THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR November 11, 2018 at 7:17 pm
Paul Plante says :
And should we really be at all surprised in any way that since his loss to Ted Cruz, the Democrats are now touting liberal heartthrob Beto O’Rourke as having sufficient superstar power with liberal women to be the next Democrat president of the United States, that according to an article in The Hill entitled “Beto 2020 calls multiply among Dems” by Amie Parnes on 11/11/18, as follows:
Democrats are seeing a silver lining to Rep. Beto O’Rourke’s loss in Texas to Sen. Ted Cruz (R).
It means O’Rourke, who emerged in the midterms as a progressive star, is free to run for president.
end quotes
See what I am saying here, people?
There it is in black and white – O’Rourke is now a progressive star in America, and if it wasn’t true, The Hill could not say it!
Which takes us back to The Hill, as follows:
Democrats across the country say that if O’Rourke wants to run for president, he has the potential to take the primary by storm.
“If he wants to run, he should do it,” said Democratic strategist Maria Cardona.
“He now has name recognition, a widely successful fundraising operation, a young fresh face with a sprinkling of woke, a cool persona, a new perspective, he speaks Spanish and would be an exciting and upbeat candidate,” she said.
end quotes
A young fresh face with a sprinkling of woke and a cool persona!
Yes, people, to the liberal women of America, that is all it takes to be presidential material in America today – if you have that sprinkling of woke and a cool persona, it doesn’t matter to the liberal women if you have an empty head – with them, you are in like Flynn!
And such is American politics today, as we see from this following from that Hill article, to wit:
Another strategist was even more enthusiastic.
“I hate to say this because it would piss off a lot of Democrats, but the fact is we have so many people and we really have nobody that’s thrilling, nobody that would send a thrill up Chris Matthews’s leg except for Beto,” the strategist said, referencing the MSNBC “Hardball” host, who expressed such excitement about hearing former President Obama speak.
“You know how I know?”
“I had friends calling me to ask about him.”
“I would overhear conversations about him.”
“He’s generating the kind of buzz we haven’t seen since ‘hope and change’,” the strategist added.
end quotes
So sending a thrill up Chris Matthews’s leg is a necessary qualification for a liberal Democrat presidential contender!
Isn’t that just so sweet?
But that’s the way you have to do it to be a liberal Democrat presidential contender in America today and score the liberal women’s vote in America, and there we are, people, Beto for 2020!
He was able to raise an enormous amount of money, afterall, and he has a bit of a star quality to him, and people in Texas, especially liberal women, were mesmerized and moved by him.
“He has to think hard about it because moments like this don’t come around often in politics and they tend to be fleeting,” said Democratic strategist David Wade, who served as a senior aide to John Kerry.
Wade compared O’Rourke’s moment with the time Obama captured Democrats’ imagination when he gave the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.
“Imagine if Barack Obama has deferred his instant connection from the 2004 convention and waited for a safer cycle to run for president,” Wade said.
“You can’t guarantee that these moments last forever.”
“Moments change.”
“Political demand signals change.”
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/a ... ment-92486
Just musings, is all
Re: Just musings, is all
THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR November 11, 2018 at 8:01 pm
Paul Plante says :
Yes, indeed, people, making it up as they go along!
American history, I mean, as we can clearly see in an editorial in the Hearst publication, the Albany, New York Times Union, entitled “Editorial: Correct America’s course” on October 29, 2018, where we are fed this following falsehood, to wit:
It is time to restore a two-party system, for the sake of the country.
Regardless of whether you’re Republican, Democratic, a member of a minor party or an independent, it’s hard to imagine any thoughtful American would be comfortable with the idea of absolute control of Washington, D.C., by a single political party.
The last 22 months have shown us the dangers of a federal government without the checks and balances envisioned by the nation’s founders and set forth in the Constitution.
end quotes
What hog**** that is, because the so-called “two-party” system, which has all political power in this nation in the hands of just two factions, both of which are minority factions in terms of population in America, is not set forth in the United States Constitution, at all, nor did the so-called “nation’s founders” put in place the two-party system in the United States of America as a check and balance on anything.
And in fact, the Era of Good Feelings in America, which certainly does not exist today, marked a period in the political history of the United States that reflected a sense of national purpose and a desire for unity among Americans in the aftermath of the War of 1812.
That era of American history saw the collapse of the Federalist Party and an end to the bitter partisan disputes between it and the dominant Democratic-Republican Party during the First Party System.
President James Monroe strove to downplay partisan affiliation in making his nominations, with the ultimate goal of national unity and eliminating parties altogether from national politics.
So much for this spew of hog**** from the editorial staff of the Albany Times Union about the two-party system being essential to the functioning of government here in the United States of America!
As to this internecine political warfare we see plaguing this country today, as the Democrats make open war on the Republicans in a naked grab for power, it was after the Era of Good Feelings, during and after the 1824 presidential election, when the Democratic-Republican Party split between supporters and opponents of Jacksonian Nationalism, leading to the Second Party System, which plagues our nation today.
As to the First Party System, which ended when the Era of Good Feelings began, it was a model of American politics used in history and political science to periodize the political party system existing in the United States between roughly 1792 and 1824.
It featured two national parties competing for control of the presidency, Congress, and the states: the Federalist Party, created largely by Alexander Hamilton, and the rival Jeffersonian Democratic-Republican Party formed by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and usually called at the time the “Republican Party.”
The Federalists were dominant until 1800, while the Republicans were dominant after 1800.
In an analysis of the contemporary party system, Jefferson wrote on February 12, 1798:
“Two political Sects have arisen within the U. S., the one believing that the executive is the branch of our government which the most needs support; the other that like the analogous branch in the English Government, it is already too strong for the republican parts of the Constitution; and therefore in equivocal cases they incline to the legislative powers: the former of these are called federalists, sometimes aristocrats or monocrats, and sometimes Tories, after the corresponding sect in the English Government of exactly the same definition: the latter are stiled republicans, Whigs, jacobins, anarchists, dis-organizers, etc.; these terms are in familiar use with most persons.”
Contrary to the hog**** the editorial board of the Albany Times Union is making up as it goes along there in support of the Democrat party in this recent election, the Constitution did not create either of those parties, nor did the founders intend them into being.
Rather, they were the result of something – that being the struggle for political power at the national level here in the United States of America after the new Constitution was ratified.
Getting back to the so-called “First Party System,” and the power struggle, both parties originated in national politics, but soon expanded their efforts to gain supporters and voters in every state.
The Federalists appealed to the business community, the Republicans to the planters and farmers.
Thus, we see the original lines of political division in America exposed here for all to see, and that is supposed to be our common political history, no matter your personal political persuasion, because history as it happened should trump politics.
So why doesn’t it, then?
Any thoughts, anyone?
