Australian officials have apparently failed to get any details on the Obama “plan” on Afghanistan. Xinhua reports:
“It was an ideal opportunity, with Smith and Fitzgibbon (Foreign Minister Stephen Smith and Defense Minister Joel Fitzgibbon) meeting the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, yet we’re none the wiser to any extent about an increased commitment the U.S. is expecting of Australia,” Opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman Julie Bishop told reporters. … This week Australia would not commit more troops to Afghanistan unless the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) increased its commitment and the U.S. outlined a new strategy to fight the Taliban insurgents, Fitzgibbon said in a statement last week.
That suggests that if Obama had a plan he was either unwilling to take the likes of Kevin Rudd into confidence or that it was still incomplete. With Obama himself recently returned from NATO and Holbrooke just back from South Asia perhaps the “plan” doesn’t exist yet.
Which might not be a bad thing. Modern politicians are supposed to have a plan for everything. A “plan” to save social security; ‘reform’ immigration; end the ‘scourge of piracy’ and many other things. But many of these problems are complex and it is often unclear how, much less when, they will be solved. When GWB went into Afghanistan and Iraq in 2002 and 2003, his plans, such as they were, turned out to require constant revision. I think it is the nature of the beast that only provisional plans can be realistically made. President Obama simply can’t come up with an “exit plan” he can show to the Australian ministers that resembles a kind of PERT-CPM launch schedule with a countdown at the end. If he shows them one, it’s a fraud. At the very best, he might decide on a direction and get together a stock of political and material provisions and keep going until he either realizes he’s going down the wrong road and changes direction or uses up his capital and shrivels by the electoral wayside.
It may surprise some members of the public to realize that the President doesn’t have all the answers. There are some questions to which the reply is, “I don’t know”. There are some problems to which the solution is “do nothing”. But the public has been conditioned to believe in the political magic machine. There’s a plan for everything, including alien invasions from Outer Space, which are stored in Area 51. Maybe the only thing politicians can do is show them a folder marked “plan” and play along. Perhaps the most useful thing about official secrecy is to create a space where the public can imagine that all the confidential answers are stored. Its most useful content is hope. There’s no change.
Wretchard,
The Plan is Hope!!!
Hope, indecision, indifference, and more!!!
The Plan does not bear detailed discussion in open forum, involving as it does placing Vladimir Putin in charge of our line of communicatons and throwing Georgia under the bus, Peace In Our Time with Iran through throwing Israel under the bus, and massive loss of face and abandonment of superpower status following the worst defeat since the Fall of the Philippines.
Cannoneer No 4: Well said.
Boghie: You left out the change. I’m actually filled with hope and change. No, I said that wrong — it’s really hope FOR change. F
Xinhua is very interested in this. China has effectively bought Australia’s future. Rudd sold not just the product but the capital stock when he let China buy the mines. Now China can plan a move South, through the South China Sea and Indonesia. In effect they are repeating what Imperial Japan attempted 70 years ago, only the Chinese are proving more effective. My expectation is that Taiwan will be expected to submit quietly to the new order and Tibet will be scrubbed clean. China’s long term plan is to control access to the resources of the Gulf both through a land route across Afghanistan and with a new Navy based in the Arabian Sea. Russia is not opposing this, they are coordinating with China through the Shanghai Cooperative Organization. The alternative for Putin would be a Chinese Strike North. The two wild cards are India and Japan.
@ 4. Lifeofthemind
China does not have to strike north. They just need to wait 50-75 years and they’ll take the no-man’s land by default. Meanwhile, “we won’t strike north if you help out with south expansion, wink, wink”, works pretty well.
It’s the (win+win)delta t, formula.
There are chinks in the armor… but that is another story.
twobyfour,
Mark Steyn has not been refuted about demographics.
The surprise for me is that Russia does not get more exercised about the prospect of a Chinese presence in the ‘Stans. While China can use Tibet to stare down at India it can’t ship the resources by that route. The Pamirs are just to knotty. The route should be through the Dzungarian Gates and then South and West. Has Putin made a grand bargain in which he gets Eurasia, EU Nato with the Caspian oil and Arctic, and the Chinese get East, South, Central and South-West Asia? Maybe Turkey needs to be added to the list of countries that should have an opinion about this.
