Ugly Truths
Troy, you have no idea the distress your post below has caused me, which explains my delay in responding to it. I needed time for it to soak in, and collect my thoughts. They are not pretty. You have forced me to consider some ugly truths, which I have been evading for some time. While essential to a rational mind that prefers to deal in reality, such is rarely a pleasant experience.
While it has pleased me for years, to repeat the myth that America is a republic, not a democracy, you have forced me to recognize the utter folly of that assertion. When I read:
“Regarding both court cases, a very clear and constant majority of those affected by these cases DO NOT give their consent and they have made this as clear as can possibly be made.
And, as should be clear to all without my saying it, a government that governs AGAINST the will of its people has become a tyranny. Period, no other explanation possible!”
…my immediate knee-jerk reaction was the same as always, when I encounter the ‘will of the people’ argument that we are a mobocracy, which I expounded on only two weeks ago in my Liber-T-Party Stump Speech:
“Folks, America is NOT a democracy; it is a republic, and the distinction is profound. Our Founders abhorred the very concept of democracy, which they considered just a fancy term for mob rule; or as Franklin purportedly put it, two wolves and a lamb discussing what to have for dinner. That is why they fashioned instead a constitutional republic, to protect the natural rights of the minority, from the whim of the majority; and each of us, as an individual, represents the ultimate minority. If this comes as news to you, I recommend a little research, for a much needed civics lesson.
The reason this Big Lie is so insidious, is that it gives voters the mistaken notion that the majority rules here in America. They assume that they can achieve any political goal they desire, if they can just get 51% of their neighbors to agree with them. Nothing could be further from the truth, in a country that is supposed to be governed by the rule of law, with a Constitution as the supreme law of the land, which pointedly constrains the lawmakers, from legislating outside narrowly defined limits. Too often, the rude discovery of this simple truth, leaves voters angry and jaded, when the elegance with which it secures our individual Liberty, should produce the opposite effect.
Few things irritate a true Constitutionalist more, than the inevitable partisan outcry that the ‘will of the people’ is being thwarted, when one of their pet referendums or legislative victories, is overturned by the courts as unconstitutional. Of course the majority’s will is being thwarted, and thank goodness! That is what the horizontal separation of powers is all about.
The independent courts exist to defend the Constitution, and the natural rights of any minority, from the capricious whim of the majority, in a self-governing republic. It is wrong to blame the judges for doing their jobs; blame belongs with the misguided lawmakers, for attempting to overstep theirs.”
However, there was one niggling difference in your argument. You preceded it with:
“…WE HAVE A GOVERNMENT THAT GOVERNS BY THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED!”
…and when I factored that element into our system of government, the scales began to fall from my eyes. I soon understood the exponential rate of entropy it is experiencing, on several levels, and how utterly unstable it actually is.
The simple fact is that the sheeple have consented to the mayhem, done to the original intent of our Constitution, by politicians and judges alike, over the past hundred years. It no longer protects the individual from the whim of a majority, and there is certainly not a majority today who wish it to. Even the supposedly awakening T-Party types, want once unconstitutional programs, like education, social security, medicare, et al ‘fixed,’ not eliminated.
While there is a majority who find fault, for one reason or another, with Obamacare, there is by no means a majority for outright repeal, and getting the Feds out of healthcare entirely. They want it less expensive and/or obtrusive than the ACA; but they want the Feds to ‘fix’ it, nonetheless. It is a pipe dream to think we could ever return to small Constitutional government; the ‘will of the people’ would never consent to it. It is impossible to return to fiscal discipline and a balanced budget, because the majority wouldn’t brook the austerity required. Witness that other famed democracy, Greece.
Meanwhile we have two competing ideological ‘wills,’ which are roughly equal to each other in numbers. Both have accepted the premise of mob rule, and peacefully allow the other side to take over the levers of our government, when they win an election. With increasingly idealogical judges, and a Constitution routinely ignored, we may as well admit that we are a de facto democracy. The ‘will of the people’ long ago consented, to the demise of the republic of our Founders.
As if having to swallow this ugly truth weren’t bad enough, the rest of your post is even more depressing; because it made me realize that we are not just at the mercy of the whim of a majority. The plain truth is that we are, always have been, and always will be, at the mercy of any determined minority. Alas, it could not be otherwise.
You are suggesting that it is time for another revolution, and it is hard to argue with your logic. Unfortunately, revolution is just another term for rebellion, which is just another term for civil war, in any state purported to be self-governing. Any determined minority, finding themselves intolerably oppressed by the majority, can – and arguably should – start such a rebellion.
