Si vis pacem parabellum If I agreed with you, we would both be wrong We can thank public education for American gullibility... When did individualism and self reliance come to depend on the government? "A Liberal is a person who will give away everything he doesn't own." Capital punishment means never having to say, "You again?" Liberals Use Guilt As Moral Weapon Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you're wrong.
Showing posts with label History. Show all posts
Showing posts with label History. Show all posts
Thursday, August 15, 2013
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Democracy and Majority Rule - Walter E. Williams
Democracy and Majority Rule
Democracy and majority rule give an aura of legitimacy and decency to acts that would otherwise be deemed tyranny. Most people would agree that having our decisions on what television shows to watch, what kind of car we'll purchase and what we'll eat for Thanksgiving dinner made through the democratic process is tyranny. Why isn't it also tyranny for the political process to determine decisions such as how much should be put aside out of our paycheck for retirement; whether we purchase health insurance or not; what type of light bulbs we use; or whether we purchase 32- or 16-ounce soda containers?
The founders of our nation held a deep abhorrence for democracy and majority rule. The word democracy appears in neither of our founding documents: our Declaration of Independence and Constitution. In Federalist Paper No. 10, James Madison wrote, "Measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority."
John Adams predicted, "Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."
Edmund Randolph said, "... that in tracing these evils to their origin every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy."
Chief Justice John Marshall observed, "Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos."
In a word or two, the founders knew that a democracy would lead to the same kind of tyranny the colonies suffered under King George III. Our founders intended for us to have a republican form of limited government where political decision-making is kept to the minimum.
Alert to the dangers of majoritarian tyranny, our Constitution's framers inserted several anti-majority rules. One such rule is that election of the president is not decided by a majority vote but instead by the Electoral College. Nine states have more than 50 percent of the U.S. population. If a simple majority were the rule, conceivably these nine states could determine the presidency. Fortunately, they can't because they have only 225 Electoral College votes when 270 of the 538 total are needed. Were it not for the Electoral College, presidential candidates could safely ignore less populous states.
Two houses of Congress pose another obstacle to majority rule. Fifty-one senators can block the designs of 435 representatives and 49 senators. The Constitution gives the president a veto that weakens the power of 535 members of both houses of Congress. It takes two-thirds of both houses of Congress to override a presidential veto. To change the Constitution requires not a majority but a two-thirds vote of both Houses to propose an amendment, and to be enacted requires ratification by three-fourths of state legislatures.
Today's Americans think Congress has the constitutional authority to do anything upon which they can get a majority vote. We think whether a measure is a good idea or a bad idea should determine its passage as opposed to whether that measure lies within the enumerated powers granted Congress by the Constitution. Unfortunately, for the future of our nation, Congress has successfully exploited American constitutional ignorance or contempt.
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Obama win is Constitution’s loss
On Sept. 12, 2001, President George W. Bush assured us: “We will not allow this enemy to win the war by changing our way of life or restricting our freedoms.”
The enemy has certainly tried, but it was President Bush, following the advice of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, who began the extensive attack on our individual liberties through the Patriot Act, which passed on Oct. 26, 2001.
Then, President Barack Obama went far beyond his predecessor’s administration to become the most destructive uprooter of our Constitution in our nation’s history.
Growing up as a student at Boston Latin School, one of whose alumni was Samuel Adams, a firebrand of our American Revolution, I read American history with excitement. I learned how we always overcame grimly looming threats to our self-governing republic to become a beacon to the world.
But never did I even imagine that an American president, without insuring due process in a court of law, would – as Obama does – use a kill list to target suspected terrorists for assassination. So far this list has also included three American citizens.
Obama has taken advantage of ever-advancing digital technology, using bottomless databases that keep track of those Americans he considers persons of subversive interest. During the presidential debates, did you hear anything about our vanishing privacy?
The secrecy with which Obama discards the Constitution to rule over us is evident in his dictatorial use of the “state secrets” privilege, which actually prevents judges from even hearing cases brought by citizens who claim their fundamental constitutional rights have been expunged by the president’s censors.
I now share with you, fellow American citizens, this chilling description of the essence of four more years of our maximum leader. In a recent op-ed for the Washington Post, Kurt Volker shows what that portion of the electorate who cared enough to vote gave us and the rest of the world. This is what America has now come to stand for:
“What do we want to be as a nation? A country with a permanent kill list? A country where people go to the office, launch a few kill shots (from pilotless drones) and get home in time for dinner?
“A country that instructs workers in high-tech operations centers to kill human beings on the far side of the planet because some government agency determined that those individuals are terrorists?” (“What the U.S. risks by relying on drones,” Kurt Volker, The Washington Post, Oct. 26).
