The Progressives’ Phony Democracy

American_Jihad

Flaming Libs/Koranimals
May 1, 2012
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One of these days the left will get the revolution they so desperately want...
The Progressives’ Phony Democracy
The fears of the Founders and the prophecies of Tocqueville are on their way to becoming reality.
February 16, 2016
Bruce Thornton

we-the-people-on-fire.png


The sudden death of Justice Antonin Scalia has sharpened the divide between the progressives’ idea of technocratic federal power, and the Constitution’s limited government that Scalia eloquently championed for almost 30 years. This division has a long history that transcends the failed presidency of Barack Obama.

The Democratic Party grew out of opposition to the elitist Federalists, whose president John Adams was known as “His Rotundity” for his girth and alleged aristocratic tendencies. James Madison in 1792 established the contrast between the two parties that persists to this day: the Federalists were “more partial to the opulent,” and believed that “government can be carried on only by the pageantry of rank, [and] the influence of money and emoluments.” Those who would become Democrats, Madison wrote, believed “in the doctrine that mankind are capable of governing themselves,” and he charged that power lodged “into the hands of the few” is “an insult to the reason and an outrage to the rights of man.” In short, the Democrats were about power to the people rather than to privileged elites.

Two centuries later, the Democratic Party still uses the rhetoric of democracy, and castigates the Republicans as the tools of greedy corporations and crypto-fascist plutocrats––“Wall Street” and the “Koch brothers” being the shorthand for this nefarious cabal. Yet in their policies and practices, the Democrats are now the true elitists who have narrowed government “into the hands of the few,” even within their own party. Consider the recent two presidential primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire. In the popular vote Bernie Sanders tied Hillary in Iowa and wiped her out in New Hampshire. Yet Hillary ended up with more delegates––394 to Sanders’ 44. Why? Because there are 712 “superdelegates,” Congressmen, governors, some mayors, and certain party apparatchiks. Each superdelegate is worth about 10,000 of one citizen’s vote. So much for believing “mankind are capable of governing themselves.”

Much more dangerous for the country has been the consolidation and concentration of power in the federal government, and its metastasizing regulatory agencies and expansive presidential reach, a goal of progressive ideology starting with Theodore Roosevelt. Of course, early progressives continued to use democratic rhetoric to mask this undemocratic inflation of the chief executive’s constitutional authority, and their tyrannical assaults on the people’s autonomy and freedom. Roosevelt spoke of the “triumph of a real democracy,” and Woodrow Wilson touted the “sovereignty of self-governing peoples.” Opposed to this “people” were the “sinister special interests” that “beat back the forces that strive for social and industrial justice,” as Roosevelt put it, and the “invisible empire” of “bosses and their employers, the special interests,” in Wilson’s words. Sound familiar?

But the “people” of the progressives is not the “people” of the Constitution. The progressives’ “people” were not individuals and factions with their clashing interests and beliefs. Those different interests reflected the diverse regional, sectional, and religious identities and folkways comprising the flesh-and-blood peoples of the original states. Rather, the progressives homogenized that variety into an abstract collective “people,” now unified by interests, ideology, and aims as defined by the new techno-political elite.

...

The Progressives’ Phony Democracy
 
Why not have the whole package, and see whether the comparison is apt, and for whom:

"One of the divisions consists of those who, from particular interest, from natural temper, or from the habits of life, are more partial to the opulent than to the other classes of society; and having debauched themselves into a persuasion that mankind are incapable of governing themselves, it follows with them, of course, that government can be carried on only by the pageantry of rank, the influence of money and emoluments, and the terror of military force. Men of those sentiments must naturally wish to point the measures of government less to the interest of the many than of a few, and less to the reason of the many than to their weaknesses; hoping perhaps in proportion to the ardor of their zeal, that by giving such a turn to the administration, the government itself may by degrees be narrowed into fewer hands and approximated to a hereditary form... The antirepublican party, as it may be called, being the weaker in point of numbers, will be induced by the most obvious motives to strengthen themselves with the men of influence, particularly of moneyed, which is the most active and insinuating influence. It will be equally their true policy to weaken their opponents by reviving exploded parties and taking advantage of all prejudices, local, political, and occupational, that may prevent or disturb a general coalition of sentiments."
-- James Madison; from 'A Candid State of Parties' (Sept 22, 1792)
 
Perfect right wing beliefs. Totally wrong.
You and some of yo ilk are like broken records, you might expand more answers to use, same old liberal B/S...


