Revolution?

[bronzeage]

OK, but what differs this from being a democracy ?

In a Democracy, the people are the government, without an elected legislature. All issues, from law and regulations, to budgets and spending are decided by a general vote.

This quickly becomes unwieldy when the population grows beyond a few dozen.

Paid managers, in the form of legislators and executives are the solution. The US Republic divides power between the law makers, the law enforcers, and the courts. Except for Iceland, it is the only nation in the world whose government has lasted over 200 years without fundamental change in structure.

It's far from perfect, but as Benjamin Franklin once said, "its the worst form of government, except for all the others."

 

[Liar]

In a Democracy, the people are the government, without an elected legislature. All issues, from law and regulations, to budgets and spending are decided by a general vote.

Ok then. Name one democratic nation.

 

[bronzeage]

Ok then. Name one democratic nation.

They don't last long. Probably one of the Greek city-states was the last.

 

[Liar]

It's far from perfect, but as Benjamin Franklin once said, "its the worst form of government, except for all the others."

Citation needed. I always hear that attributed to Churchill.

 

[Liar]

They don't last long. Probably one of the Greek city-states was the last.

So the United States is no different from all the others then in that regard. And for the sake of convenience people call al those nations democracies, (since the elections are democratc).

 

[bronzeage]

Citation needed. I always hear that attributed to Churchill.

Just going by memory. It could have been Churchill, but would you put it past him to steal it from Franklin?

 

[Liar]

Just going by memory. It could have been Churchill, but would you put it past him to steal it from Franklin?

Nope. Ze almighty Google falls flat on quote + franklin tho.

 

[PoppingTom]

In a Democracy, the people are the government, without an elected legislature. All issues, from law and regulations, to budgets and spending are decided by a general vote.

This quickly becomes unwieldy when the population grows beyond a few dozen.

Paid managers, in the form of legislators and executives are the solution. The US Republic divides power between the law makers, the law enforcers, and the courts. Except for Iceland, it is the only nation in the world whose government has lasted over 200 years without fundamental change in structure.

It's far from perfect, but as Benjamin Franklin once said, "its the worst form of government, except for all the others."

so you wanna tell me I'm not living in a democracy ?

And that a "dictatorship with election legislatures" is what you could have in America while still being a "Republic" ?

I begin to understand Bukowski, who said "The only difference between a democracy and a dictature is that, in a democracy, you can vote before obey the commands." ups, he said democracy, too. OK, he drunk a lot in his life.......

 

[bronzeage]

So the United States is no different from all the others then in that regard. And for the sake of convenience people call al those nations democracies, (since the elections are democratc).

Different in what way?

I remember when there used to be a GDR team in the Olympics. Anyone can call themselves "democratic" and it doesn't lessen any other use of the word.

The US, like many other countries elects professional managers to operate the government. This is the essence of a Republic. We can call it a democratic republic. The question for democracy vs. republic only arises when someone feels they are part of a neglected majority.

 

[bronzeage]

so you wanna tell me I'm not living in a democracy ?

And that a "dictatorship with election legislatures" is what you could have in America while still being a "Republic" ?

I begin to understand Bukowski, who said "The only difference between a democracy and a dictature is that, in a democracy, you can vote before obey the commands." ups, he said democracy, too. OK, he drunk a lot in his life.......

No, I am not going to tell you where you live. You can call it an anarcho-syndicalist commune if you want. Be sure to watch out for the violence inherent in the system. If you understand Bukowski, that is a great start.

Some people define a Republic as a "representative democracy."

What's in a name?

 

[PoppingTom]

Some people define a Republic as a "representative democracy."

What's in a name?

I think, most of the time, the ideology (even if it's pretended like on GDR - but the whole past-socialistic world was one big pretense).

So, if I say, I'm living in a democracy, I say, I'm a piece of that society, with rights and duties, and I can elect anybody I want.

If I'm American (sorry for that cliche this time) and I say, I'm living in a Republic, tis means, I have rights, and I can elect anybody I want.

Is that right ? Or misunderstood ?

 

[bronzeage]

I think, most of the time, the ideology (even if it's pretended like on GDR - but the whole past-socialistic world was one big pretense).

So, if I say, I'm living in a democracy, I say, I'm a piece of that society, with rights and duties, and I can elect anybody I want.

