Democracies Fail Without Adult Supervision

_{Barry Arrington

November 16, 2018

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Pure democracies are inherently unstable. Exhibit A for why that is so:

Progressive Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

The reason for the fiscal instability of a pure democracy was captured in a widely circulated quotation usually attributed to Alexander Fraser Tytler:

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy . . .

Ocasio-Cortez has a list of goodies she wants the federal government to dispense, including Medicare for all, jobs guarantees, student loan forgiveness, free college, paid family leave, and Social Security expansion. The price tag is $40 trillion (with a “t”) over the next 10 years. We would have to more than double federal taxes to pay for it all.

When asked how she proposes to pay for all of this she responded, “the same way you pay for anything; you just pay for it.” It is truly frightening that someone as aggressively stupid as Ocasio-Cortez was not only elected to the United States House of Representatives, she was elected easily by a very wide margin.

The glory of the American system of government established by the Constitution is that it provides for majority rule with distinctly anti-majoritarian checks. It is, as it were, “democracy with adult supervision.” Ocasio-Cortez needs adult supervision. It does not take a genius to realize that if she ran the House and Sanders ran the Senate the county would go bankrupt so fast your head would spin.

Keep this in mind the next time you hear some pundit whine about how insufficiently democratic our federal government is. The Constitution did not establish a democracy. To which I say, thank God.

And , yes, this post has nothing to do with ID.

