthrow the government. In a “veiled dictatorship” (a democracy) the people tend to believe they are already in charge, for example by voting. The change to stand up or a “revolution” is therefore less likely.
halturnershow .com
iamthewitness.com read and listen to these
It is amazing how Murkans have been bamboozled into believing they live in a democracy instead of the republic that was created by them over 200 years ago. Democracy is analogous to communism by stealth. The Zionist press, government, and public school system has done it’s job well. The people think communism is good because they don’t know it by that name. They know it as “democracy”.
There is no democracy anywhere. Democracy is not about letting the people vote every few years, or even about “letting” the people have a say. Democracy, if it existed, would mean the people being in control, not about anyone “letting” them do anything. THEY would be the ones in charge, and that’s why the Rothschilds, Rockefellers, Bushes, Windsors and other thieves and mass-murderers will never allow a democracy to exist anywhere.
Another thing about democracy is that it CANNOT be IMPOSED (Afghanistan, Iraq). Democracy is or it is not. Democracy is people power, not something we can be made to do.
Perhaps one day, when the tyrannical empire has collapsed, we WILL have democracy.
The deception in this case goes deeper than sudo democracy, as usual, the lies are stacked one on top of the other. First, the “Jews” that inhabit what we call Israel are not (for the most part) fleshly Jews but religious prosolites. The closest thing to a fleshly Jew is the people who were left after the 70 CE destruction of Jerusalem, people we call the Palestinians. The “Christians” who are supporting Zionist Israel, are actually supporting the killers of the true Jewish people (or at least the closest living reletives of such) Ironic!! We live in a world of lies, deception and fake freedoms. In the US, the game is up, over, done. The laws are now in place to stamp out any resistance once the brainwashed sheep wake up to the real government agenda that will then openly show that the US people are no more than surfs and squatters on the land. The only power we have is the power to expose the game before they are ready, before the trap is closed. When it is closed, then the pretend democracy we have now will no longer be needed. Martial law will openly be used, after all, we are at war with Oceanus are we not?
This piece is riddled with factual errors. The author actually confused Hamas and Hezbollah. Not to mention the ungrammatical (and annoying) ellipses. Was this written by a 12 year old? Who decided to post this?
We don’t even have anywhere near a democracy here in the US. Take a look at the evidence compiled at http://majormediabypass.com , in video format, and decide for yourself. The media censor the more reasonable candidates, whether mainstream or third party.
# PZ on 20 Jun 2007 at 10:59 am
One may not separate the political body from its military arm .. Hamas .. Hizbollah .. two sides of the same coin .. the fact that you have stooped to personal insult is proof that the words got under your thin skin .. they struck the mark .. so who gives a damn about grammar?
Ivor:
Interesting, passionate article. And I find the comments also very interesting. The definition of “democracy” is lost on Americans. USA is a REPUBLIC, not a democracy, so how can Americans imagine that they are spreading democracy when they don’t live under one themselves? And when Americans disagree with their leader, he says “I won’t listen. I’m the decider.” What kind of democracy is that? It’s just a word, like “freedom”; these words are used to control opinion.
Note: Any country that doesn’t use the western (Israeli) central-debt-banking system (for instance, any Muslim-controlled country) is called “undemocratic” by Israel, UK and USA. Americans become either afraid of the “undemocratic” nation, or concerned that they must go there and impose their ways to “liberate” the poor louses who haven’t yet succumbed. Americans use the word “freedom” a lot. They don’t know they’re enslaved to a permanent debt-money system, and they don’t know that those “undemocratic” countries are resisting this takeover. “Undemocratic” is a magic word that causes westerners to swallow all logic, and say, “Go get ‘em and do whatever you have to, to make them change to our way of life.” The American public has been duped into being its own Machiavelli. It’s quite clever, really. Ah, democracy. Dontcha just love it?
In Abraham Lincoln’s Inaugural Address on March 4, 1861 he stated: “I shall perform it (my duty as president), so far as practicable, unless my rightful masters, the American people, shall withhold the requisite means, or, in some authoritative manner, direct the contrary.”
