Is dictatorship the only way out? (money, problems, world, slavery)
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The more Tea Party the congress becomes, the more backbone it will have.
We need to get rid of Boehner.
There's some good Democrats as well.
But Congress does need a cleansing..on both sides.
Get the warmongers out. The petrodollar is going to lose regardless of how many dictators we assassinate..China and Russia are "too big to bomb".
Get with a plan B on how this country will survive.
I figure we're at where Britain was at the end of WWII when they lost top dog position.
I'm all for baseball, motherhood, the flag and the American way, but to tell you the truth I don't see democracy getting us out of this mess. What am I missing?
how about going back to what the USA was supposed to be, a republic. the USA had 1 revolutionary war, there is nothing saying that it cant happen again.
I'm all for baseball, motherhood, the flag and the American way, but to tell you the truth I don't see democracy getting us out of this mess. What am I missing?
Nothing.
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Originally Posted by Charles45
Has any civilization existed that didn't end in tyranny?
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Originally Posted by Charles45
Possibly. I'm of two minds on the subject, maybe more.
But here's my point: the fact that no democracy has ever existed that didn't end in tyranny doesn't tell us anything. Every government in every country tends towards tyranny. Some faster than others, some with more internal pressure than others. But men have free will, and everything that has ever happened, happened once for the first time. It's still possible that American democracy - when it ends - will not be succeeded by a tyranny.
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Originally Posted by The Homogenizer
Your self-interest is not the same as the US's interests.
The propaganda is the widespread notion that you and I, individuals, make a difference. That may have been true prior to universal suffrage, but now we must suffer the fate of all democracies: we must fall to the least worthy majority. As the nation falls, those who hold power will be more and more indebted to foreign countries and shadow players. Each of us can be fools who subscribe to the notion of self-sacrifice for others and the country, and those who do will be at the bottom.
Regardless of what you believe, however, you can't change the nature of democracies. The end is here.
No civilizations that I can think of, and if they did not end in tyranny, then they were either destroyed by civil war, or a civil war weakened them allowing an outside force to conquer them, or they were over-run and destroyed out-right by invaders.
Plato was opposed to democracy, insisting on a republic with limitations on who may participate. The Founding Fathers designed the US Constitution and set up the US exactly like Plato's Republic, and it worked for the most part until people started tinkering with it and straying from the original concept.
I love this gem (I wish I could remember where I found it to give better credit): Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principle.
Aristocracy ruins itself by limiting too narrowly the circle within which power is confined; oligarchy ruins itself by the incautious scramble for immediate wealth. In either case the end is revolution. When revolution comes it may seem to arise from little causes and petty whims; but though it may spring from slight occasions it is the precipitate result of grave and accumulated wrongs; when a body is weakened by neglected ills, the merest exposure may bring serious disease.
"Then democracy comes: the poor overcome their opponents, slaughtering some and banishing the rest; and give to the people an equal share of freedom and power".
But even democracy ruins itself by excess–of democracy. Its basic principle is the equal right of all to hold office and determine public policy. This is at first glance a delightful arrangement; it becomes disastrous because the people are not properly equipped by education to select the best rulers and the wisest courses.
"As to the people they have no understanding, and only repeat what their rulers are pleased to tell them" (Protagoras, 317); to get a doctrine accepted or rejected it is only necessary to have it praised or ridiculed in a popular play (a hit, no doubt, at Aristophanes, whose comedies attacked almost every new idea).
Mob-rule is a rough sea for the ship of state to ride; every wind of oratory stirs up the waters and deflects the course. The upshot of such a democracy is tyranny or autocracy; the crowd so loves flattery, it is so "hungry for honey," that at last the wiliest and most unscrupulous flatterer, calling himself the "protector of the people" rises to supreme power.
Protagoras [of Abdera] lived in the 5th Century (the 400s BCE). That was 2,500 years ago, and look at how goddam amazingly accurate it is.
I think perhaps what is most frightening to me, is that in that 2,500 years, absolutely nothing has changed. We really aren't that much better off. Sure, we have lots of technology and creature comforts, but nothing more.
And this:
"...to get a doctrine accepted or rejected it is only necessary to have it praised or ridiculed in a popular play (a hit, no doubt, at Aristophanes, whose comedies attacked almost every new idea).