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/o ... ment-92521
Paul Plante says :
Yes, indeed, people, making it up as they go along!
American history, I mean, as we can clearly see in an editorial in the Hearst publication, the Albany, New York Times Union, entitled “Editorial: Correct America’s course” on October 29, 2018, where we are fed this following falsehood, to wit:
It is time to restore a two-party system, for the sake of the country.
Regardless of whether you’re Republican, Democratic, a member of a minor party or an independent, it’s hard to imagine any thoughtful American would be comfortable with the idea of absolute control of Washington, D.C., by a single political party.
The last 22 months have shown us the dangers of a federal government without the checks and balances envisioned by the nation’s founders and set forth in the Constitution.
end quotes
What hog**** that is, because the so-called “two-party” system, which has all political power in this nation in the hands of just two factions, both of which are minority factions in terms of population in America, is not set forth in the United States Constitution, at all, nor did the so-called “nation’s founders” put in place the two-party system in the United States of America as a check and balance on anything.
And in fact, the Era of Good Feelings in America, which certainly does not exist today, marked a period in the political history of the United States that reflected a sense of national purpose and a desire for unity among Americans in the aftermath of the War of 1812.
That era of American history saw the collapse of the Federalist Party and an end to the bitter partisan disputes between it and the dominant Democratic-Republican Party during the First Party System.
President James Monroe strove to downplay partisan affiliation in making his nominations, with the ultimate goal of national unity and eliminating parties altogether from national politics.
So much for this spew of hog**** from the editorial staff of the Albany Times Union about the two-party system being essential to the functioning of government here in the United States of America!
As to this internecine political warfare we see plaguing this country today, as the Democrats make open war on the Republicans in a naked grab for power, it was after the Era of Good Feelings, during and after the 1824 presidential election, when the Democratic-Republican Party split between supporters and opponents of Jacksonian Nationalism, leading to the Second Party System, which plagues our nation today.
As to the First Party System, which ended when the Era of Good Feelings began, it was a model of American politics used in history and political science to periodize the political party system existing in the United States between roughly 1792 and 1824.
It featured two national parties competing for control of the presidency, Congress, and the states: the Federalist Party, created largely by Alexander Hamilton, and the rival Jeffersonian Democratic-Republican Party formed by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and usually called at the time the “Republican Party.”
The Federalists were dominant until 1800, while the Republicans were dominant after 1800.
In an analysis of the contemporary party system, Jefferson wrote on February 12, 1798:
“Two political Sects have arisen within the U. S., the one believing that the executive is the branch of our government which the most needs support; the other that like the analogous branch in the English Government, it is already too strong for the republican parts of the Constitution; and therefore in equivocal cases they incline to the legislative powers: the former of these are called federalists, sometimes aristocrats or monocrats, and sometimes Tories, after the corresponding sect in the English Government of exactly the same definition: the latter are stiled republicans, Whigs, jacobins, anarchists, dis-organizers, etc.; these terms are in familiar use with most persons.”
Contrary to the hog**** the editorial board of the Albany Times Union is making up as it goes along there in support of the Democrat party in this recent election, the Constitution did not create either of those parties, nor did the founders intend them into being.
Rather, they were the result of something – that being the struggle for political power at the national level here in the United States of America after the new Constitution was ratified.
Getting back to the so-called “First Party System,” and the power struggle, both parties originated in national politics, but soon expanded their efforts to gain supporters and voters in every state.
The Federalists appealed to the business community, the Republicans to the planters and farmers.
Thus, we see the original lines of political division in America exposed here for all to see, and that is supposed to be our common political history, no matter your personal political persuasion, because history as it happened should trump politics.
So why doesn’t it, then?
Any thoughts, anyone?
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/o ... ment-92521
Re: Just musings, is all
THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR November 15, 2018 at 11:48 am
Paul Plante says :
What a mockery our national government has become.
Everything that the authors of the Federalist Papers, Jemmy Madison, and Alexander Hamilton, said would not come true in America in terms of destructive combinations taking control of our national government pretty much has.
For example, in FEDERALIST No. 60, Concerning the Power of Congress to Regulate the Election of Members, from the New York Packet to the People of the State of New York by Alexander Hamilton on Tuesday, February 26, 1788, he states as follows:
There is sufficient diversity in the state of property, in the genius, manners, and habits of the people of the different parts of the Union, to occasion a material diversity of disposition in their representatives towards the different ranks and conditions in society.
end quotes
But where do we see any genius in the American people today?
We have a national government fit to be the ruler of a nation of morons and idiots, not a people of genius.
In that same paper, Hamilton posed this question, to wit:
Or, to speak in the fashionable language of the adversaries to the Constitution, will it court the elevation of the wealthy and the well-born, to the exclusion and debasement of all the rest of the society?
end quotes
That being said as we witness the most costly mid-term in our history.
In FEDERALIST No. 57, The Alleged Tendency of the New Plan to Elevate the Few at the Expense of the Many Considered in Connection with Representation, from the New York Packet to the People of the State of New York on Tuesday, February 19, 1788, either Hamilton or Madison stated thusly:
THE THIRD charge against the House of Representatives is, that it will be taken from that class of citizens which will have least sympathy with the mass of the people, and be most likely to aim at an ambitious sacrifice of the many to the aggrandizement of the few.
Of all the objections which have been framed against the federal Constitution, this is perhaps the most extraordinary.
Whilst the objection itself is levelled against a pretended oligarchy, the principle of it strikes at the very root of republican government.
The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust.
The elective mode of obtaining rulers is the characteristic policy of republican government.
The means relied on in this form of government for preventing their degeneracy are numerous and various.
end quotes
HAH! is my answer to that.
We no longer have republican government in this country, it has been replaced with a democracy, so all those safeguards are out the window with respect to the House of Representatives.
In the beginning, perhaps, back when it was republican government, the aim of the political constitution might have been to first obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust, but now, it seems to be a case of selecting for “rulers” those with the proper sexual orientation, at least among the Democrats, anyway.
And we have no way of keeping these people virtuous, because the nation itself does not see value in having as public officials those with virtue.
Virtue gets in the way of cash flow, and so, we can’t have it in America.
In that same paper, the author, whether Madison or Hamilton, stated thusly:
If it be asked, what is to restrain the House of Representatives from making legal discriminations in favor of themselves and a particular class of the society?
I answer: the genius of the whole system; the nature of just and constitutional laws; and above all, the vigilant and manly spirit which actuates the people of America, a spirit which nourishes freedom, and in return is nourished by it.
end quotes
And again I say HAH!
How naïve they were, as can be seen in this sentence from that same Federalist Paper:
Duty, gratitude, interest, ambition itself, are the chords by which they will be bound to fidelity and sympathy with the great mass of the people.
end quotes
Not really, if anyone bothers to check on the approval rating of the United States Congress today.