It is every politician’s duty, even the president, to implement the will of the people. The only problem is that the people, the “masters,” never had the ability to assemble in an “authoritative manner” which would enable them to create and project their collective will to their public servants.
http://www.UPworldgov.org is worth taking a look at if this makes any sense to you.
based on what I’ve read Fatah is slightly more moderate toward Israel
and therefore less a threat and preferred by the U.S. and Israel
Ivor and Company:
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding
what’s for lunch.
Part of the problem is making democracy an idol. This is evident in your post , Ivor. For example, you ask, “how many shamelessly lie against the interests of those who placed them in power?” Implicit in this question is your premise that the interests of those who placed the politician in power are superior to any other interests. That premise, at bottom, is just what I stated in the first paragraph.
Wayne at 7:39 am-bingo. It is amazing how many americans just do not understand that democracy is socialism and that we have supersized our order for democracy.
May you Live,
IN LIBERTY
Ivor Hughes- So you’re suggesting that Hamas and Hezbollah are “two sides of the same coin” and part of an integrated group?
It’s not a personal insult, I’m just stating the obvious: you don’t seem to know too much about the Middle East. Hamas is a Palestinian-based Sunni Islamic group while Hezbollah is a Lebanese Shiite militia and political party that basically dominates south Lebanon and parts of Beirut. You can use ellipses all you want, but you can’t skip over basic facts.
If you want an insult, you should talk to the guy who said that this piece and many of its commenters sound like “a bunch of crazy, homeless guys spent the day in an internet cafe somewhere.”
Insulting, but true. Here’s where it was said: http://www.ataricommunity.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9063241&postcount=9
# PZ on 20 Jun 2007 at 6:46 pm
What I suggest is that these organizations have a common enemy .. and they have a common philosophy .. based on the same grievances .. Palestinians .. and when the time is right they will move in unison against the brutal common enemy ..
I concede the nit picking .. but that does not negate the thrust of my plaint .. because irrespective of the tinkering with the words one cannot change the story .. the story remains the same .. Israeli Ethnic Cleansing .. Genocide and Apartheid .. directed against the Palestinians .. And as for that whore word ‘Democracy .. many of the posters who have replied have the same understanding as I .. Freedummy and Democrappy.
Regarding the Middle East .. I think I understand the people rather well .. and for whom I have a healthy respect .. I did my tour of duty defending stolen oil .. behind a shit stained Union Jack .. My English mother taught me right from wrong .. and my Celtic Father taught me to weigh in for the underdog where ever they may be .. I sleep better at night in so doing.
These issues are more than mere nitpicks. Hezbollah isn’t even a Palestinian organization. It’s agenda and activities are not really the same as Hamas.
Not to mention the hyperbolic use of the word “genocide”. Depending on your estimates, more people have been killed in Iraq since 2003 than in nearly 60 years of Arab-Israeli conflict. Rambling about “genocide” in your “plaint” (huh?) just isn’t credible. Despite your allegations of “genocide”, the Palestinian population has experienced extremely high growth over the past few decades. If this is a genocide, it’s the most inept one anyone’s ever seen.
I’ve been to the West Bank (including Bethlehem) and Israel several times. Nothing you’re saying here really makes any sense. In fact, maybe you’re a Mossad agent. You’re making arguments that are so terribly thought-out that they are meant to discredit other arguments that support Palestinians and the cause of human rights.
Blogs are so great. even when youy don’t completely get the original post, the comments will make its meaning clear.
i really liked Barney’s comment: Barney on 20 Jun 2007 at 9:00 am. ‘Democracy’ means “rule by the mob,” or “mob rule,” which is what we have, in a sense. The joke’s on us, don’t we see?
as long as “type-A” personalities exist, elitists and tyrants will come into being. “I’m willing to work harder because i want more//I deserve more because i work harder.” Rather you that, or prefer you that we all sink into the mediocrity implied by socialism? It’s the LOVE of money that is the root of all evil. Maybe the problem is government itself: delegating others to do what we ought to do for ourselves. But how are the interests of 300M citizens meaningfully represented and equitable managed?
