Who promised democracy?

Stealing elections is not new to Democrats. “Vote early —— and often.” is a standard joke usually attributed to one of three Chicagoans, Bill Thompson, mayor 1915 - 1923 and again 1931 - 1935. Al Capone also gets credit in some quarters, as does Richard Daly, mayor 1955 - 1976. Daly is undeserving because I heard the line when I was a kid in the 1940s.

The Great McGinty (1940) was the best movie ever made about crooked politics. It showed how the game was played in an earlier era.

The main characters in the movie were crooks to be sure, but they were tough guys not wrong guys; at least that was the image most Americans had of party bosses and their inner circles. Crap movies about presidential campaigns, and presidents, that were produced since the end of WWII never surpassed the plot or the political dialogue in these two great scenes:

NOTE: Brian Donlevy (1901 - 1972) was an interesting guy off screen; especially in his youth:

Today’s Democrat crooks are not tough guys, but they are wrong guys and gals from top to bottom. Which brings me to voter fraud.

I’m not going to go over ACORN and the rest of the voter frauds again except to say no one seems to be able to stop political causes from being funded by tax dollars.

A superb, and detailed, piece by Chelsea Schilling examines the attacks on voter identification laws. Should Hussein make a showing of any kind it will be because of voter fraud, and you bet that a few Democrats will win congressional seats because of larceny à la “Senator” Al Franken.

To my surprise, even the media has covered the challenges to voter identification laws. It is this excerpt touching on the real problem in American politics today that I want to address; a problem that was deliberately manufactured to destroy this country more surely than “Vote early —— vote often.” if it is not addressed:

I’ve posted countless message about the evils of democracy. This time I can best express all of my objections to the Advanced Project by putting them into rhetorical questions:

1. Who promised democracy?

2. Who wants to replace limited government with democracy other than envious losers looking for political power?

3. Will Caucasian Americans receive more “racial justice” in a democracy than they are getting from Eric Holder’s Justice Department today?

4. Are White Panthers intimidating black voters at polling stations?

5. Has any qualified voter of any race been denied their Right to vote?

Don’t respond to me. Answer those questions in your own mind, and to your own satisfaction.

Here’s the link to Schilling’s piece if you want to delve deeper into the topic of voter identification laws:

 

You are forgetting that only one people really fought and won democracy: The French. The American revolution could count too, if more of those 50 states were involved and if most "Americans" would have to come to the US prior 1770. So if you look at it, the only people who really fought repeatedly for democracy are really only the French. And they won! That's the most important part of it.

That's why people in France react to this day differently. If their government does something they don't want, they organize and protest. And the government is afraid of their people's reaction. In most other countries it's the other way around. The people are afraid of their government. Not in France! Their president knows that they would literarily hang him in the middle of Paris if he doesn't do a good job.

Every one else in the world was "given" democracy. You can look at any country in the world and I'm really open to whatever you may find. To my knowledge it's only one. You can usually tell if they just changed the titles in government. Here in Austria the title "emperor" got replaced with "president"; in the USA the title "president" was also a last minute decision. They originally thought of going with "king".

So let us recap: Why does democracy not work properly? Primarily because most people don't know what rights they have (probably until they loose them). Their own tradition and history is not to oppose their own government but rather to live somehow within it.

 

Heck, that era is, hopefully, just now coming to an end in Cleveland. Had to throw part of county govt in jail to get there.

 

To mihapiha: Democracy is always going somewhere worse —— never towards individual liberties. Socialist/Communist France proves it.

I’m sure you can find thinkers who praised democracy. History shows that these are universal truths:

And more recently:

 

I think you ought to read up on what communist means. Socialism isn't bad, or are you really the first one who's against social security, Medicate and Medicare, public schools, fire department, federal postal service, public libraries, etc.

 

To mihapiha: Oh really. Did you ever look it up in a dictionary:

socialism (noun)

1. a. A social system in which the means of producing and distributing goods are owned collectively and political power is exercised by the whole community. b. The theory or practice of those who support such a social system.