Does Nancy Pelosi have a sense of duty to the American people regardless of party affiliation?
Does Nancy Pelosi feel any gratitude for the people of America, regardless of party affiliation?
Not hardly is the answer to both of those questions, which leads us to this further question from that same Federalist Paper, to wit:
What are we to say to the men who profess the most flaming zeal for republican government, yet boldly impeach the fundamental principle of it; who pretend to be champions for the right and the capacity of the people to choose their own rulers, yet maintain that they will prefer those only who will immediately and infallibly betray the trust committed to them?
end quotes
That one is simple to answer – they were right.
And here we are today, with Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats back in charge of the House of Representatives.
Isn’t insanity doing the same over and over again while expecting a different result?
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/t ... ment-94080
Paul Plante says :
What a mockery our national government has become.
Everything that the authors of the Federalist Papers, Jemmy Madison, and Alexander Hamilton, said would not come true in America in terms of destructive combinations taking control of our national government pretty much has.
For example, in FEDERALIST No. 60, Concerning the Power of Congress to Regulate the Election of Members, from the New York Packet to the People of the State of New York by Alexander Hamilton on Tuesday, February 26, 1788, he states as follows:
There is sufficient diversity in the state of property, in the genius, manners, and habits of the people of the different parts of the Union, to occasion a material diversity of disposition in their representatives towards the different ranks and conditions in society.
end quotes
But where do we see any genius in the American people today?
We have a national government fit to be the ruler of a nation of morons and idiots, not a people of genius.
In that same paper, Hamilton posed this question, to wit:
Or, to speak in the fashionable language of the adversaries to the Constitution, will it court the elevation of the wealthy and the well-born, to the exclusion and debasement of all the rest of the society?
end quotes
That being said as we witness the most costly mid-term in our history.
In FEDERALIST No. 57, The Alleged Tendency of the New Plan to Elevate the Few at the Expense of the Many Considered in Connection with Representation, from the New York Packet to the People of the State of New York on Tuesday, February 19, 1788, either Hamilton or Madison stated thusly:
THE THIRD charge against the House of Representatives is, that it will be taken from that class of citizens which will have least sympathy with the mass of the people, and be most likely to aim at an ambitious sacrifice of the many to the aggrandizement of the few.
Of all the objections which have been framed against the federal Constitution, this is perhaps the most extraordinary.
Whilst the objection itself is levelled against a pretended oligarchy, the principle of it strikes at the very root of republican government.
The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust.
The elective mode of obtaining rulers is the characteristic policy of republican government.
The means relied on in this form of government for preventing their degeneracy are numerous and various.
end quotes
HAH! is my answer to that.
We no longer have republican government in this country, it has been replaced with a democracy, so all those safeguards are out the window with respect to the House of Representatives.
In the beginning, perhaps, back when it was republican government, the aim of the political constitution might have been to first obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust, but now, it seems to be a case of selecting for “rulers” those with the proper sexual orientation, at least among the Democrats, anyway.
And we have no way of keeping these people virtuous, because the nation itself does not see value in having as public officials those with virtue.
Virtue gets in the way of cash flow, and so, we can’t have it in America.
In that same paper, the author, whether Madison or Hamilton, stated thusly:
If it be asked, what is to restrain the House of Representatives from making legal discriminations in favor of themselves and a particular class of the society?
I answer: the genius of the whole system; the nature of just and constitutional laws; and above all, the vigilant and manly spirit which actuates the people of America, a spirit which nourishes freedom, and in return is nourished by it.
end quotes
And again I say HAH!
How naïve they were, as can be seen in this sentence from that same Federalist Paper:
Duty, gratitude, interest, ambition itself, are the chords by which they will be bound to fidelity and sympathy with the great mass of the people.
end quotes
Not really, if anyone bothers to check on the approval rating of the United States Congress today.
Does Nancy Pelosi have a sense of duty to the American people regardless of party affiliation?
Does Nancy Pelosi feel any gratitude for the people of America, regardless of party affiliation?
Not hardly is the answer to both of those questions, which leads us to this further question from that same Federalist Paper, to wit:
What are we to say to the men who profess the most flaming zeal for republican government, yet boldly impeach the fundamental principle of it; who pretend to be champions for the right and the capacity of the people to choose their own rulers, yet maintain that they will prefer those only who will immediately and infallibly betray the trust committed to them?
end quotes
That one is simple to answer – they were right.
And here we are today, with Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats back in charge of the House of Representatives.
Isn’t insanity doing the same over and over again while expecting a different result?
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/t ... ment-94080
Re: Just musings, is all
THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR November 15, 2018 at 9:50 pm
Paul Plante says :
Yes, people, making it up as they go, and shamelessly so, as to be a “liberal Democrat” by their own definition is to be “liberated from all traditional forms of authority,” which actually starts with history and the meaning of words as a means of inter-personal communications, as can be seen in this following colloquy from the internet where RLA2 is a self-identified “liberal” in favor of democracy in America over the Republic on what was an “ask me anything” thread where people could learn first-hand from a self-professed “liberal” how it was that a “liberal” would see the world, to wit:
RLA2 wrote: People who do not want to see equalitarian democracy flourish tend to define it as something bad.
INTERLOCUTOR: Athens became the most successful democracy of ancient Greece during the 400’s BC.
Athenian democracy granted all male citizens the rights to vote on government policies, hold political office, and serve on a jury.
However, it was restricted to male Athenian citizens.
Non-Athenians living in Athens, women, and slaves had no political rights.
So HISTORY defines democracy as something bad, not people.
In a democracy, the majority, or those with muscle, exclude from the protection of law those they don’t want to have it.
And your metaphors keep changing, rla.
Now you are over into an “equalitarian democracy.”
What, pray tell, is that now?
How many kinds of democracy are there, anyway?
Is there a non-equalitarian democracy, as well?
RLA2 wrote: People with a committment to the rule of law define democracy as something good.
INTERLOCUTOR: The Aftermath of Solon’s reforms:
After completing his work of reform, Solon surrendered his extraordinary authority and left the country.
According to Herodotus the country was bound by Solon to maintain his reforms for 10 years, whereas according to Plutarch and the author of Athenaion Politeia (reputedly Aristotle) the contracted period was instead 100 years.
A modern scholar considers the time-span given by Herodotus to be historically accurate because it fits the 10 years that Solon was said to have been absent from the country.
Within 4 years of Solon’s departure, the old social rifts re-appeared, but with some new complications.
There were irregularities in the new governmental procedures, elected officials sometimes refused to stand down from their posts and sometimes important posts were left vacant.
It has even been said that some people blamed Solon for their troubles.
Eventually one of Solon’s relatives, Pisistratus, ended the factionalism by force, thus instituting an unconstitutionally gained tyranny.
In Plutarch’s account, Solon accused Athenians of stupidity and cowardice for allowing this to happen.
