Democracy, the big lie

[anotherlife]

Very interesting problem. The only place where democracy is not sanctified is the US citizenship exam, where the democracy answer is wrong to the question of what is the USA. By the way, the correct answer is republic. The citizenship exam preparation book even tells a story of Benjamin Franklin, walking out at the end of one of the constitutional sessions, and he tells the reporters that the type of government he is working on to create is a republic if you can keep it.

It is no accident that in Europe, the most important and fastest job of ww1-2 was to take down all countries that were not democratic, most notably the Zar's Russia and Austria-Hungary.

 

[Tehon]

We are free by nature. We form government to protect our freedom by those who would suppress it, but in doing so give up some of our freedom. Our freedom remains constantly under attack. Not by government directly but by those who would subvert government for their own purpose. Their purpose being their self interest. The politicians likewise are acting in their self interest.

It is absolutely correct to want to suppress someones ability to subvert the government for their own purposes. Giving more people the ability to do so only compounds the problem. I think this is what we are seeing today. There are so many competing interests that it is difficult in America to make sense of it all. We can't agree on anything.

My inclination is not to restrict people. It is to free them from the system of competition that sets them against one another. The reason our government has been subverted is that people who have "won" are acting in their self interest to try and stay on top. Well what if there is no top, only cooperation in achieving goals for all. Then we are all free and government can naturally dissolve.

Protection (security) is self-interest ...
Government is only a tool of control ... And control is a measure of power.

Like the old saying ... "Power Corrupts" ... Is a crock of shit.
It isn't power that corrupts the person ... Power only allows a person's corruption to influence more people.
It is a person's absence of virtue that corrupts them ... And government, society or community facilitates a person's absence of virtue to corrupt the outcome for others.

.

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
James Madison, The Federalist Papers, 1788

It sure beats Marx quotes such as, "Me take money from rich man. Me happy"

Marx understood, just as Madison did, that the state must moderate the internal contradictions found within society.

Madison had to create a government that vested power in the land owning class while at the same time protecting the general population from the land owners in whom he vested the powers.

Let me help you with your illiteracy. Marx and Engels clearly understood the dynamics at play.


The ancient state was, above all, the state of the slave-owners for holding down the slaves, just as the feudal state was the organ of the nobility for holding down the peasant serfs and bondsmen, and the modern representative state is the instrument for exploiting wage-labour by capital.

political recognition of property differences is, however, by no means essential. On the contrary, it marks a low stage in the development of the state. The highest form of the state, the democratic republic, which in our modern social conditions becomes more and more an unavoidable necessity and is the form of state in which alone the last decisive battle between proletariat and bourgeoisie can be fought out – the democratic republic no longer officially recognises differences of property. Wealth here employs its power indirectly, but all the more surely. It does this in two ways: by plain corruption of officials, of which America is the classic example, and by an alliance between the government and the stock exchange, which is effected all the more easily the higher the state debt mounts and the more the joint-stock companies concentrate in their hands not only transport but also production itself, and themselves have their own center in the stock exchange. ... And lastly the possessing class rules directly by means of universal suffrage. As long as the oppressed class – in our case, therefore, the proletariat – is not yet ripe for its self-liberation, so long will it, in its majority, recognise the existing order of society as the only possible one and remain politically the tail of the capitalist class, its extreme left wing.
Origins of the Family- Chapter IX

 

[BlackSand]

Sorry ... I would rather own one chicken than raise a thousand for the state ...
And don't need anything from the government nor my neighbors to do it.

.

 

[Tehon]

Sorry ... I would rather own one chicken than raise a thousand for the state ...
And don't need anything from the government nor my neighbors to do it.

.

No one is asking you to raise chickens for the state.

Marxists believe that what you produce by your labor belongs to you.

You should try to be a little less willfully ignorant.

 

[BlackSand]

No one is asking you to raise chickens for the state.

Marxists believe that what you produce by your labor belongs to you.

You should try to be a little less willfully ignorant.

I didn't say that anyone was asking me to raise chickens for the state ... Wouldn't give a damn if they did.
I said I would rather own one chicken than raise a thousand for the state.

My chicken ... My property ... None of the state's business.
I don't need Marx's or the state's approval nor agreement ... And don't give a fuck what Marx thought about it ...

You are willfully ignorant if you think something needs to change for me to own my chicken.

.

 

[Tehon]

No one is asking you to raise chickens for the state.

Marxists believe that what you produce by your labor belongs to you.

You should try to be a little less willfully ignorant.

I didn't say that anyone was asking me to raise chickens for the state ... Wouldn't give a damn if they did.
I said I would rather own one chicken than raise a thousand for the state.

My chicken ... My property ... None of the state's business.
I don't need Marx's or the state's approval nor agreement ... And don't give a fuck what Marx thought about it ...

You are willfully ignorant if you think something needs to change for me to own my chicken.

.

The state is going to regulate your chicken.

 

[BlackSand]

The state is going to regulate your chicken.

Of course they are ... That is about all the state is good for.
All the state can do is mess with me and my chicken.

The state also tells me what I have to pay someone to feed my chicken ...
And, if Marx was in charge ... The state would try to convince me the chicken belonged to who I was paying to feed it.

.

 

[Tehon]

The state is going to regulate your chicken.

Of course they are ... That is about all the state is good for.
All the state can do is mess with me and my chicken.

The state also tells me what I have to pay someone to feed my chicken ...
And, if Marx was in charge ... The state would try to convince me the chicken belonged to who I was paying to feed it.

.

What happened to "I can feed my own chicken without any help"?

I guess you're not as self sufficient as you would have us believe.

 

[BlackSand]

What happened to "I can feed my own chicken without any help"?

I guess you're not as self sufficient as you would have us believe.

I didn't say that ... I said I can decide to do whatever I want with my chicken with no help from the government.
If I decide I want to pay someone to feed my chicken ... I can help them and myself.

I would still be paying them to feed my chicken ... Not to own my chicken.
It's still my chicken ... And if the person I wanted to pay to feed my chicken is unhappy with the pay ... I can still feed my chicken or pay someone else to.

Still my chicken ... If anyone else wants to own my chicken ... They are going to have to buy it ...


.

 

[Tehon]

What happened to "I can feed my own chicken without any help"?

I guess you're not as self sufficient as you would have us believe.

I didn't say that ... I said I can decide to do whatever I want with my chicken with no help from the government.
If I decide I want to pay someone to feed my chicken ... I can help them and myself.

I would still be paying them to feed my chicken ... Not to own my chicken.
It's still my chicken ... And if the person I wanted to pay to feed my chicken is unhappy with the pay ... I can still feed my chicken or pay someone else to.

Still my chicken ... If anyone else wants to own my chicken ... They are going to have to buy it ...


.

They could steal it.

 

[BlackSand]

They could steal it.

They could try anyways ... Not the safest way to acquire a chicken in my neck of the woods.
I would hate to kill someone over a chicken.

If they were just hungry ... They would have better luck and results if they just asked.
I could find something for them to do while the chicken and dumplings were cooking.

.

 

[Tehon]

They could steal it.

They could try anyways ... Not the safest way to acquire a chicken in my neck of the woods.
I would hate to kill someone over a chicken.

If they were just hungry ... They would have better luck and results if they just asked.
I could find something for them to do while the chicken and dumplings were cooking.

.

Your worldview is that which gave rise to the state.

 

[BlackSand]

Your worldview is that which gave rise to the state.

My worldview has little to do with any passion for the state.

In my extensive experience around the world (which probably exceeds any you may have had) ...
It has been individuals that support or administer the state(s) that offer the bulk of corruption and malfeasance.

One stands better protecting themselves from the state(s) than common criminality.
It is the state(s) that attempt(s) to make what is nefarious and less than virtuous ... Not only legal but accepted.

.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

We hear people every day praise the virtue of democracy. We hear it from our leaders, we hear it from the press, we even hear it from our educators. One would almost assume that democracy is akin to some life saving righteous force that will eventually purge any government of corruption and injustice. It's almost as if democracy were some sort of god like power, in which rests all of our hopes and dreams.