Tony Malone’s comments were good too: Tony Malone on 20 Jun 2007 at 4:08 pm. Islam forbids usury while the Western world utterly depends on it.
Maybe the problem is nation-states. Perhaps as technology improves, human organizations should simplify, meaning a reversion to small settlements and village-life. Consolidating nation-states into continental blocs then into one-world government seems like more of a bad thing to some.
i’m not here to bicker or argue, but to learn; thank you all for that.
PZ .. methinks you are a Zionist .. if you think that shooting children in the head is not Genocide then I suggest you take a good look at your moral stance.
3 quarters of a million Palestinians were displaced during the Israeli Ethnic cleansing of 1948 .. The globally respected Jewish historian (who has been forced to flee) Ilam Pappe has told the truth.
You claim to have been in the West Bank and Bethlehem and saw nothing untoward .. well a great many eyes have recorded the Israeli bestiality .. the Videos are all over the internet … Rachel Corrie the Christian peace worker horribly slain by the IDF .. The monster concerned ran her down with an armored bulldozer .. and then backed up over her to make sure she was dead.
A female Swedish Christian Peace Worker had her face smashed in by a bottle .. wielded by one of the illegal Jewish settlers in the West Bank .. her crime .. she was escorting Palestinian children to school.
Those are just a couple from thousands of incidents perpetrated by the racist Israel ..
Be sure that the Jewish State of Israel is destined to end up in the International Court of Justice in the Hague ..
Quote ..
Israel’s religious shepherds also preach such bloodlust. Former Sephardi chief rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu recently wrote Ehud Olmert to counsel that all Gazan civilians-men, women, newborn babies-are collectively guilty for rocket attacks on Israel. He said the Jewish state is morally entitled to kill them all.
Eliyahu’s son, also a rabbi, (http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1180527966693
&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull) spoke to press about his father’s views. “If they don’t stop after we kill 100, then we must kill a thousand,” he said. “And if they do not stop after 1,000 then we must kill 10,000. If they still don’t stop we must kill 100,000, even a million. Whatever it takes to make them stop.”
http://www.rense.com/general77/cloak.htm
The Palestinians are going to do .. Whatever it takes to make Israel stop.
I didn’t say I saw nothing “untoward”. But it’s clear that you’re knowledge is based on nothing more than a few web searches for other blogs that validate your own preconceptions.
Either that, or you’re a Mossad agent sent to undermine the Palestinian cause. The world doesn’t appreciate your Zionist manipulations, Ivor Hughes. We want truth and justice, not your Zionist doublespeak that confuses the *real* issues with mumbojumbo.
PJ .. if you want to engage in a sensible debate then it may help if I have a real name instead of the pseudonym behind which you hide and spout clap trap ..
Clap trap which flies in the face of the many hundreds of amateur video clips which is visual evidence of the Israeli bestiality .. the slaying of Rachel Corrie I found to be most harrowing .. I could almost hear the scrunch and snapping of bones as the armored bulldozer ran her down and then to my horror backed up over her .. A clear case of Murder with malice aforethought.
Ilam Pappe is a Jewish Historian of world wide repute .. who for his efforts in revealing the real nature of the Palestinian Catastrophe at the hands of the Israeli,s was hounded from his tenure in Israel and forced to take up the offer of tenure from Exeter University in the West of England .. again the truth you seek is to be found in his work.
Former Sephardi chief rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu and his Son have made it quite clear as to what the Palestinians have had burnt into their very souls .. Israel is failed state .. a failed state who operate outside of the boundaries of any pretense at civilized behavior.
The Palestinians already recognise Israel for what she is and is becoming .. do you seriously think that the Palestinians will forfeit the right of return to their ancestral lands?