So much for rule of law, anyway.
RLA2 wrote: We have a republican form of government, the state-federal structure.
This republican structure facilitates the process of democracy in that it allows for more decentralization.
Democracy vs republic is a false dychotomy.
INTERLOCUTOR: COMMONWEALTH: It generally designates a republican frame of government – ONE IN WHICH THE WELFARE AND RIGHTS OF THE ENTIRE MASS OF PEOPLE ARE THE MAIN CONSIDERATION, rather than the privileges of a CLASS or the will of a monarch.
– Black’s Law Dictionary
TEDDY ROOSEVELT wrote:
New Nationalism Speech, 1910
The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that property shall be the servant and not the master of the commonwealth; who insists that the creature of man’s making shall be the servant and not the master of the man who made it.
That is conflating, I think, rla.
A REPUBLIC does not imply the relationship between levels of government, it is about the relationship between the people and the government.
INTERLOCUTOR: What Is Federalism?
Historical Examples of Things Like Federalism
Primitive leagues: leagues of nations (when they had more than military duties).
“Confederacy.” Calling these leagues federal may seem anachronistic: using our current term to describe something in the past.
Yet these primitive leagues (e.g. the Achaean League) resemble the Articles of Confederation in some ways.
Early modern leagues: e.g. Swiss.
They were a league of groups to defend against Habsburgs and Holy Roman Emperor.
USA: began as a league of rebellious provinces, but was transformed in Philadelphia in 1787.
A new kind of confederacy: “as much a single centralized state as it was an alliance of states.”
The word federalism was coined largely to describe this new mix, and still refers to systems like the USA.
Latin American federalism: mostly modeled after US.
Former English colonies: since most were small, they have often combined into a federal structure after independence (much as USA’s thirteen colonies did).
Examples: Canada, Australia, India/Pakistan, Malaysia, Nigeria, etc. (though not all remained federal).
Communist federalism: unique form, designed to ease absorption of new republics, then abandoned for party domination once the new republics were firmly absorbed.
Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia after 1968, etc.
Federalism elsewhere: Africa (Ethiopia, libya, others for a while), but balkanization keeps them from lasting long.
Conceptual Definition of Federalism
“Federalism is a political organization in which the activities of government are divided between regional governments and a central government in such a way that each kind of government has some activities on which it makes final decisions.”
Federalism comes in many flavors, which can be thought of along a continuum from minimal (loosely allied) to maximal (highly centralized) federalism.
In minimal federalism, the central rulers have at least one (perhaps narrowly restricted) area in which it can act without approval of the federal units.
(Otherwise, it’s an alliance like the UN, not a federal union.)
In maximal federalism, the central rulers can make decisions in all but on (perhaps narrowly restricted) area without approval of the federal units.
(Otherwise, it’s a fully centralized government, not a federal union.)
http://wikisum.com/w/Riker:_Federalism% … al_Science
INTERLOCUTOR: Measuring Federalism
A strongly centralized party system can undermine federal divisions of authority.
Thus, fully centralized (“maximal,” see above) federalism is often accompanied by a strong governing party, rendering federal divisions “quite meaningless.”
Examples: USSR, Yugoslavia, Mexico (under PRI).
Thus, measuring the degree of federalism requires measuring the degree of party centralization.
And Riker measures party centralization according to (1) whether the party that controls the central government also controls the regional governments and (2) the strength of party discipline.
(Note that, in practice, looking at both party strength and institutional divisions is analogous to the veto players approach, which looks for both institutional and partisan veto players.)
http://wikisum.com/w/Riker:_Federalism% … al_Science
RLA2 wrote: Who or what made Henry Cambell Black the ultimate authority on government in the human social system.
Born 1860, growing up in a devout religious context, receiving a BA and MA from Divinity College, studying Greek and Roman classics, he then attended law school and practiced law for about six years.
He remained a nerdish scholar, spending his time writing and editing the Constitutional Review, from its beginning to his death in 1925.
He lived with parents Until they died and at age 50, married a woman who had been a border in his family’s house hold for many years.
The Black’s Law Dictionary was an out growth of many years of editing the writings of law professors.
The Dictionary is in its 9th edition.
The 1910 second edition is now in the public domain and available free on the internet and is thus the edition most often quoted.
INTERLOCUTOR: Black’s Law Dictionary
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Black’s Law Dictionary is the most widely used law dictionary in the United States.
It was founded by Henry Campbell Black.
It is the reference of choice for definitions in legal briefs and court opinions and has been cited as a secondary legal authority in many U.S. Supreme Court cases.
The latest editions, including abridged and pocket versions, are useful starting points for the layman or student when faced with an unfamiliar legal word.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black%27s_Law_Dictionary
I believe the United States Supreme Court did, rla.
Shouldn’t they have?
RLA2 wrote: Black’s definitions of the basic terms for a theory of government did not come from a summary of court cases but rather from his own personal construct system, which was a product of his time and his particular history.
He apparently used his role and status as an professional insider to popularize his particular world view.
A world view that came primarilly from ancient history and theology – not from science or the kind of experiential learning that develops street smarts.
INTERLOCUTOR: JAMES MADISON wrote:
Do not separate text from historical background.
If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government.
INTERLOCUTOR: COMMONWEALTH: It generally designates a republican frame of government – ONE IN WHICH THE WELFARE AND RIGHTS OF THE ENTIRE MASS OF PEOPLE ARE THE MAIN CONSIDERATION, rather than the privileges of a CLASS or the will of a monarch.
– Black’s Law Dictionary
Are you then saying that a REPUBLIC is really something other than what Black’s Law Dictionary says it is?
Are you saying that science or the kind of experiential learning that develops street smarts have come up with some kind of different definition for what a REPUBLIC is as defined by the U.S. Constitution, and that we should use that alternate definition for what a REPUBLIC is over that expressed in Black’s Law Dictionary?
Are the dudes with the street smarts now saying that a REPUBLIC should be a frame of government in which the privileges of a class, say, the MIDDLE CLASS, and the will of our monarch are the main consideration, rather than the welfare and rights of the entire mass of people?
Is that what science is saying as well?
RLA2 wrote: No, I’m saying do not conflate the US Constitution and Black’s Law Dictionary.
I would take that a step further to say don’t allow the constitution to be transformed into scripture.
It has a process for being amended.
INTERLOCUTOR: U.S. CONSTITUTION Article IV, Section 4:
The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/cons … article04/
I’m hardly conflating anything here, rla.
To the contrary, I am employing a two-step rational, logical process here.
And I am doing exactly what James Madison, himself a member of the Constitutional Convention and an American president to boot, told us to do when reading and interpreting the wording and language of the U.S. Constitution – Do not separate text from historical background.
Or you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government.
Which is what this present discussion is all about so our readers can follow along in here.