“chinks in the armor” Raaaaacist
Call it the Bush-Obama-2013 Plan:
Do absolutely nothing about the Pashtun Heroin Industry, that finances Taliban/al-Qaeda terror. Put $600,000,000 in the pockets of the same terrorist animals who carried out 9-11, and call whatever you are doing, nation-building.
Frankly, I have never heard anyone at Belmont Club link the drug trade to the heightened Islamofascist aggression. Hmmm…you were slaves to Bush, therefore you won’t attack carryover of same to the Hussein O farce.
Australia should announce a 30 day pull out, if the American President can’t trust the one Allie that has helped the most there (Afghanistan) and in Iraq then they (the Australians) need not stay a second longer then it is possible to leave, “0″ is quickly shedding away our true Allies, the end is not far.
Problem: having trashed the effort in Iraq, only to see things improve, how to avoid looking like a naive pacifist appeaser?
Solution: be gracious in political victory re the bad war, find yourself a good war–Afghanistan is the ticket.
New Problem: vast differences between the two countries in history, terrain, social organization, economic sophistication, ethnic makeup–just about anything you can think of.
New Solution: 1) ask/beg the general you badmouthed to step up to the line once more, knowing he has enough character and maturity to do it; 2) get all kinds of other people to throw in with us, this sharing the expense, moral burden, and showing we are now cooperative, sensitive, non-arrogant, and just plain good guys.
New-new Problem(s): allies, seeing little beneath the varnish, smile and simultaneously pick your pocket; all kinds of logistical problems in land-locked country; whiffs of misplaced self-confidence wafting about.
New-new Solution: … uh, uh … can’t we all just get along (will someone fix my teleprompter)?
LotM/6,
Bargain, well, you need to look at it from the Chinese POV: “Pooty is temporary, China is eternal”.
Are they right? Of course they are.
Apropos, shouldn’t that be Raaaacist™?
@ 7. Moxie88
islamofascists
Aren’t they, uhm, something like brothers in arms of yours? Or is there some sort of ireconcillable beef between fascists and nazis?
Moxie @7…
Such matters have long ago been discussed at the Club.
You need to lurk more often.
@ 12. blert:
You need to lurk more often
And preferably in that mode only.
I viscerally dislike Stormfront subscribers and recommend lurking only for their own good.
The Aussies looked a bit askance
When told there was no plan
They asked if there might be by chance
A savvy old Afghan
Who knew the countryside quite well
And who if pressed could say
The price the warlords need to sell
The price we need to pay
To get the locals on our side
To fight the Tal’ban vice
We tried to reason with their pride
But money is the price
With that the Aussies put the ball
Into the US court
And said that you must make the call
But O is not the sort
Of guy who takes advice and such
From guys who like as not
Are really asking not too much
For the best allies we’ve got
“Now China can plan a move South, through the South China Sea and Indonesia.”
One wonders what all those “red shirts” are really about in Thailand lately, eh?
By the way I believe the whole China to Siberia theme is probably overplayed: one of the basic principles on which the SinoSoviet strategy is founded is probably that actual territory is inviolate, and that Siberian resources are better negotiated at a reduced price than with nuclear war. It’s not as though Moscow would accept its truncation out of feeling for the shortcomings of Chinese urban planning.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0409/21138.html
Unless, of course, the Kremlin believes Europe will be its own within 15 or 20 years…
All while the disbelieving Western public gapes “it’s a conspiracy theory!” and continues to pretend not to notice…
http://tinyurl.com/dfl9xv
…and then we have Hamas <- Hezbollah <- Iran <- Russia trying to destabilize USA’s primary Arab partner while Iraq re-starts its Saddam-era Russia deals and prepares for US exit…
Well, the US just may be exiting all over the place pretty soon eh?
Or maybe people thought all these things are unconnected?
#16–by the time they have a chance to own Europe, there won’t be enough healthy people in Russia to own it with. Birth rate decrease=death rate gain: both about 40% in past decade or so, a macabre symmetry (see recent posting by Mark Steyn).
Dan @17…
It’s astounding to see such an OPEN admission of Iran’s meddling.
I’d say the weapons smuggling is well and truly ticking Hosni Mubarak off.
For starters, it means that his own boys are playing a double game with Iran for thirty pieces of silver.
That’s got to be unnerving.
Further, Mubarak normally operates from Sharm el-Sheikh, at the southern tip of the Sinai. To learn that Iran’s proxies are smuggling heavy rockets right on by must be extremely alarming. Plainly, at any time these weapons could be trained on Mubarak, himself! Yikes!