2. The building of the material base for communism under the dictatorship of the proletariat in Marxist-Leninist theory.

You are just what I need. Another clever little liberal separating communism from socialism. Harboring Socialist beliefs while rejecting communism is the epitome of naiveté.

Socialists are adept at calling themselves something else; names like liberal and progressive. The word communism adds confusion to the problem of identification. The more tax dollars Socialists/Communists acquired the more imperative it became for them to separate themselves from the Communist label for public relations purposes. That is why I often refer to them as Socialists/Communists. Socialism and communism are different sects of the same religion. Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924) put it this way:

Even Lenin’s “Useful idiots” has come to mean something different since the Soviets first coined the phrase to describe free people who thought of themselves as allies of the Soviet Union but not Communists. Useful idiots truly believed they were compassionate Socialists while they fooled themselves into thinking they were not Communists. Soviet Communists knew better when they sneered at them and called them “Other Communists.”

For your edification the only difference between socialism and communism is how they get to totalitarian government. Socialists openly admit they do it incrementally. Communists want to get there with violent revolution. Research the Fabian Society and Communists in the late 19th century before making any more uninformed comments.

In one sense American Socialists put themselves in a bind when they tried to distance themselves from communism. Identifying communism as the corrupt religion it is probably would not resonate with most Americans because they already hate communism. No one hates a child molester all the more because he is also a shoplifter! Not so with socialism. It should not be that difficult to make socialism the parent religion then tie in the various Communist tenets: Socialized medicine, the welfare state, abortion, population control, entitlements, equal distribution of the wealth, a world without borders and so on.

NOTE: Senator McCarthy never accused anyone of being a Socialist. That was a big mistake. Had the Senator tied Socialists and Communists together 60 years ago the phoney differences would be impossible to maintain today. Here’s the joke I like best of all. Communists even distance themselves from communism for public relations purposes. China’s Communists are now laissez faire capitalists to hear liberals tell it. Indeed, every Communist regime claims it promotes free enterprise under the gentle guiding hand of government control.

Sadly, every approach to dismantling the Socialist/Communist welfare state in America attacks a symptom without recognizing the disease. Example: Rejecting socialized medicine alone appears to be a political objection rather than an issue of religion although socialized medicine is a moral concept more suited to the pulpit and voluntary participation than it is to legislation and coerced compliance. Without tax dollars going to special interest groups to advance one or another Communist tenet like socialized medicine the Socialist priesthood would be preaching to an empty house.

Incremental steps

Were it not for the Internet, progressives would have been content to implement socialism incrementally as they were doing throughout the 20th century. The growing political influence of the Internet speeded up the government’s need to assert totalitarian control before the American people fully learned what their government was doing to them. Not only learned but figured out a way to organize and stop it.

Bottom line: Elected Democrats do not care what the public thinks. The way they shoved socialized medicine down the country’s throat demonstrates utter contempt for the overwhelming majority of Americans. Democrats do fear organized resistence; hence, the need to subjugate Americans as soon as possible.

Social liberals & fiscal conservatives

In contemporary America holding Socialist beliefs while denying communism has morphed into: “I am a social liberal and a fiscal conservative.” Useful idiot is still applicable because those two political postures in the real world are incompatible. Only hustling politicians looking for votes from both sides of the political spectrum can be excused for making such a claim. Hopefully, not a one of them is dumb enough to believe it.

Individuals who swear they are not Communists because they cherish a few Socialist ideals are nothing more than frustrated moralists who somehow believe the transition will not affect them. I define them as fools who cling to the fantasy that says a benign totalitarian government is possible.

To mihapiha: You are the umpteenth liberal I’ve come across who mixes legitimate areas of government with the welfare state. For your information the Postel Service is the only thing on your list that is authorized by the Constitution.

I singled out public education because teachers were the first, and remain the most parasitic, government funded group. How many Americans see teachers in that light? Mention limiting government-paid teachers to teaching the three R’s and you’ll be run out of town on a rail. It’s all but impossible to fire a teacher who is a known pervert; so how far can the public get in an attempt to drive teachers’ unions away from the public trough? And let’s not overlook federal tax dollars subsidizing higher education.

