America is not a Democracy.

[Angel Heart]

LiveLeak.com - America is not a Democracy.

What type of Government do we have in America - A Democracy or a Republic? What different types of Government are there? Hopefully this clip will answer those questions for some people.

This is an excert of "An Overview of America" which you can view here: LiveLeak.com - Overview of America

 

[RetiredGySgt]

We have a democratic Republic. We elect people to represent us in Government. No true democracy could work at anything other then a small Town.

California tries hard and look how fucked up they are.

You think we have problems with 545 people representing us, think what it would be like if everything was put to a popular vote.

 

[American Horse]

LiveLeak.com - America is not a Democracy.

What type of Government do we have in America - A Democracy or a Republic? What different types of Government are there? Hopefully this clip will answer those questions for some people.

This is an excert of "An Overview of America" which you can view here: LiveLeak.com - Overview of America

In the mid 1960's, when our concerns were raised to high levels because we feared the loss of freedom from the welfare state (Great Society) of Lyndon Johnson, the John Birch Society brought some common sense to the public. There were Saturday morning radio broadcasts just like this video. They were the equivalent of the Saturday morning presidential message of today. This was part of the inception of the greater conservative movement in this country; probably a bigger force than were Ayn Rand, and Bill Buckley, and played a huge part in the nomination of Barry Goldwater in 1964. That led to eventual election of Reagan in 1980. The left tried to condemn the JBS out of existence.

I'm glad to see they're back, and getting our back!

 

[editec]

Can any of you so called conservatives tell me who John Birch was without looking it up?

 

[del]

Can any of you so called conservatives tell me who John Birch was without looking it up?

i believe he was an american airman who was a POW in the korean war.

edit-just looked it up-wrong

i'll contrive to carry on nonetheless.

 

[American Horse]

Can any of you so called conservatives tell me who John Birch was without looking it up?

There you go with the put-down. Does it even matter? The message was what counted. The JBS came out of our State of Indiana in the early 60's, and it had a real effect, as I said above. I won't be surprised if the message is attempted to be shut up again. It's because of the effectiveness of the message that the left will try to put the quietus to it.

edit: BTW there are "so called Conservatives", and there are "so called Liberals"; it all only makes any sense through our own perspectives.

 

[American Horse]

Can any of you so called conservatives tell me who John Birch was without looking it up?

There you go with the put-down. Does it even matter? The message was what counted. The JBS came out of our State of Indiana in the early 60's, and it had a real effect, as I said above. I won't be surprised if the message is attempted to be shut up again. It's because of the effectiveness of the message that the left will try to put the quietus to it.

edit: BTW there are "so called Conservatives", and there are "so called Liberals"; it all only makes any sense through our own perspectives.

It occurs to me that this was precisely the same challenge we heard in the 60's; that is how old the left's playbook is. We were forever challenged to explain who John Birch was, as if he was some evil daemon. Right at the top of that playbook is ad hominem attacks against the messenger instead of the message.

To discredit the message we must kill the messenger.

 

[LiveUninhibited]

Oh look, a propaganda video...

Gotta love the 1-D political spectrum.

The closest thing to democracy on a large scale would be a democratic republic. The non-democratic aspect is the Constitutional part, that limits what kinds of laws can be made. I suppose technology like the internet would make it more theoretically possible to have a pure democracy, but our world is complex and specialization is necessary. People wouldn't educate themselves enough nor be willing to spend even an hour a day running the government en masse.

The video calling America's government the best system ever devised could use more proof. I'd recommend reading How Democratic is the American Constitution by Robert Dahl.

Can any of you so called conservatives tell me who John Birch was without looking it up?

Famous people shouldn't matter. Why waste time remembering their names instead of just their ideas?

 

[Ravi]

LiveLeak.com - America is not a Democracy.

What type of Government do we have in America - A Democracy or a Republic? What different types of Government are there? Hopefully this clip will answer those questions for some people.

This is an excert of "An Overview of America" which you can view here: LiveLeak.com - Overview of America

In the mid 1960's, when our concerns were raised to high levels because we feared the loss of freedom from the welfare state (Great Society) of Lyndon Johnson, the John Birch Society brought some common sense to the public. There were Saturday morning radio broadcasts just like this video. They were the equivalent of the Saturday morning presidential message of today. This was part of the inception of the greater conservative movement in this country; probably a bigger force than were Ayn Rand, and Bill Buckley, and played a huge part in the nomination of Barry Goldwater in 1964. That led to eventual election of Reagan in 1980. The left tried to condemn the JBS out of existence.

I'm glad to see they're back, and getting our back!

Actually it was the right that finally gave the JBS the boot. Didn't they label Ike a Commie? I wouldn't doubt Ronnie was a Bircher and what a lot of damage that man did to our country.

 

[midcan5]

America is not a muffin it is a cake, no hold, America is not a vegetable it is a meat, no hold... on its surface that is excellent propaganda, I'm sure the naive bow their heads in not so subtle gratitude and thanks for these bits of simplistic truth. It makes the heart warm and the head foggy. But it is the between the lines and the necessity that government and collectivism are the foes that the piece begins to shed light on the real purpose of this manure. They missed defining themselves as seeing yourself is often a difficult task.

PublicEye.org - John Birch Society

Political spectrum - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[American Horse]

America is not a muffin it is a cake, no hold, America is not a vegetable it is a meat, no hold... on its surface that is excellent propaganda, I'm sure the naive bow their heads in not so subtle gratitude and thanks for these bits of simplistic truth. It makes the heart warm and the head foggy. But it is the between the lines and the necessity that government and collectivism are the foes that the piece begins to shed light on the real purpose of this manure. They missed defining themselves as seeing yourself is often a difficult task.

All that being said, and yes the JBS did go over the top about collectivism and communism, but they did some things very well which we can take some lessons from today as this quote from your link PublicEye.org - John Birch Society shows:

No matter what the actual membership, the JBS pioneered grassroots lobbying, combining educational meetings, petition drives, and letter writing campaigns. One early campaign against the second Summit Conference between the US and the Soviet Union generated over 600,000 postcards and letters, according to the Society. A June 1964 Birch campaign to oppose Xerox Corporation sponsorship of TV programs favorable to the UN produced 51,279 letters from 12,785 individuals.

Their half hour radio broadcast every Saturday about noon was popular here in Indiana; far, far more than today's weekly Presidential address is, which is broadly ignored by almost everyone. Theirs is a model we can use today since we can't depend on our MSM to do their job.

The theme of the video is valuable if it gets people to thinking more about the basic structure of our governmental system. The first time a governing system worked efficiently (which is debatable) and survived over a long period of time was the Roman Republic. With all its flaws as a republic it was the prototype for our own, with it's structure used as a model in virtually every facet of the organization of our own federal republic.

The video was wrong when it said that the Republic of Rome decayed into a democracy. It had many problems, only a very minor part of which was the descent of the City's (a city state) population into a welfare state with "bread and circuses". However even that aspect still offers some good parallels and caveat’s about relying on government for welfare and political circus.