It would seem that Australia does NOT want to be part of Project Anabasis.
Imagine that!
I’m repeating myself: get NATO out of Pashtunistan.
Until the logistics and strategy is squared away any additional troops figure to have an impending Chosin Reservoir ordeal.
Every NATO trooper removed from the logistical burden will come to be seen as a blessing.
A wise general reinforces success not defeat, and NATO is a defeated force.
Gordon @18…
It’s even worse than that.
Right around the corner, Russian MILITARY AGE MALES are going to be TWICE as scarce!
We’re talking just eight years from now!
The current freshmen crop was born right at the end of the Soviet Union. After the breakdown of the Sovietist State male births collapsed: abortions took off.
Even today, more than two out of three pregnancies are being aborted in White Russia!
And the good looking babes are fleeing to America. An awful lot come to ‘little Moscow’ — Rancho Cordova. (a part of greater Sacramento, California)
Many flee on vacation visas and stay for a lifetime.
I know of one sizable employer who has 60% illegal Russian immigrant workers — most of whom are women. It’s shouldn’t be too surprising: their head of HR is an illegal Russian immigrant! ( female, of course)
I don’t think the Puntinjugend can overcome the exodus.
And that’s what makes the race to be the last nation standing such drama. Can Putin screw up Russia faster than Obambi screw up America? The future is so hard to see.
Blert/21,
Can Putin screw up Russia faster than Obambi screw up America?
Probably not. He does not suffer from the form of liberal insanity so fashionable in Washington circles. My bet is on 0, hands down.
Obama doesn’t trust the Aussies because they were such good allies of Bush. So he’ll treat them the same way he’s treated Brown and the Brits. He *does* trust France and GErmany and Saudi Arabia because they were not good Bush-backers.
What a pathetic little kindergarten view of the world this jerk has. I’m going to be applauding and applauding and applauding when something *really* bad happens to him (and his Mrs.), and just hope whatever it is has a radius of Democrats only and doesn’t also take out Real Americans at the same time. Although that pretty much leaves out DC.
NahnCee/23,
The second paragraph of yours is giving me creeps. You seem to be already in the near-civil-war mode with a high dose of retributional comeuppance, albeit hoping for some act of god, instead of electing some pro-active path through political discourse.
Chances are that in 2010, the swing to left may be reversed and 0 would be thus rendered a lame duck.
Those of us with eyes to see have been in pre-Civil War mode for a year, 2×4.
Chances are that the elections of 2010 will be totally corrupted with ACORN and Nation of Islam “poll watchers” showing our new Civilian National Security Force the ropes.
That’s CWII’s Fort Sumter.
If you don’t have your military-style semi-automatic rifle and 2000 rounds by now, chances are you’re already too late.
SEMI-automatic?
;>)
Sorry NahnCee, I’ve got to agree with twoby four on this one; take it easy on Obama: he won the presidency fair and square (or dirty and square if you prefer); he is our president and he honors the office even if we don’t like his personal style or politics; that is, I might disagree with him on everything but he is still my president brought to me by a system that I cherish (I’m not always happy about it but I still cherish it); I don’t see where apocolypse fever gets us. At best he reminds us that all of our so-called higher offices were designed to be run by amatuers; at worst, well, I don’t see what thinking all the worst thoughts can do for us. There is so much to be positive about. Remember, the best refutation of the left that conservatives or even liberal conservatives can offer is to enjoy life in a liberal democracy to the fullest. As you well know the left is all about diminishing life – we should be always pro…cheers.
Das, how would you feel about your cherished system and your honored President if he were to have purchased the Presidency of the United States of America using Saudi oil money?
It seems to me that there was an initial system older than the present one of pork and lobbyists and pay-to-play, put in place by George Washington and Alexander Hamilton and THAT one was promulgated by revolution and gun barrels.
If it’s not working, change it. A system that allows a President to be elected using overseas donations is broken. Change it. And I do *not* mean “hope and change” either. I mean overthrow the SOB before he can ruin everything that America stands for, turn us all into Marxists, and turn the whole US military — not just the US Navy — into a bunch of surrender monkeys.
The original tea party was the beginning of a revolution. It wasn’t just a demonstration of distaste for dictatorship. Just exactly how far do you want to allow Obama to go in dismantling America before you’re prepared to revolt, too?
