Democracy is not a dirty word -

[PaulaGem]

You just want the "workers of the world" to unite and throw off their oppressors, unfortunately, the people on this forum know history too well to fall for your Leninist agitation strategies.

You're a real dickhead, aren't you?

 

[pcosmar]

You're a real dickhead, aren't you?

Well I can be.
Does blunt and accurate = Dickhead ??

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
H. L. Mencken

“A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.”

Thomas Jefferson

“Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people."
Oscar Wilde

Democracy is the road to socialism.
Karl Marx

 

[Original_Intent]

You're a real dickhead, aren't you?

You do bring out the best in me, Paula dear.

 

[powerofreason]

Democracy allowed Hitler to take power, for one.

Monarchs had much less power than modern democratic leaders. They couldn't tax nearly as much, because their powers were in dispute and not clearly written down on paper. And they didn't involve the average citizen in their military adventures. Civilians were not generally targeted in war, either.

Democracy allowed all the US fascists and tyrants to take power and implement their evil plans. Representative government is a failure for 2 main reasons.

1. A representative can only truly represent himself.
2. Representatives vote to help out those people that contributed the most money to his/her election campaign. If they didn't, they wouldn't get re-elected. This leads to both fascism and socialism.

Natural Order > Monarchy > Democracy/Republicanism (because there's really no such thing as pure democracy)

More reasons why monarchy is better than democracy:

1. A monarch "owns" his country. He has in interest in not wrecking/looting it. He wants to preserve its value.
2. A democratic leader is a temporary caregiver of a country. He has no real interest in preserving its value long term and may loot it/wreck it at will without consequence.
3. There is a chance with monarchy that the person who inherits the throne will be a benevolent and caring person.
4. A democratic leader is nearly always a lying sociopath thug. One has to be that way to succeed in politics.
5. Democracy gives the illusion of control by the people. This empowers the government to enact extraordinarily tyrannical laws, because there is the illusion that the people have automatically endorsed the actions of the elected official. (Even though all the candidates suck and people are choosing the one that sucks less.)

Bump for truth.

 

[Original_Intent]

Bump for truth.

LOL, you quote yourself three times and then "Bump for Truth".

Not that I disagree with you, it just struck me as amusing.

 

[TortoiseDream]

it means rule by the people. Our founding fathers believed in Democracy because they believed that legitimate government derived its power from the consent of the governed.

There may be technical variations on the way Democratic government is organized and administered but consent of the people (Demos), those who are governed, is still the only legitimate source of power for a government.

 

[Conservative Christian]

"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."

~ Winston Churchill


.

 

[Conservative Christian]

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/chu6.html

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!"

~ Benjamin Franklin, leader of the American Revolution

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"We are a Republican Government. Real liberty is never found in despotism or in the extremes of Democracy... 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 good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity."

~ Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury to George Washington, author of the Federalist Papers

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"Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."

~ John Adams, 2nd President of the United States

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"A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine."

~ Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States

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"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 death.

~ James Madison, 4th President of the United States, Father of the Constitution

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"The experience of all former ages had shown that of all human governments, democracy was the most unstable, fluctuating and short-lived."

~ John Quincy Adams, 6th President of the United States

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"Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos."

~ John Marshall, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, 1801-1835


.

 

[BenIsForRon]

Jesus, this thread is a clusterfuck of nonsense.

direct election to house of Reps by people (primarily men) who own land.

No land, no vote for anything.

That doesn't sound Democratic to me. It was built that way for a reason ... the majority cannot be trusted.

Wow, did you even stop to think if that even sounds plausible? People in a free society are not going to allow other people to make decisions for them just because they have land. The only way to enforce your little ideal system is through violent suppression.

Second, Have you ever thought that some people might just prefer to rent, and don't care about owning land? Hell, some people don't really want to own anything, and would just rather live in a voluntary community. Should they not be allowed a vote?

Just think for two seconds about the implications of what you're saying. It's a fantasy world. Not reality.

 

[powerofreason]

LOL, you quote yourself three times and then "Bump for Truth".

Not that I disagree with you, it just struck me as amusing.

 

[PaulaGem]

it means rule by the people. Our founding fathers believed in Democracy because they believed that legitimate government derived its power from the consent of the governed.

There may be technical variations on the way Democratic government is organized and administered but consent of the people (Demos), those who are governed, is still the only legitimate source of power for a government.

Back to the original post - I still stand by it.

What is consent of the governed and how does one know when it is in play? How does one tell the difference between consent of the governed and say resignation of the governed? Or even hopelessness of the governed? What if 51% of a population are somehow determined to have given their consent and 49% have been determined to have revoked their consent?

Please define "consent of the governed".

