Kelly J wrote:
LeagueOf1291 wrote:
You know, I read quotes like these, and similar quotes about how democracy is "nothing more than mob rule," and then hear the proponents of these views then suggest their solutions, which always in one way or another involve a loss of self-governance. They always involve giving to someone else the power to exercise dominion over you -- as in our representative system in which elected representatives infringe our rights, and unelected officials and judges make policy.
For those who think democracies only fail, I submit the Swiss Confederation as Exhibit A in support of the opposing view.
-- It has been a nation since 1291.
-- It has protected freedom of speech and religion for at least three hundred years, and arguably longer.
-- It has maintained the right to bear arms even more effectively than has the US.
-- It has resisted the centralization of political power far more effectively than has the US.
-- It has far less of a "police state" "authoritarian" mentality than the US.
-- It has less violent crime, higher income, lower national debt, and in several Cantons (States), lower effective tax rate than the US.
-- It has done all this with an even greater cultural and linguistic diversity than the US.
Before you take offense and tell me to love it or leave it, just bear in mind that I'm a dual citizen of the US and Switzerland, and I have a home there, yet I'd rather live here for a number of reasons.
It's just that I see how far the US has fallen from its former glory, in which the States and the people were truly the repository of political power and individual liberties were generally cherished by most of the people. Now, the federal government exercises power far beyond its Constitutional authority.
The result is
-- a loss of individual freedoms,
-- a loss of popular political power,
-- an increase in dependency,
-- the corruption of the representative government,
-- and a rift between various social and economic segments.
This weakens individuals, families, and the nation. Until the people of the United States recover their political power, they will be subservient to the whims of tyrannical governors.
Most of them don't even know they are already subservient to them.
The problem here is the simple fact that we have what is refered to as a democracy and it is supposed to be a Republic, I just wish the People would remember that and get it back on track to again being a Republic.
No, the confusion stems from a failure to understand that we have a democratic of type government with a republican
structure. We've never stopped being a republic -- it's just that we've stopped being a republic with some sort of check on the power of the federal government.
Switzerland is a republic -- the nation is a confederation of independent states. The state of Geneva is called the "Republic and Canton of Geneva." It's a republic because it has elected representatives -- same as at the federal level.
A republic is a great form of government so long as those distant elected representatives have very limited power. If you don't limit their power, they become tyrants. Our government has retained its republican structure, but over the years it has gradually arrogated tremendous powers to itself, to the point where it bears no resemblance whatsoever to the constitutional structure.
What makes a democratic
type of government is the concept of the will of the people. The whole purpose of the constitutional federal government in the US was to
preserve democratic power for the people, and to elect -- in a republican structure -- representatives who have only certain enumerated powers, with the goal of providing only that government necessary at the federal level to preserve and protect governmental, social, and cultural institutions where they belong -- locally and at the state level.
They don't teach this stuff anymore because they don't want you to know it -- if you did, you'd insist on your liberties.
Instead, they hand you half-truthful pithy sayings designed to make you believe that democracy is for fools and tyrants.
"Democracy is the rule of fools by fools" and "Why trade one dictator 3000 miles away for 3000 dictators one mile away?" Statements like these are handed down from those in power to unthinking mind-numbed zombies who have been taught that they're better off ruled by the elite than to be in control of their own destinies.
Switzerland is proof to the contrary of these sayings, and the early history of the US is too.
So what we have now is two generations of Americans who know neither their history, nor their heritage, nor their liberty. And since they don't know them, they cannot understand them, and they cannot value them.
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