Red State, Blue State
Some quotes to consider.
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.
A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government.
That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.
I didn't leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me.
I belong to no organized political party. I am a Democrat.
Now, do you know who the people are that said each one? The answers are farther down in the post.
I'm taking a freshmen level Poli Sci course this semester and I'm just amazed at the level of political misunderstanding by the majority of students. I know I've got years of perspective and wisdom that come from simply living longer, but still......
Now, I've gotten more realistic and pragmatic through the years (some would say cynical and calloused!), but I think my core understandings of liberty and freedom coupled with responsibilities hasn't changed all that much. And what is the appropriate role of government in the economy and society. Yet in this class I'm seen as even to the right of Pat Buchanan! This of the guy who was nicknamed Radical Rob by a sociology teacher in high school! Some folks suggested that I was bold enough to wear pink shirts not because I was secure in my manhood but because of my pink-o politics!
So why the quotes. If you didn't know the sources you might think they were from today's neo-cons. But they're not.
WC Fields was the last one: "I belong to no organized political party. I am a democrat."
That one was just for fun. As a lifelong Democrat whose Dad was a New Deal democrat from the first vote he ever cast 'til the day he died, I couldn't help poking fun at the real big tent party. The other four are for more serious consideration.
The first three come from Thomas Jefferson, who many consider, along with Andrew Jackson, as one of the founders of the Democratic Party. But if you compare his quotes, and the philosophy they represent, with quotes from any of the recent Democratic presidential candidates you can't help but be struck by how different the political orientation is.
The fourth quote: "I didn't leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me." is from Ronald Reagan.
Some things for folks to think about as the inside the Beltway crowd starts figuring out how to take advantage of the ineptitude and scandals of the Republicans. Especially when the Dean wing of the Democratic party is trying to set the agenda for the coming years.
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.
A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government.
That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.
I didn't leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me.
I belong to no organized political party. I am a Democrat.
Now, do you know who the people are that said each one? The answers are farther down in the post.
I'm taking a freshmen level Poli Sci course this semester and I'm just amazed at the level of political misunderstanding by the majority of students. I know I've got years of perspective and wisdom that come from simply living longer, but still......
Now, I've gotten more realistic and pragmatic through the years (some would say cynical and calloused!), but I think my core understandings of liberty and freedom coupled with responsibilities hasn't changed all that much. And what is the appropriate role of government in the economy and society. Yet in this class I'm seen as even to the right of Pat Buchanan! This of the guy who was nicknamed Radical Rob by a sociology teacher in high school! Some folks suggested that I was bold enough to wear pink shirts not because I was secure in my manhood but because of my pink-o politics!
So why the quotes. If you didn't know the sources you might think they were from today's neo-cons. But they're not.
WC Fields was the last one: "I belong to no organized political party. I am a democrat."
That one was just for fun. As a lifelong Democrat whose Dad was a New Deal democrat from the first vote he ever cast 'til the day he died, I couldn't help poking fun at the real big tent party. The other four are for more serious consideration.
The first three come from Thomas Jefferson, who many consider, along with Andrew Jackson, as one of the founders of the Democratic Party. But if you compare his quotes, and the philosophy they represent, with quotes from any of the recent Democratic presidential candidates you can't help but be struck by how different the political orientation is.
The fourth quote: "I didn't leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me." is from Ronald Reagan.
Some things for folks to think about as the inside the Beltway crowd starts figuring out how to take advantage of the ineptitude and scandals of the Republicans. Especially when the Dean wing of the Democratic party is trying to set the agenda for the coming years.
posted by Wake of the Flood at 2:55 PM
3 Comments:
All the quotes are provocative. I find the first one to be very interesting at this point in time, as we all receive those spam mails advocating OUR rights be respected because of a perceived majority superiority.
Thomas Jefferson understood the potential tyranny of majority rule. This is one reason why we have federalism instead of democracy in this country. Respectful protection of minority opinions is what we need to be about.
And for our readers (both of them), I will vouch for wake's liberal creds. Oh the ruined dinners as he and Dad argued the same side of the coin using different talking points!
We have more than 2 readers. It's just they're all family and they only read the blog about once a month or so just to make sure that our revisionist family history doesn't paint them in a negative light. Beware what you say, you never know if Mother Superior is reading this or not, lol!
Oh, yes, I forgot something else. Let me be as didactic now as I was in my youth with our father and correct you on a point. We are a representative democracy or a republic -- they are similar but not identical. The US can be classified as either. And it is these forms of elected representative government that prevents the tyranny of the majority. As for being a federation, that applies to our structure in relation to the states. We are a federation as opposed to a confederation. And in spite of what some neo-cons and others in the FDR/Nixon imperial presidency mold think, we are not a unitary state with all power resting in the federal government! Some modern folks have assumed that when we replaced the Articles of Confederation with the Constitution and then fought a civil war asserting the power of the federal government over the power of the states to legalize slavery that the issue was settled. I happen to think that the pendulum swung too far in the 60's and 70's when the federal government began to assert powers of regulation based upon a very broad reading of the commerce clause the rights of the states were usurped in many places. The libertarian in me agrees with Jefferson that the less government the better.
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