Tuesday, March 07, 2006

On Democracy

Democracy, the Emperor and his junta insist, is the cure-all panacea for the world's ills. The basis of this belief remains a mystery, however, given the Emperor's deficient understanding of history and admonitions from the founding fathers to the contrary.

"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

"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

"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

"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

"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

"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

"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


If there never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide, what exactly is the goal for Iraq?

10 Comments:

At 3:40 PM, March 07, 2006 , Blogger Free Agency Rules said...

Those are some of my favorite quotes. I have been shouting about the use of the word "Democracy" ever since I first heard it misused a few decades ago.

It was always "Republic" until W. Wilson started the rush to use the word when he said "Make the world safe for Democracy." We can thank him for the "slight of hand" that happens when we are told that "Democracy" is a good thing.

Ever hear of the "Battle Hymn of the the Democracy?" How about "and to the Democracy for which it stands?"

A Republic has safeguards in a Constituation that restrains the vote of the Majority so that we don't have "mob rule."

Might seldom makes right. The majority are often wrong!


Great Post!


:)

FAR.

 
At 3:42 PM, March 07, 2006 , Blogger Free Agency Rules said...

P.S.

The only way Democracy will work in the Middle East is if they have restraints on the misuse of the "vote" by having safeguards similar to a "Bill of Rights" as we have.

I think that has been explained to the framers of their Constitution, or at least I hope it was.

FAR.

 
At 7:00 PM, March 07, 2006 , Blogger Intellectual Insurgent said...

In other words, democracy will only work if it's a republic. :-)

For democracy to work there, it also requires the U.S. to keep its nose out of everyone's business and that is a tall order.

 
At 6:28 AM, March 08, 2006 , Blogger RR said...

We're already lost in Iraq.... Instead of a bill of rights they "recognize Islam as a major source of law" -- I beleive that's what the Iraqi constitution says in the first line...

So much for religious liberty... They may mouth the words we want to hear, but the country will devolve into chaos no matter what we do. There are simply too many competing and incompatible points of view ...

 
At 8:24 AM, March 08, 2006 , Blogger Intellectual Insurgent said...

It was fine before the US got there.

 
At 2:38 PM, March 08, 2006 , Anonymous Anonymous said...

Fighting fire with fire again, huh?
Did I mention I love your blog?

 
At 8:20 PM, March 08, 2006 , Blogger Michael said...

Ha, interesting; this is the subject of that book I was reading a few weeks ago. In the early days of the republic, there was a party called the Federalists, firmly opposed to the idea of letting the grubby common people - like us - have a say in the affairs of the nation. The Democratic Party - the Democracy, as it was acalled at the time - formed in response to that, and created the democracy we live in today.

The various rightist parties, Federalists, Whigs, Know-Nothings, republicans, as FAR again demonstrates, have always had a problem with the will of the people.

:-), StS

 
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