Sooo …
FIRST, I go to the U.S. Constitution, which happens to be scripture, or law of the land, until such time as it might be lawfully amended, where in Article IV, Section 4, that document informs us that:
The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government
THEN, to find out what a REPUBLICAN FORM OF GOVERNMENT is, I go to Black’s Law Dictionary, since the Constitution does not separately define a republican form of government itself.
Put them together and what you have is that Article IV, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution as written states clearly and unambiguously that the United States SHALL guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government – one in which the welfare and rights of the entire mass of people are the main consideration, rather than the privileges of a CLASS or the will of a monarch.
I know that pisses you off to no end, rla, but so be it.
It is what it is until it is LAWFULLY changed.
RLA2 wrote: The constitution specifies a republican FORM of government and Black’s Law Dictionary specifies a republican FRAME of government and a process in which the welfare and right of the entire mass of people are the main consideration, rather than the privileges of a CLASS or the will of a monarch, which is what democracy means.
The republic-democracy dychotomy is a distinction without a difference.
The US Constitution laid the ground work for a democratic republic and the Amendments have for the most part have made it more democratic.
INTERLOCUTOR: First off, rla, Black’s Law Dictionary does not specify anything at all; rather it DEFINES what words being used elsewhere, such as the U.S. Constitution, actually mean.
Secondly, FORM and FRAME are interchangeable, and you see me using both, because they are interchangeable.
And DEMOCRACY most certainly is not the same as the REPUBLICAN FORM or FRAME of government.
DEMOCRACY is all about class, and in a DEMOCRACY, the dominant class disenfranchises the minority classes.
INTERLOCUTOR: The liberal-popular and the conservative-aristocratic emerged as the two dominant factions in Athenian democracy.
The spirit of the agon (competition), fame, glory, honor and the desire to surpass all others were values enshrined even in the Homeric poems, particularly the Iliad.
“It was widely accepted as ‘natural’, that the members of the community were unequal in resources, skills and style of life.”
In Herodotus’ prime, Athens was the dominant naval and imperial power.
It offered military protection to members of the Athenian (Delian) league in exchange for tributes, euphemistically called contributions – other euphemisms include protection for military occupation; prison was dwelling; an Athenian military defeat was to have a misfortune.
Athenians were granted homesteads in the colonies, cementing further their hold on them and squelching any moral objection from the participants.
Athens relied on imports of fruits and merchandise from distant lands to supplement local produce like corn and salted fish, and maintained permanent garrisons abroad to ensure a steady supply.
Many of the colonized though, even when they resented the politics of Athens, found its popular culture irresistible.
The professed objective of Athenian foreign policy was to aggressively promote democracies abroad in direct opposition to the more muted Spartan confederacy’s preference for oligarchies.
But exceptions to high principle were frequently made for illiberal ends.
At times, foreign territory was grabbed in the name of goddess Athena herself.
In reality, wars were used to acquire wealth, to keep the economy humming, to flex their muscle of growing power, and to distract citizens from domestic issues.
Classical Athens soon turned into a wartime economy.
Special interest groups in popular assemblies cloaked their impassioned speeches in the rhetoric of national interest and glory – deemed acceptable grounds for hostile military action even when others’ legitimate rights were mauled.
Athens began asserting itself in all manner of allied causes and interfered in other nations’ internal matters.
It had shrewd orators – demagogues, idealists, pragmatists, with the ability to manipulate public opinion to catastrophic ends – illustrated by the Mitylene debate when the popular assembly, following the frenzied instigation of the demagogue Cleon, rashly voted to condemn all men in the rebellious colony to death to set an example.
In greater Hellas, Athens repeatedly invoked its role in the Persian wars as moral justification for present domination, backing it up with militant aggression, much to the exasperation of the second-rank powers and other ‘inward-looking’ city-states.
A generation after Herodotus, the great historian Thucydides thought the Peloponnesian war inevitable: Athens had become an unprincipled bully; they had to be checked.
Their cultural effulgence had a dark side; they were victims of their own cupidity and recklessness.
Their conduct towards other city-states, with its own self-serving logic and momentum, had set them on a road to disaster.
Some Athenians believed that a just society needed an inspired combination of philosophy and real-politick in a leader – a philosopher-king, but the production and predictable supply of such men proved utopian.
Their democracy, too, depended on public awareness, responsibility, and participation to provide a bulwark against any willful abuse of power; conscious citizens were vital for its success in their asking – who are these men making decisions for me and my people?
The disparity between the rich and the poor, and the knowledge gap between the civilized few and the superstitious many, had become enormous in Athens.
Class conflict between wealthy landowners and less fortunate craftsmen, sailors and small traders became pervasive; the poor began asking awkward questions when reminded of their obligation to the polis.
Thucydides portrays the fragile and corruptible nature of popular government and noble institutions, the twin spectacle of the juggernaut of history and an endlessly vulnerable humanity, egocentric leaders lusting for power and glory, and at times inevitability, in light of the often blind and contending cultural instincts of peoples – his is a stage portrait of man, the political animal.
http://www.shunya.net/Text/Blog/DemocracyAthens.htm
INTERLOCUTOR: MARKETWATCH wrote:
America is no longer a democracy, not even a plutocracy.
Today our middle class is in a rapid trickle down into Third World status, while the rich get richer and the gap between the super-rich and the rest steadily widens.
It is now irrelevant who wins the 2012 race, because money corrupts and Obama is already a puppet of this system favoring lobbyists and wealthy donors.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/2011-2 … e_carousel
The experiment of a REPUBLIC in America was an abject failure, thanks to democracy, which sold out the REPUBLIC to the highest bidders, as democracy always does, in the end.
RLA2 wrote: DEMOCRACY is all about class, and in a DEMOCRACY, the dominant class disenfranchises the minority classes …Yes.
FORM and FRAME are interchangeable because they both refer to how the government is structured.
Every system has both structure and process.
The founding fathers and Mr. Black came along before general system’s language became available to scholars.
The US Constitution structures the US government in the form of a constitutional democratic republic.
The people are still struggleing to establish and maintain a democratic process.
There have always been a large gap between theory and practice.
This gap has been maintained because leadership has been allowed to emerge only from among the elite who controlled banking and comerce, organized religion and higher education, government bureauracy and the military.
Henry Black, because of his insider position with Trinity College, the Episcopal Church and the Journal for Constitutional Review was uniquely positioned to reinforce the prevailing perspective of the most elite who gave lip service to democracy while carrying on bidness as usual.
end quotes
That is a conversation that went on and on and never went anywhere or got to anywhere because the self-proclaimed liberal RLA2 would not accept Black’s Law Dictionary as a source for the meaning of words in the Constitution, and yes, that is a real conversation from back in February of 2012, which is an indication of how long this inability to have a rational discussion about government in America with a self-proclaimed liberal has existed.