Securing social order through the formation of any government invariably requires the direct consent of those who are to be governed. (2nd Treatise §95) Each and every individual must concur in the the original agreement to form such a government, but it would be enormously difficult to achieve unanimous consent with respect to the particular laws it promulgates. So, in practice, Locke supposed that the will expressed by the majority must be accepted as determinative over the conduct of each individual citizen who consents to be governed at all. (2nd Treatise §97-98) Although he offered several historical examples of just such initial agreements to form a society, Locke reasonably maintained that this is beside the point. All people who voluntarily chooses to live within a society have implicitly or tacitly entered into its formative agreement, and thereby consented to submit themselves and their property to its governance. (2nd Treatise §119)

Locke on Consent of the governed.

CHAP. VIII.

Of the Beginning of Political Societies.
Sect. 95. MEN being, as has been said, by nature, all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put out of this estate, and subjected to the political power of another, without his own consent. The only way whereby any one divests himself of his natural liberty, and puts on the bonds of civil society, is by agreeing with other men to join and unite into a community for their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living one amongst another, in a secure enjoyment of their properties, and a greater security against any, that are not of it. This any number of men may do, because it injures not the freedom of the rest; they are left as they were in the liberty of the state of nature. When any number of men have so consented to make one community or government, they are thereby presently incorporated, and make one body politic, wherein the majority have a right to act and conclude the rest.

Locke, Second Treatise of Civil Government


Apparently Locke believes that if you are in the 49% you can deal with it or leave. It sounds a lot like democracy to me.

 

[ChaosControl]

Yes it is mr potty mouth.

 

[PaulaGem]

The General Will
As Rousseau envisioned it, the general will [Fr. volonté générale] is not merely the cancelled-out sum of all the individual wills of those who participate in the social contract, the will of all [Fr. volonté de tous]. Indeed, he warned that the influence of parties representing special interests is directly inimical to the sort of sound public deliberation that can arrive at a consensus regarding the welfare of all. So thoroughly must each individual surrender to the whole as to acknowledge that "sa vie n'est plus seulement un bienfait de la nature, mais un don conditionnel de l'Etat". By entering into the original agreement, I have sworn to seek only the welfare of the community, no matter what the consequences may be for me. The general will must be concerned solely with the general interest, which is the inalienable responsibility of the sovereign body, expressed through legislation.

So to go back to a longstanding argument - if the community after due deliberation believes that second hand smoke is a general health hazard and undermines the welfare of the community they do have the right to outlaw smoking in public places under this theory of government.

The general will, abstractly considered as a commitment to the welfare of the whole, is indestructible in principle, Rousseau held, even though it may be overridden by undesirable motives in practice. The original contract requires perfect unanimity, and major issues should be decided by a major portion of the population, but simple matters requiring quick action may be determined by a simple majority. In each case, Rousseau supposed that open inquiry and debate will converge on an awareness by each individual of what is truly in the best interest of the community as a whole; and that is the general will. Positions of leadership that require skill should be decided by election, while those that demand only good sense should be chosen by lot.

http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/5d.htm#rous

 

[Theocrat]

Your Irrationality is Noted

I don't answer silly quibbling questions by people that don't understand what the really important issues are.

In other words, you have shown that you are unwilling to answer the questions which destroy your notion that "democracy is not a dirty word."

 

[ClayTrainor]

In other words, you have shown that you are unwilling to answer the questions which destroy your notion that "democracy is not a dirty word."

Theo FTW!

 

[PaulaGem]

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/chu6.html

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!"

~ Benjamin Franklin, leader of the American Revolution

"Lunches with Wolves" (the fake Ben Franklin quote on Democracy)
posted by Barry Popik
Wed, 01/24/2007 - 9:42pm
"Lunches with Wolves" was how Wednesday's New York Post editorial described Governor Spitzer's lunch with Sheldon Silver and Joe Bruno. The editorial begins: "Democracy has been defined as two wolves and a sheep discussing plans for lunch."

A second line is often added: "Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."

And finally the phrase is usually--incorrectly--attributed to Ben Franklin.

The word "lunch" wasn't popular until about the 1820s and would not have been said by Franklin. Wikipedia discusses that the quote is bogus and doesn't appear until 1994!

A colleague today found it in the Los Angeles Times, January 12, 1992:

"Democracy is not freedom. Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for lunch. Freedom comes from the recognition of certain rights which may not be taken, not even by a 99% vote. Those rights are spelled out in the Bill of Rights and in our California Constitution. Voters and politicians alike would do well to take a look at the rights we each hold, which must never be chipped away by the whim of the majority."

James Bovard is sometimes credited for the phrase, and he did use it in the Washington Times, August 29, 1992:

"The USDA's concept of democracy reminds one of the old joke: Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. Why should the government give some farmers the power to vote to destroy other farmers' property rights?"

Perhaps two wolves and a lamb beats "three men in a room," but I dunno.

LINKS:

http://www.nypost.com/seven/01242007/postopinion/editorials/lunches_with_wolves_editorials_.htm
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin
[/QUOTE]

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"We are a Republican Government. Real liberty is never found in despotism or in the extremes of Democracy... 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 good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity."

~ Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury to George Washington, author of the Federalist Papers

Duh.... that's why we don't have a PURE democracy.

"Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."

~ John Adams, 2nd President of the United States

Perhaps we have suicided ourselves by not taking care of the democratic system of government we were given.