No need to expand anything. Your OP is teabagger bullshit. Nothing more.
So your a left/wing clown, what else is new...

Call me names if you want to. Your OP is still bullshit.
That's why you keep bumping it to the top, you lefties are good for something, I might start calling you jeeves...
 
Perfect right wing beliefs. Totally wrong.

If it's "totally wrong", Bulldog...point out why it's totally wrong. Or is EVERYTHING that those on the right believe in totally wrong simply because they believe in it? With all due respect...that seems to be your position.
 
Perfect right wing beliefs. Totally wrong.

If it's "totally wrong", Bulldog...point out why it's totally wrong. Or is EVERYTHING that those on the right believe in totally wrong simply because they believe in it? With all due respect...that seems to be your position.

You're too far gone to have a rational discussion. I've seen you discard proven facts too many times, so I won't bother trying to educate you where so many others have failed. You are wrong though.
 
Perfect right wing beliefs. Totally wrong.

If it's "totally wrong", Bulldog...point out why it's totally wrong. Or is EVERYTHING that those on the right believe in totally wrong simply because they believe in it? With all due respect...that seems to be your position.

You're too far gone to have a rational discussion. I've seen you discard proven facts too many times, so I won't bother trying to educate you where so many others have failed. You are wrong though.

I'm "wrong"...but you can't say why? Typical...

You don't even know what a typical person on the right believes, Bulldog! You've got your partisan blinders on and by God you're not taking them off come hell or high water!
 
Perfect right wing beliefs. Totally wrong.

If it's "totally wrong", Bulldog...point out why it's totally wrong. Or is EVERYTHING that those on the right believe in totally wrong simply because they believe in it? With all due respect...that seems to be your position.

You're too far gone to have a rational discussion. I've seen you discard proven facts too many times, so I won't bother trying to educate you where so many others have failed. You are wrong though.

I'm "wrong"...but you can't say why? Typical...

You don't even know what a typical person on the right believes, Bulldog! You've got your partisan blinders on and by God you're not taking them off come hell or high water!


I know what the typical person on the right here believes. You spout your crap here every day.
 
Perfect right wing beliefs. Totally wrong.

If it's "totally wrong", Bulldog...point out why it's totally wrong. Or is EVERYTHING that those on the right believe in totally wrong simply because they believe in it? With all due respect...that seems to be your position.

You're too far gone to have a rational discussion. I've seen you discard proven facts too many times, so I won't bother trying to educate you where so many others have failed. You are wrong though.

I'm "wrong"...but you can't say why? Typical...

You don't even know what a typical person on the right believes, Bulldog! You've got your partisan blinders on and by God you're not taking them off come hell or high water!


I know what the typical person on the right here believes. You spout your crap here every day.

Fine...you know me so well...what's my position on gay marriage?
 
Perfect right wing beliefs. Totally wrong.

If it's "totally wrong", Bulldog...point out why it's totally wrong. Or is EVERYTHING that those on the right believe in totally wrong simply because they believe in it? With all due respect...that seems to be your position.

You're too far gone to have a rational discussion. I've seen you discard proven facts too many times, so I won't bother trying to educate you where so many others have failed. You are wrong though.

I'm "wrong"...but you can't say why? Typical...

You don't even know what a typical person on the right believes, Bulldog! You've got your partisan blinders on and by God you're not taking them off come hell or high water!


I know what the typical person on the right here believes. You spout your crap here every day.

Fine...you know me so well...what's my position on gay marriage?


Not sure, but I would suspect bottom.
 
Don't have a clue...do you? Here's a hint...I'm an agnostic!

How about my stance on gun control laws? Know how I stand there?
 
Don't have a clue...do you? Here's a hint...I'm an agnostic!

How about my stance on gun control laws? Know how I stand there?


If you have non standard right wing beliefs, then good for you. This discussion is about the OP., which is wrong, and I won't bother trying to explain for about the thousandth time why it is wrong.
 
Don't have a clue...do you? Here's a hint...I'm an agnostic!

How about my stance on gun control laws? Know how I stand there?

Oldstyle,

Bulldog is right...

You open a Thread with the title:

The Progressives’ Phony Democracy

You deserve to be ridiculed... It was a copy and paste rant with his only addition is he wanted a revolution.

Bulldog should be commended for stop laughing long enough to write anything...
 

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