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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 »
hat tip: The Daily Bell
Monday, May 24, 2010 – by Staff Report
Who owns America today? … Perhaps the greatest threat to … the tea party is that they appear to be arguing a case that, for all practical purposes, has already been settled for the majority of Americans. The America of the Founding Fathers roots – a modest, decentralized, and agrarian nation – is gone, or is at least being pushed to the demographic margins, inhabiting the great red swath of the country’s middle. Politically, the America of today is as much a product of Lyndon Johnson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt as James Madison and Thomas Jefferson – of the sprawling government programs of Medicaid and Social Security as much as the Second Amendment and its provision for nongovernment militias. Though he was speaking of … the Civil Rights Act specifically, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele’s comment Sunday morning on “Fox News Sunday” appears to be broadly relevant to the tea party as a viable political movement: “The philosophy was misplaced in these times,” he said. “The philosophy got in the way of reality.” – Christian Science Monitor
Dominant Social Theme: It’s ovah! The blue states have won. Federal government activism is gloriously ascendant.
Free-Market Analysis: Working closely together, we Bell staffers have developed a most un-libertarian, hive-like mentality. These days, buzzing in our brains are recollections, often, of the compelling Claudius books by Robert Graves. What comes to mind, however, is not so much the pomp and decrepitude that Graves brought to life as the books’ over-riding, semi-tragic perspective that the Republic was gone and could not be brought back.
Indeed, the theme of Roman republicanism-now-lost hangs over these books and in our humble opinion lifts them into the realm of great art. Not only does Graves have an apparently thorough grasp of ancient times, but he is able to bring these times to life and to inhabit them with living, breathing creatures who are often among the most maleficent and fascinating since Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, wrote his great character-driven plays (Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, etc.).
May 24th, 2010 | Posted in Web-Only Content | Read More »
The New American
by Joe Wolverton, II
Friday, 14 May 2010
Since the days when Mark Antony’s grandfather patrolled the coasts of the Mediterranean searching for the distinctive gilded-stemmed masts of their lightweight vessels, pirates from Cilicia (modern-day Cukorova, Turkey) had vexed Roman shipping lanes.
The pirates brigandry was particularly irksome for generations of Roman political leaders because the peace and stability of the massive Roman populace depended on the free, uninterrupted movement of goods from the other parts of their vast empire. Without this crucial supply of commodities, storehouses would empty, the people would go hungry, and riots would enflame the streets that run serpentine among the Seven Hills.
In 68 B.C., the Cilician pirates ratcheted their attacks on Roman interests up a notch. The bustling port at Ostia was their target. These brazen buccaneers sailed in and set the port on fire. The amber glow could be seen at night from the alleys and rooftops of Rome herself. The people were petrified with fear.
Rampant fear followed news of the assault: fear of famine, fear of death, fear of unsafe passage along the now-ancient roads connecting Italy’s coasts, rich with the bounty of the world, to the teeming interior, principally its capital — the Eternal City of Rome.
May 23rd, 2010 | Posted in Web-Only Content | Read More »
by Jim Quinn
Hat tip: www.opednews.com
Do you know the enemy?
Do you know your enemy?
Well, gotta know the enemy
Violence is an enemy
Against the enemy
Violence is an energy
Bringing on the fury
The choir infantry
Revolt against the honor to obey
Know Your Enemy – Green Day
Do you know the enemy?
Is it Iraqis, Iran, the Taliban, terrorists, Muslims, Russia, North Korea, China, or our government? General Douglas MacArthur had a distinct point of view on the more likely threat.
“I am concerned for the security of our great Nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within.”