Aristophanes was a contemporary of Protagoras. Substitute "popular play" with the the MSM, the internet, and every other form of media.
Weeping for the Future....
Mircea
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Originally Posted by wutitiz
Western civilization dumped monarchy in favor of democracy over the last couple centuries because we wanted more liberty and equality, but we have not gotten either. We are far less free now than the colonists were under King George.
Point well taken. It's really ironic, isn't it? Who'd have thought?
Oppressed...
Mircea
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Originally Posted by LauraC
The first thing dictators do after they get in office is jail, exile and/or kill the idolizing intellectuals and the educated that put them in power.
Anita Dunn's idol, Mao Zedong did it. Castro did it. Pol Pot did it. 80 percent of Ukranian intellectuals were killed under Stalin. Ahmet Cemal Pasha rounded up the Armenian intellectuals. Juan Carlos OnganĂa (Argentina) had them beaten up, arrested and exiled. Lenin imprisoned and executed them. The useful idiots who prop up dictators are the first to be whacked.
Be careful what you wish for.
That's right, they are. The useful idiots serve a limited purpose, right up to the point when they are executed, assassinated, imprisoned or exiled.
Concurring...
Mircea
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Originally Posted by alphamale
The Constitution is the only thing that can save us.
I truly believe that.
The attempt by the Left to create a Unitary State where such a State could never possibly exist is the cause of many of the problems now. The only thing that will save the US is the complete restoration of the Federation, in accordance with the Constitution.
If that were to happen, and you could travel forward into the Future and read the history books, you would see something like this:
......
1898 - 1932: The Imperial State
1932 - 20XX: The pseudo-Unitary State
20XX - Present: Federalism Restored
That's how historians and political scientists would define the periods.
Federally...
Mircea
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Originally Posted by HappyTexan
I figure we're at where Britain was at the end of WWII when they lost top dog position.
I do believe you're onto something there. In thinking about it, the circumstances are damn near identical:
1] Britain over-reacts to the WW II and post-WW II era with heavy handed Domestic Policies and then subsequently loses its Colonies.
2] the US over-reacts to the Great Depression with heavy handed Domestic Policies and has subsequently lost or is losing its Client States (pseudo-Colonies).
Empires must expand, or they enter a period of stagnation and ultimately collapse in any number of ways. British expansion ceased with the colonization of China, and even that was difficult for Britain, whose Chinese Colonies were competing against US Colonies in China and also German Colonies in China (and now pause to think about the root causes of World War I for just a second).
The US has effectively ceased expanding in the 1970s. Sure, the US has attempted to expand into other areas, like Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, some forays into Africa and also the Central Asian States (like Uzbekistan et al), but those expansions were at the expense of the loss of Asia.
If would say the US is now where Britain was in the post-WW I era (if you equate Iraq/Afghanistan for the US).
The fact that we keep sending corrupt people back to DC over and over again should speak volumes.
You just said a moutful. Just as we do here in Calif, the morons who keep on sending the wrong idiots to run it, are the ones who screw it.
So we are screwed. Do people never learn a lesson.
If our situation in this Country, and our economy has not improved, if the person who promised us all this great Hope n' Change. And said at the end of my term if the economy is not what it should be. I should be considered a one term President, yes Obama said that.
But people are not good students are they.
The first thing dictators do after they get in office is jail, exile and/or kill the idolizing intellectuals and the educated that put them in power.
Not all dictators are created equal. It's a crap shoot. So is democracy.
Anyway, I prefer monarchs to dictators. If we can't get the Prince of Liechtenstein, I suggest pleading with the only legitimate heir to the throne of Great Britain and therefore the American colonies, King Francis II. Now there's a leader for you!
The Constitution is the only thing that can save us.
The Constitution is only as good as the judges, legislators and magistrates who interpret, apply, and enforce it.
Here's where the constitutionalist mentality, however laudable it is in theory, falls down in real life: good government always comes back to good men and the exercise of human authority. We're all monarchists in the end.
I'm all for baseball, motherhood, the flag and the American way, but to tell you the truth I don't see democracy getting us out of this mess. What am I missing?
You are missing one little thing: what is going on now is NOT democracy.
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Originally Posted by Harrier
How about we institute a military theocracy?
This.
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