During the first American Revolution, no more than 3% of the colonialists were ever under arms against the King’s forces. Only about 10% were openly supporting their cause, while 20% were staunch loyalists, actively supporting their King. By the end of the war, there were more colonialists actively fighting for the Crown, than against it. The vast majority in the middle bent with the wind, and were willing to accept either outcome. Then as now, they were apolitical and just wanted to get on with their own mundane lives, unmolested by partisan zealots.
It has long been my view that the reason the courts and politicians have refused to address the Obama eligibility issue, is their abject fear of riots in the ghettos across the nation. If they had to do their duty to eject the obvious usurper, it would ignite a civil war. As irritating as their dereliction of duty has been to me, their fears are by no means unwarranted. Thus, this nation is arguably being held hostage by a decided minority right now.
I see more and more Patriots coming to the same conclusion as you, everywhere I look. We too are a decided minority, yet a determined one. Civil war is absolutely inevitable, in my opinion, and sooner rather than later. Unfortunately, the poverty pimps and race hustlers are frenetically engaged, in making sure it will be characterized as a race war, rather than an idealogical one. This will insure that those sheeple afflicted with terminal ‘white guilt,’ will naturally rally to their cause.
It really matters not which side starts the war, or which side wins. The losing side will only regroup and eventually rebel again. I would say Jefferson is about due to get his wish, for at least one revolution per generation. Unfortunately, we are too far gone for the contest to ever again be between true Liberty and tyranny. They will be between the competing tyrannical ideologies of the culture warriors. America as designed, and as you and I dream it should be, is already history.
When the war starts, I’ll not shirk my duty; I never have. I am pissed off enough to almost be looking forward to it; but I’ll harbor no unrealistic dream that it will solve a damn thing. It won’t, because it can’t. The rugged individualist has been bred out of our culture. The altruists and their jack-booted thugs, will never consent to leaving their neighbors alone, to live peaceable lives, unmolested by culture warring busybodies, intent on regulating their lives, one way or another. The dream is over, my friend. â—„Daveâ–º
There is a fair amount of discussion of this article elsewhere, after visiting here to read it. Comments are welcome here too, and no registration is required to do so. Thanks for your interest. â—„Daveâ–º
Have the sheeple knowingly consented to this mess or are they generally too simple to realize that taking handouts has political implications?
Years ago, while living in Florida, there was a oil spill in Tampa Bay. Many good folk captured oil-soaked ducks, took them home, and used solvents to clean them up. After such treatment, the ducks had to be kept in captivity a while until their natural feather-oiling system was fully restored. When that time came, many of the ducks simply stayed put, looking for more of that easy chow that magically appeared each day.
I sincerely doubt these ducks went through any kind of mental process, weighing the value of freedom over the value of easy food. Their instinctive needs were to find food and to find mates and breed — both of them seemingly made easier (and safer) by their captivity. Did any of them stop to consider “what if these humans quit giving us food?” or ‘at what point might we become their food?”??
Nope. They were simply not capable of that manner of reasoning.
Troy
Understood, Troy. I didn’t say they made a rational choice; but almost by definition, acquiescence without objection is consent. Try taking away the public trough of plunder they feed from, and see if they squeal then. â—„Daveâ–º
Of course they will squeal. Just as pigs squeal when their trough is empty. But, that does not make them suddenly capable of rational thought. And, so long as a huge percent of our population is the functional equivalent of a barnyard herd or flock, there is little chance for rational thought to prevail.
Well, at least our rebellion should thin the herds / flocks somewhat. Of course, my herd will get thinner as well.
Troy
And, as should be clear to all without my saying it, a government that governs AGAINST the will of its people has become a tyranny. Period, no other explanation possible!â€
But what is the will of the people? Is it the long term “will” or the instantaneous “will.” If the “will of the people” embraces two contradictory positions which shall we call “The will of the people.” Our Founders recognized, even in their day, that not all “wills” were alike. They founded a government with checks and balances to give preference to the long term “will.” When the constitution was written there was understanding, among some, that slavery was immoral. It was more important that agreement prevail for the forming of a better union than that established under the Articles. So that issue was sidelined until, hopefully, more rational views would prevail. As time has passed many problems with the original “will of the people” have been remedied. Non government slavery is essentially gone. Womens position having equal rights with men is much improved. We have discussed the basic problem of public education in other forumns, but I think it unrealistic to expect that over a hundred and fifty years of philosophical misdirection can be corrected in the forty or so years that efforts have been made to change that direction. The vote is still in place. the checks and balances are at least slowing the progress towards altruistic collectivism. As much as we may be frustrated by the slow pace of change I don’t see the need for “rebellion.” What is needed is continued self education and sharing of ideas with others. We have to recapture the positive enthusiasm of the enlightenment. I credit Dave, here, for his dialogue with one of more socialist persuasion. We might think progress is slow, but think of how frustrated the 17th century collectivists must have felt when they started to change cultural direction. The only reason they made any progress was the dissapearance of rational philosophy after Herbert Spencer (and I am aware of his problems). Ayn Rand started the counter revolution if you are to “rebel” start with the rebellion of intellect. Videos on Objectivism are available at the ARI web site.