So just answer the points that I have made in this blog ..rather than engaging in the usual Zionist personal attack .. as you say .. we want ‘Truth and Justice’ not your Zionist double speak that confuses the real issue with mumbo jumbo ..
Er… democracy, republic, whatever; the Republic has been dead since 1861.
This nation has not enjoyed even the semblance of a democracy, much less a republic, since the Ape, Ape Linkum, invaded the Southern states and imprisoned some 40,000 people in the states loyal to his “union”.
So things have rolled along downhill since then in a progressing tyranny.
Stonewall Jackson, not a slave owner but an ardent benefactor to them BTW, and all of the thinking people of the South [and North] understood this.
A few quotes for the young skulls full of Horace Mann mush:
“If the North triumphs it is not alone the destruction of our property; it is the prelude to anarchy, infidelity, the ultimate loss of free and responsible government on this continent. It is the triumph of commerce, the banks, factories. We should meet the federal invader on the outer verge of just and right defense and raise at once the black flag. No quarter to the violators of our homes and firesides.” ~Thomas Jonathan (Stonewall) Jackson, May 1861
“Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” ~Lord Acton
THE ACTON-LEE CORRESPONDENCE [excerpted]
LORD ACTON:
I saw in State Rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy. The institutions of your Republic have not exercised on the old world the salutary and liberating influence which ought to have belonged to them, by reason of those defects and abuses of principle which the Confederate Constitution was expressly and wisely calculated to remedy. I believed that the example of that great Reform would have blessed all the races of mankind by establishing true freedom purged of the native dangers and disorders of Republics. Therefore I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization; and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo.
GENERAL LEE:
I can only say that while I have considered the preservation of the constitutional power of the General Government to be the foundation of our peace and safety at home and abroad, I yet believe that the maintenance of the rights and authority reserved to the states and to the people, not only essential to the adjustment and balance of the general system, but the safeguard to the continuance of a free government. I consider it as the chief source of stability to our political system, whereas the consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it. I need not refer one so well acquainted as you are with American history, to the State papers of Washington and Jefferson, the representatives of the federal and democratic parties, denouncing consolidation and centralization of power, as tending to the subversion of State Governments, and to despotism.
The New England states, whose citizens are the fiercest opponents of the Southern states, did not always avow the opinions they now advocate. Upon the purchase of Louisiana by Mr. Jefferson, they virtually asserted the right of secession through their prominent men; and in the convention which assembled at Hartford in 1814, they threatened the disruption of the Union unless the war should be discontinued. The assertion of this right has been repeatedly made by their politicians when their party was weak, and Massachusetts, the leading state in hostility to the South, declares in the preamble to her constitution, that the people of that commonwealth “have the sole and exclusive right of governing themselves as a free sovereign and independent state, and do, and forever hereafter shall, exercise and enjoy every power, jurisdiction, and right which is not, or may hereafter be by them expressly delegated to the United States of America in congress assembled.”
diogenes … precisely and dont it make ya sick .. Orwell and his double speak rules the world .. what a prize bunch of chumps we are.
But I live in hope .. Middle America is awake and snorting fire .. the blogosphere is seething and the Brits are groaning.
The Saxon is not like us Normans. His manners are not so polite.
But he never means anything serious till he talks about justice and right.
When he stands like an ox in the furrow with his sullen set eyes on your own,
and grumbles .. This isn’t fair dealing .. my son leave the Saxon alone.
Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936)
Mark,
Very sound comment there. This is actually why I am against ‘democracies’ overthrowing dictatorships. If Nationalist Socialist Germany, for example, had even been half as bad as the ‘democratic’ propaganda made it out to be, the German people would, sooner or later, have overthrown it themselves. I see my problem - and the problem of most thinking people today - as that of overthrowing ‘democracy’ and replacing it with something a little more, um, democratic.
A Democracy, as the founders declared, is the most pernicious form of government, equating to mob rule - 51% rules over 49%.
Democracy, pictured, would be a line of men stretching from here to infinity with their left hand on the next man’s shoulder and their right hand in that man’s pocket.
