Thomas Jefferson, ever the democratic republican, believed that the safest repository of power was in the masses. The right to political power is always with the people, not with the representatives, and only when the masses exert that right will the power be effectively and appropriately checked. However, the masses are very easily swayed, mainly by three influences: 1) education, 2) forms, and 3) economics. When these influences are mal-aligned with liberty, the people allow their political power to be assumed by the aristocracy. And an unchecked aristocracy is the greatest threat to liberty, according to both John Adams and Jefferson.
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A Republic of the “Mass”
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A New Beginning
This is what I have been waiting for. I don’t think he goes far enough with the non-violence idea, but it’s a start. Please read the entire thing. If Pres. Obama’s presidency accomplishes nothing else than changing the tone regarding U.S.-Islam relations, it will have shifted the world in a critical direction.
The Natural End of Economic Structures
In my previous post I proposed that corporatism is worse than socialism because of the inherent inequality that lies therein. However, it got me thinking about the natural ends of these economic structures. This is a line of thinking that I have considered before, but not to the point of writing about it.
The American Founding: Conservative or Radical?
Conservatives in the U.S. like to put forth the idea that those who founded the USA did so on conservative principles. Of the fundamental tenants (not dogmas or doctrines, according to Kirk) mentioned in the previous post, which are in agreement with the principles of the American Founding? A Whig in the British Parliament, Edmund Burke joined the Radical Whigs (there’s that darned r-word again) in support of the American colonists’ rights to self-government and to fight against an over-reaching monarch. And although most of his conservative writings were in response to the bloody French Revolution and the “radical” ideas of “liberty, fraternity, and equality”, conservatives promote Burke’s opinions on the American revolution and the fundamental principles of the American Founding as being, well, conservative. Let’s see how conservative those ideals were.
The Idealist’s Idealistic Election Reality
Well, it now seems that we are down to two main presidential candidates, John McCain and Barack Obama. Interestingly, both represent the more liberal portion of their respective parties’ ideologies. The question is, who should you vote for and why?
A Better Economy
This post was initially a letter to my brother about this book.
The book, The Unsettling of America, is one man’s take on the road that agriculture has taken in the United States and the governmental policies that have led us down that road and the cultural effect it has had and is having on the citizens of the United States. Here is the email:
Democracy and the Potential Loss of Freedom
I was just reviewing the end chapters of Democracy in America and was reminded of the following from Tocqueville:
[Warning: it might hit a nerve]
Intellectual Tyranny of the Majority
In reviewing Volume Two of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America I began thinking about the concept of majority-thinking.
Ultimate Reality and America’s Role
An interesting blog that I was informed about has stimulated reading of some speeches from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. From thence comes the following:
A Tale of the Same Foreign Policy
One of the most concerning situation for the United States at present is the influence that Iran is wielding throughout the Middle East (and stretching into Venezuela). Iran is accused of training Iraqi insurgents and providing them with weapons. Iran has also been implicated as being the money and power behind groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. This influence into other countries using paramilitary and insurgent groups is a violation of the sovereignty of these nations.