You may eschew pragmatism, John; but you are damn sure the poster child for optimism. 🙂
Thanks for the kind words. I wasn’t ready to whack him with objectivism quite yet; but if you have a link to an ARI video apropos to a discussion we are having, by all means drop it into a comment, and do please join the discussion. I can use all the help I can get. He asks a lot of questions… you would think the fellow a student of Socrates or something… 😉 â—„Daveâ–º
Acknowledged.
Dave, what is your source of the colored backgrounds and smiley faces?
Also, I only get a notification of a new thread, not replies to my reply on this forum. Is there some wat to set it up differently?
Thanks for your interest, John. The yellow smiley faces are automatically resolved by the site software, when it encounters the standard two character emoticons in submitted text. e.g.;
colon) yields a smile 🙂
colon( yields a frown 🙁
semi-colon) yields a wink 😉
Others probably work too; but I have never tried them. I do occasionally miss some of our custom ones, from our fireside chats of old. 😉
The indented text and colored background, is a function of the site software encountering any text bracketed by the standard HTML ‘blockquote’ tags.
Complete URLs are resolved into live links, without need for HTML tags.
You can subscribe to both article and comment RSS feeds to your e-mail client (or browser, rss reader, etc.) by visiting the RSS pages under “META” in the widget in the right sidebar, just above the Political Spectrum chart.
Finally, when replying to a specific comment, if you will click the “reply” link at the bottom of it before composing it, your reply will be nested under it, rather than appear at the bottom of the comments to the main article. If it is already three levels deep, just reply to the comment above in the second level, to append yours on the bottom of the 3rd level queue. â—„Daveâ–º
Testing some more standard emoticons…
The two characters must stand alone, meaning there must be a space before one, and there may not be a printable character after one, although a carriage return is permissible. Thus, I will put a > in front of the first column and put a space between it and the emoticon in the second column to see what the results will be:
>:) > 🙂
>:( > 🙁
>;) > 😉
>:D > 😀
>:P > 😛
>8) > 8)
>:O > :O
>:\ > :\
>:| > 😐
>:X > :X
>:& > :&
>:% > :%
>:* > :*
OK, let’s see what happens… â—„Daveâ–º
http://mutanatia.blogspot.com/
You asked for a response, and here it is 🙂
Thanks for the introduction and the kind words, Greg. As a new reader of my blog, you are not to be faulted for having failed to read my Liber-T-Party Stump Speech, which I posted a couple of weeks ago to explain my long-held view of the job description of a Representative. It suggested a winning strategy for a Congressional candidate to earn the support of the folks in the Liberty and/or TEA Party movements. I do highly recommend that you read it, as there is much food for thought contained therein.
Had you already done so, it is unlikely that you would have mixed the incongruous quotes I pulled from that earlier article, with new ones from this article, missing entirely my dilemma in reevaluating my answer to an important question, which has probably never even occurred to you – is America a republic or a democracy?
For the past twenty years, I have vociferously asserted that it was a republic. Now, with this new “Ugly Truths” article, I admitted that it is indeed a democracy. Please understand, that this was a major epiphany I had, only after reading Troy’s intervening article, which negated the earlier quotes I pulled from the Speech, and changed forever my view of our system of government.
This could not have been more profound for me. It utterly demolished the last vestiges, of any hope I had harbored for the future of this nation, and I said as much. It befuddles me how you could have missed it, or why you would have ignored it in your critique if you didn’t.
While I am critiquing your critique, I’ll make a few observations. First, you need to work on your quoting technique. You are stingy with your quotation marks, so there are several places where the unfamiliar reader would have difficulty distinguishing my remarks from yours. Let’s see if HTML ‘blockquote’ tags works on your blog…
Mutanatia said:
If it doesn’t, here or elsewhere you might comment, may I suggest a convention I and others use to offset a block of text one is quoting:
///Mutanatia said: “This gave me pause to wonder: Does the Constitution actually protect us from the majority? I don’t think so. Instead of Tyranny of the Majority, it becomes a tyranny of the majority of a minority. The Minority I am speaking of, of course, is the US House of Representatives and the Senate.”///
This is a comment you made about a quote I extracted from the earlier “Stump Speech.” At the time I composed it, my purpose was to explain our Founder’s intent, when they drafted our Constitution, and expose the Big Lie that our nation is a democracy, which has been drummed into Americans for a hundred years. I was not at all suggesting that it was currently working as intended.