Comments

BA77
Trump’s net worth has decreased not increased:
Since he refuses to release his tax returns, how does anyone know?Ed George_{November 18, 2018
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Are you really that clueless?john_a_designer_{November 18, 2018
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What does "like me" mean?Mimus_{November 18, 2018
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Mimus @ 21,
Speaking as someone who lives in a representative democracy, could I just point out US government, political system and electoral machinery and not exactly a shining model of a functional democracy these days…
And whose fault is that? Isn’t it people like you?john_a_designer_{November 18, 2018
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Seversky, your distorted view of Trump is so delusional it is even worse, more distorted and delusional, (if such a thing were possible), than your Darwinian view of how all life came to be on earth. For one example out of many I could pick from your rant, contrary to what you erroneously believe, Trump's net worth has decreased not increased:
Donald Trump Falls 11 More Spots On The Forbes 400 List - Oct 3, 2018 American billionaires may be getting richer, but America’s billionaire president is not. Forbes released its annual ranking of the 400 richest people in the U.S. today. And, while the average list member’s net worth rose by $600 million over the past year, Donald Trump’s remained flat at an estimated $3.1 billion. Trump is now the 259th-richest person in America, by our count, down 11 spots on the ranking since last year. It’s the third consecutive year that he has fallen in the ranks. In 2015, just after he launched his campaign for president, Forbes estimated Trump’s fortune to be $4.5 billion, good for the 121st spot on the list. Since then he has dropped 138 places, in spite of the surging stock market,,, https://www.forbes.com/sites/chasewithorn/2018/10/03/donald-trump-falls-11-more-spots-on-the-forbes-400-list/#5b878a4c79f1
Thus unlike politicians like say the Clintons, Trump certainly has not gotten richer because of politics (but amazingly he has lifted millions out of poverty, and into jobs,).
"You can't get rich in politics unless you're a crook." - Harry Truman Clinton Cash http://www.clintoncashbook.com/
bornagain77_{November 18, 2018
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Speaking as someone who lives in a representative democracy, could I just point out US government, political system and electoral machinery and not exactly a shining model of a functional democracy these days...Mimus_{November 18, 2018
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The Tytler quotation at the beginning of this post was captured long ago in the figure of speech "bread and circuses", originally attributed to Juvenal, Satire 10.77–81, c. 100 AD. "Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses." See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses Another example is the prime minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, who upon presenting a national budget with a huge deficit, infamously declared that "budgets balance themselves". Thus, this weakness of democracies is apparently longstanding and widespread. But as Winston Churchill supposedly said, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others."Fasteddious_{November 18, 2018
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ayearningforpublius @ 17
Your comparison of your President Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler is truly vulgar and totally off the mark. A more apt comparison would be Trump and Ronald Reagan, for reasons that are becoming more clear as the months roll by. But I doubt you will expend any energy, time or integrity to investigate for yourself. A real danger and national tragedy in the Hitler/Nazi name calling is that young impressionable and uneducated minds, such as perhaps your own grandchildren, will come to associate people who support our president with the monsters of history.
My father served in WWII as just one of millions of Allied troops who fought a bloody war to destroy the Nazi regime an Imperial Japan. What is utterly outrageous and deeply offensive is that, not only has Trump courted and received the support of white supremacist groups who are the spiritual descendants of the Nazis, he has even had people who share such views in the inner circle of his advisers. Can you imagine what Roosevelt or Truman would have thought about that? Trump is not Hitler. Yet. But the Hitler of the Twenties and Thirties was not the Hitler we know now. He was seen in Germany as a strong but good man who could lead the country out of the mess of the Weimar Republic and the Great Depression and restore their political, military and economic power. To that end the German people were prepared to overlook a certain amount of bad behavior. By the time the bad behavior became so bad it could no longer be ignored, it was too late to do anything about it. The US is still a long, long way from that situation but we owe it to the generation that fought the Nazis to make sure that it never happens again.Seversky_{November 18, 2018
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bornagain77 @ 8
oh goody, Seversky, the Darwinist, compares Trump to Hitler. If that were really true you, the Darwinist, should love Trump
Trump isn't concerned with the survival of the fittest, just the survival - and enrichment - of Donald Trump. To that end he'll dogwhistle racist views to the white supremacists, pretend to Christian belief to the religious and support the national myth of a United States that has been chosen by God to be the greatest country on Earth. He says whatever he thinks his chosen audience wants to hear. He couldn't give a damn about whether it's true or false as long as he gets his way. The sad thing is a whole lot of people swallow his BS hook, line and sinker.
Moreover since Trump has been the most pro-Israel president in decades, as well as lowering the unemployment rate for minorities to there lowest levels ever, I guess your Hitler comparison to Trump falls flat in a rather dramatic fashion.
