December 18, 2007
America is not a democracy.
NPR and one of Sotheby's vice presidents, David Redding, get it wrong: America is not a democracy; no matter what wikipedia might say. (Sotheby's also here.)
"There are new laws and then there are old ones, really old ones: say, the Magna Carta, for example...It's considered one of the most important legal documents in the history of democracy."
(Host, NPR, "All things Considered," December 18, 2007.)
So far, so good. But then:
"In return for their allegiance, the king ceded to the barons various rights. All kinds of ideas in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution owe a debt to the Magna Carta."
(Margot Adler--or here; Show: IBID.)
Hmmm...Maybe that's how Americans gained freedom! We ceded our allegiance in return for rights.
David Redding continues:
"I still believe the most important thing about Magna Carta is it's mythic significance: we can point to a time, we can say this is where freedom and liberty began, this is the antecedent, the progenitor of the great documents of freedom of our country."
(Redding; Show: IBID.)
Let's hope that, considering his accent, NPR merely took what he said out of context; as they do with so many other things. Let's hope Mr. Redding meant "this is where British freedom began." What Mr. Redding said? It agrees not with our own Declaration.
"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
(Text here)
Our "separate and equal station," our being "created equal," our "unalienable rights"; , we are given entitlement to these, and they all are derived from"the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God."
He said so himself.
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."
(Gen 1:1.)
"God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them."
(Gen. 1:27.)
Even the "atheist" Thomas Paine understood that the "rights" of mankind originally came from God, declaring that we were "originally equals in the order of creation." (Paine, Common Sense, 1776.)
But the Constitution itself denies the lie of democracy, declaring:
"The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government..."
Can someone please explain for me, then, why these people, and so many other learned people, persist in referring to America as a democracy?
It just ain't so.
Posted by Carl at 09:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 02, 2007
A few more links about the Hero, Paul Tibbets.
Posted by Carl at 07:13 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 30, 2007
Ain't that the truth!
"If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise, in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing and talk by the hour? That one hundred and fifty lawyers should do business together ought not to be expected."
(Here.)
If the present Congress steals too much....
Posted by Carl at 10:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack