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The Founding Fathers universally rejected democracy and hoped that posterity would never turn the United States into one. The word they used was “Republic,” which is not synonymous with “Democracy.” The word “Democracy” is not in the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution, or the Bill of Rights. Even the Pledge of Allegiance is “to the Republic for which it stands.”
Benjamin Franklin defined democracy as “two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.”
So why did they reject Democracy? Because it is inherently flawed with the “share the wealth” philosophy, which only works as long as there is someone else’s money to share. Those receiving are quite pleased with getting something for nothing. But those forced to give are denied the right to spend the benefits of their own labor in their own self-interest, which creates jobs no matter how the money is spent. They also lose a portion of their incentive to produce.
June 29th, 2010 | Posted in Web-Only Content | Read More »
Jim Hightower
Are you an agitator? You know, one of those people who won’t leave well enough alone, who’s always questioning authority and trying to stir things up?
If so, the Powers That Be detest you. You … you … “agitator!” They spit the term out as a pejorative to brand anyone who dares to challenge the established order.
“Oh,” they scoff, “our people didn’t mind living next to that toxic waste dump until those environmentalists got them upset.” Corporate chieftains routinely wail that “our workers were perfectly happy until those union agitators started messing with their minds.”
Agitators. In each case, the message is that America would be a fine country if only we could get rid of those pesky troublemakers who get the hoi polloi agitated about one thing or another.
Bovine excrement. Were it not for agitators, we wouldn’t even have an America. The Fourth of July would be just another hot day, we’d be singing “God Save the Queen,” and our government officials would be wearing white-powdered wigs.
Agitators created America, and it’s their feisty spirit and outright rebelliousness that we celebrate on our national holiday. I don’t merely refer to the Founders, either. Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, James Madison, Ben Franklin and the rest certainly were derring-do agitators when they wrote the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, creating the framework for a democratic republic. But they didn’t actually create much democracy. In the first presidential election, only four percent of the people were even eligible to vote — no women, no African Americans, no American Indians and no one who was landless.
So, on the Fourth, it’s neither the documents of democracy that we celebrate nor the authors of the documents. Rather, it’s the intervening two-plus centuries of ordinary American agitators who have struggled mightily against formidable odds to democratize those documents.
July 5th, 2009 | Posted in Print Edition | Read More »
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. –Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
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July 3rd, 2009 | Posted in Print Edition | Read More »
by Jon Faulkner
www.opednews.com
The U.S, for the last few decades, has been seriously hurt by the leadership Americans chose. Obama will very likely be defeated in 2012 by a landslide victory of the G.O.P. The new ultra rightist government will renew its attacks upon the U.S. Constitution, and whatever still exists of the Constitutional protections once afforded Americans will be further diminished. Social programs, including the big one, Social Security, will be dissolved and whatever is left of the trust fund will be handed over to private investors. Old folks should be making plans for other health and living arrangements. The U.S. will descend into true Third World status, and its influence in the world will diminish further. Unless that is, the rightist government begins a new era of imperialist aggression beginning with any nation unable to defend itself.
The question will be how much the world will allow U.S. imperialism to advance before a collective effort, probably led by Russia and China, is launched to contain the U.S. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been too profitable for U.S. Corporations to ignore future adventures in foreign lands. Evildoers are remarkably easy to find, particularly when one looks for them. Bush prepared the ground when he informed the nation that endless war was necessary.
“It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.” … James Madison
What was once the world’s strongest economy is now drowning in debt, and the corporations with their magical free market wizards are being rewarded with vast amounts of taxpayer dollars for sinking the economy. It’s provident for them that American taxpayers didn’t get the same tax breaks they did. Otherwise there would be little money to give them. The big banks, investment firms and insurers are busy, with full political support, finishing off what little is left of the U.S. economy. Obama knows what is necessary to fix the nation’s headlong plunge into economic oblivion, but he hasn’t the courage or the political support to fix a flat tire, never mind the economy.
The American people have been the victims of their own self righteous morality. They have been lazy and guilty of unbelievable ignorance. The warnings were everywhere, but they were far too comfortable with their baseless opinions to see them. The “We Report, you Decide” crew did a fine number on them, and they’re still being jerked around like a marionettes on a string.
“Capitalism has defeated communism. It is now well on its way to defeating democracy.” … David Korten
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April 21st, 2009 | Posted in Web-Only Content | Read More »
The media and others have for years undertaken a concentrated effort to misinform the American public by rewriting America’s Judeo-Christian history. The motto at the heart of the American experiment “in God we trust” has been exchanged for “in Man we trust.”
America’s Godly Heritage Rewriting History
The last three generations of Americans simply have not been told the truth about American history as its Christian heritage has been disparaged.
For example, ask most Americans if the “separation of church and state” is in our Constitution, and they will answer yes. You can scour the Constitution of the United States, and you will NOT find the phrase, “separation of church and state” or anything close to it.
In the Constitution of the Soviet Union, however, the doctrine of the separation of Church and State is found: “In order to ensure to citizens freedom of conscience, the church in the U.S.S.R. is separated from the State, and the school from the church. Freedom of religious worship and freedom of anti-religious propaganda is recognized for all citizens” (Article 124). Article Twelve of the 1918 Soviet Constitution decrees that no church or religious organization “shall enjoy the rights of judicial person.” Instruction of children under age 18 in religious matters, whether in public or private, is against the law.
The concept of separation of church and state might be implied by the First Amendment which states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….” It says nothing about the “separation of church and state.” And, even if you accept the principle of the separation of church and state being implied by the First Amendment, it’s implication is not there to protect Americans from religion, it is there to protect religious Americans from the government.
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April 11th, 2009 | Posted in Web-Only Content | Read More »
The Founding Fathers universally rejected democracy and hoped that posterity would never turn the United States into one. The word they used was “Republic,” which is not synonymous with “Democracy.” The word “Democracy” is not in the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution, or the Bill of Rights. Even the Pledge of Allegiance is “to the Republic for which it stands.”
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