Maybe it is just me, but when words no longer have common meaning, and history becomes what you want it to be, then do we still have a nation?
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/o ... ment-94249
Paul Plante says :
Yes, people, making it up as they go, and shamelessly so, as to be a “liberal Democrat” by their own definition is to be “liberated from all traditional forms of authority,” which actually starts with history and the meaning of words as a means of inter-personal communications, as can be seen in this following colloquy from the internet where RLA2 is a self-identified “liberal” in favor of democracy in America over the Republic on what was an “ask me anything” thread where people could learn first-hand from a self-professed “liberal” how it was that a “liberal” would see the world, to wit:
RLA2 wrote: People who do not want to see equalitarian democracy flourish tend to define it as something bad.
INTERLOCUTOR: Athens became the most successful democracy of ancient Greece during the 400’s BC.
Athenian democracy granted all male citizens the rights to vote on government policies, hold political office, and serve on a jury.
However, it was restricted to male Athenian citizens.
Non-Athenians living in Athens, women, and slaves had no political rights.
So HISTORY defines democracy as something bad, not people.
In a democracy, the majority, or those with muscle, exclude from the protection of law those they don’t want to have it.
And your metaphors keep changing, rla.
Now you are over into an “equalitarian democracy.”
What, pray tell, is that now?
How many kinds of democracy are there, anyway?
Is there a non-equalitarian democracy, as well?
RLA2 wrote: People with a committment to the rule of law define democracy as something good.
INTERLOCUTOR: The Aftermath of Solon’s reforms:
After completing his work of reform, Solon surrendered his extraordinary authority and left the country.
According to Herodotus the country was bound by Solon to maintain his reforms for 10 years, whereas according to Plutarch and the author of Athenaion Politeia (reputedly Aristotle) the contracted period was instead 100 years.
A modern scholar considers the time-span given by Herodotus to be historically accurate because it fits the 10 years that Solon was said to have been absent from the country.
Within 4 years of Solon’s departure, the old social rifts re-appeared, but with some new complications.
There were irregularities in the new governmental procedures, elected officials sometimes refused to stand down from their posts and sometimes important posts were left vacant.
It has even been said that some people blamed Solon for their troubles.
Eventually one of Solon’s relatives, Pisistratus, ended the factionalism by force, thus instituting an unconstitutionally gained tyranny.
In Plutarch’s account, Solon accused Athenians of stupidity and cowardice for allowing this to happen.
So much for rule of law, anyway.
RLA2 wrote: We have a republican form of government, the state-federal structure.
This republican structure facilitates the process of democracy in that it allows for more decentralization.
Democracy vs republic is a false dychotomy.
INTERLOCUTOR: COMMONWEALTH: It generally designates a republican frame of government – ONE IN WHICH THE WELFARE AND RIGHTS OF THE ENTIRE MASS OF PEOPLE ARE THE MAIN CONSIDERATION, rather than the privileges of a CLASS or the will of a monarch.
– Black’s Law Dictionary
TEDDY ROOSEVELT wrote:
New Nationalism Speech, 1910
The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that property shall be the servant and not the master of the commonwealth; who insists that the creature of man’s making shall be the servant and not the master of the man who made it.
That is conflating, I think, rla.
A REPUBLIC does not imply the relationship between levels of government, it is about the relationship between the people and the government.
INTERLOCUTOR: What Is Federalism?
Historical Examples of Things Like Federalism
Primitive leagues: leagues of nations (when they had more than military duties).
“Confederacy.” Calling these leagues federal may seem anachronistic: using our current term to describe something in the past.
Yet these primitive leagues (e.g. the Achaean League) resemble the Articles of Confederation in some ways.
Early modern leagues: e.g. Swiss.
They were a league of groups to defend against Habsburgs and Holy Roman Emperor.
USA: began as a league of rebellious provinces, but was transformed in Philadelphia in 1787.
A new kind of confederacy: “as much a single centralized state as it was an alliance of states.”
The word federalism was coined largely to describe this new mix, and still refers to systems like the USA.
Latin American federalism: mostly modeled after US.
Former English colonies: since most were small, they have often combined into a federal structure after independence (much as USA’s thirteen colonies did).
Examples: Canada, Australia, India/Pakistan, Malaysia, Nigeria, etc. (though not all remained federal).
Communist federalism: unique form, designed to ease absorption of new republics, then abandoned for party domination once the new republics were firmly absorbed.
Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia after 1968, etc.
Federalism elsewhere: Africa (Ethiopia, libya, others for a while), but balkanization keeps them from lasting long.
Conceptual Definition of Federalism
“Federalism is a political organization in which the activities of government are divided between regional governments and a central government in such a way that each kind of government has some activities on which it makes final decisions.”
Federalism comes in many flavors, which can be thought of along a continuum from minimal (loosely allied) to maximal (highly centralized) federalism.
In minimal federalism, the central rulers have at least one (perhaps narrowly restricted) area in which it can act without approval of the federal units.
(Otherwise, it’s an alliance like the UN, not a federal union.)
In maximal federalism, the central rulers can make decisions in all but on (perhaps narrowly restricted) area without approval of the federal units.
(Otherwise, it’s a fully centralized government, not a federal union.)
http://wikisum.com/w/Riker:_Federalism% … al_Science
INTERLOCUTOR: Measuring Federalism
A strongly centralized party system can undermine federal divisions of authority.
Thus, fully centralized (“maximal,” see above) federalism is often accompanied by a strong governing party, rendering federal divisions “quite meaningless.”
Examples: USSR, Yugoslavia, Mexico (under PRI).
Thus, measuring the degree of federalism requires measuring the degree of party centralization.
And Riker measures party centralization according to (1) whether the party that controls the central government also controls the regional governments and (2) the strength of party discipline.
(Note that, in practice, looking at both party strength and institutional divisions is analogous to the veto players approach, which looks for both institutional and partisan veto players.)
http://wikisum.com/w/Riker:_Federalism% … al_Science
RLA2 wrote: Who or what made Henry Cambell Black the ultimate authority on government in the human social system.
Born 1860, growing up in a devout religious context, receiving a BA and MA from Divinity College, studying Greek and Roman classics, he then attended law school and practiced law for about six years.
He remained a nerdish scholar, spending his time writing and editing the Constitutional Review, from its beginning to his death in 1925.
He lived with parents Until they died and at age 50, married a woman who had been a border in his family’s house hold for many years.
The Black’s Law Dictionary was an out growth of many years of editing the writings of law professors.
The Dictionary is in its 9th edition.
The 1910 second edition is now in the public domain and available free on the internet and is thus the edition most often quoted.
INTERLOCUTOR: Black’s Law Dictionary
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Black’s Law Dictionary is the most widely used law dictionary in the United States.
It was founded by Henry Campbell Black.