A country also where its president makes the final choice for his faceless killers to rub out their targets.
I was not surprised to learn from a recent Washington Times column by Ilana Freedman that “the latest (dictator) to publicly announce his support for the commander-in-chief’s re-election bid was Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, who … assured he’d vote for Obama if he were from the United States. …
“Earlier in the year the government-official daughter of Cuban military dictator Raul Castro proclaimed her country’s support for Obama during a visit to the U.S. ‘I believe that Obama needs another opportunity and he needs greater support to move forward with his projects and with his ideas, which I believe come from the bottom of his heart’” (“Chavez, Castro, Putin: Four more years!” Ilana Freedman, times247.com, Oct. 2).
In that dictatorship, Raul’s daughter surely spoke with permission from her father and uncle. It takes one to know one.
Freedman’s news story includes Russia’s Vladimir Putin as a member of the professed group “Dictators for Obama.” But I have no direct evidence of that. I’ll keep you abreast of any other dictators joining the celebratory chorus.
In any case, Obama is once more exultantly justifying anything he chooses to do from now on, because “We won!”
The fateful questions for the future of this nation are why did he win, and will his re-election show the victorious way for future presidents to come?
Many Americans’ choice to discard the Declaration of Independence reveals an alarming ignorance of their history, including why their country is – or is supposed to be – unique among all other nations in the world.
The depth of this ignorance explains why throughout the long, fiercely divisive presidential and congressional campaigns, there were hardly any references to Obama’s persistent contempt for the Constitution. This was the case among loyal Obama Democrats, of course, but also among Republicans and independents.
What makes us Americans was not an issue!
How grotesque it was for Obama to say in September – as he presented his beliefs for maintaining the principles of America’s rule of law while strengthening national security – that in going after American citizens involved with al-Qaida: “They are subject to the protections of the Constitution and due process” (“Death from afar,” The Economist, Nov. 3).
Had I been there looking at him, how could I not have burst out laughing?
How can we specifically get our country back? Whether you’re elderly or not, keep in mind that Obamacare could soon be coming after you full force – as it decides whether it costs his government too much to keep you alive!
In January 2003, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg spoke about the balance between liberty and security. “The security side is going to outweigh the other” – unless “people come forward and say we are proud to be living in a land that has been more free, and we want to keep it that way” (my book, “The War on the Bill of Rights and the Gathering Resistance,” Seven Stories Press, 2003).
Next week: How many of us are ready to rebel against this new King George III?
The enemy has certainly tried, but it was President Bush, following the advice of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, who began the extensive attack on our individual liberties through the Patriot Act, which passed on Oct. 26, 2001.
Growing up as a student at Boston Latin School, one of whose alumni was Samuel Adams, a firebrand of our American Revolution, I read American history with excitement. I learned how we always overcame grimly looming threats to our self-governing republic to become a beacon to the world.
But never did I even imagine that an American president, without insuring due process in a court of law, would – as Obama does – use a kill list to target suspected terrorists for assassination. So far this list has also included three American citizens.
Obama has taken advantage of ever-advancing digital technology, using bottomless databases that keep track of those Americans he considers persons of subversive interest. During the presidential debates, did you hear anything about our vanishing privacy?
The secrecy with which Obama discards the Constitution to rule over us is evident in his dictatorial use of the “state secrets” privilege, which actually prevents judges from even hearing cases brought by citizens who claim their fundamental constitutional rights have been expunged by the president’s censors.
I now share with you, fellow American citizens, this chilling description of the essence of four more years of our maximum leader. In a recent op-ed for the Washington Post, Kurt Volker shows what that portion of the electorate who cared enough to vote gave us and the rest of the world. This is what America has now come to stand for:
“What do we want to be as a nation? A country with a permanent kill list? A country where people go to the office, launch a few kill shots (from pilotless drones) and get home in time for dinner?
“A country that instructs workers in high-tech operations centers to kill human beings on the far side of the planet because some government agency determined that those individuals are terrorists?” (“What the U.S. risks by relying on drones,” Kurt Volker, The Washington Post, Oct. 26).
A country also where its president makes the final choice for his faceless killers to rub out their targets.
I was not surprised to learn from a recent Washington Times column by Ilana Freedman that “the latest (dictator) to publicly announce his support for the commander-in-chief’s re-election bid was Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, who … assured he’d vote for Obama if he were from the United States. …
“Earlier in the year the government-official daughter of Cuban military dictator Raul Castro proclaimed her country’s support for Obama during a visit to the U.S. ‘I believe that Obama needs another opportunity and he needs greater support to move forward with his projects and with his ideas, which I believe come from the bottom of his heart’” (“Chavez, Castro, Putin: Four more years!” Ilana Freedman, times247.com, Oct. 2).