However, what most people may not know, or refuse to consider, is that the history of democracy is far from desirable. The people of Athens are often credited with being the first recorded democracy. However, do we ever consider the historical success of that ancient democracy?

Looking closer into Athenian life, only the citizens of Athens who were male could vote. This excluded the vast majority of Athenians, which included children, women, and slaves. In fact, there were far more slaves than citizens. In a rather odd way though, slavery was the key to any success democracy might have had in Athens. For you see, the men of Athens who were allowed to participate in democracy spent their days debating and studying topics, so that they were well informed and educated about the issues. This was only made possible because they had slaves to attend to the time consuming chores of every day life. We all know that an uniformed vote is a wasted vote. The irony here is that even the well informed men of Athens paved a path to hell as they devolved into a self righteous and arrogant society that squandered their riches and freedom on wars abroad with such powers as Sparta in order to spread their virtuous form of government. The gospel of democracy led them to ruin. Sound familiar?

So as we see, democracy does not automatically lead to virtue. In fact, the Founding Fathers seemed to think that democracy before virtue was placing the cart before the horse. Many of the Founders, such as Ben Franklin, seemed to think that only a virtuous people could succeed in a free and democratic society. Ben Franklin famously mentioned that he thought that the Constitution would succeed for a number of years until the morality of society waned to the point it be rendered useless and cast aside for a tyranny of some kind. HIs view was that society would eventually become so corrupt, that a tyranny would be needed to restrain it.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the Founding Fathers set up a Republic instead of a democracy. As John Adams once said, "Democracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man’s life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few" Why then does everyone continue to refer to the US as a democracy with the added implication that this has lead to the greatness of the nation? This is a total fabrication.

Does this description of John Adams not sound like society within the US today? Looking at our leaders who seem to routinely break the law with impunity, the US has become a nation of men and not laws. The nation no longer seeks after wisdom and virtue, but after power, wealth, beauty, and knowledge and science. It's almost as if knowledge is equal to wisdom and virtue, if not even better than the two combined. However, a mind full of knowledge that embraces evil is the worst nightmare society could hope for. Knowledge is merely a tool, or weapon depending on the morality of the individual in which it resides.

So the next time you hear democracy being used to describe the United States, or being used to describe the ideal form of government, ask yourself why. What are they trying to sell because the gospel of democracy is a lie.

As Purposely Destructive As Letting Ten-Year-Olds Vote

You're blaming democracy for the distant, ignorant, and self-serving oligarchy set up by your anti-democratic Sacred Cow, the U.S Constitution. Only pathetic losers want to worship some system that makes them feel superior to the majority, not realizing that the minority in power considers them, too, as being part of the inferior majority.

And majority in a legitimate democracy must be understood to mean the majority of those allowed to vote by the majority. The enemies of democracy want it to mean the best governed by the worst, which proves that, despite what their position is in public, the self-appointed ruling class gave the vote to those who they knew would give "democracy" a bad name by leeching off the previous and deserving majority. But the Civil Rights for the Uncivilized Laws were forced on us by the 1% against the will of the majority, so the present state represents an intentional perversion of democracy.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

The US is not a democracy, it's a republic, and a republic is only as good as the voters are smart and the politicians are honest.

A Republic Is a Foster Government

Establishing a political oligarchy, which bickers only about which pet ideology will suck the most power away from the majority, was the assignment of the lawyers for the 18th Century 1% who wrote the elitist Constitution behind closed doors. By the way, quit lying about the Bill of Rights. You know the Founding Fodder didn't include that in their clients' Constitution; that's why it is a list of Amendments.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

Our fathers were only acquainted with selfishness? Is this why George Washington refused to be made king? Is this why George Washington reluctantly became the first President and demanded to step down after two terms, something that all others after him followed until the blight of the power hungry FDR? Thankfully Congress limited the terms after FDR because of FDR and his abuses.

You can appreciate that de Tocqueville was born in the year 1805, right? His father was a noble peer in a monarchical, hierarchical system.