 

You don't need to write bold to make a point. We're not in school anymore.

I'm not a liberal; I'm actually a conservative. I grew up in a communistic country and a social-capitalist one. (I grew up in three countries) By profession I'm a historian. So I'm quite aware in the matter, and I can promise you that things changed since Lenin's little goal. Also I can guarantee that any European country is far far away from what used to be communism only 25 years ago, because I can recall how it was. So things have changed. It's not as black and white as you may look at things. It really depends what you do with it.

For example: Democracy; if there are 9 people on a ship and one of them can't swim. 5 people now could have the democratic majority to drown that person and it would be democratically correct. This doesn't mean it's morally wrong. That doesn't mean that every democratic decision is unfair or morally incorrect though.

If you think that all social benefits we're distributing right now among the people is unjust, you could start with something as simple as burning your Medicate/Medicare cards. In the 60s people burned the draft-papers to protest going to war in Vietnam. I thing this would be a message nobody seems to think of. Maybe refuse social security as a county?

But the peak of a "no-social"-system were the middle ages. Even the Romans had a bigger social system in ancient times. Rich people at all times in history had very few problems providing services for themselves and their family. Usually it is the bottom 95% of the country who couldn't possibly pay for everything they needed. Whether it's health care, education or security. The real progress of the middle-ages was the establishment of a bourgeoisie/middle-class who got the right (or privilege to be more precise) to govern itself. Fist it started with small cities and grew later on. But what the bourgeoisie/middle class did, was put the money together and provide certain cervices for everybody. First only security, and then other social programs. The idea was that everybody needed protection and everybody ought to provide protection. First you had to stand on the city-wall as a public service but you also could pay someone else to do it. The money was collected and a full-time guard was payed.

Benjamin Franklin was the one to suggest the fire department being payed for by the community. A fire would effect a whole neighborhood and this ought to be prevented. He was also the one to push libraries being accessible to everyone. Also one of his ideas was to distribute the cost among the income. A poor old widow shouldn't pay the same as a wealthy businessmen.

As time progressed the middle class added more and more social programs and the government grew. With the government growing something happened. The aristocracy lost it's power. Usually you'd had to related to a king or high aristocracy to go into politics, now the middle-class joined the political elite and demanded more rights for their own people. Democracy is the peak of that progress because it gives poor people a vote, they never had before. It removed power from the wallet to the ballet!

Social programs are the fundamentals of any society with a working middle class. The first time you'd get sick or you needed to pay fully for your education in the middle class, you couldn't possibly afford it without the people doing well paying more into a system than you. This is the redistribution people talk about.


Now to Communism: Communism's goal is to have only one party (usually the communist party) control all aspects of the government. This includes companies as well as social programs, which the government offered before a communist power took power. So far Communist parties had their own military within a country prior to taking it over. I know of no example where a country became communistic without a military coup d'état of some sort. First after that they take out political opposition and the rightful political leaders, and then financial and intellectual elite of the society. This is never a long process but a very fast one where quite a few percent of the people get executed or locked away. First institutions to be taken over are usually mass media (TV, radio, newspapers, Internet, etc.) and universities (or other institutions of higher learning). So one of the biggest enemies of Communists are educated people.

You may see now, that the process of becoming a communistic country doesn't work via socialism. Without a military supporting some communistic leader, they cannot take control of any country. Always they need a military because the communist-loyalists are always outnumbered.


But now back to democracy: In my opinion democracy cannot work because the overall population is too uneducated and gets propagandistic information. If you don't get the full and correct informations you cannot make an accurate decision. By picking out of context content FOX-news and MSNBC often mislead their viewers. It's openly known that these are the left-wing media groups and these are right-wing media groups. So no matter what you read or watch, you get propaganda from the mass media, and people obviously cannot make the "right" decision if they've only heard one side of the story; whether it's the left or the right one is unimportant. Also what I find troubling is that communities insist on educating kids with proven false facts in school. They try to push scientific evidence out the school program to preserve their idealist views; obviously ignoring the child's needs to being able to compete education wise world wide.
Just because the majority of the people believes something it doesn't make it correct. I will never understand why civil rights are up for the debate, or why there is a dialog going on between a layman and an expert in the expert's field...