It is the reference of choice for definitions in legal briefs and court opinions and has been cited as a secondary legal authority in many U.S. Supreme Court cases.
The latest editions, including abridged and pocket versions, are useful starting points for the layman or student when faced with an unfamiliar legal word.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black%27s_Law_Dictionary
I believe the United States Supreme Court did, rla.
Shouldn’t they have?
RLA2 wrote: Black’s definitions of the basic terms for a theory of government did not come from a summary of court cases but rather from his own personal construct system, which was a product of his time and his particular history.
He apparently used his role and status as an professional insider to popularize his particular world view.
A world view that came primarilly from ancient history and theology – not from science or the kind of experiential learning that develops street smarts.
INTERLOCUTOR: JAMES MADISON wrote:
Do not separate text from historical background.
If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government.
INTERLOCUTOR: COMMONWEALTH: It generally designates a republican frame of government – ONE IN WHICH THE WELFARE AND RIGHTS OF THE ENTIRE MASS OF PEOPLE ARE THE MAIN CONSIDERATION, rather than the privileges of a CLASS or the will of a monarch.
– Black’s Law Dictionary
Are you then saying that a REPUBLIC is really something other than what Black’s Law Dictionary says it is?
Are you saying that science or the kind of experiential learning that develops street smarts have come up with some kind of different definition for what a REPUBLIC is as defined by the U.S. Constitution, and that we should use that alternate definition for what a REPUBLIC is over that expressed in Black’s Law Dictionary?
Are the dudes with the street smarts now saying that a REPUBLIC should be a frame of government in which the privileges of a class, say, the MIDDLE CLASS, and the will of our monarch are the main consideration, rather than the welfare and rights of the entire mass of people?
Is that what science is saying as well?
RLA2 wrote: No, I’m saying do not conflate the US Constitution and Black’s Law Dictionary.
I would take that a step further to say don’t allow the constitution to be transformed into scripture.
It has a process for being amended.
INTERLOCUTOR: U.S. CONSTITUTION Article IV, Section 4:
The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/cons … article04/
I’m hardly conflating anything here, rla.
To the contrary, I am employing a two-step rational, logical process here.
And I am doing exactly what James Madison, himself a member of the Constitutional Convention and an American president to boot, told us to do when reading and interpreting the wording and language of the U.S. Constitution – Do not separate text from historical background.
Or you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government.
Which is what this present discussion is all about so our readers can follow along in here.
Sooo …
FIRST, I go to the U.S. Constitution, which happens to be scripture, or law of the land, until such time as it might be lawfully amended, where in Article IV, Section 4, that document informs us that:
The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government
THEN, to find out what a REPUBLICAN FORM OF GOVERNMENT is, I go to Black’s Law Dictionary, since the Constitution does not separately define a republican form of government itself.
Put them together and what you have is that Article IV, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution as written states clearly and unambiguously that the United States SHALL guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government – one in which the welfare and rights of the entire mass of people are the main consideration, rather than the privileges of a CLASS or the will of a monarch.
I know that pisses you off to no end, rla, but so be it.
It is what it is until it is LAWFULLY changed.
RLA2 wrote: The constitution specifies a republican FORM of government and Black’s Law Dictionary specifies a republican FRAME of government and a process in which the welfare and right of the entire mass of people are the main consideration, rather than the privileges of a CLASS or the will of a monarch, which is what democracy means.
The republic-democracy dychotomy is a distinction without a difference.
The US Constitution laid the ground work for a democratic republic and the Amendments have for the most part have made it more democratic.
INTERLOCUTOR: First off, rla, Black’s Law Dictionary does not specify anything at all; rather it DEFINES what words being used elsewhere, such as the U.S. Constitution, actually mean.
Secondly, FORM and FRAME are interchangeable, and you see me using both, because they are interchangeable.
And DEMOCRACY most certainly is not the same as the REPUBLICAN FORM or FRAME of government.
DEMOCRACY is all about class, and in a DEMOCRACY, the dominant class disenfranchises the minority classes.
INTERLOCUTOR: The liberal-popular and the conservative-aristocratic emerged as the two dominant factions in Athenian democracy.
The spirit of the agon (competition), fame, glory, honor and the desire to surpass all others were values enshrined even in the Homeric poems, particularly the Iliad.
“It was widely accepted as ‘natural’, that the members of the community were unequal in resources, skills and style of life.”
In Herodotus’ prime, Athens was the dominant naval and imperial power.
It offered military protection to members of the Athenian (Delian) league in exchange for tributes, euphemistically called contributions – other euphemisms include protection for military occupation; prison was dwelling; an Athenian military defeat was to have a misfortune.
Athenians were granted homesteads in the colonies, cementing further their hold on them and squelching any moral objection from the participants.
Athens relied on imports of fruits and merchandise from distant lands to supplement local produce like corn and salted fish, and maintained permanent garrisons abroad to ensure a steady supply.
Many of the colonized though, even when they resented the politics of Athens, found its popular culture irresistible.
The professed objective of Athenian foreign policy was to aggressively promote democracies abroad in direct opposition to the more muted Spartan confederacy’s preference for oligarchies.
But exceptions to high principle were frequently made for illiberal ends.
At times, foreign territory was grabbed in the name of goddess Athena herself.
In reality, wars were used to acquire wealth, to keep the economy humming, to flex their muscle of growing power, and to distract citizens from domestic issues.
Classical Athens soon turned into a wartime economy.
Special interest groups in popular assemblies cloaked their impassioned speeches in the rhetoric of national interest and glory – deemed acceptable grounds for hostile military action even when others’ legitimate rights were mauled.
Athens began asserting itself in all manner of allied causes and interfered in other nations’ internal matters.
It had shrewd orators – demagogues, idealists, pragmatists, with the ability to manipulate public opinion to catastrophic ends – illustrated by the Mitylene debate when the popular assembly, following the frenzied instigation of the demagogue Cleon, rashly voted to condemn all men in the rebellious colony to death to set an example.
In greater Hellas, Athens repeatedly invoked its role in the Persian wars as moral justification for present domination, backing it up with militant aggression, much to the exasperation of the second-rank powers and other ‘inward-looking’ city-states.
A generation after Herodotus, the great historian Thucydides thought the Peloponnesian war inevitable: Athens had become an unprincipled bully; they had to be checked.
Their cultural effulgence had a dark side; they were victims of their own cupidity and recklessness.
Their conduct towards other city-states, with its own self-serving logic and momentum, had set them on a road to disaster.
Some Athenians believed that a just society needed an inspired combination of philosophy and real-politick in a leader – a philosopher-king, but the production and predictable supply of such men proved utopian.
Their democracy, too, depended on public awareness, responsibility, and participation to provide a bulwark against any willful abuse of power; conscious citizens were vital for its success in their asking – who are these men making decisions for me and my people?