Since most Americans view thinking as manual labor and are easily “schmoozed” by the likes of what is termed “first tier candidates” in every election, government will continue to degenerate as our freedoms vanish like the dew.
Leave the rubes their toys and their illusions, bolstered by sweet lies that cost the candidates nothing and the election is easily won by the biggest liar. Conversely, tell them the truth, get inside their “comfort zone,” and they will seek to have you banished from their sight and hearing.
My hope lies with the younger generation (20’s, 30’s, 40’s) that is now becoming politically active and backing just such a candidate whose record is so clean and consistently Constitutional that the big-money candidates cannot smear him, try as they might, so they are attempting to ignore him, paint him out of the picture.
This damnable fascist “democracy” (plutocracy) is one tick away from Martial Law and total tyranny, which is the fate of all “democracies.” If we wind up with a Hillary, Obama, Rudy, Mitt or Fred, you can put a fork in this country, it will be done.
The scary thing is it may already be too late. If the idiot in the Whore House bombs Iran, our fate is sealed. Radiation carried on the wind in conjunction with metric tonnes of Depleted Uranium already carried around the world will serve to burst the bubble of “JUST WARS.”
We will lose the remainder of our troops on the ground in Iraq, 95% young people, who would have become fathers and mothers to part of the next generation. Should some few of them survive, their bodies will have become so poisoned that birth defects will claim any offspring.
At some point in the near future, if we don’t change things greatly, the rest of the world will come against the rogue state that America has become (or stand aside as a new superpower like China does it ) and you can kiss freedom and sovereignty good-bye. By that time we will probably be too sick, broke, hungry and homeless to care.
For myself, as well as the preponderance of bleating sheep Americans, I care not. I have taken the time to write this reply on behalf of my three grown children and those like them who love freedom and are awake and aware that we are in imminent danger of losing ours and our country in the bargain. A bitter legacy, to be sure.
Neither they, nor I, wish to become a part of the abortive North American Union as part and parcel of the New World Order.
May their efforts bear good fruit.
Ron Paul 2008
Barbara Klaassen
No one has ever claimed that we live in a democracy. The United States by definition is a Republic. The meaning of the word Democracy has evolved since it was first used in ancient Greece. It refers to a government that, by definition, derives its power from the people. This derivation of power can come from open elections. While the US and many other large industrialized nations have been able to surreptitiously avoid accountability to their respective constituencies, that technical definition is still true.
That said, I will get to my point. It makes me sick to my stomach when I hear people say that they are citizens of the world, and I am a child of humanity. The people who claim this have absolutely no bearing whatsoever on where they lie in the grand scheme of the universe. How self-centered must you be to believe that humanity, and by definition, yourself, is so homogeneous that you can simply belong to the group by virtue of genetics. Have you honestly forgotten where you come from? Do you think that you arrived on this earth from your day 1 and that it was all screwed up already and all you can do is complain and try to sterilize the planet with peace and love in your own way?
Mr. Miller, you have some serious soul searching to do if you think that you, or anyone, can simply ignore the sacrifices your father and grandfather have made in order to enable you to even write this blog. Humans by nature are not good nor are they bad. Humans are animals with an extraordinary level of intelligence that far surpasses any other animal on this planet. Through this intelligence we have formed collectives and sub-collectives. These collectives have enabled us to survive and prosper. To now cast these collectives aside because “you” feel that the system that your fathers bled and died to create to allow their children to survive is flawed is the most unbelievable act of selfishness.
You can curse humanity all you want and claim that injustices are rampant on the planet. Whose justice do you speak of? A moral compass is not completely objective. However, there are in my opinion some absolute moral truths. These groups of collectives could not possibly have survived this long if they all did not agree on a set of moral principles. All of you are now trying to rewrite this set of morals so it agrees with your own skewed morality. Perhaps your morality calls for peace and love and flowers and candy and cake for all mankind. We all know that that is not the way the world works. Governments in wealthy societies have always tried to sheild the eyes of their populace from the ugly truths of humanity. This, in my opinion, is not bad or wrong or evil. It the responsibility of government to protect its people. This protection extends beyond death and dismemberment. This protection also extends to an emotional level. There is a very good reason why our society does not leave rotting corpses lying in the street whether they be humans, or any other creatures (aside from the health implications). People don’t want to live their lives with a day to day reminder of the more grotesque aspects of life. It is unfortunate that some societies are better at this than others.