Cannoneer No. 4/25,
If you go back to time when I popped out of the lurk mode, you’d realize that I am really a cassandra. I think the CWII is more likely than not, sometimes down the road. That does not mean I’d like that to happen and if it does, it would be rather a sad moment in history. I won’t be going quietly into the night.
See, I would not like it when Washington DC would get nuked (with 0 in it or not) so I would then, as NahnCee would, “applaud, applaud, applaud” and distribute candy to passer-bys. She did not say the latter, but it is implied. I’ve seen that before and I did not like it one bit.
The left has a death wish, masked by all sorts of layers, I know it you know it that it is there and expresses itself in many forms. NahnCee is so far on the sphere of political spectrum that she and far left are breathing on each other necks.
NahnCee/28.
Not much to quarrel about here. Yes, the political process is very close to being broken, but it is possible to reverse the trend, yet.
No need to go ballistic, at this stage, as long as the chances that it can be repaired (45%?) are still on the horizon. Preparation, absolutely. Starting shooting people, no.
Some major metropolitan area is going to suffer a CBRNE mass casualty event. If I was an AQ, NorK, Iranian, Venezuelan, Chicom, or Generic Bad Guy targeteer, DC would be the last place on the list.
Cannoneer No. 4/31,
But you aren’t and they aren’t you. Except Chicoms (they are far more pragmatic then the rest of the cited bunch), all of them have this “need” to go after something highly symbolic to prop up their fragile egos.
NahnCee, I take your anguish seriously but it is hard since you insist on throwing around such expensive words like: overthrow, Marxism, broken system, dictatorship…and yet, you’ll walk out into the night and go out for ice cream or cheesecake or go to the opera or the ball game, the movies…again, I’m not trying to make light of your anguish, but, come on. We’re sitting at keyboards communicating in a liberal democracy – I say, let’s at least get back to room temperature…I really don’t agree with Obama but I refuse to demonize him; what’s the point in becoming the mirror image of the left during the Bush years? They were insane bringing up stupid Hitler analogies every other sentence. Yet it wasn’t a Hitlerian crisis that brought their man into power…it was our system. Don’t they feel stupid now (no, the left is shameless – again let’s not imitate them)?
33. Das:
We’re sitting at keyboards communicating in a liberal democracy
Das, I hate to be a heartbreaker but we don’t live in a liberal democracy, we live in a Republic. The very word demcracy appears neither the Dec. of Indep. or the Constitution.
You’re limned features are those of a liberal socialist, currently very content because your maybe citizen occupies the WH and your socialist philosophy in both Houses dominates.
Das, here are some notes on a Republic vs. Democracy. I would highly recommend you embrace the differences for they are vast and meaningful. Then I encourage you to continue your study of the differences.
Republic vs. Democracy
Republic vs. Democracy
Rule by Law vs. Rule by Majority
Just after the completion and signing of the Constitution, in reply to a woman’s inquiry as to the type of government the Founders had created, Benjamin Franklin said, “A Republic, if you can keep it.”
Not only have we failed to keep it, most don’t even know what it is.
A Republic is representative government ruled by law (the Constitution). A democracy is direct government ruled by the majority (mob rule). A Republic recognizes the inalienable rights of individuals while democracies are only concerned with group wants or needs (the public good).
Lawmaking is a slow, deliberate process in our Constitutional Republic requiring approval from the three banches of government, the Supreme Court and individual jurors (jury-nullification). Lawmaking in our unlawful democracy occurs rapidly requiring approval from the whim of the majority as determined by polls and/or voter referendums. A good example of democracy in action is a lynch mob. A more recent example was the failure of the US Senate to uphold their oath “to do impartial justice” and remove bill clinton from office. Those Senators should be removed themselves, for failure to uphold their oath and for aiding and abetting a known criminal.
Democracies always self-destruct when the non-productive majority realizes that it can vote itself handouts from the productive minority by electing the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury. To maintain their power, these candidates must adopt an ever-increasing tax and spend policy to satisfy the ever-increasing desires of the majority. As taxes increase, incentive to produce decreases, causing many of the once productive to drop out and join the non-productive. When there are no longer enough producers to fund the legitimate functions of government and the socialist programs, the democracy will collapse, always to be followed by a Dictatorship.
