The content of this video should be taught to every student in school, beginning in grade school. It should be repeated and reinforced in high school. The study of the spectrum of government and its various forms - which indeed can be reduced to either an oligarchy or a republic - should be a mandatory class in college as well. Instead, most of us have been brainwashed into believing that we are supposed to be living in a democracy, that we should prefer to live in a democracy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DioQooFIcgE&feature=player_embedded
Robert Anson Heinlein, a great author and wise libertarian, should be mandatory reading, too. A science fiction ("speculative fiction") writer, he wrote a book called "Starship Troopers", in which the government of Earth's future placed a requirement of military service upon suffrage, the right to vote. I realize the many liberals of today abhor the military (just as the Clintons did and the Obamas do), but the full investment of one's very life in service to our country perhaps should be a requirement for the ability to cast a vote. (I would love to see it as a requirement for public office as well.) He also wrote a novel called "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", about a time in the future when the moon is used as a penal colony, perhaps as a metaphor for Australia, but also one for the Thirteen Colonies that became America. Revolution takes place, and those residing there become free of the abuses of the government on Earth.
A very bright historian named Alexis De Tocqueville wrote a book back in the early 1830's called "Democracy in America". In this book he states that every democracy (as opposed to a Republic) has ended badly, followed by a dictatorship (actually an oligarchy, even though some of them appear to be rule by one individual). He was quite accurate, as America has become a country ruled by an elite, an elite that says we must accept laws and legislation that is written by Congress even if we don't want it, even if no one has read the full document to know what is in it. "We need to pass it before we can know what is in it," if you accept the irrational dictates of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.
Our country was created as a republic, as noted in the famous exchange of Ben Franklin with a lady curious as to what the Constitutional Convention had settled upon as a form of government: "A republic, madam, if you can keep it." Nowhere in the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, or the Constitution is "democracy" mentioned, as the united States (they didn't capitalize "united" back then, because the Federal government was meant to be subservient to the States and the citizens of those States) was never intended to be a democracy.
It is only in recent history - and in the revision, the perversion, of history that is taught in most of our public schools - that people have come to speak of America as a democracy, and to talk of bringing democracy to the people of other countries who suffer under repressive rule by tyrants. The old adage states that "democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner". The rights of the individual, especially his right to own property (including the fruits of his own labor, which is economic property, ever bit as real as intellectual, physical, or "real" property) are not protected in a democracy.
Look at the Kelo decision in the Supreme Court, where any property may be taken from an individual if it will benefit a federal, state, or local government to do so.
Consider also that you only rent the house you thought you bought and paid for. Even real estate which has been completely paid for can be taken from you if you fail to pay taxes upon it. Not only may you be imprisoned for failure to pay taxes (debtor's prison, anyone?), but your property can be confiscated and permanently taken from you if the taxes levied against it have not been paid. How can you be said to actually own something that some other entity can take from you for taxes owed (a minuscule fraction of the property's value) at will, or simply at the whim of government? When someone holds the paper on your debt, say for a car which has not been completely paid for, it can be repossessed by the bank or agency which has loaned you the money to buy it. Once you have completely paid for it, it cannot be repossessed. Your home and your land can be. Can you see how totally wrong that is?
Democrats in Congress (and most Republicans, for that matter) want democracy instead of a republic, because that is the way they can insure that the oligarchy, the elite, our "representatives" who all believe they are so much wiser than us and wish to make our decisions for us (i.e., they themselves), will remain in power. They all want a very strong and dominating central government which will allow them to wield the power to decide what is best for us simple folk, while it also enriches them monetarily. They have arranged it so that they are not subject to the very laws they create to control us, have arranged to be able to draw a full pension after only one term of service, and receive benefits that none but the most wealthy of our society - most of whom have actually earned their wealth - can possibly afford.
So. Do you wish to live in a democracy, where your needs can be ignored or your property taken from you at the whim of a majority - even the tiny majority of a town council, consisting of perhaps four or five people - or in a republic, were law and government properly protect your rights and property? Learn the difference here and try to choose wisely. We have already lost our Republic, but a concerted effort by enough Americans might somehow be able to turn things around and get us back to a republic, and the Rule of Law that was meant to protect each and every one of us.
H/T to WRSA and Small Dead Animals for posting the video.