If I'm American (sorry for that cliche this time) and I say, I'm living in a Republic, tis means, I have rights, and I can elect anybody I want.

Is that right ? Or misunderstood ?

That is stating it very simply. You can vote for anyone you like, but they have to be on the ballot. Your vote can be one out of hundreds, thousands or millions. In the end, the aggregate judgment of voters shapes the Republic.

Most of this kind of stuff matters very little to people. Very few people have the time to keep informed on complicated issues (that does not stop them from talking about it). Interest in what the government is doing increases when there is a big issue such as healthcare, or invading a country that does not have weapons of mass destruction.

We worry about more practical matters. Things like paying the rent, getting our children to school on time and the like. Who is sitting in Congress or the Whitehouse just doesn't matter much on a day to day basis.

In the US, we have many rights and privileges. Every right we enjoy comes with some kind of restriction. I can drive anywhere in the nation, cross borders and stop anyplace I like. I must carry a valid driving licence. The car I drive has to have a separate license. I can vote for any candidate on the ballot, but I must register with the government, have my name on a list, vote only at a specific place and be prepared to prove my identity. I can start a business, but the government can restrict where I put the business.

The list can go on and on. As I said before, a Republic is usually claimed by the neglected majority.

 

[oggbashan]

Just going by memory. It could have been Churchill, but would you put it past him to steal it from Franklin?

Churchill: Speech in House of Commons, 11 November 1947:

No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

He didn't claim that the statement was original.

Og

 

[PoppingTom]

....

Most of this kind of stuff matters very little to people. Very few people have the time to keep informed on complicated issues (that does not stop them from talking about it). Interest in what the government is doing increases when there is a big issue such as healthcare, or invading a country that does not have weapons of mass destruction.

We worry about more practical matters. Things like paying the rent, getting our children to school on time and the like. Who is sitting in Congress or the Whitehouse just doesn't matter much on a day to day basis.

In the US, we have many rights and privileges. Every right we enjoy comes with some kind of restriction. ......

Well, I think that's why American and European tend to misunderstood.

In the word "forced solidarity", a European sees the world "solidarity" first, an American the word "forced".

If you grow up in a society where you learned that duties are essential for a society, you take it. You pay what you have to pay, but you can demand if you're in need, too.

If you grow up in a society where you learned that this is freedom and you have your rights, and duties were called "taxes" or "restrictions", you don't take any duty, if you can avoid this. OK, we do this kinda too, but we don't damn duties as "restrictions of freedom". You pay what you have to pay, and you always demand less taxes and restrictions without questioning their senses.

Am I right? Or prejudiced?

This is no system bashing. I don't say your system is bad. I say that's how a European sees the American society. Maybe I'm wrong, I never was in the states.

 

[bronzeage]

Well, I think that's why American and European tend to misunderstood.

In the word "forced solidarity", a European sees the world "solidarity" first, an American the word "forced".

If you grow up in a society where you learned that duties are essential for a society, you take it. You pay what you have to pay, but you can demand if you're in need, too.

If you grow up in a society where you learned that this is freedom and you have your rights, and duties were called "taxes" or "restrictions", you don't take any duty, if you can avoid this. OK, we do this kinda too, but we don't damn duties as "restrictions of freedom". You pay what you have to pay, and you always demand less taxes and restrictions without questioning their senses.

Am I right? Or prejudiced?

This is no system bashing. I don't say your system is bad. I say that's how a European sees the American society. Maybe I'm wrong, I never was in the states.

I am not sure what "forced solidarity" means.

Very few people are willing or able to acknowledge the government services they consume. They demand lower taxes and give very little thought to the services they demand.

What people want more than anything is a system that works. They want roads that can be traveled in the rain and bridges that don't fall down. They expect a policeman to come when called and the school teacher to be better educated than the students.

For the past 30 years, the US government has followed a foreign policy intended to keep oil and gasoline prices low. We pay about half what a European driver pays. We have spent a lot of money to keep the Middle East Oil fields open to the world. This is a substantial subsidy to the American driver. Our taxes paid for all of it.

Beyond that, it has pushed the building of an infrastructure based on concrete roads and parking lots. Now we are stuck with an incredible investment in big things that take up a lot of room. Mass transit is poor in most cities and passenger train travel is impossible in most parts of the country. We have large populations who live a great distance from their job. Any rise in gas prices is a real hardship and there is no other alternative.