Since the beginning of the information age, people have become increasingly exposed to images that they never would have before. Websites show people in poor nations bleeding with injuries. These injuries having been caused by American Bombs. This is a very powerful propaganda technique. Images that the average person would never see can evoke raw emotions. Using this raw emotion they read an article with skewed logic and reasoning which claims that America is evil because they are the cause of this image. Have you ever wondered why you don’t see many images of bloody Americans on the internet (not including soldiers). Our society puts a higher value on protecting our populace from the images the will harm the emotional state of the people. These images of injuries are no more graphic than are images taken during life saving surguries or images taken of accidental injuries. These images have less value to the general public, because they have less political capital. They are just as graphic, however, and prove that using injuries sustained by people in poor regions are being used as propaganda. Your fathers knew that images like these did not belong in the public square. This is why even today, human corpses are covered and quickly removed from the public eye, and why bloody accident scenes on the side of the road are blocked from public view.
The Palestinian cause is not unjust. The morality of the world dictates that they should at least be better off than they currently are. However, does that mean that we should sacrifice the moral rights of one group to give moral rights to another? Certainly not. Working within our moral framework is the only way that the human race has ever been succesful. Everytime that we have tried to venture outside of that framework, we have failed miserably. Nations have no choice but to look after their own. Their primary goal should ALWAYS be to care for their own people. Everyone else MUST come second. This does not mean that they should be against everyone else. They simply need to prioritize their actions.
Again, your fathers knew that Selfishness on the part of nations is the only way to guarantee the maximum rate of success for the human race. Capitalism was able to take that to the next level. I agree that governement in certain places has gotten too big. I would severely hesitate to call the economy of the US communist. If you look at the way our society is run, there is nothing communist about it. Rags to riches stories are not rare. On the contrary, they are more common than anyone can possibly imagine. All of this can occur because of what your fathers fought for and your fathers were able to accomplish this becuase of their fathers and the society around them. They were not citizens of the world, They were citizens of their nation. A nation that gave their struggle a canvas. The government and the nation is not the same thing. I am not advocating that the government enabled this progress. The nation of people that surrounded them enabled this progress to occur.
It’s amazing how consistent the “libertarian” syndrome is, as amply manifested in this threads.
You, like your brethren in the establishment fold, for make no mistake, however disillusioned you may sound you’re still pretty much part and parcel of this system because you are CONSERVATIVES, you keep on revering Ron Paul, a conservative Texan Republican, for chrissakes! and therefore are not by a stretch of the imagination revolutionists.
So don’t flatter yourselves. Look in the mirror a bit. You have a hyperindividualist personality that abhors any form of social cooperation, except in the most minimalist sense, and even that is regarded as suspect…Woe to you if you should need your fellows in a true emergency. Then, maybe then, you’ll begin to fathom the wrongheadedness of your position.
Second, you all blab a great deal about the fact this is not a democracy because, as if you have discovered a great truth, this is a “republic” and hence it is supposedly in automatic contradiction to democracy, which is a nonsequitur and a false statement (see below). Lastly, like the poster on this thread (and many others) Barbara Klaassen, you adduce that ALL democracies give rise to what we have today (in Bushco), a looming tyranny, etc. Says Ms. Klaassen:
This damnable fascist “democracy” (plutocracy) is one tick away from Martial Law and total tyranny, which is the fate of all “democracies.” If we wind up with a Hillary, Obama, Rudy, Mitt or Fred, you can put a fork in this country, it will be done.
Beautifully put, and partially true, but wrongheaded analysis.
Let’s see if we can sort this out at least a little bit.
