Posted on 07/02/2012 8:59:01 AM PDT by NCjim
We may be seeing the beginning of the end of the model for civilized governance that has dominated Western civilization since WWII. That model has been provision by the state of all or most of the needs of its people combined with the popular election of the government. Or, in other words, the welfare state plus democracy.
What we are seeing in Europe is that that model is inherently unsustainable. The concept of individual rights is the only standard for government action that puts an objective limit on what the government can do. The post-war leaders of Europe were completely ignorant of that standard. They adopted instead the principle that the primary function of government is to assure its citizens’ welfare. Since there is no limit in principle to the free benefits people would like to get from their government, politicians competed for their citizens’ votes by promising and providing more and more welfare. The political parties that promised the most benefits won the elections.
The desirability of welfare depends on not having to pay for it. People like the subsidies for milk, housing, student loans, health care and so forth, but they hate the taxes. Consequently, tax revenues have always lagged behind spending (the difference is the deficit). To make up the difference, governments sell their IOUs (government debt)—to their own citizens, to corporations, to private banks, to central banks, to foreign countries. Eventually the total debt grows so large, and the deficit grows so large, that holders of the debt begin to doubt that they will be repaid. Then it becomes harder and harder to sell the additional debt that is necessary to cover the deficit. The interest the government has to pay on its debt keeps rising to cover the rising risk, adding more and more to what the government will have to pay when its IOUs come due.
This seems to be the position Greece is in right now. Other European countries are giving or loaning Greece money to cover its deficit on the condition that Greece cut back on its welfare. But the citizens of Greece regard that welfare as a right and are rioting in the streets in protest. Several other European countries evidently are approaching the same crisis. The United States is not yet in crisis, but it has a one and a half trillion-dollar deficit (the government is borrowing 40¢ for every dollar it spends), a difference that cannot be sustained over time any more than Greece’s could be sustained.
There does not seem to be any other end to this process than some form of dictatorship. You cannot cut welfare as long as there are popular elections, so in the name of the country’s survival, popular elections will be first suspended, then suspended indefinitely. The United States will be the last to stumble down this road, but this is clearly the course we are on.
Large governments that pay off one group of people at the expense of another group have always collapsed civilizations. In order to have a welfare state you basically must destroy morality among individuals to make it work. Someone with morals will refuse to live as a master or a slave.
Yep, and no barrier is holding. The SC failed. When the debt ceiling came up, the Congress failed. They will collapse the system because they don’t believe it will happen till it does.
And if the Keynesians try to escape their trap with creation of money out of thin air, the result will be hyperinflation. If they try to avoid hyperinflation by slowing down the increase in the money supply, the result will be a new contraction phase.If they try to escape their trap with higher taxes, the result will be a new contraction phase.
America's Founders' "reliance on Divine Providence," their study and understanding of both the ideas essential to liberty, as well as the counterfeit ideas of tyranny led to what many have described as "the miracle of America."
A rediscovery and renewal of those ideas in the minds of "the People" could produce such results again, were they understood.
"Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court even can do much to help it." - Judge Learned Hand
Now is the time for "the People" to stand for the foundational principles of liberty enshrined in the 1787 Constitution.
Despite last week's ruling, the "Trojan horse" called "health care reform" simply was a vehicle in the goal of "transforming America" from its foundations in individual liberty to one of coercive rule by political elites--imperfect persons in positions of power in government.
America's Founders understood the latter concept well, and they soundly rejected it in favor of a written "People's" Constitution to forever limit, separate, check and balance, and "bind down" their elected and appointed representatives in government. In Article V, they provided the only valid means of amending that written Constitution. The results were astounding!
Then, along came the so-called "progressives" who, in their arrogance and lust for power and control, several decades ago began to erode those "foundations" of individual liberty. Now, led by the current Administration, "health care reform" was to lay a different and opposite foundation.
By the Founders' formula, "the People's" written Constitution was the anchor of our liberties, binding government to the "People's" limitations on its power.
The "progressives" (who are, in fact, regressive in their counterfeit ideas), in effect, would undo all the monumental work accomplished by the Founders on behalf of liberty and leave the law afloat and without anchor, relying, as of old, on mere men and women.