In that dictatorship, Raul’s daughter surely spoke with permission from her father and uncle. It takes one to know one.
Freedman’s news story includes Russia’s Vladimir Putin as a member of the professed group “Dictators for Obama.” But I have no direct evidence of that. I’ll keep you abreast of any other dictators joining the celebratory chorus.
In any case, Obama is once more exultantly justifying anything he chooses to do from now on, because “We won!”
The fateful questions for the future of this nation are why did he win, and will his re-election show the victorious way for future presidents to come?
Many Americans’ choice to discard the Declaration of Independence reveals an alarming ignorance of their history, including why their country is – or is supposed to be – unique among all other nations in the world.
The depth of this ignorance explains why throughout the long, fiercely divisive presidential and congressional campaigns, there were hardly any references to Obama’s persistent contempt for the Constitution. This was the case among loyal Obama Democrats, of course, but also among Republicans and independents.
What makes us Americans was not an issue!
How grotesque it was for Obama to say in September – as he presented his beliefs for maintaining the principles of America’s rule of law while strengthening national security – that in going after American citizens involved with al-Qaida: “They are subject to the protections of the Constitution and due process” (“Death from afar,” The Economist, Nov. 3).
Had I been there looking at him, how could I not have burst out laughing?
How can we specifically get our country back? Whether you’re elderly or not, keep in mind that Obamacare could soon be coming after you full force – as it decides whether it costs his government too much to keep you alive!
In January 2003, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg spoke about the balance between liberty and security. “The security side is going to outweigh the other” – unless “people come forward and say we are proud to be living in a land that has been more free, and we want to keep it that way” (my book, “The War on the Bill of Rights and the Gathering Resistance,” Seven Stories Press, 2003).
Next week: How many of us are ready to rebel against this new King George III?
Friday, November 9, 2012
The Tytler Cycle
The Tytler Cycle
by John Eberhard
09/15/03
Last year my wife, who home-schools our kids, attended several seminars on home-schooling that were put on by George Wythe College in Salt Lake City.
Dr. Shannon Brooks of the college gave a lecture on politics at the seminar called "The Liber" which my wife bought me on CD. "Liber" by the way means one who is educated for freedom, and comes from the same root as the words "library" and "liberty".
In the lecture, Dr. Brooks described the work of a man named Alexander Tytler, a Scottish historian who lived at the same time as the American Founding Fathers, who described a repeating cycle in history. He had found that societies went through this same cycle again and again, and that the cycle lasted roughly 200 years each time.
Tytler said the cycle starts out with a society in bondage. Then it goes in this sequence:
Bondage
Spiritual Faith
Courage
Liberty
Abundance
Selfishness
Complacency
Apathy
Dependence
Then starting over with Bondage
Tytler organized these items in a circle:
So to give a little more on the sequence above, a society starts out in bondage, meaning no or very limited freedoms. Now faced with a very difficult situation (bondage), they turn to religion and religious faith. Through this they achieve the courage they need to fight for and win their freedom. Next, through the benefits of freedom, they achieve an abundance in material things.
Now we start into the other side of the circle/cycle. We get selfishness and laziness setting in. Then we get apathy and finally dependence. Then we arrive back up at the top with bondage again.
I was intrigued. I looked for information on Tytler on the Internet, could find none, and finally wrote to Dr. Brooks. He told first how to spell Tytler's name, and told me that most of Tytler's work has been completely lost. On further online search I found a number of sites with limited information on Tytler, but little more than what Brooks had said in his lecture.
I found this cycle to be very interesting in relation to where we are in the United States today. Dr. Brooks said he has asked the question of where the U.S. is in this cycle, in every one of these lectures he has given, to over 10,000 people to date. No one so far has said that we are on the right side of the cycle (spiritual faith, courage, liberty, abundance). Everyone has said we are somewhere on the left side of the circle (selfishness, complacency, apathy, dependence).
Let's talk about selfishness for a second. We have a situation in America today where many people are trying to get whatever they can out of the "system," with no concern of how this hurts the overall group of the United States of America.
Remember JFK's words at his inauguration speech? "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country." You'd be hard pressed to find that sentiment in America today.
You've got one third of the US Post Office and the US Printing Office out at any given time on Workers Compensation disability. Does anyone really believe that at any given time, one third of those workers are injured so badly (and injured on the job mind you) so that they are physically unable to work? There are cases documented of federal government employees, for example, going out on disability in 1983, and collecting $5,000 per month for the last twenty years on a completely fraudulent claim. And only now is something being done about some of these cases.