Support for Israel goes down well with Christian evangelicals. Trump also made it clear he would have no problem with an influx of white immigrants from Scandinavia, for example. What he doesn't want, which plays into the strand of racist bigotry in US society is invading hordes of brown-skinned people pouring over the southern border, who are mostly drug-dealers, rapists and MS-13 gang-members. Poverty-stricken refugees desperate enough to trek thousands of miles on foot hoping for a safe haven in the United States from horrendous conditions in various Central and South American countries don't count. You think Trump could give a toss about black unemployment except where the figures make him look good?
Why would Darwinists disavow their most ardent champion, Hitler???
Show me where Hitler championed Darwinism and I'll show you several passages where he appealed to Christian belief.Seversky_{November 18, 2018
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Seversky Your comparison of your President Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler is truly vulgar and totally off the mark. A more apt comparison would be Trump and Ronald Reagan, for reasons that are becoming more clear as the months roll by. But I doubt you will expend any energy, time or integrity to investigate for yourself. A real danger and national tragedy in the Hitler/Nazi name calling is that young impressionable and uneducated minds, such as perhaps your own grandchildren, will come to associate people who support our president with the monsters of history.ayearningforpublius_{November 18, 2018
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Who is Jul3s and whose side is he on? Is he sympathetic with ID or does he oppose it? If it’s the latter his “sage advice” is a tad disingenuous, is it not?john_a_designer_{November 18, 2018
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Jul3s, So you fear that people who are emotionally 'tribal' in their politics will also be emotionally tribal in their science? :) Again, letting your emotions dictate your science and politics is an absolutely horrible way to go about science and politics and is only bound to put you in logically untenable positions again and again, Moreover, in case you haven't noticed, Darwinists, since they have no empirical evidence to back up their grandiose claims, have been trying to smear ID with name calling for a very long, long, time. Other than outright lying about the true state of the empirical evidence, name-calling is practically Darwinism's main defense against ID. No matter what IDists do, since Darwinism is itself based on a religious/political agenda, instead of on any actual science, Darwinism will call ID names and try to hypocritically accuse ID of being the same exact thing that Darwinism actually is, i.e. a religion masquerading as science.
"Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian, but I must admit that in this one complaint, and Mr. Gish is but one of many to make it, the literalists are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today." Ruse, M., How evolution became a religion: creationists correct? Darwinians wrongly mix science with morality, politics, National Post, pp. B1, B3, B7 (May 13, 2000)
And again, the supposed science of Darwinism is itself based on (bad liberal) theology not on empirical evidence,
CHARLES DARWIN: VICTORIAN MYTHMAKER By A.N. Wilson (Book Review By Jonathan Wells) - - Wednesday, January 31, 2018 Excerpt: Darwin called “The Origin of Species” “one long argument,” and it was a theology-laden argument against creation by design. Many people have the mistaken impression that Darwin’s theory was accepted because he provided so much scientific evidence for it (he didn’t). Instead, his theory was accepted because it fit the increasingly secular spirit of the times.,,, So Darwinian evolution is not so much a scientific theory as it is a secular creation myth. According to Mr. Wilson, “Darwinism, as is shown by the current state of debate, is resistant to argument because it is resistant to fact. The worship of Darwin as a man, the attribution to him of insights and discoveries which were either part of the common scientific store of knowledge or were the discoveries of others, this is all necessary to bolster the religion of Darwinism.” Mr. Wilson’s book is not flawless, but on this point he’s right. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/jan/31/book-review-charles-darwin-by-an-wilson/ Methodological Naturalism: A Rule That No One Needs or Obeys - Paul Nelson - September 22, 2014 Excerpt: It is a little-remarked but nonetheless deeply significant irony that evolutionary biology is the most theologically entangled science going. Open a book like Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True (2009) or John Avise's Inside the Human Genome (2010), and the theology leaps off the page. A wise creator, say Coyne, Avise, and many other evolutionary biologists, would not have made this or that structure; therefore, the structure evolved by undirected processes. Coyne and Avise, like many other evolutionary theorists going back to Darwin himself, make numerous "God-wouldn't-have-done-it-that-way" arguments, thus predicating their arguments for the creative power of natural selection and random mutation on implicit theological assumptions about the character of God and what such an agent (if He existed) would or would not be likely to do.,,, ,,,with respect to one of the most famous texts in 20th-century biology, Theodosius Dobzhansky's essay "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution" (1973). Although its title is widely cited as an aphorism, the text of Dobzhansky's essay is rarely read. It is, in fact, a theological treatise. As Dilley (2013, p. 774) observes: "Strikingly, all seven of Dobzhansky's arguments hinge upon claims about God's nature, actions, purposes, or duties. In fact, without God-talk, the geneticist's arguments for evolution are logically invalid. In short, theology is essential to Dobzhansky's arguments.",, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/09/methodological_1089971.html
Moreover, it is impossible to even 'do science' in the first place without basic theistic presuppositions about the rational intelligibility of the universe and the ability of our 'made in the image of God' minds to be be able to grasp that rational intelligibility.
Science and Theism: Concord, not Conflict* – Robert C. Koons IV. The Dependency of Science Upon Theism (Page 21) Excerpt: Far from undermining the credibility of theism, the remarkable success of science in modern times is a remarkable confirmation of the truth of theism. It was from the perspective of Judeo-Christian theism—and from the perspective alone—that it was predictable that science would have succeeded as it has. Without the faith in the rational intelligibility of the world and the divine vocation of human beings to master it, modern science would never have been possible, and, even today, the continued rationality of the enterprise of science depends on convictions that can be reasonably grounded only in theistic metaphysics. http://www.robkoons.net/media/69b0dd04a9d2fc6dffff80b3ffffd524.pdf
Thus, since science itself was born out of, and is still, despite what atheists may claim to the contrary, very much dependent on Judeo-Christian presuppositions, it is simply impossible to completely divorce science from Theology. i.e. "Religion" will always be the elephant in the room. In fact, in their attempt to divorce science from its Theological foundation, Atheists have wound up in a world of illusion and fantasy. Although the Darwinist firmly believes he is on the terra firma of science, (in his appeal, even demand, for methodological naturalism), the fact of the matter is that Darwinists are adrift in an ocean of fantasy and imagination with no discernible anchor for reality to grab on to:
Darwin’s Theory vs Falsification – 39:45 minute mark https://youtu.be/8rzw0JkuKuQ?t=2387 Excerpt: Basically, because of reductive materialism (and/or methodological naturalism), the atheistic materialist is forced to claim that he is merely a ‘neuronal illusion’ (Coyne, Dennett, etc..), who has the illusion of free will (Harris), who has unreliable beliefs about reality (Plantinga), who has illusory perceptions of reality (Hoffman), who, since he has no real time empirical evidence substantiating his grandiose claims, must make up illusory “just so stories” with the illusory, and impotent, ‘designer substitute’ of natural selection (Behe, Gould, Sternberg), so as to ‘explain away’ the appearance (i.e. illusion) of design (Crick, Dawkins), and who must make up illusory meanings and purposes for his life since the reality of the nihilism inherent in his atheistic worldview is too much for him to bear (Weikart), and who must also hold morality to be subjective and illusory since he has rejected God (Craig, Kreeft). Bottom line, nothing is real in the atheist’s worldview, least of all, morality, meaning and purposes for life.,,, Paper with references for each claim page; Page 37: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pAYmZpUWFEi3hu45FbQZEvGKsZ9GULzh8KM0CpqdePk/edit
Thus, although the Darwinian Atheist firmly believes he is on the terra firma of science (in his appeal, even demand, for methodological naturalism), the fact of the matter is that, when examining the details of his materialistic/naturalistic worldview, it is found that Darwinists/Atheists are adrift in an ocean of fantasy and imagination with no discernible anchor for reality to grab on to. It would be hard to fathom a worldview more antagonistic to modern science than Atheistic materialism and/or methodological naturalism have turned out to be.
2 Corinthians 10:5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;
And I would also hold that, in so far as atheistic ideology influences politics, as it does with socialism and/or communism, that politics itself will end up in a world of fantasy and imagination with no discernible anchor of reality to grab onto. For prime example, Cortez's grossly fiscally irresponsible fantasy that is highlighted in the OPbornagain77_{November 18, 2018
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"Premise 3: you fear that to point out an absurd political position on this site" No. "could potentially alienate people from ID who hold to Cortez’s grossly fiscally irresponsible position." Again, no. It is naive to think that criticizing an individual politician will only put off people who personally support them. Even if it did, there is no need to virtue signal about being economically literate on a design-in-nature site. Reality check, politics is tribal in one way or another and most people overall sympathize more with one side than with the other. An attack on candidates on one side can be seen as an attack on that entire side, even if individuals on that side disagree with each other. Criticism of one politician for being fiscally irresponsible doesn't make you look smart, it just raises questions as to why there isn't criticism of the other side here. Virtue signalling and going after easy political targets only on one side on a supposedly design-in-nature themed website reeks of partisanship. It is unpersuasive to people who are not fully aligned with you on all or most issues. "Moreover, I find your premises to not be valid which invalidates your conclusion even before it gets off the ground." Throughout the West at least, there is the fear, the fear of "creationists in cheap tuxedos" that Berlinski described. Wherever the topic of the design-in-nature debate comes up, the accusation of having a religious/political agenda is sure to follow, its practically an axiom in the mainstream. ""And again even if I granted your premises, I find your conclusion to be non-persuasive." So you see no value in leaving partisanship outside of a scientific debate. That is very worrying.Jul3s_{November 17, 2018
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As to: "You misrepresent my conclusion,",,, "Posts such as this one are fuel for the fear Berlinski talks about." Well then, let's amend,,, Premise 1: the evolution-ID debate is in a stalemate. Premise 2: the reason the evolution-ID debate is in a stalemate is political not scientific. Premise 3: you fear that to point out an absurd political position on this site, such as Cortez's grossly fiscally irresponsible one, could potentially alienate people from ID who hold to Cortez's grossly fiscally irresponsible position. Conclusion 4: it is counterproductive to talk about absurd political positions since you fear people holding those absurd political positions may be driven away from ID. :) Again, your conclusion does not follow from your premises in that it is founded on the 'phantom fear' that somehow people who are not able to clearly see that Cortez's socialist position actually is grossly fiscally irresponsible, will somehow 'emotionally' be driven away from ID. Reality check, anyone who is deciding certain political positions, as well as what is true about reality, based on their emotions rather than on the logic and evidence is not going to be persuaded by the rock solid science for ID anyway. Moreover, I find your premises to not be valid which invalidates your conclusion even before it gets off the ground. And again even if I granted your premises, I find your conclusion to be non-persuasive.bornagain77_{November 17, 2018
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You misrepresent my conclusion, I never said that. There is a huge difference between "talking about the political aspect of the stalemate" and actively pushing an agenda. Posts such as this one are fuel for the fear Berlinski talks about. That is the issue I raised and that you didn't even address in your reply. It's clear now that being accessible and persuasive across the aisle isn't a goal of this site.Jul3s_{November 17, 2018
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Jul3s Premise 1: the evolution-ID debate is in a stalemate. Premise 2: the reason the evolution-ID debate is in a stalemate is political not scientific. Conclusion 3: it is counterproductive to talk about the political aspect of the stalemate even though it is the main driving force of the stalemate. Your conclusion does not follow from your premises. Moreover, I would argue over your two premises. The second premise in particular. I hold that the main divide between Darwinism and ID is a religious divide not a political divide per se, (with Darwinism falling firmly in the religious camp, since it is basically, at least the way Darwinists treat their theory, a unfalsifiable pseudoscience), from which politics somewhat loosely follow,, (i.e. although most, if not all, hard core atheistic Darwinists on the internet are far left, most Democrats are not atheists)bornagain77_{November 17, 2018
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In the ID the Future podcast David Berlinski & Michael Denton, Pt. 2: Darwinian Stalemate? Berlinksi says: "Why is the (evolution-ID) debate stable? ... And there are complicated answers, I don't think they're scientific. I think there is in this country a tremendous fear that any form of criticism of Darwin has an underlying political agenda." If Berlinski is right, (and he most likely is), then this thread and others like it contribute nothing useful to this site and are counterproductive.Jul3s_{November 17, 2018
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BA, Looks like it is relevant to point to Plato's parable of the ship of state (notice, the mutiny and manipulation): https://kairosfocus.blogspot.com/2018/10/platos-ship-of-state-parable-how.html and to Luke's subtle echo in Ac 27: https://kairosfocus.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-ship-of-state-2-acts-27-as-case.html Democracy can too easily become a manipulated, mob-ruled voyage of stubborn, doomed folly, a de-mock-racy: https://www.themontserratreporter.com/de-ole-dawg-part-15-2016-will-we-have-democracy-or-de-mock-racy/ . . . so, we must address restoring the foundations of a sound society. KF PS: On the logic of revolution, words to give us pause: https://americanmind.org/essays/our-revolutions-logic/kairosfocus_{November 17, 2018
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oh goody, Seversky, the Darwinist, compares Trump to Hitler. If that were really true you, the Darwinist, should love Trump. Hitler took Darwinian thinking to its logical end and applied it to society as a whole, specifically to those he deemed unfit to survive. Why would Darwinists disavow their most ardent champion, Hitler??? Moreover since Trump has been the most pro-Israel president in decades, as well as lowering the unemployment rate for minorities to there lowest levels ever, I guess your Hitler comparison to Trump falls flat in a rather dramatic fashion. When will you ever judge rightly Seversky?bornagain77_{November 16, 2018
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A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy . . .
The greatest threat to a democracy is an uninformed electorate whose ignorance and fear can be exploited by whatever populist demagogue - whether left or right - most effectively says whatever they think they want to hear. The left will promise a package of financial, health and social security benefits which would cripple the economy; the right - forgetting their principles of fiscal prudence - slash taxes which makes the wealthy and big corporations even richer and sends the national debt through the roof - like from $18tn-$22tn since 2016. Sadly, the traditional Republican Party has ceased to exist. It has been mutated into the Trump Nationalist Party, basically a herd of RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) who go lumbering after their would-be Fuhrer in whatever direction pops into his narcissistic head at any given moment. I suspect the only thing that is stopping him renaming it the Trump National Socialist Party is that anything "socialist" is anathema to his base and he knows it. Given his predilection for Twitter, though, I suppose he could call it the Trump National Social Media Party. Instead of Nazis they would be Tweetzis. More seriously, it was said Donald Trump was a measure of how much Hilary Clinton was disliked and distrusted by a large part of the electorate and I think there is a lot of truth in that. Polls had been showing - and continue to show - that Congress and the Washington establishment are held in abysmally low regard. But it didn't seemed to worry them at all and apparently still doesn't. They still seem to think they can safely ignore it. Trump's election proved them wrong although it doesn't look like the older generation have learned the lesson. Not that it matters since that older generation will become increasingly irrelevant as it falls to the next generation to cope with their inheritance of climate change and a burgeoning national debt which has to be paid off somehow or other. The worrying thing is that we have a president who's one real skill seems to be wriggling out of bankruptcies relatively unscathed, meaning others are left bearing the losses. Not a good precedent - or president.Seversky_{November 16, 2018
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The chief advantage of democracy is that it allows most adults to vote on most policies. In North America, that has produced a great deal of stability. People forget that there has not been a civil war north of the Rio Grande since 1865. US: 50 states, Canada: 10 provinces, 3 territories. But no civil war. No war between the two sovereign states for over two centuries. When we consider the history of comparable parts of the world in terms of size and population density, that merits some reflection. I think one reason is that, for example, Ocasio-Cortez was not put there without most of her district voting for her. If she is a fool, she is a popular one. If people are willing to live with the results, so be it. If they regret their choice, they can find out by consulting a calendar when they can do something about it. The secret to immense stability is that there is no reason to consider throwing bombs or overthrowing the government, no matter what she does, because everything is limited by something else. I hope it stays that way.News_{November 16, 2018