From Page xv of "Our Ageless Constitution," allow me to include here excerpted words from President Andrew Jackson's Proclamation of December 10, 1832:
"We have received it [the Constitution] as the work of the assembled wisdom of the nation. We have trusted to it as to the sheet anchor of our safety in the stormy times of conflict with a foreign or domestic foe. We have looked to it with sacred awe as the palladium of our liberties, and with all the solemnities of religion have pledged to each other our lives and fortunes here and our hopes of happiness hereafter in its defense and support. Were we mistaken, my countrymen, in attaching this importance to the Constitution . . .? No. We were not mistaken. The letter of this great instrument is free from this radical fault. . . . No, we did not err! . . . The sages . . . have given us a practical and, as they hoped, a permanent* Constitutional compact. . . . The Constitution is still the object of our reverence, the bond of our Union, our defense in danger, the source of our prosperity in peace: it shall descend, as we have received it, uncorrupted by sophistical construction, to our posterity. . . ."
*Underlining added for emphasis
And, it was Thomas Jefferson who used another metaphor with reference to the Constitution when he indicated that "the People" must "bind them (government) by the chains of the Constitution." In another instance, he declared: "It was intended to lace them up straitly within the enumerated powers. . . ."
With that in mind, we also might remember these words from President Washington's "Farewell Address":
". . . Towards the preservation of your Government and the permanency of your present happy state, it is requisite, not only that you steadily discountenance irregular oppositions to its acknowledged authority, but also that you resist with care the spirit of innovation upon its principles, however specious the pretexts. --One method of assault may be to effect, in the forms of the Constitution, alterations which will impair the energy of the system, and thus to undermine what cannot be directly overthrown. . . ."
Rather than railing against the ruling, whatever energy lovers of liberty can muster should be directed toward enlightening the minds of fellow citizens in the urgent need to study and understand what Washington, Jefferson, Jackson and the other Founders understood--that imperfect people who assume power over the lives of their fellow citizens are to be "bound down by the chains of the Constitution," according to the Author of our Declaration of Independence.
——You cannot cut welfare as long as there are popular elections,——
After the SHTF, the ranks of welfare recipients will decline sharply.
In the post Napoleonic era, Europe was not free from war, but most of the wars were pretty small. Crimean and Franco-Prussian were about as big as things got. The only exception was the American Civil War. We had some really bad days, but the world didn't have to care so much about us.
The long stretch of (mostly) peace after 1815 ended in 1914. Millions of casualties in a pointless war. It changed everything and gave us the world we live in today.
If our modern world is being taken apart (and I think it is) then it's going to be bumpy indeed.
Are you saying that slaves have no morals?
Are you saying that slaves have no morals?
—For reasons too numerous to list, civilization has already gone into the toilet.—
Actually, as much as I am a true doom and gloomer, I disagree with that statement. I liken us to the guy that jumps off a 100 story building and as he passes the third floor, yells to the guy in the window, “so far, so good”.
You can still get a job. You can still get an education. You can buy stuff, the police still need a warrant to break into your house. You can still go do the park.
When this hits, we’ll be like the early USSR or Nazi Germany. Or worse. After all, they didn’t have the technology we have today. That was a serious deterrent to all out totalitarianism.
If Barry Soetoro aka Barack Obama has any say so the elections will be suspended here in Oct.
If they are not willing to fight for their freedom then I am saying they have no morals.
ok
If Barry Soetoro aka Barack Obama has any say so the elections will be suspended here in Oct.
I now believe that is a possibility.
Baloney. What is required is for the politicians to stop being politicians and become national leaders. Democracies can and will face up to hard choices provided they have leaders who will STOP trying to undercut one another for votes and will START talking about the real changes that must take place regardless of who holds the electoral mandate.
This false choice of running out to the strongman who can impose a solution, however benficial, on us is moral cowardice of the first order.
“Democracies can and will face up to hard choices provided they have leaders ...”
Democracies might, but a nation of feral savages won’t.
And that is exactly what our educational institutions have produced.
This is nothing new. Shortly after our country was formed several political analysts of time pointed out that democracy inevitably fails when the politicans figure out they care bribe votes from 60% of the population using the assets of the other 20%.
This is a great article.
Sher Zieve
Progressive CJ John Roberts solidifies socialism in U.S.
Sher Zieve
July 2, 2012
To read the article, click here:
http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/zieve/120702
Check out her links about the “roving black mobs”
Roving black mobs attacking whites:
http://sigforum.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/320601935/m/8660083882/p/2
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=36c_1337431086
http://www.wnd.com/2012/07/black-mobs-now-beating-jews-in-new-york/
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