How about all the damage claims cases in the courts? We've perhaps lost our incredulity for suits against the tobacco companies. But how about the new crop of suits against the fast food companies because they somehow misled people about the fact that their food is not really that good for you and (horrors) the customers became fat.
Recently a person sued his neighbor because that neighbor's dog bit him. And he won! Despite the fact that he was in the neighbor's yard at the time within the reach of the dog who was tied up, and was throwing rocks, antagonizing the dog!
Then we've got the welfare class. My mother taught school in the inner city, and would sometimes ask kids what they wanted to do when they grew up. They would sometimes reply, "Get high and get drunk." These kids' parents had been on welfare their entire lives and these kids expected to do the same. Why work or learn or achieve anything in class?
Selfishness Crisis
What we have in the U.S. today is a selfishness crisis. And believe me, this did not exist in any way, shape or form 227 years ago.
We have a generation, many of whom are looking for a way to bleed the system to get their "fair share." We could call them the "entitlement class." But it goes beyond the welfare class to people with jobs and careers, looking for some way to "cash in" in some way. There are many variations, but the common denominator is people looking for a way to get some kind of a free ride, in a manner in which they did not work for it or earn it.
This reaches even to the tops of corporate America, with the recent bunch of corporate executives and CEOs that had a lapse of ethics and conscience and seem to have forgot such annoying things as laws, in the interest of their own personal fortunes. Enron et al.
I'm not necessarily saying we are at the "selfishness" part of Tytler's cycle. We might have gone past that point. But we are at least up to that point. And complacency, apathy and dependence are not far behind. You could argue that some people today, such as those who have been on welfare for years, are in the dependence part of the cycle. I know that we had federal welfare reform passed a few years ago and that things are improving somewhat in that zone, but there's no question that dependency has become a way of life for a certain portion of our citizenry.
And when a people becomes completely dependent, they can be made into slaves. Rather easily.
What Next?
Since learning of this Tytler cycle, hearing the lecture myself and meeting Dr. Brooks, and discussing the issue with friends, I've been grappling with the idea that our country may go through a major crisis within the next 30-50 years.
As someone who feels that the United States is without a doubt the best form of government ever seen on this planet, the idea of such a crisis that could lead to what Tytler called "bondage" is very painful.
And yet, we can see the signs. Welfare recipients on the dole for life, people suing others for wacky reasons just so they can "cash in," state legislators and judges insisting that we must give billions in free benefits to illegal aliens, the concept of personal responsibility becoming a foreign concept, insurance claim fraud accounting for one third of all claims in California - all of these things weaken the group, the group of the USA. These examples penalize the ones who work hard and try to build a society, because these entitllement types are tearing it down. Those who take responsibility are hurt.
So is the cycle inevitable? Are we heading down the drain in the next few years? I wish I had the answer.
But I will say that I don't believe in the inevitability of our collapse. I don't think we can believe in it or that it's sane to believe in it. Otherwise that puts us squarely in the apathy part of the cycle. So I believe we have to assume it's not inevitable.
We need to educate people on the importance of ethics, of contributing rather than just taking, on insisting that people work for and exchange for what they receive. Only in that way can we reverse this slide. And I believe we can.
by John Eberhard
09/15/03
Last year my wife, who home-schools our kids, attended several seminars on home-schooling that were put on by George Wythe College in Salt Lake City.
Dr. Shannon Brooks of the college gave a lecture on politics at the seminar called "The Liber" which my wife bought me on CD. "Liber" by the way means one who is educated for freedom, and comes from the same root as the words "library" and "liberty".
In the lecture, Dr. Brooks described the work of a man named Alexander Tytler, a Scottish historian who lived at the same time as the American Founding Fathers, who described a repeating cycle in history. He had found that societies went through this same cycle again and again, and that the cycle lasted roughly 200 years each time.
Tytler said the cycle starts out with a society in bondage. Then it goes in this sequence:
Bondage
Spiritual Faith
Courage
Liberty
Abundance
Selfishness
Complacency
Apathy
Dependence
Then starting over with Bondage
Tytler organized these items in a circle:
So to give a little more on the sequence above, a society starts out in bondage, meaning no or very limited freedoms. Now faced with a very difficult situation (bondage), they turn to religion and religious faith. Through this they achieve the courage they need to fight for and win their freedom. Next, through the benefits of freedom, they achieve an abundance in material things.