 

To mihapiha: Where did you get the idea you can tell me which format to use? And you’re right. We are not in school and I’m not your pupil; so now that you know what my format is you don’t have read my messages anymore.

To mihapiha: Franklin’s personal views were not incorporated in the Constitution. And since you are a historian and you mention libraries let me give you my views.

I cannot recall ever seeing a criticism of libraries anywhere; certainly not in the print press or on television. That’s why I thoroughly enjoyed a WND piece by Dave Tombers who begins with this:

Federal, state and local governments; i.e., tax dollars, fund libraries. Some private donations are in the mix, but I doubt if any brick & mortar library could survive on private gifts. Aside from the economics involved, libraries glorify the printed word in one of the most self-serving institutions in America while doing nothing for wisdom.

Tax dollars funding libraries is an indirect subsidy to the publishing industry.

Are libraries necessary?

I’d have to answer yes and no. By that I mean fiction, history, biographies, and all non-technical books should be housed in buildings paid for, and maintained, by the publishing industry.

History deserves special mention:

Santayana’s trite truism just doesn’t standup under scrutiny. Thanks to history books, history teachers, television, radio, movies, and public education everybody knows all about past events, yet I suspect they will continue to relive them anyway.

To me, reading history so you can predict the future is an awful lot like reading the Daily Racing Form’s “Past Performances” so you can predict the outcome of a race yet to be run by horses of questionable ancestry.

Knowing all about historical events going back thousands of years hasn’t done much to keep the world from repeating the same old forms of government over and over again. Socialism/communism is basically no different than every other totalitarian government that ever was. That alone should give people food for thought concerning the value of learning where the political world has been. Nobody has to read history to know where governments are going; they never change their destination.

The greatest form of government ever devised given to us by the Founding Fathers is the one exception and it is losing ground. I have a feeling that when America is gone governments will see that limited government is never repeated.

I doubt very much if the Founders looked in history books in order to find out what they should or should not do. The word ‘history’ appears in the Declaration of Independence, but it only refers to a living King Georges’ conduct. The founders applied common sense to the political problem at hand. That beats a knowledge of history every time. And you can be sure that those people who abuse power will not stop doing it just because they know how the fate of a few long dead oppressors turned out.

Aside from knowledge of our individual fields of endeavor in search of a buck most of us know more about wars than we know about any other subject. That tells me killing is being taught as if some humans require lessons in the subject.

It is said that Egyptians living in the time of the pharaohs were overly fascinated with death. If that is true, maybe it’s time for the US to try shutting down the history department in every institution that accepts tax dollars. Since the human race seems to be getting less humane with a mountain of treacherous historical facts in their heads there is nothing to lose by shutting down history departments —— nothing to lose except a few bucks should we ever get on Double Jeopardy and history is one of the categories.

If teaching history is actually shutdown maybe there will come a generation that spends more time looking forward rather than looking back. If the day ever comes when no one, including myself, will have to refer to past events in order to have a shot at more freedom from government everyone except history teachers will be a lot better-off.

When all is said and done exactly why are historians stumbling all over one another picking up the money if they’re not propagandists with licenses to tell stories?

Necessary libraries

Law libraries, medical libraries, scientific, technical books, etc., should be housed in libraries paid for and maintained by tax dollars. Even there, foot traffic should determine how long they stay open. To serve the public as physical structures disappear, tax dollars should be used to setup a website to provide all of the scientific and technical books one finds in brick library.

Naturally, The Library of Congress would be permitted to stock works of fiction because it is more museum than library.

Colleges and universities should not get a tax dollar of any kind until every work of fiction is removed from their libraries. Note that history books, biographies, autobiographies, and so on are more fiction than fact.