Even though nearly every politician, teacher, journalist and citizen believes that our Founders created a democracy, it is absolutely not true. The Founders knew full well the differences between a Republic and a Democracy and they repeatedly and emphatically said that they had founded a republic.
Article IV Section 4, of the Constitution “guarantees to every state in this union a Republican form of government”…. Conversely, the word Democracy is not mentioned even once in the Constitution. Madison warned us of the dangers of democracies with these words,
“Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths…”,
“We may define a republic to be … a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people, and is administered by persons holding their offices during pleasure for a limited period, or during good behavior. It is essential to such a government that it be derived from the great body of the society, not from an inconsiderable proportion or a favored class of it; otherwise a handful of tyrannical nobles, exercising their oppressions by a delegation of their powers, might aspire to the rank of republicans and claim for their government the honorable title of republic.” James Madison, Federalist No. 10, (1787)
“A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.” Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
Our military training manuals used to contain the correct definitions of Democracy and Republic. The following comes from Training Manual No. 2000-25 published by the War Department, November 30, 1928.
DEMOCRACY:
A government of the masses.
Authority derived through mass meeting or any other form of “direct” expression.
Results in mobocracy.
Attitude toward property is communistic–negating property rights.
Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate, whether is be based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences.
Results in demogogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy.
REPUBLIC:
Authority is derived through the election by the people of public officials best fitted to represent them.
Attitude toward law is the administration of justice in accord with fixed principles and established evidence, with a strict regard to consequences.
A greater number of citizens and extent of territory may be brought within its compass.
Avoids the dangerous extreme of either tyranny or mobocracy.
Results in statesmanship, liberty, reason, justice, contentment, and progress.
Is the “standard form” of government throughout the world.
The manuals containing these definitions were ordered destroyed without explanation about the same time that President Franklin D. Roosevelt made private ownership of our lawful money (US Minted Gold Coins) illegal. Shortly after the people turned in their $20 gold coins, the price was increased from $20 per ounce to $35 per ounce. Almost overnight F.D.R., the most popular president this century (elected 4 times) looted almost half of this nation’s wealth, while convincing the people that it was for their own good. Many of F.D.R.’s policies were suggested by his right hand man, Harry Hopkins, who said,
“Tax and Tax, Spend and Spend, Elect and Elect, because the people are too damn dumb to know the difference”.
Das…a wee bit more education..
Republic vs. Democracy as forms of government
“Indisputably, this nation was founded as a republic and its leaders were justifiably afraid of a democracy,
lest it destroy the nation they had risked their lives to establish”
It was long ago speculated that the reason why so many Americans — especially new (naturalized) and working class Americans — register and vote as Democrats instead of Republicans is that they think this nation is a democracy. After all, that’s what they’ve been told all their lives, and, wanting to be “good Americans,” they opt to call themselves Democrats.
As a person who has never been able to understand how so many people with, supposedly, common sense would identify with and slavishly support the very party that bleeds their pocketbooks dry while enacting interminable tax loopholes for their very rich campaign contributors, that theory makes better sense than anything I have been able to come up with.
Alexander Hamilton said: “Real liberty is neither found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate government.”
The redefining of “democracy” is one of the most disastrous and potentially fatal blows America has ever suffered, and the most frustrating thing about it is that it is such a blatant lie. The simple truth is that America is not now, never was, and was never intended to be a “democracy.”
The political systems known as “democracy” and “republic” were created and named concurrently about 3,000 years ago in ancient Greece in what are known as “city-states”: cities that were in bare-knuckle competition with each other even though their citizens were all the same nationality, Greek.
The one thing both systems had in common was the idea of self rule; that is, the absence of a “king” by any name. The distinction between them was that, in democracies, the qualified voters (which included every “free” citizen — yes, the ancient Greeks had their helots; lower, “serf” class people) met together and enacted all laws and made all decisions directly for the state. In the republics, the qualified voters elected representatives who, in turn, met together and enacted all laws and made all decisions for the state. Obviously, any political unit that got too large for all its qualified voters to meet together at one time in one place could not be a democracy, even if it wanted to be.
Also, keep in mind the fact that, contrary to what every 20th Century “liberal” (closet communist) propagandist tells you, “democracies” have never been classless societies, and have never been governments “of all the people.”
Furthermore, even then, even 2,500 to 3,000 years ago, the dangers and failures of a democracy had revealed themselves, as shown by writers of the times.