Now we start into the other side of the circle/cycle. We get selfishness and laziness setting in. Then we get apathy and finally dependence. Then we arrive back up at the top with bondage again.
I was intrigued. I looked for information on Tytler on the Internet, could find none, and finally wrote to Dr. Brooks. He told first how to spell Tytler's name, and told me that most of Tytler's work has been completely lost. On further online search I found a number of sites with limited information on Tytler, but little more than what Brooks had said in his lecture.
I found this cycle to be very interesting in relation to where we are in the United States today. Dr. Brooks said he has asked the question of where the U.S. is in this cycle, in every one of these lectures he has given, to over 10,000 people to date. No one so far has said that we are on the right side of the cycle (spiritual faith, courage, liberty, abundance). Everyone has said we are somewhere on the left side of the circle (selfishness, complacency, apathy, dependence).
Let's talk about selfishness for a second. We have a situation in America today where many people are trying to get whatever they can out of the "system," with no concern of how this hurts the overall group of the United States of America.
Remember JFK's words at his inauguration speech? "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country." You'd be hard pressed to find that sentiment in America today.
You've got one third of the US Post Office and the US Printing Office out at any given time on Workers Compensation disability. Does anyone really believe that at any given time, one third of those workers are injured so badly (and injured on the job mind you) so that they are physically unable to work? There are cases documented of federal government employees, for example, going out on disability in 1983, and collecting $5,000 per month for the last twenty years on a completely fraudulent claim. And only now is something being done about some of these cases.
How about all the damage claims cases in the courts? We've perhaps lost our incredulity for suits against the tobacco companies. But how about the new crop of suits against the fast food companies because they somehow misled people about the fact that their food is not really that good for you and (horrors) the customers became fat.
Recently a person sued his neighbor because that neighbor's dog bit him. And he won! Despite the fact that he was in the neighbor's yard at the time within the reach of the dog who was tied up, and was throwing rocks, antagonizing the dog!
Then we've got the welfare class. My mother taught school in the inner city, and would sometimes ask kids what they wanted to do when they grew up. They would sometimes reply, "Get high and get drunk." These kids' parents had been on welfare their entire lives and these kids expected to do the same. Why work or learn or achieve anything in class?
Selfishness Crisis
What we have in the U.S. today is a selfishness crisis. And believe me, this did not exist in any way, shape or form 227 years ago.
We have a generation, many of whom are looking for a way to bleed the system to get their "fair share." We could call them the "entitlement class." But it goes beyond the welfare class to people with jobs and careers, looking for some way to "cash in" in some way. There are many variations, but the common denominator is people looking for a way to get some kind of a free ride, in a manner in which they did not work for it or earn it.
This reaches even to the tops of corporate America, with the recent bunch of corporate executives and CEOs that had a lapse of ethics and conscience and seem to have forgot such annoying things as laws, in the interest of their own personal fortunes. Enron et al.
I'm not necessarily saying we are at the "selfishness" part of Tytler's cycle. We might have gone past that point. But we are at least up to that point. And complacency, apathy and dependence are not far behind. You could argue that some people today, such as those who have been on welfare for years, are in the dependence part of the cycle. I know that we had federal welfare reform passed a few years ago and that things are improving somewhat in that zone, but there's no question that dependency has become a way of life for a certain portion of our citizenry.
And when a people becomes completely dependent, they can be made into slaves. Rather easily.
What Next?
Since learning of this Tytler cycle, hearing the lecture myself and meeting Dr. Brooks, and discussing the issue with friends, I've been grappling with the idea that our country may go through a major crisis within the next 30-50 years.
As someone who feels that the United States is without a doubt the best form of government ever seen on this planet, the idea of such a crisis that could lead to what Tytler called "bondage" is very painful.
And yet, we can see the signs. Welfare recipients on the dole for life, people suing others for wacky reasons just so they can "cash in," state legislators and judges insisting that we must give billions in free benefits to illegal aliens, the concept of personal responsibility becoming a foreign concept, insurance claim fraud accounting for one third of all claims in California - all of these things weaken the group, the group of the USA. These examples penalize the ones who work hard and try to build a society, because these entitllement types are tearing it down. Those who take responsibility are hurt.
So is the cycle inevitable? Are we heading down the drain in the next few years? I wish I had the answer.
But I will say that I don't believe in the inevitability of our collapse. I don't think we can believe in it or that it's sane to believe in it. Otherwise that puts us squarely in the apathy part of the cycle. So I believe we have to assume it's not inevitable.
We need to educate people on the importance of ethics, of contributing rather than just taking, on insisting that people work for and exchange for what they receive. Only in that way can we reverse this slide. And I believe we can.
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