Few people think about this when they demand lower taxes.

 

[stephen55]

All this because health care is going to made more available????

Wow...elected politicians narrowly pass a health care bill and Ami shits his pants. All this from the first page of this thread...

As I sit here and ponder a title for this piece, I know in my heart that all across America, true Patriots are considering how and when they must bring about a revolt. (My guess is that there won't be as many "true" Patriots as the guy hopes there are.)

It is time to recognize and acknowledge that 2010 America is undergoing a descent into absolute Despotism, and a course towards abolishment must be taken. (Absolute Despotism...yup, yup, yup...decent health care is the epitome, the very pinnacle of Absolute Despotism.)

Islamic and Muslem (sic) extremists have demonstrated that they will make the ultimate sacrifice for their way of life; do you expect true Americans to do anything less? (Not over health care reform...but go ahead and prove me wrong...please...)

Your class warfare Marxian rhetoric of the poor versus the rich is so out of date I wonder anyone with even a small education even reads about. (No comment except...I think Ami and Marx actually have more in common than Ami will ever realize, let alone admit to.)

There is not a single Congressman in either the House or the Senate that I admire and respect and very few in either Party that speak with knowledge and clarity and could be considered, 'Statesmen', the best of our minds will not stoop to public service. (My guess is that Ami thinks he has one of those best minds. Thus all Congressmen are beneath his dizzying intellect.)

In my view of the coming upheaval, you will be transported to barren land, given material to build a shelter and seeds to start a garden and pretty much left to weed yourselves out. Those that survive may be fit to join the human race again...but that is pure speculation, I think you would just give up and die. (You don't want to accept that I'm so much better than you, so you don't deserve to live.)

Now innovation is controlled by government, the EPA and the FDA, et cetera, and true genius has been stifled or corrupted in order to please the regulators in power. All we ask is that you leave us alone and get the hell out of the way. Is that too much to ask? (Ami, one of the true geniuses, wants you to stop trying to keep him from taking over. I for one say, that's way to much to ask!!)

I wonder what gems of True Republican Patriot Philosophy are on the following pages?

 

[amicus]

Bronzeage...there really was an America before the age of Big Government, believe it or not.

Perhaps it is my vintage but I bristle when people use, 'we' as inclusive in national goals.

The history of the energy industry includes more than middle east oil fields. European Petrol prices are largely determined by government taxation, tiny auto's and limited infrastructure, not because the US or NATO has kept the oil lanes open.

Most of the Postage Stamp sized countries in Europe simply do not comprehend suburban expansion the occured naturally in the US, or the distances involved in travel.

I sense a political agenda in your words and that is a shame as there are real problems to be solved and big government is the worst possible solution.

Amicus

 

[cloudy]

Ah, Cloudy, I have no objections to your tunnel vision for Native Americans and in your eyes they had a perfect society that was ruined by contact with Europeans.

In truth, they were in large, savage, warring tribes, aboriginal by nature and doomed to be absorbed by the first society that came in contact with them.

As time goes by we learn that most likely, the first Native Americans were migrating from Europe, not Siberia. Both tool styles and DNA support that theory and it seems they following the ice pack across the Atlantic from Spain and France.

Interesting, eh?

Amicus

As usual, you avoid addressing the fact that you were WRONG.

Please show me where I've ever said that NA society was perfect. I won't wait because you won't be able to find where I've said anything remotely like that.

Like all civilizations, it had its good and bad, and classifying us as savages is laughable, considering that Europeans were burning people at the stake for believing the earth was round instead of flat. Humans are violent, regardless of their society, and for every atrocity you want to lay at my feet, I can give you at least ten for your own. You should probably quit now, and not even go there, since you're so damn clueless about history. You already look pretty stupid as it is - still don't know how to use the quote function after how many years here?

Yep, clueless.

 

[oggbashan]

As usual, you avoid addressing the fact that you were WRONG.

Please show me where I've ever said that NA society was perfect. I won't wait because you won't be able to find where I've said anything remotely like that.

Like all civilizations, it had its good and bad, and classifying us as savages is laughable, considering that Europeans were burning people at the stake for believing the earth was round instead of flat. Humans are violent, regardless of their society, and for every atrocity you want to lay at my feet, I can give you at least ten for your own. You should probably quit now, and not even go there, since you're so damn clueless about history. You already look pretty stupid as it is - still don't know how to use the quote function after how many years here?

Yep, clueless.

Sorry Cloudy,

Europeans believing the earth was flat was a 19th century invention of Washington Irving. Any sailor who went out of sight of shore could see that the earth was round - right back to the Bronze Age.

Og

 

[amicus]

Stephen55 never seems happier than when he can attack a philosophy or political opinion opposed to his own.

The trouble is, Stephen55 and the many other cowards of the Left, never divulge just what their philosophy concerning human individual liberties are in any terms philosophical or political.

I feel sadness for the starving and abused children of Africa and a different kind of sadness for the defeated and miserable intellects of Europe and Canada.

Most Americans who are not recent immigrants or political refugee's, cannot conceive of the depravity of sacrificing one's individual rights and choices to the will of the majority.

Stephen55 blurts his pain out in vengeful vitriol because he/she has been born again without an individual sense of life and finds a vacuum where there ought to be a sense of right and wrong, in other words, a moral and ethical foundation.

I don't really know if a frog in a pot of water on a stove would jump or be boiled alive but Stephen55 and his cohorts surely don't have the sense of even the frog as rights and liberties are slowly removed and the boiling point approaches.

A rational person would applaud those who warn of approaching danger, the Stephen55's in this world merely place there heads in the sand with their hind ends up and warm to the approaching barbarians.

Perhaps you will survive with just a reamed rectum or perhaps you will not survive; it is out of your hands.

an amused amicus...(laughing at my own extemporaneous soliloquy)

 

[cloudy]

Sorry Cloudy,

Europeans believing the earth was flat was a 19th century invention of Washington Irving. Any sailor who went out of sight of shore could see that the earth was round - right back to the Bronze Age.

Og

I was being mostly facetious - sorry. I can come up with many concrete, factual examples if ami wishes. They aren't that hard to find.

 

[Huckleman2000]

[...]Perhaps you will survive with just a reamed rectum or perhaps you will not survive; it is out of your hands.

an amused amicus...(laughing at my own extemporaneous soliloquy)

hmm... hitting the bottle kind of early tonight, aren't you?

 

[amicus]

Nope...had to zip down to the market for an onion, spaghetti calls tonight, Chianti is later...

thanks anyway

ami

 

[Boota]

~~~

Obama is a socialist; I want that to fail and I am heartened by the Tea Party uprisings all across the country that are resisting this move to the left.

Your jumbled thoughts on self interest and sacrifice are juvenile. Rational self interest, individual responsibility translates to a National character of individualism. People do not recieve their baisc character from government, they do so in spite of what government may do as the natural and rational lifestyle is one of self interest, innovation and excellence....terms apparenly without meaning to you.

Amicus

Being concerned with social responsibility doesn't make anyone a socialist. "Fuck you, I got mine" doesn't make you a patriot either. You're talking your flawed logic, off the point bullshit again. What is jumbled about what I wrote? Did anyone else not get it? What is juvenile about sacrifice? Patriots, all patriots, sacrifice. That is what makes them patriots. Putting others ahead of yourself is required to be a patriot. Putting the good of your country and your countrymen ahead of being right at all costs is required to be a patriot. You want something that could be great for this country to fail because you don't want to be wrong. You'd rather see the country lose big then for you to be wrong. That is selfish, and really dumb to boot. Like it or not, we're all in this together. If America fails, all Americans will suffer for it. Maybe even you.

I have to ask again:

What would you sacrifice for your country?

 

[amicus]

Your language fits your avatar, coarse and abrasive.

I gave eight years active duty in military service for starters and then 30 years combined in radio and newspaper news reporting.

News reporting may not seem a service to you, but back in the days of 'objective' reporting, it was accepted as a service of information.

You are hung up on 'sacrifice' it is no sacrifice to work to feed my family and provide for them, it is no sacrifice to defend the principles of liberty because those principles are part of my existence, with or without a government to enumerate them.

Government works for me, not the other way around. When government no longer works in my interest, then it is my right and my duty to abolish it.

Amicus