Admittedly, a grain of truth can be found in a piece of fiction. The problem is all of the B.S. one has to wade through to find that one grain. The fiction section in every library contains 99.9999999 percent B.S. That’s a lot of manure to handle looking for a grain of truth. You’re better off looking in your own life’s experience.

My suggestion would work out real well should colleges and universities refuse to comply. Nothing would serve the public better than stopping all tax dollars going to institutions of higher learning.

Presidential libraries

Journalists and researchers looking to write a book are the only people who read anything in a presidential library. For all practical purposes, they are libraries where nobody goes to read a book.

Presidential libraries are built with private funds then donated to the federal government so that taxpayers end up paying for staffing and maintenance. Need I say more?

Reading & Writing

The greatest myth surrounding libraries is the one that says libraries are an essential component in literacy. That line of reasoning is so absurd it defies logic. Individuals who read and write well spend very little time in libraries, if any. In the past, professional writers might have used libraries for research purposes, but they certainly have no need for them today.

Ordinary people who do not read and write well sure as hell won’t learn those skills in a library. Public education cannot teach reading and writing; so how the hell is a library where silence is required going to teach those skills?

And sure I’d like to see the library that teaches reading comprehension. It would have to be something out of a science fiction movie judging from the liberals I’ve come across on message boards.

Videos & CDs

Under no circumstance should a library get a tax dollar if it stocks movie CDs. It is my understanding that libraries everywhere provide the worst, most destructive, fiction of all in the form of CDs. Fiction becomes propaganda in every movie. That brings me back to Dave Tombers’ piece:

Revealed: The evil lurking in libraries
Association accused of 'prostituting itself out to issue propaganda'
Published: 5/14/2012
by DAVE TOMBERS

http://www.wnd.com/2012/05/revealed-the-evil-lurking-in-libraries/?cat_orig=education

Not only do tax dollars fund libraries, I’m sure Soros takes a tax deduction for his “large grant.” That means you and I pay for propaganda promoting open borders, global government, and the entire the Socialist agenda.

Let me close by reminding everyone that The Iron Heel by Jack London was the only book by an American author that Stalin allowed in Soviet libraries. I don’t think it was there for entertainment purposes.

As to the rest of your response you are simply rewording the same old crap that was popular at the beginning of the Cold War: Capitalism and communism will meet in the middle and everything will be just fine.

It wasn’t true then and it’s not true now.

 

Fist things first: The "not writing bold"-part was a suggestion No reason to get mad about it.

Well the thing is: The cold war is over. Democracy won. And there is a huge difference between Russia 1920, 1940, 1960, 1980 and now. If yo prefer the Russian example with Communism we can talk about that, but you have to clarify which year your talking about, because there are such vast difference in structure and the acceptance by the people.

Same thing pretty much goes for any country. Democracy in the US and the political agenda in the 1980s is very different from today. So pre-WW2 I'd agree with the "Socialism being the same as Communism"-concept because most people saw it like that. In today's world it is no longer accurate. Every country saw Communism fail and every country reacted. Either by replacing their system with something else (SU), locking itself down (Korea) or opening their ports (China). Socialism no longer is the same as Communism. That has changed. Times as you no do change.

The mistake I used to make and I see many hobby-historians make is to focus on one issue and reading all sorts of literature on it while always ignoring the bigger picture or connecting the proper dots. It stuns me often with what detail people would know certain battles (particularly WW2 for some reason) but not know how the society in those countries at war worked.
What worries me though, is that many people do not question their sources, which was basically something I heard all through college. It seems so obvious now, but I used to read a book too and believe the content. Now I research on the author first. Some people actually use Viktor Suworow (pseudonym of Wladimir Bogdanowitsch Resun) to argue for the operation Barbarossa (innovation of the SU) or use David Bartons to argue the deep Catholic belief of the founding fathers.

I'm guessing you're not a historian but you're deeply interested in history, hence my suggestion to look at the content you read a little more critically. Also if possible try to find the newest literature about a subject possible. I remember looking over books written by historians of how much the SU was ahead of the western-world and that their stable regime poses a threat to the European security - published in 1988.