Posted on 10/26/2013 4:10:28 AM PDT by Kaslin
1) The more democracy we have, the better. As Benjamin Franklin once said, "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch." This is why our Founding Fathers made this country a republic, not a democracy. They believed that the people should have their say, but also that certain underlying rules should remain in place that should take precedence over the will of a simple majority. Ultimately, that's the only way that the wolves and the lambs can happily co-exist over the long haul.
Unfortunately, we've moved so far away from the plain reading of the Constitution that we could fairly be called a post-constitutional society and that has a lot to do with why our government functions so poorly, why politics has become so contentious, and why our nation is slipping into decline. A nation where the law has more to do with the whims of the people in power than constitutional principles is a nation that will become increasingly embittered and unstable over time.
2) When it comes to politicians, morals don't matter. It's no coincidence that most Americans are perpetually disappointed in the honesty of our politicians when they simultaneously believe that the moral failings of politicians have little bearing on their fitness for office. If we put adulterers, degenerates, and crooks in office, they're going to lie to us. Why would anyone expect anything else?
What's worse is that they're changing the culture inside and out of Washington. After Bill Clinton, why should anyone be surprised at Anthony Weiner? After Gerry Studds got away with having a sexual relationship with a 17 year old page, why should anyone be surprised that Barney Frank got away with having a gay prostitution ring running out of his apartment? The impact on society is even greater not only because politicians are prominent, but because it's assumed they are held to a higher standard than the average person. If a pothead who liked to snort a little coke, like Barack Obama, can become President, what message does it send to kids about drugs? If Bill Clinton's adultery is treated like no big deal by his wife, Democrats, and the voters, what message does that send to men across the country? We've allowed Washington, D.C. to become a pig pen and no one should be surprised at how dirty all of us are getting in the process.
3) Income inequality is caused by rich people stealing money from the poor. There is more income inequality today in the United States than there used to be. That's because advances in computers, transportation, and technology have shrank the world. What that means is that it's more feasible than ever for dirt poor workers in China and India to do low skill work that once would have gone to Americans at a cheaper price. The time when a man with an 8th grade education can support himself, a wife, and a kid by doing repetitive, unskilled labor all day long has largely ended.
On the other hand, for highly skilled workers, a smaller world means that people overseas now are more likely to be their potential customers. Bill Gates isn't just selling Microsoft products to Americans, he's selling them to computer users EVERYWHERE. So, the money isn't flowing from the poor Americans to the rich Americans; it's flowing from the poor here to the poor elsewhere and customers elsewhere to the rich here. Moreover, you can tax the rich at a much higher rate (and we do), but since there are relatively few of them, you can't loot enough to make up for the reduced demand for low skill workers. In fact, paradoxically, the more capital you take away from rich Americans, the less money they have to buy products or invest here in America to create jobs.
That's why it isn't about rich versus poor so much as a global economic change that benefits one group while hurting another, like the introduction of sharks into an environment filled with fishermen and tuna. If you're a fisherman, you're going to love the shark fin soup, but if you're a tuna, you're going to spend a lot more time swimming for your life and finding places to hide.
4) There's no need to worry because politicians know what they’re doing. The primary reason most Americans don't pay attention to politics is that they just assume that despite all of the feuding and fighting, politicians generally know what they're doing and won't let anything too horrible happen to the country. This is no longer a safe assumption because the people running the government aren't competent, they're not making decisions based on what's best for the country, and most government employees are just following orders, not trying to improve the system.
We have an unsustainable level of debt that we're not addressing. We're in the midst of a radical and dangerous experiment with our medical system. The Federal Reserve is deliberately trying to reduce the value of our money by 1/3 over the next 20 years. Our response to the government-inspired housing crash that wrecked our economy at the tail end of the Bush Administration is to try to artificially reinflate the housing bubble using the same techniques that got us into the mess in the first place. All the money that has been contributed to Medicare and Social Security has already been spent and our plan to pay those Americans back is to borrow trillions indefinitely. Responsible government has left the building in America and like a Bible salesman walking towards Mecca, we're veering into strange and dangerous territory.