More importantly, my purpose for extracting it into this article, was to render it void in light of my epiphany; yet the reader is left with the impression that I now deem it a truth, if ugly. By no means intending to impugn a nefarious motive for this error, I must say that the intellectually honest approach, would have been to challenge it in the original article, from whence it was extracted.
Your failure to apprehend or explain to the reader the subject of my article, renders your critique of it confusing at best. You spent the first half of your efforts opining on the merits of old remarks, which I had quoted for the very purpose of voiding them. When you finally do get around to quoting from my current remarks, the astute reader is going to suffer cognitive dissonance. He will be puzzled how this fellow Dave can uphold conflicting assertions as ‘truths,’ and probably conclude that it is the organizational structure of his mind that is ‘ugly.’ 🙂
///Mutanatia said: “I disagree on this point. The so-called unconstitutional problems that Dave brings up above are popular, and—to a degree—helpful programs. … Hey, this is useful… let’s improve upon it.”///
“So-called?” The Constitution either means what it says, or it is worthless. Nowhere in it is the word ‘education’ mentioned. Nowhere does it empower the Feds to meddle in the affairs of local communities, such as their public schools. Nowhere does it empower the Feds to compel individual citizens to participate in Ponzi schemes, like social security or medicare.
“Popular… helpful” So what? If they are unconstitutional, we can’t have them. Universal firearms training, government issued firearms, free ammunition, and mandatory carry laws would be extremely popular. They would be very helpful in deterring crime, and substantially reduce the cost of our police forces. Should we create a cabinet level ‘Make My Day’ department to issue everyone a gun, and then fine… er… tax any citizen caught outside his home unarmed?
///Mutanatia said: “Ideally, you would have a direct democracy, but Cicero mentions that that leads to the rule…///
“Ideally?” I am not getting through to you at all, am I? We desperately need less democracy, not more of it! Please think through the consequences of a true direct democracy. Would you prefer to return to a society where minorities had no protection from the whim of the majority? Do you really want segregated schools, restaurants, toilets, and drinking fountains? Would you have gays scramble back into their closets, because they couldn’t find jobs and risked arrest for public displays of affection? Direct democracy is mob rule; please understand that.
///Mutanatia said: “…ideally, you want to bring the country forwards, not back to where it was!”///
< •sigh•> I couldn’t disagree more. We had a rather idyllic society for the first hundred years of this nation’s existence. The common man had never in human history experienced such opportunity to be all that he could be, and most prospered beyond the wildest dreams of their ancestors, here in the land of the free, unmolested by tyrants and busybodies holding them down and telling them how they must live their lives. Diligence, ingenuity, hard work, and unlimited opportunity to achieve their individual goals, provided an ever better existence for each succeeding generation.
It wasn’t until the Progressive social engineers descended upon us with their utopian dreams, and started to rearrange our society to implement them, that misery and suffering returned to these shores. If you wish our country to begin advancing forward again, implement total laissez-faire capitalism, and then get the hell out of everybody’s way and let them prosper. In a true free market economy (which has never been tried) everyone is a winner, in always voluntary value for value exchanges of goods, labor, and services, without the need of coercive government at all.
///Mutanatia said: “The next part talks of revolution, which I will leave out for varying reasons, the most glaring of which is that violence of any sort makes me troubled…”///
Here I am afraid that you leave the reader the completely false impression that I am advocating revolution. Nobody who has ever been in a war, has been shot at, had to sweat tripping a land mine, and had to kill or be killed, ever looks forward to another war. I have spent years trying to cool tempers and advocating political solutions in the Patriot community. Here, I was merely acknowledging the inevitability of civil war.
If violence makes you queasy, you are by no means alone; but I do hope you have the good grace and courtesy, to stop and thank every cop or warrior you encounter, for their willingness to deal with the violent nature of those, who would slit your throat and those of your loved ones in a heartbeat, but for the existence of these protective sheep dogs. Psychopaths and barbarous ideologies are a fact of life in the real world, and you cannot wish them out of existence.
I hate to be the one to have to tell you, Greg, since you are young and have a life you look forward to living; but the best of times in America are in the past, and are very unlikely to return, even in your lifetime. It is only going to get worse – much, much worse. Yes, a revolution or civil war (same thing) is coming. It is truly unavoidable. At some point in the not too distant future, the producers are simply going to stop feeding the moochers.
