“Democracy is a miracle considering human psychological disabilities.”
Eli Sagan, The Honey and the Hemlock: Democracy and Paranoia in Ancient Athens and Modern America.
It may or may not surprise some that Plato and many Greeks knew and believed a beneficent dictator, The Philosopher King, was preferred to “rule by the mob” — or democracy. The Founders and framers were no less suspicious of democracy. But all these superior minds were well aware that the Philosopher King was an ideal. An “ought,” not an “is.” Like “Utopia,” a Greek word “coined” by Sir Thomas More in 1517 meaning “no such place.” And if men were angels...
Karl Popper blamed Plato for the rise of totalitarianism in the 20th century, seeing Plato's philosopher kings, with their dreams of "social engineering" and "idealism", as leading directly to Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin (via Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx respectively).[6]
Popper fails to acknowledge that Philosopher Kings are as much of a fantasy as utopias. “Power corrupts” and all that. Marx was no Philosopher King: and Marxism is an ideology. All ideologies are worthless, save one: Republicanism. An ideology that ceased to be found in the Republican Party after 1912. Marxism is garbage. Marx IS and remains an influential genius on a par with Chomsky yet his least great contribution is Marxism. Or the Marxism of the Right.
It may surprise some of you to find out that “socialism” predates the birth of Karl Marx. It will shock and possibly terminate the existence of any American fascist by spontaneous cerebral combustion, although the better educated 1% know this undoubtedly, however this truth, this fact, does not advantage them politically.
Owen sought support for his socialist vision among American thinkers, reformers, intellectuals and public statesmen. On 25 February and 7 March 1825, Owen gave addresses in the U.S. House of Representatives to the U.S. Congress and others in the US government, outlining his vision for the Utopian community at New Harmony, and his socialist beliefs.[25][42] The audience for his ideas included three former U.S. presidents – John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison) – as well as the outgoing US President James Monroe, and the President-elect, John Quincy Adams.[43] His meetings were perhaps the first discussions of socialism in the Americas; they were certainly a big step towards discussion of it in the United States. Owenism, among the first socialist ideologies active in the United States, can be seen as an instigator of the later socialist movement.[20][19]
The behavioralists had this figured out years ago when B.F. Skinner proposed the method and process of leader selection in his hypothetical utopian novel, Walden Two.
The person who least wanted the job was chosen to lead. And she or he had no choice.
It makes perfect sense to me as I’ve considered it a disqualifying character defect to even want to be POTUS since Nixon and Reagan. Jimmy Carter comes close to the genuine article.
Long story short, I’ve come to believe Lincoln’s “healing” was necessary at the time, we were still a young developing nation, but all that Kumbayah bullshit failed miserably — Big Time.
The first thing you have to understand is that no amount of reasoning will accomplish anything with the insurrectionists. They are impervious to reason.
So all you end up doing is kicking an unpleasant can of worms down the road for future generations to deal with. Thanks a lot, Grandpa.
I’m no Philosopher King but I do share a birthday with two vastly different people. 6/14. Flag Day.
The same day as Che Guevara and Donald Trump. So somebody is bound to get shot by a firing squad. I’m getting old and cranky and I’m sick of uneducated imbeciles, provincials who’ve never set foot in a public library (too socialist!), spouting off about the Constitution and what The Founders wanted and envisioned. They never agreed on anything, for Chrissake! They were a contentious lot.
Biden won’t do it but I would. Martial Law. They’ve been begging us to “come and take them” for years. We should, with extreme prejudice. And before they get their hands on Apaches and Armored Fighting Vehicles. They’ll never get them in any great numbers and will never have the C3 (command, control, and communications) a modern fighting force has but they only get better and stronger the longer we turn a blind eye to sedition and treason. I wouldn’t give a damn if I lost any voters for shooting a traitor on 5th Ave because I’ll never want that job, so yeah. Line ‘em up.
Forrest McDonald was a self-described paleocon and the most distinguished scholar on the Founding Era and Colonial America. All of his books well worth reading. His appearances on CSPAN are wonderfully hilarious: Of the colonial Americans: “This country was a bunch of lazy slobs, you know. They would fight for their liberties and stuff if the chips got down but they wouldn’t work, they wouldn’t save...” About 2 minutes and 30 seconds into the video.
If I should ask you what kind of economic order the Founding Fathers contemplated when they established the constitutional order, you would doubtless reply capitalism or a market economy. If I addressed that question to a similar number of professional American historians, the answer would be the same, the difference being that most of you would add "Thank God" and most of them would add "unfortunately…"
As to whether the Framers intended to create a capitalistic order, the weightier evidence balances to the contrary. Let us start by considering what they understood by property rights. The appropriate source is Sir William Blackstone's 4 volume Commentaries on the Laws of England, a work that James Madison said was "in every man's hand." On the second page of the second volume, subtitled "Of the rights of things," Blackstone defines property as "That sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe." Splendid statement, but Sir William devotes the remaining 518 pages of the volume to qualifying and specifying exceptions to his definition.
Every state had adopted English prohibitions of "offenses against public trade," which banned usury, regulated the price of bread, and forbade such practices as "forestalling" (buying or contracting commodities on their way to market), "engrossing" (buying large quantities of commodities with intent to sell them in other markets), and "regrating" (buying and reselling products in the same market). Americans, like Englishmen, also recognized that their right to acquire and hold private property was subject to rights residing in the public. As an aggregate of individuals, the public retained rights to grazing, wood gathering, hunting, passage, and water use on privately owned lands. In its corporate or governmental capacity, the public reserved the right to restrict the use of private property and even take it from the owners in certain conditions.
These legal barriers were reinforced by ideological considerations. Granted, Americans were, by and large, a practical and not an ideological people, but they had embraced a pair of ideas that took deep roots. First was republicanism. When Americans proclaimed their commitment to republicanism as part of the reaction against George III in 1776, most did so willy-nilly without knowing what it entailed. The body of literature on the subject was large and readily found, however, and soon public figures were versed on the subject. The actuating principle of a republic was public virtue, virtue meaning manly devotion of one's self to the wellbeing of the public. The opposite of virtue was vice, meaning effeminacy, or a love of luxury.
The very idea of economic growth that inheres in a market economy was incompatible with this primary principle of republicanism. Plato, believing that relative equality of property is essential to a republic, proposed to limit inheritances and recommended that no republic be established on the sea or on a navigable river, for that "would expose it to the dangers of commerce" and the inequalities that resulted from trade. Lycurgus, "in the most perfect model of government that was ever framed," ancient Sparta, had forbidden trade altogether. And Montesquieu, whom American devoutly admired, declared that if people were allowed "to dispose of property [as they] pleased," a republic would be "utterly undone." As disparate a pair of Americans as John Adams and Benjamin Franklin agreed. Adams denounced credit as responsible for "most of the Luxury & Folly which has yet infected our People," and declared that anyone who could devise a way to abolish credit forever "would deserve a Statue to his Memory." Franklin characterized commerce as "generally cheating" and wrote bitterly of its corrupting and debilitating effects.
Biden won’t make a formal declaration of Martial Law but take my word for it, those insurrectionists, — in Admiral Yamamoto’s words after the attack on Pearl Harbor — have awoken a sleeping giant that is about to disinfect and expunge them from the body politic. With bleach. As if they need to be any whiter.
Yeah, I’m a socialist republican. Like the Irish Republican Party has been since 1896.