5) Any sort of debt-related crash is a long way away. A decade ago, prepping was for militias, Mormons, and survivalist nuts. Today, it has gone mainstream and guns, gold, and survival seeds are growth industries. There's a reason for that: tens of millions of Americans believe the country isn't that far away from a Greece-style economic crash caused by our debt. This is not an unreasonable belief. In 2010, Mike Pence (who's now governor of Indiana) told me that, "unless we produce national leadership that is willing to confront our mounting fiscal crisis head-on, that America will be Greece within 10 to 15 years." Senator Tom Coburn wasn't as optimistic.
In 2010; he said we could be Greece in as little as 4 years. When you consider the fact that we've lost our AAA rating, there are no realistic prospects of balancing the budget in the foreseeable future, and we can't sell all of our debt on the open market, it's already clear that we're in deep trouble.
Now consider the fact that by 2020, we'll need roughly 19% of the PLANET'S GDP to finance our debt and that by 2030, just the INTEREST PAYMENTS ON THE DEBT will take up about 58% of our budget -- and ask yourself how much longer we'll be able to hold it together. We're already at the point where we appear to need massive action by both political parties to avert a financial catastrophe and not only are both sides barely even discussing the problem, the Democrats are upset that we're not ramping up our spending even more. We're like a patient whose doctor just warned him he could have a heart attack at any time who insists on eating nothing but bacon cheeseburgers for every meal. The question isn't whether there's going to be a heart attack sometime in the near future; it's how bad is it going to be?
I wonder why the author neglected to include the rest of the quote? Bias against a well armed citizenry? Or, some other reason?
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.
Myth number 5: Any sort of debt-related crash is a long way away - bears repeating again and again and again.
Check out recent news articles about Saudi and China: two of the largest holders of US debt.
Actually, reading the entirety of Mr. Hawkins’ #1 myth I believe if he had included the entire quote it would have destroyed his premise.
Actually he included the entire quote in italics
Not seeing it. The entire quote is two sentences as I posted. But I did get his point. Just wondering why the omission.
How so? There doesn’t seem to be antagonism to 2A in the rest of the article.
If he had included the rest of the Franklin quote, his summation would have made little sense because it would have clearly been a reference to the 2nd amendment, since that is what Franklin was clearly referring to.
They believed that the people should have their say, but also that certain underlying rules should remain in place that should take precedence over the will of a simple majority. Ultimately, that's the only way that the wolves and the lambs can happily co-exist over the long haul.
'Certain underlying rules'? That would be the 2A and no other. But as it is presented, it's a bit ambiguous.
Here's a rule that allows for no ambiguity.
When the wolf is at your door, dispatch it with prejudice. Do not tarry.
The author used the wolf analogy, not I.
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.
Widely attributed to Franklin on the Internet, sometimes without the second sentence. It is not found in any of his known writings
When I first checked for the quote I checked the Brainy Quote, and the quote is in none of the 8 pages
If you're right, then it would have been a mistake to use the whole quote.
They believed that the people should have their say, but also that certain underlying rules should remain in place that should take precedence over the will of a simple majority.I think all of the founders saw risk in universal suffrage, a point that the author misses entirely. Regardless of the underlying form (democracy or republic), universal suffrage ALWAYS results in social downfall. There is no historical example of a successful society that embraced universal suffrage.
The vote is used as a tool to pacify the public - if the general public has the right to vote, then, goes the logic, all the laws are consented to by the public. That is, the government is legitimate and healthy.
All of that is baloney. Our federal government is corrupt and way beyond its constitutional bounds, and no amount of voting is going to remedy that condition.
I take Franklin's remark as a reference to limited powers. He assumed that the government would more or less leave the people alone.
That is a reduction from the rate the Fed has destroyed the currency over its hundred year life. They've averaged 3.2% inflation, so over 20 years they would average stealing 47% of the value of the dollar instead of a mere 33%.
Our Founding Fathers knew that a democracy was nothing but "mob rule" and took steps in our Constitution to prevent it by patterning our government after the Roman Republic, but it didn't stop the Democrat Party from eventually turning it into an almost complete democracy/mob rule.
As both the House and the Senate are now elected by the unwashed masses, the only thing preventing this country from becoming a complete democracy is the Electoral College's involvement in our Presidential elections, and the Democrats keep talking about eliminating that.
The rats’ 17th Amendment de-federalized the government, destroyed vertical separation of powers and practically assured consolidation of all powers in Washington, DC.
There really is no hope of return to republican freedoms without repeal of the 17th.
He certainly was a dreamer, huh?
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