About 370 BC, Plato wrote: “A democracy is a state in which the poor, gaining the upper hand, kill some and banish others, and then divide the offices among the remaining citizens equally.”
About 126 BC, Polybius wrote: “The common people feel themselves oppressed by the grasping of some, and their vanity is flattered by others. Fired with evil passions, they are no longer willing to submit to control, but demand that everything be subject to their authority. The invariable result is that government assumes the noble names of free and popular, but becomes in fact the most execrable thing, mob rule.”
And about 63 BC, Seneca, a Roman wrote: “Democracy is more cruel than wars or tyrants.”
More than 2,000 years before this nation was founded, democracy had been recognized by its creators for the political and economic failure it is.
Colonial American Experience — Subsequent to declaring their independence from Britain, the colonies established their own, individual governments and, apparently in the enthusiasm of independence, most of them incorporated “democratic” standards for qualifying voters in their systems. According to some of the framers of the Constitution and to many 20th Century historians, this act very nearly caused the political death of the infant nation.
Specifically, most of the colonies voted themselves all manner of benefits without any apparent reflection on the ramifications of their acts. As a result, the individual colonies as well as the Confederation were confronted with massive debts and zero funds with which to pay them off. They had no credit — either financial or psychological — anywhere in the world. They were teetering on the brink of bankruptcy and facing the very real threat of being taken over by some European nation.
This crisis, created by the financial and social irresponsibility of “democracy,” compelled the convening in 1787 — barely four years after wining their war for independence — of the convention that led to the writing of our Constitution. During those debates, the danger and failure of democracy as a political system was known and pointed out.
Edmund Jennings Randolph, in debate, stated: “Our chief danger arises from the democratic parts of our constitutions.”
Alexander Hamilton, in debate, said: “Real liberty is neither found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate government.”
Elbridge Gerry, in debate, said: “The evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy. The people do not want virtue, but are the dupes of pretended patriots.”
And after the Constitution had been adopted: Alexander Hamilton, in Senate: “It has been observed that a pure democracy, if it were practicable, would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies, in which the people themselves deliberated, never possessed one feature of good government. Their very character was tyranny: their figure deformity.”
James Madison said: “…democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”
John Adams, in a letter to John Taylor, wrote: “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”
James Madison said: “…democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”
Thomas Jefferson, in the drafts of the Kentucky Resolutions, wrote: “In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.”
(Yes, Democratic Party propagandists and their dupes insist that Thomas Jefferson was a Democrat. And he did, in a response to a European correspondent, say, “…we are all democrats; we are democratic Republicans and democratic Federalist…” and explained that, to him, “democratic” was not a political system but a political condition; specifically, a system in which the government recognizes no social classes and creates no social classes. Where, as far as law go, “all men are created equal.” Jefferson, of course, acknowledged that all humans are not equal, in hardly any way — he was just adamant that the laws should make no acknowledgment of these differences, should bestow no benefit or civil advantage to a part of the citizenry because of differences. That was as far as his “democratism” went, which, obviously, is the exact opposite of what “Democrats” today believe.)
John Adams, in a letter to William Cunningham in March 1804, wrote: “Democracy is Lovelace and the people is Clarissa” (an allegoric reference to popular literature of the time, in which Lovelace “did Clarissa wrong”).
Not only were our Founding Fathers adamantly opposed to creating a “democratic” system, they were unanimous in giving this nation a republic as its political system.
Alexander Hamilton, June 26, 1788, stated: “There are few positions more demonstrable than that there should be in every republic some permanent body to correct the prejudices, check the intemperate passions, and regulate the fluctuations of a popular assembly.”
Alexander Hamilton, also in 1788: “It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of society against the injustice of the other part.”
George Washington, April 30, 1789: “The…destiny of the republican model of government (is) justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally stacked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.”
Thomas Jefferson, March 11, 1790: “The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.”
Thomas Jefferson, 1791: “Government in a well constituted republic requires no belief from man beyond what his reason authorizes.”
Thomas Jefferson, July 30, 1795: “The revolution forced them (the “people of America” — author) to consider the subject for themselves, and the result was an universal conversion to republicanism.”
Thomas Jefferson, March 12, 1799: “The body of the American people is substantially republican. But their virtuous feelings have been played upon by some fact with more fiction, they have been the dupes of artful manoeuvres, & made for a moment to be willing instruments in forging chains for themselves.”