Equally puzzling is the notion that we are somehow different. Do people such as yourself have selfishness? Did Karl Marx have selfishness? Of course they did and of course you do You might even say that people like yourself and Karl Marx are the most selfish of all. You are eternally fixated on how much other people have and desire it, a sin called coveting that the Bible warns us about. Yes, people like you.

I do not fixate on what other people have. I fixate on creating an egalitarian society. My understanding of Marx is that he desired much the same.

How can you have an egalitarian society without fixating on what other have? The game is, you take a tally of wealth and riches and decide to divvy it up the way you see fit.

For example, those in the US who are poor are rich in comparison to those in Haiti. However, in the US egalitarians seek to give more redistribution to the poor in the US as where if the poor in the US were in Haiti, they would be seeking to take from them to give to the poor in Haiti.

So the egalitarian concept is only dependent on what other people have.

I am not interested in redistributing wealth. I am interested in transforming the mode of production and developing a cooperative society.

despite your refusal to recognize It

Capitalism Is founded on cooperation

Business Is a Team, Not a One-Man Show

Capitalism is collectivist. The employees create the wealth, and the owners collect it. So it is no different from Communism, where the one-party dictatorship that owns all businesses collects the wealth produced by those not in the loop. That's more proof that Communism was created by the impatient spoiled brats of the Capitalists. "Heiristocracy" is the enemy of democracy and must have its privileges abolished.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

So how do you explain that we have an individualistic society full of ignorant people who are shackled to the selfish desires of the ruling class?

Easy enough ... Virtue doesn't come from government ... Nor can government provide virtue.
The ignorant will be led and shackled to the desires of whomever promises them security and protection from their individual failures.

.

Nor does virtue come from democracy.

Cowardice Is the Crime That Enables All Others

Submission to the plutocrats you want us to worship is not a virtue.

 

[Votto]

We hear people every day praise the virtue of democracy. We hear it from our leaders, we hear it from the press, we even hear it from our educators. One would almost assume that democracy is akin to some life saving righteous force that will eventually purge any government of corruption and injustice. It's almost as if democracy were some sort of god like power, in which rests all of our hopes and dreams.

However, what most people may not know, or refuse to consider, is that the history of democracy is far from desirable. The people of Athens are often credited with being the first recorded democracy. However, do we ever consider the historical success of that ancient democracy?

Looking closer into Athenian life, only the citizens of Athens who were male could vote. This excluded the vast majority of Athenians, which included children, women, and slaves. In fact, there were far more slaves than citizens. In a rather odd way though, slavery was the key to any success democracy might have had in Athens. For you see, the men of Athens who were allowed to participate in democracy spent their days debating and studying topics, so that they were well informed and educated about the issues. This was only made possible because they had slaves to attend to the time consuming chores of every day life. We all know that an uniformed vote is a wasted vote. The irony here is that even the well informed men of Athens paved a path to hell as they devolved into a self righteous and arrogant society that squandered their riches and freedom on wars abroad with such powers as Sparta in order to spread their virtuous form of government. The gospel of democracy led them to ruin. Sound familiar?

So as we see, democracy does not automatically lead to virtue. In fact, the Founding Fathers seemed to think that democracy before virtue was placing the cart before the horse. Many of the Founders, such as Ben Franklin, seemed to think that only a virtuous people could succeed in a free and democratic society. Ben Franklin famously mentioned that he thought that the Constitution would succeed for a number of years until the morality of society waned to the point it be rendered useless and cast aside for a tyranny of some kind. HIs view was that society would eventually become so corrupt, that a tyranny would be needed to restrain it.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the Founding Fathers set up a Republic instead of a democracy. As John Adams once said, "Democracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man’s life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few" Why then does everyone continue to refer to the US as a democracy with the added implication that this has lead to the greatness of the nation? This is a total fabrication.

Does this description of John Adams not sound like society within the US today? Looking at our leaders who seem to routinely break the law with impunity, the US has become a nation of men and not laws. The nation no longer seeks after wisdom and virtue, but after power, wealth, beauty, and knowledge and science. It's almost as if knowledge is equal to wisdom and virtue, if not even better than the two combined. However, a mind full of knowledge that embraces evil is the worst nightmare society could hope for. Knowledge is merely a tool, or weapon depending on the morality of the individual in which it resides.

So the next time you hear democracy being used to describe the United States, or being used to describe the ideal form of government, ask yourself why. What are they trying to sell because the gospel of democracy is a lie.

As Purposely Destructive As Letting Ten-Year-Olds Vote

You're blaming democracy for the distant, ignorant, and self-serving oligarchy set up by your anti-democratic Sacred Cow, the U.S Constitution. Only pathetic losers want to worship some system that makes them feel superior to the majority, not realizing that the minority in power considers them, too, as being part of the inferior majority.

And majority in a legitimate democracy must be understood to mean the majority of those allowed to vote by the majority. The enemies of democracy want it to mean the best governed by the worst, which proves that, despite what their position is in public, the self-appointed ruling class gave the vote to those who they knew would give "democracy" a bad name by leeching off the previous and deserving majority. But the Civil Rights for the Uncivilized Laws were forced on us by the 1% against the will of the majority, so the present state represents an intentional perversion of democracy.

Your disdain for the Constitution and Bill of Rights is duly noted.

What about them rubs you the wrong way?

 

[Votto]

The US is not a democracy, it's a republic, and a republic is only as good as the voters are smart and the politicians are honest.

A Republic Is a Foster Government

Establishing a political oligarchy, which bickers only about which pet ideology will suck the most power away from the majority, was the assignment of the lawyers for the 18th Century 1% who wrote the elitist Constitution behind closed doors. By the way, quit lying about the Bill of Rights. You know the Founding Fodder didn't include that in their clients' Constitution; that's why it is a list of Amendments.

Did you prefer the Articles of Confederation?

The Bill of Rights were written to protect the citizens from government. What other government has come up with something as similar?

 

[Votto]

Our fathers were only acquainted with selfishness? Is this why George Washington refused to be made king? Is this why George Washington reluctantly became the first President and demanded to step down after two terms, something that all others after him followed until the blight of the power hungry FDR? Thankfully Congress limited the terms after FDR because of FDR and his abuses.

You can appreciate that de Tocqueville was born in the year 1805, right? His father was a noble peer in a monarchical, hierarchical system.

Equally puzzling is the notion that we are somehow different. Do people such as yourself have selfishness? Did Karl Marx have selfishness? Of course they did and of course you do You might even say that people like yourself and Karl Marx are the most selfish of all. You are eternally fixated on how much other people have and desire it, a sin called coveting that the Bible warns us about. Yes, people like you.

I do not fixate on what other people have. I fixate on creating an egalitarian society. My understanding of Marx is that he desired much the same.

How can you have an egalitarian society without fixating on what other have? The game is, you take a tally of wealth and riches and decide to divvy it up the way you see fit.

For example, those in the US who are poor are rich in comparison to those in Haiti. However, in the US egalitarians seek to give more redistribution to the poor in the US as where if the poor in the US were in Haiti, they would be seeking to take from them to give to the poor in Haiti.

So the egalitarian concept is only dependent on what other people have.

I am not interested in redistributing wealth. I am interested in transforming the mode of production and developing a cooperative society.

despite your refusal to recognize It

Capitalism Is founded on cooperation

Business Is a Team, Not a One-Man Show

Capitalism is collectivist. The employees create the wealth, and the owners collect it. So it is no different from Communism, where the one-party dictatorship that owns all businesses collects the wealth produced by those not in the loop. That's more proof that Communism was created by the impatient spoiled brats of the Capitalists. "Heiristocracy" is the enemy of democracy and must have its privileges abolished.

A business is collectivist. A church is collectivist. A family is collectivist.

The issue here is using collectivism in the form of a centralized government that rules over everyone.

The Founding Fathers attempted to create a Republic with checks and balances to try and prevent a centralized dictatorship. Washington himself declined to be made king in an effort to decentralize power.

What problem do you have with that?