First, like the people whom you probably despise, those “statist liberals,” you often come up with a great and eloquent list of the system’s problems and diseases and invariably suggest misguided or laughingly inadequate cures. In the liberals’ case it’s usually to throw bandaids on the problem “du jour” (”war on poverty”, etc.) while leaving the system pretty much as it is, I mean with its cancerous dynamic of growing inequality, misallocation of resources, imperialist foreign policies, political criminality, unravelling of Constitutional rights, and so on, untouched.
In the libertarian camp, the “radical” solution is to go back to the beginning of capitalism, to the fount of the real problem, thinking that, by some magic the tiger cub will not become a full-grown tiger in a few years or maybe generations. The libertarian camp is forever forgetful that a social economic arrangement evolves over time, it grows, it changes, and you MUST understand its dynamic to be able to ascertain whether you are replacing something with something different or merely showing the movie all over again. The libertarians are simply famous for their unwillingness to face that simple truth. It’s called ahistoricalism. If that is not rank stupidity I don’t know what is.
Second, democracy is ALWAYS a work in progress. You can’t elect a bunch of people and then go to sleep, tending to your stupid business or whatver the hell you are most normally concerned with. Democracy requires ACTIVE AND CONSTANT PARTICIPATION. Got that? ACTIVE AND CONSTANT PARTICIPATION. Without that, it does eventually evolve into a farce, whether under capitalism or socialism or whatever label you want to use.
BUT to address the problem WE HAVE. The mess we face is the product not of the fact that “all democracies evolve into tyrannies,” as Ms. Klasseen argues, but of a very specific type of “democracy” CAPITALIST DEMOCRACY, what most people in Europe still call “bourgeois democracy.” Bourgeois democracy is always something of a fraud because it is first of all a class-divided system between two sides that have mutually clashing interests, the employer or business class, the “bourgies”, in this country the polite label is “corporate elites” and the workers, and by workers we MUST mean everyone who MUST work to make a living. But the bourgies run the show, as it should be abundantly clear to most readers with some funcitoning brain cells. And they run the show to the detrioment of everyone who is not a bourgie. That’s not rocket science, is it? So the whole system is a “class system”—yes, class differences exist and powerfully here in America, despite all the mythology and deliberate lies to cover this elemental fact.
Let’s examine the classes that comprise the American nation today and who’s who.
A billionaire like Rockefeller, a Buffet, a Murdoch, or a Bloomberg or a Bill Gates going to his office every day is not “working” in this critically important sense: he’s overseeing his assets. He OWNS the place. No one can tell him what to do. He can’t be fired. He decides pretty much what goes and doesn’t go under his roof. He holds the power to tell everyone else what to produce, under what conditions, and where. And he takes the lion’s share of the profits generated. “Work” for him or her is optional. Even if he stopped going to his office tomorrow he’d still have enough dough to live 100 lifetimes in an opulence almosy impossible to imagine by most working stiffs.
In a subaltern capacity you have these “smaller capitalists”—the executive class, often enriched by originally serving the plutocrats. They too come to exercise this kind of power, and they in effect join the bourgies as members of the same class. They often make tens if not hundreds of millions in the service of such plutocrats. They fire hundreds of thousands of workers with glee, to the salute of Wall Street, who pronounces such insanity “good for the economy.” Their allegiance is NOT to the working people of this nation, nor to the consumers, who they study carefully to squeeze for every dime they can, but to themselves and their betters—those who are even richer and more powerful than they are.
Next you have the “freelancers” in the economy, the “small bourgeois”—the professionals: doctors, lawyers, engineers, what have you. Some of them act as independents, others (i.e., engineers and scientists) work for a corporation with some relative degree of independence, but still very much attached to the corporate “career track”. And then you have everyone else—the vast majority of Americans who work blue collar, white collar and just about any other color of collar jobs in this increasingly, no-loyalty insecure, distintegrating job environment.