Thomas Jefferson, March 4, 1801: “If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form…”
Thomas Jefferson, Jan. 18, 1802: “The body of our people … have ever had the same object in view, to wit, the, maintenance of a federal, republican government…”
Thomas Jefferson, Jan. 13, 1813: “This is my belief of it; it is that on which I have acted…to administer the government according to its genuine republican principles…”
Thomas Jefferson, in the Anas: “He (John Adams — author) has since thoroughly seen that his constituents were devoted to republican government…”
Thomas Jefferson, in the Anas: “…and I fondly hope … that the motto of the standard to which our country will forever rally, will be ‘federal union, and republican government…”
As historians Charles Austin Beard and Mary Ritter Beard wrote (1939): “At no time, at no place, in solemn convention assembled, through no chosen agents, had the American people officially proclaimed the United States to be a democracy. The Constitution did not contain the word or any word lending countenance to it, except possibly the mention of ‘We the people,’ in the preamble … When the Constitution was framed, no respectable person called himself a democrat.”
Justifiably Afraid Of ‘Democracy’ — Indisputably, this nation was founded as a republic and its leaders were justifiably afraid of “democracy,” lest it destroy the nation they had risked their lives to establish.
And thus it officially was for a century and a half. As recently as in a 1928 U.S. Army training manual it was described thusly:
“Democracy: A government of the masses. Authority derived through mass meeting or any form of ‘direct’ expression. Results in mobocracy. Attitude towards laws is that the will of the majority shall regulate, whether it is based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice or impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences. Results in demagogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy.”
It is stated (I have been unable to verify it — author) that Woodrow Wilson, the Democratic president who gave control of this nation’s money to the Federal Reserve Bank and thus put America’s economic destiny in the hands of foreign bankers, was the first public figure to proclaim this nation a “democracy.”
One of the 1993 Merriam-Webster’s definitions of “democracy” is: “the absence of hereditary or arbitrary class distinctions or privileges.” Yet today, “democratic” America is riven by class distinction, class envy, and class warfare, and all of it has been deliberately created and fomented by “liberal” (closet communist) Democrats in order to facilitate their personal possession of political power! Not a single day passes today but some Democrat politician somewhere deliberately agitates the masses in class envy, ethnic envy, economic envy, etc. — all in the name of “democracy” which, by their modern definition, forbids the very sociopolitical condition they advocate.”
While our “democracy” and its accompanying social self destruction are the planned and deliberate handiwork of the “liberal” enemies of free people, so successful has their redefinition of “democracy” been that the leaders of the opposition, i.e., “conservatism,” aid and abet the liberals by their constant reinforcement of the idea that this nation is a democracy and that there is nothing wrong with that.
All of the “conservative” and Republican icons of the past 50 years — William Buckley, Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, Robert Dole, Newt Gingrich, Phil Gramm, Dick Armey, Rush Limbuagh, and Gordon Liddy, to name just a few — invariably refer to this nation as a “democracy” without hesitation.
Today, America is 222+ years old, and to call Congress’ fiscal policy “loose” is an understatement of monumental proportions.
And all because of the successful definition and sanitization of the word “democracy.”
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” — George Santayana.
It may be too late to save America from its historically mandated fate, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try. And one thing we can all do is to quit propagating the “democracy” lie. We who know better can quit calling America a democracy and we can try to educate those who don’t know any better. Oh, yes. We can also call on those public leaders who keep repeating the lie to cease to do so. When the very people who invented “democracy” learn the error of their ways, what excuse can a modern educated person have for not knowing?
Das/33,
We’re sitting at keyboards communicating in a liberal democracy
Damn! It did not take them long… That’s what I was afraid of.
It does not matter that liberal some 60 years ago had a different meaning. The left nationalized it (= stole it) as a tool of confusion (and apparently, you did not notice) and they own it and it ain’t pretty.
You probably meant “in a country with guaranteed freedoms”. But the liberal democrats hammer at them from any angle they can. Deconstructing and reframing, they call it,
“PLAN?, PLAN? There ain’t no stinkin’ plan!”
Habu thanks for the references they are stirring. But, come on you guys, you know what I meant; I meant to emphasize our basic freedom. And you avoided my main point about demonizing Obama: let’s not.
Das, I think you’re one of them. Which means you’re either stupid or blinkered. Or bought off.