"A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine."

~ Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States

Jeffersonian vision of democracy defined

We currently have no evidence to confirm that Thomas Jefferson ever said or wrote, "Democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51% of the people may take away the rights of the other 49%" or any of its listed variations. We do not know the source of this statement's attribution to Thomas Jefferson.

"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 death.

~ James Madison, 4th President of the United States, Father of the Constitution

In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority.
James Madison

The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to an uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government.
James Madison

James Madison Quote

So it seems that Mr. Madison applied critical thought to "Republics" and absolute right to property too... Gee whoda thunk it?

Also follow the link - there are some fantastic, almost prophetic quotes there.

"The experience of all former ages had shown that of all human governments, democracy was the most unstable, fluctuating and short-lived."

~ John Quincy Adams, 6th President of the United States

This did not mean he had a better suggestion, it just means that he was concerned that our democracy would not last. (and don't give me the Republic argument - nothing in the creation of this country denied the power of the demos.)

"Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos."

~ John Marshall, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, 1801-1835

MR. CHAIRMAN, I conceive that the object of the discussion now before us is whether democracy or despotism be most eligible. I am sure that those who framed the system submitted to our investigation, and those who now support it, intend the establishment and security of the former. The supporters of the Constitution claim the title of being firm friends of the liberty and the rights of mankind. They say that they consider it as the best means of protecting liberty. We, sir, idolize democracy. Those who oppose it have bestowed eulogiums on monarchy. We prefer this system to any monarchy because we are convinced that it has a greater tendency to secure our liberty and promote our happiness. We admire it because we think it a well-regulated democracy: it is recommended to the good people of this country: they are, through us, to declare whether it be such a plan of government as will establish and secure their freedom. ......
What are the favorite maxims of democracy? A strict observance of justice and public faith and a steady adherence to virtue. These, sir, are the principles of a good government. No mischief, no misfortune, ought to deter us from a strict observance of justice and public faith. Would to heaven that these principles had been observed under the present government! Had this been the case the friends of liberty would not be so willing now to part with it. Can we boast that our government is founded on these maxims? Can we pretend to the enjoyment of political freedom or security when we are told that a man has been, by an act of Assembly, struck out of existence without a trial by jury, without examination, without being confronted with his accusers and witnesses, without the benefits of the law of the land? Where is our safety when we are told that this act was justifiable because the person was not a Socrates? What has become of the worthy member’s maxims? Is this one of them? Shall it be a maxim that a man shall be deprived of his life without the benefit of law? Shall such a deprivation of life be justified by answering that a man’s life was not taken secundem artem, because he was a bad man? Shall it be a maxim that government ought not to be empowered to protect virtue?

Source of the above quote from John Marshall


In conclusion, I now state that DEMOCRACY is one of the most precious words we possess. In it lies the only legitimate source of any governmental power. It appears that the folks on this board have been had...

You have bought into a pack of lies that would deprive you of this most precious of all rights, that of self government.

Our founding fathers were wise. They put checks and balances in against the different branches of government, but they also extended this system of checks and balances to the powers exercised by the people so that pure democracy would be tempered by the preservation of those unalienable rights which they fought so hard to establish in the Declaration and preserve in the Constitution.

This was not a denial of democratic right, it was an attempt to ground it and make it more permanent and lasting. If you deny democracy in our government you strip it of all possible claim to legitimacy.

 

[PaulaGem]

In other words, you have shown that you are unwilling to answer the questions which destroy your notion that "democracy is not a dirty word."

I have chosen to stop replying to someone I perceive to be baiting and argumentative because he has some unresolved psychological issues of self worth.

This party has also shown by his post below that he has no desire to think or read an argument when put before him, otherwise he would have read the post above and found that all of those supposed historical enemies of democracy actually embraced it wholeheartedly as an ideal to be sought after, their only reservations were in the practice of it and the ability of the people to sustain it.

Theocrat appears to be trolling and playing the demos on this board for a fool, how many others are doing the same thing, hoping to remove the Liberty from the Forest?

 

[Theocrat]

You Don't Know What You're Talking About, Do You?

I have chosen to stop replying to someone I perceive to be baiting and argumentative because he has some unresolved psychological issues of self worth.

That statement is really irrelevant to the topic of your thread. I am seeking to show you why democracy is "a dirty word," but all you want to do is give personal attacks and evade questions. The only person dealing with "unresolved psychological issues of self-worth" is you, and that much is evident because you know the intent of the questions I asked you, and you're afraid to answer them, knowing what it proves about the title of your thread.

In many ways, you're no different than liberals who simply take their own political views for granted without evidence and engage in name-calling when they are proven wrong in their unfounded beliefs. It's very sad you have degenerated your own thread to that level, especially for someone who claims to be a "gnostic."

 

[TurtleBurger]

Democracy is political communism. Communism is economic democracy.

 

[PaulaGem]

Democracy is political communism. Communism is economic democracy.

Then you are against the Constitutional system of government that is in place in this country.