Those are your basic classes in America. And here’s the rub: a “democracy” in which the control of its parties, its media, its courts, its academic centers, and its core economic units (the corporation) is concentrated in one single class: the corporate rich, the plutocracy, and dedicated from inception to private profit, not value and service to the public, is NOT ever going to be a true democracy because this class and its interests are at profound variance with the interests of the masses.
So the problem is not, like Ms. Klasseen suggests, that democracy is flawed, and therefore it inevitably leads to tyranny. It is that CAPITALISM is antidemocratic, oligarchic by its very nature and it naturally leads to plutocratic dominance. If you don’t believe me, then just watch what goes on in ANY corporation, you call that a democracy? A democracy in which informaiton is ample and reliable, in which the economic units are made to operate first and foremost in the interest of the majority and NOT for the enrichment of a privileged minority, is a fine, good, worth-fighting-for democracy. That’s the democracy we still haven’t had, and the democracy we need to implement in this nation.
For all his blather, Albignon has failed to do more than simply indulge in hubris that excuses and seeks to perpetuate the status quo as it has come to be, not as it was meant to be.
He and I DO agree that it was/is the fault of “we the people” that his sorry situation exists and it is, therefore, up to “we the people” to change it.
We are suffering under Monopoly Capitalism with a debt fiat currency which has no backing and benefits those who always get the phony paper first before it’s purchasing power has been diluted. The Federal Reserve has to go. It is made up of a private foreign cabal who seek a One World Government under their control.
Neither gold nor silver need necessarily back a united States currency; it could be based on our GDP, but it must be backed to prohibit inflation by overprinting if the currency is paper. If the money supply is not fully backed, then only gold and silver as specified by the Constitution can be money. Money facilitates trade and should not have to be borrowed into existence with attendant interest as it is today.
All direct taxation, such as Income Tax - both Federal and State - should not exist, as they are un-Constitutional. No direct tax can be laid unless it be by enumeration as determined by the census or apportionment, an equal amount from each sovereign State.
All regulatory agencies and departments of the Federal Government NOT specifically mandated by the Constitution should be abolished. They are tax eaters producing nothing but red tape and sponsoring a bloated bureaucracy. They are, in fact, corporations - whether they be the EPA or the IRS. No franking privileges either.
We as individuals do not get our rights from the Constitution. The Bill of Rights came into being because those rights enumerated there are the ones most often abridged or usurped by government - freedom of speech, right to assemble, right to keep and bear arms, right to be safe in our homes and our papers, privacy, freedom of religion and freedom from the establishment of a state-sponsored religion, etc.
The Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation but kept to the same principles with the real power vested in the individual States and their people. It is virtually impossible today to impact the decisions and policies of the Federal Government because so much power has been usurped from the States through judicial fiat and just pure ignorance and apathy on the part of “we the people” and our so-called representatives.
WHAT HAS BEEN DONE CAN BE UNDONE, even if it takes another revolution to accomplish it.
Katrina revealed the LIE that governments ON ANY LEVEL can deliver goods, services and aid better than individuals. People from all over this country loaded up their cars, trucks, trailers and buses with food, water, clothing, temporary shelters, first aid supplies, etc., and headed to New Orleans where they were met by gunmen with Homeland Security and FEMA who forced them to turn around and leave while people died or were killed as politicians grabbed photo opportunities. The local police either turned tail and ran or joined in the looting.
It is an egregious lie that the government will be there for you when you need them. When push comes to shove, they will be in their well-furnished and secure underground facilities and you and I will be where we have always been - ON OUR OWN - sink or swim. The “nanny state” robs you of your freedoms while giving you only empty promises. The sooner you start waking up to that fact and start making some preparations of your own, the better.
Government could better be likened unto fire; kept small it is our servant, huge and out of control (as it is now) it will destroy us and all we own and hold dear.
So, Albignon, you think and say what you will. Unless we have the good sense to elect Ron Paul and back him to the hilt in his efforts to reduce the size of government and institute honest money then we will deserve what we get but when TSHTF perhaps some of what I have said will come back to you.