William Strauss and Neil Howe wrote the book The Fourth Turning in 1997. Their theory is that history is a series of repetitive 100 year cycles with four generations living through each cycle. Each cycle and generation has many similarities, only the particular events change. We are currently in the most hazardous part of the cycle with the most volatile generation in positions of power. Strauss & Howe foresaw perilous times ahead:
“Based on historical patterns, America will hit a once-in-a-century national crisis within the decade…’like winter,’ the crisis or ‘fourth turning’ cannot be averted. It will last 20 years or so and bring hardship and upheavals similar to previous fourth turnings, such as the American Revolution, the Civil War, the Great Depression and World War II. The fourth turning is a perilous time because the result could be a new ‘golden age’ for America or the beginning of the end. It all will begin with a ‘sudden spark’ that catalyzes a crisis mood around the year 2005.”
We are currently in the midst of the Fourth Turning, an era of upheaval, a crisis in which our country will redefine its very nature and purpose. The sudden spark that catalyzed this crisis occurred on the beautiful sunny morning of September 11, 2001. The crisis reached an initial crescendo in late 2008. Many believe that the worst is behind us and the future has begun to brighten. This is highly unlikely. Previous crisis periods lasted fifteen to twenty years. The Civil War crisis was confined to five brutal years that resulted in 600,000 American deaths. The crisis in our past history that appears most analogous is the Great Depression/World War II crisis that lasted sixteen years. A financial depression caused by the Federal Reserve pumping too much credit into the financial system during the 1920′s had been considered the worst in U.S. history. The current financial crisis, caused by the Federal Reserve pumping too much credit into the financial system along with politicians turbo charging the effort by eliminating all regulation of the financial system, has led to the Greater Depression. We are likely only half way through this crisis, with tears and bloodshed yet to follow.
Read more.
April 24th, 2009 | Posted in Web-Only Content | 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
Read more.
April 21st, 2009 | Posted in Web-Only Content | Read More »
Hat tip: The Daily Beast
by Bruce Fein
There were no professional interrogators involved in the creation of the CIA’s torture program.
It’s bad enough that we have war criminals running amok. Having one of them (Jay Bybee )sitting on one of the highest courts in the land (United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit) is simply psychotic.
“The evidence is now undeniable. President Barack Obama is flouting his unflagging constitutional obligation enshrined in Article II, Section 3 to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” He is also reneging on his signature campaign promise to restore the rule of law, transparency, and accountability to the White House. He is displaying the psychology of an arrogant Empire as opposed to a modest Republic in continuing and escalating the Bush-Cheney duumvirate’s global and perpetual war against international terrorism heedless of foreign sovereignties or the lives of civilians.
Even more disappointing, Obama has proven a political coward dangerous to the Republic. Before April 16, he had decided against any criminal investigation of the Bush-Cheney duumvirate or their inner circles for their boasted complicity in torture, i.e., waterboarding, which Attorney General Eric Holder has declared is torture. He has similarly declined investigations of extraordinary renditions that have occasioned, among other things, the indictments and in absentia trials of 26 CIA operatives in Milan, Italy, for the kidnapping and torture of Egyptian cleric Abu Omar.
Obama asserted: “Enlisting our values [like the rule of law or transparency] in the protection of our people makes us stronger and more secure. A democracy as resilient as ours must reject the false choice between our security and our ideals [like the rule of law or government in the sunshine]… I believe strongly in transparency and accountability… The United States is a nation of laws.”
Obama has set a precedent whitewashing White House lawlessness in the name of national security that will lie around like a loaded weapon ready for resurrection by any Commander-in-Chief eager to appear “tough on terrorism” and to exploit popular fear.
- Bruce Fein, (Excerpt: “How Obama Excused Torture,” The Daily Beast, 4-17-09.
April 18th, 2009 | Posted in Web-Only Content | Read More »
Stuart Long
click here to listen
I don’t scream a lot,
but when I do–
My lung’s eXhale
is for what’s true.
I suck in all the atmosphere
then eXplode out,
‘FrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeDOM’
until I’m blue.
You can take my life
and my currency,
But I know I’m sovereign
and I know I’m free.
November 30th, 2008 | 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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