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As has already been pointed out here, some of America’s founding fathers were quite cautious of democracy. They saw the danger of subversive “factions” illegitimately seizing power and destabilizing the government. That is one of the reasons they designed so-called checks and balances in the constitution so it would be difficult to seize power. For example, Kevin Williamson who writes for The National Review points out that "John Adams hated democracy and he feared what was known in the language of the time as ‘passion.’ Adams’s famous assessment: ‘I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on the whole, and in the long run, than monarchy or aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either.’ Democracy, he wrote, ‘never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty.’ " https://www.nationalreview.com/2016/03/donald-trump-populist-demagogue-john-adams-anticipated/ Adams goes on to warn us,
[that] no government [is] capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge and licentiousness would break the strongest cords of our Constitution, as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. Oaths in this country are as yet universally considered as sacred obligations. That which you have taken, and so solemnly repeated on that venerable ground, is an ample pledge of your sincerity and devotion to your country and its government.
The difference between then and now? The majority of people living in America at the time believed that moral values and obligations were grounded in a transcendent moral standard (an eternal self-existing Creator and Lawgiver-- God.) Today we live in a society dominated moral subjectivism and relativism. What value are so-called human rights if they have no grounding in something eternal and transcendent. If morals are only very transient human inventions then they carry no real interpersonal obligations. Without real interpersonal moral obligations there is no such thing as a right. There is certainly no possibility that human rights are universal and timeless.john_a_designer_{November 16, 2018
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I had a conversation with a democrat the other day. It went something like this.
Dem: I voted in the midterm so as to stop Donald Trump Me: Are you for open borders? Do you believe that whoever wants to come in to America can just come in? Dem: Well, I think that maybe immigrants should be vetted. Me: That is not what the main platform of the Democratic party is anymore. They basically want completely open borders and to abolish ICE. After a moments thought he states,,, Dem: Well the Europeans had no right to come to America and take it from the Indians. Me: So are you are saying that the United States should not even exist at all? Dem: Yes! ,,, (Please note that this was, of all people, a veteran that I was talking to) Me: So are you going to leave America and go back to Europe? Dem: Wellll??? Me: Don't you think that God had a divine hand in the founding of America? You know, divine providence? The defeat of the Nazis and Communists and all that??? Dem: NO!
,,, I left the table thoroughly angry and disgusted. Here was a military veteran so thoroughly brainwashed by leftist ideology that he no longer believed that the country that he laid his life on the line for has any right to exist, and that its borders can thus be crossed with impunity by foreigners. Later that evening, I ordered this book:
The American Miracle: Divine Providence in the Rise of the Republic by Michael Medved https://www.amazon.com/American-Miracle-Divine-Providence-Republic-ebook/dp/B01BAU6ES0
I plan to not so subtly read it right in front of my brainwashed Democratic friend so he can clearly see the cover. Here is an interview with Medved about the book
Michael Medved dicusses "The American Miracle" @ AFA's Literary Cafe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SM7EDjMk6U
bornagain77_{November 16, 2018
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As Ocasio-Cortez would say, "I mean, yeah, Barry, fur shur,, awesome man, you know, I mean, like, woh." I am not sure that the subject is entirely off topic, however. The progressives are all anti-Logos, anti-design, revolutionary partisans. Invariably they prefer disorder to order. The point is that it requires very little intelligence to make a mess of things. As a wise man once said, "Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a good carpenter to build one. So it is with a well-ordered society.StephenB_{November 16, 2018
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Here is the detailed Sanders/Ocasio-Cortez socialist plan for free electricity for all Americans: https://scontent.ffcm1-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/46336620_2112164295480676_1032677770531962880_n.png?_nc_cat=104&_nc_ht=scontent.ffcm1-2.fna&oh=0a184152feefb07c41a428bcd64cad83&oe=5CB109C1 :)bornagain77_{November 16, 2018
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I read a quote from one of the Founders who said that Democracy could work in the new United States because the vast majority of the citizens were from the same culture (i.e., English Protestants). The common culture of Americans only began to change when boatloads of CATHOLIC Irish came over in he 1840s. (Note that John Kennedy was remarkable because he was the first CATHOLIC president. Andrew Jackson was an Irishman, but he was Protestant.) Also note that most States (and cities and counties) had a requirement that only PROPERTY OWNERS could vote. A common requirement was owning property worth at least 50 pounds, back when land was cheap and even 1 pound was a LOT of money. And of course only men could vote. It's unlikely that the Founders would have proposed the same Constitution if they were writing it with today's cultural mixture.vmahuna_{November 16, 2018
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