Posted on 05/07/2011 8:35:16 PM PDT by neverdem
The United States, as you know, was founded as a republic, not simply as a democracy. The distinction has been lost over the past few decades, but it is an important one.
The believers in a democracy have unlimited faith in the character and judgment of the people and believe that political institutions should be responsive to their desires. The believers in a republic have large but limited faith in the character and judgment of the people and erect institutions and barriers to improve that character and guide that judgment.
America’s founders were republicans. This was not simply elitism, a matter of some rich men distrusting the masses. This was a belief that ran through society and derived from an understanding of history. As Irving Kristol put it in a brilliant 1974 essay called “Republican Virtue vs. Servile Institutions,” “The common man is not a fool, and the proof is that he has such modest faith in himself.”
The first citizens of this country erected institutions to protect themselves from their own shortcomings. We’re familiar with some of them: the system of checks and balances, the Senate, etc. More important, they believed, was public spiritedness — a system of habits and attitudes that would check egotism and self-indulgence.
As Kristol points out in the essay, the meaning of the phrase “public spiritedness” has flipped since the 18th century. Now we think a public-spirited person is somebody with passionate opinions about public matters...
--snip--
Over the past months, there has been some progress in getting Americans to accept the need for self-restraint. With their various budget approaches, the Simpson-Bowles commission, Paul Ryan and President Obama have sent the message that politics can no longer be about satisfying voters’ immediate needs. The public hasn’t bought it yet, but progress is being made...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
With the exception of Jacksonian Democrats, the rest of the rats are obsessed with Solipsism.
Reagan got a lot of Jacksonian Democrats. Bush the Elder lost them. After Obama, we might be able to keep them for good if the RINOs don't blow it. It's not that I'm crazy about RINOs. In places like Massachusetts, we probably can't do better than Scott Brown. In places like Indiana and South Carolina, we can do better than Dick Lugar and Lindsey Grahamnesty.
(Not necessarily in that order)
Brooks seems to be returning to reality, although I can still see a lingering infatuation with Obama. “ ===========
Brooks is coming around ever so slightly because it’s safe to do so, it it’s slow enough, because now even his democrat chums are beginning to see the disaster they have brought upon us. Their political philosophy has been wrought up through the American school system and churns out more like minded every May and their political figures point to communism out in the open today. I’d come around too, if I were him.
Brooks includes the Marxist thug Ubama in that group? That's downright incompetent.
No, Brooks is still the same squishy moron he always was.
Brooks: “...and Democrats still mostly talk about economic security.”
Thanks to Obama, we now have the neo-Keynesian approach: Destroy the economy to insure security.
We’re familiar with some of them: the system of checks and balances, the Senate, etc....
Well, that’s history now, we must move on with the new progressive agenda that gives all power to the President and his Czars.
Mr. Brooks doesn't yet realize that we have the very definition of a solipsist in the White House. Funny how people who are egoistic always want everyone else to "share the wealth".
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