You see, we are at that awkward stage at the moment in America. It is far too late to fix what ails us by working within the system, which is truly broken beyond repair. Yet, it is still too early to shoot the bastards. Where are you going to be, how prepared will you be, and what are you going to do, when that clock runs out? Think about it… â—„Daveâ–º
Ack! I did not know that that applies to a prior paper >.< Poor blogsmanship on my part 🙁
There is a reason why this hasn’t been responded to by me: I know you say not to “Feel” (while I am here), so let me be objective first. It was a great response, all points of which were understandable and well-put; some parts I agreed with, others I didn’t. Some I agree with, but I don’t know why, and others I disagree with and I don’t know why. This really hasn’t happened to me before :/
AS for the”feeling” part, I wasn’t sure whether to agree or disagree, laugh, cry, what? The jury is still out on how I will respond to that. The ending made me rather uncomfortable (probably why you called it “Ugly” Truths 🙂 )..
If I don’t know what my own reaction is to it… difficult to respond, wouldn’t you say? 🙂
Sorry for the delay. I had a power failure in the middle of replying to one of your posts, and the computer crashed. I decided it would be a good time for a nap. 😉 Boy, I’ll be careful the next time I ask for feedback! Now I have a daunting stack of replies to answer. Thanks, and I’ll slog through them in no particular order.
Yes, this was a classic example of a reply I put some effort into, only to get a one line response. It deserved much more, and I wasn’t ready to change the subject yet. Please keep in mind that this was a response to a post in your own blog, in precisely the cross blog manner you had suggested. To get no more reaction than a dismissive ‘oops,’ was beyond disappointing. I would suggest that when a mind serves up cognitive dissonance in response to new perspectives and ideas, it is a signal that some serious cogitation is in order.
If such disturbing ideas make you uncomfortable, you can either focus, evaluate, and think through their validity, or evade them and go watch another mindless program on the babble-box to blog about. The choice is yours; but if there is any validity at all to my prognostication for our future, evading considering and preparing for the possibility, is not a strategy for survival, much less solving anything. 😐 â—„Daveâ–º
Okay, well, then, let me get out what I can get out of this post without the ending, just because violence and me don’t mix. In your scenario, I’m the guy locking the basement door and being with a knife and hoping no one invades my home! (And yes, I have thanked multiple cops and servicemen, and I always make sure to give them a friendly wave when I see them. I don’t know how you view them, but I view them–when they do their job right, of course!–as necessary protection for our society)
Anyways, back to your post here. Let me dissect a few of the points here:
“So-called?†The Constitution either means what it says, or it is worthless.// Arguably, then, the Supreme Court’s duty to interpret the validity of laws would be unconstitutional as well, as this power was set up in a case, and not actually found directly in the Constitution. I say “So-called” because I am going by the current ruling of the SCOTUS. If enough justices turn around and say otherwise, then it’s the reverse. However, I am saying “so-called” because you and I are not judges; they are. We can speculate all we want, but unless we both have training in Constitutional law (I know I don’t) and are on SCOTUS, then we are doing just that: speculating and cogitating. 😉
““Ideally?†I am not getting through to you at all, am I? We desperately need less democracy, not more of it!”//You spoke on another thread of benevolent dictatorship; is this what you were eluding to then? If so, you’ll remember my objection to it on that other thread (I forget what its title was), and that is “What happens when the benevolent dictatorship no longer is benevolent?” I see your point, and I understand the full ramifications of a direct democracy (tyranny of the majority), but I still think the diversity of opinions would be much better than the tyranny of a “majority of a minority” (The House/Senate) I spoke of before. Perhaps the better question I would have for you would be “What happens when the benevolence becomes tyranny?”
As to the going backwards/forwards thing, the problem I have is that the Senate and the House seem to get “Stuck” on one particular thing. For the time being, for instance, the House is wasting its time on its 33rd (!) symbolic vote to repeal ObamaCare. What I mean by moving the country “forward” in this case would be finding out in a few years, “Okay, this… this really didn’t work. How do we change it to make it better, or do we have to toss the whole thing out?” Rather than wasting time on something you are “stuck” with until you can do something about it (in this instance, the Senate and President becomes run by Republicans)… best to set your attentions on something else you CAN do something about.
“Boy, I’ll be careful the next time I ask for feedback! Now I have a daunting stack of replies to answer. Thanks, and I’ll slog through them in no particular order.”// I was afraid you were going to tell me that I overdid it. Glad I didn’t 🙂