The disparity between the rich and the poor, and the knowledge gap between the civilized few and the superstitious many, had become enormous in Athens.
Class conflict between wealthy landowners and less fortunate craftsmen, sailors and small traders became pervasive; the poor began asking awkward questions when reminded of their obligation to the polis.
Thucydides portrays the fragile and corruptible nature of popular government and noble institutions, the twin spectacle of the juggernaut of history and an endlessly vulnerable humanity, egocentric leaders lusting for power and glory, and at times inevitability, in light of the often blind and contending cultural instincts of peoples – his is a stage portrait of man, the political animal.
http://www.shunya.net/Text/Blog/DemocracyAthens.htm
INTERLOCUTOR: MARKETWATCH wrote:
America is no longer a democracy, not even a plutocracy.
Today our middle class is in a rapid trickle down into Third World status, while the rich get richer and the gap between the super-rich and the rest steadily widens.
It is now irrelevant who wins the 2012 race, because money corrupts and Obama is already a puppet of this system favoring lobbyists and wealthy donors.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/2011-2 … e_carousel
The experiment of a REPUBLIC in America was an abject failure, thanks to democracy, which sold out the REPUBLIC to the highest bidders, as democracy always does, in the end.
RLA2 wrote: DEMOCRACY is all about class, and in a DEMOCRACY, the dominant class disenfranchises the minority classes …Yes.
FORM and FRAME are interchangeable because they both refer to how the government is structured.
Every system has both structure and process.
The founding fathers and Mr. Black came along before general system’s language became available to scholars.
The US Constitution structures the US government in the form of a constitutional democratic republic.
The people are still struggleing to establish and maintain a democratic process.
There have always been a large gap between theory and practice.
This gap has been maintained because leadership has been allowed to emerge only from among the elite who controlled banking and comerce, organized religion and higher education, government bureauracy and the military.
Henry Black, because of his insider position with Trinity College, the Episcopal Church and the Journal for Constitutional Review was uniquely positioned to reinforce the prevailing perspective of the most elite who gave lip service to democracy while carrying on bidness as usual.
end quotes
That is a conversation that went on and on and never went anywhere or got to anywhere because the self-proclaimed liberal RLA2 would not accept Black’s Law Dictionary as a source for the meaning of words in the Constitution, and yes, that is a real conversation from back in February of 2012, which is an indication of how long this inability to have a rational discussion about government in America with a self-proclaimed liberal has existed.
Maybe it is just me, but when words no longer have common meaning, and history becomes what you want it to be, then do we still have a nation?
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/o ... ment-94249
Re: Just musings, is all
THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR November 14, 2018 at 11:58 pm
Paul Plante says:
Dear friend and fellow American patriot, Chas Cornweller, dude, not to be too pedantic with you here, but the British and French did not divide the Middle East prior to WWI.
Prior to WWI, the Middle East was the exclusive property of the Ottoman Empire, which was the Turks.
On May 19, 1916, after WWI had started, representatives of Great Britain and France secretly reached an accord, known as the Sykes-Picot agreement, by which most of the Arab lands under the rule of the Ottoman Empire were to be divided into British and French spheres of influence with the conclusion of World War I.
After the war broke out in the summer of 1914, the Allies—Britain, France and Russia—held many discussions regarding the future of the Ottoman Empire, now fighting on the side of Germany and the Central Powers, and its vast expanse of territory in the Middle East, Arabia and southern-central Europe.
In March 1915, Britain signed a secret agreement with Russia, whose designs on the empire’s territory had led the Turks to join forces with Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1914.
By its terms, Russia would annex the Ottoman capital of Constantinople and retain control of the Dardanelles (the crucially important strait connecting the Black Sea with the Mediterranean) and the Gallipoli peninsula, the target of a major Allied military invasion begun in April 1915.
In return, Russia would agree to British claims on other areas of the former Ottoman Empire and central Persia, including the oil-rich region of Mesopotamia.
More than a year after the agreement with Russia, British and French representatives, Sir Mark Sykes and Francois Georges Picot, authored another secret agreement regarding the future spoils of the Great War.
Picot represented a small group determined to secure control of Syria for France; for his part, Sykes raised British demands to balance out influence in the region.
The agreement largely neglected to allow for the future growth of Arab nationalism, which at that same moment the British government and military were working to use to their advantage against the Turks.
In the Sykes-Picot agreement, concluded on May 19, 1916, France and Britain divided up the Arab territories of the former Ottoman Empire into spheres of influence.
In its designated sphere, it was agreed, each country shall be allowed to establish such direct or indirect administration or control as they desire and as they may think fit to arrange with the Arab State or Confederation of Arab States.
Under Sykes-Picot, the Syrian coast and much of modern-day Lebanon went to France; Britain would take direct control over central and southern Mesopotamia, around the Baghdad and Basra provinces.
Palestine would have an international administration, as other Christian powers, namely Russia, held an interest in this region.
The rest of the territory in question—a huge area including modern-day Syria, Mosul in northern Iraq, and Jordan—would have local Arab chiefs under French supervision in the north and British in the south.
Also, Britain and France would retain free passage and trade in the other’s zone of influence.
There is the beginning of the mess in the Middle East that continues to this day, thanks to the meddling and greed of France and Great Britain.
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/i ... ment-94460
Paul Plante says:
Dear friend and fellow American patriot, Chas Cornweller, dude, not to be too pedantic with you here, but the British and French did not divide the Middle East prior to WWI.
Prior to WWI, the Middle East was the exclusive property of the Ottoman Empire, which was the Turks.
On May 19, 1916, after WWI had started, representatives of Great Britain and France secretly reached an accord, known as the Sykes-Picot agreement, by which most of the Arab lands under the rule of the Ottoman Empire were to be divided into British and French spheres of influence with the conclusion of World War I.
After the war broke out in the summer of 1914, the Allies—Britain, France and Russia—held many discussions regarding the future of the Ottoman Empire, now fighting on the side of Germany and the Central Powers, and its vast expanse of territory in the Middle East, Arabia and southern-central Europe.
In March 1915, Britain signed a secret agreement with Russia, whose designs on the empire’s territory had led the Turks to join forces with Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1914.
By its terms, Russia would annex the Ottoman capital of Constantinople and retain control of the Dardanelles (the crucially important strait connecting the Black Sea with the Mediterranean) and the Gallipoli peninsula, the target of a major Allied military invasion begun in April 1915.
In return, Russia would agree to British claims on other areas of the former Ottoman Empire and central Persia, including the oil-rich region of Mesopotamia.
More than a year after the agreement with Russia, British and French representatives, Sir Mark Sykes and Francois Georges Picot, authored another secret agreement regarding the future spoils of the Great War.
Picot represented a small group determined to secure control of Syria for France; for his part, Sykes raised British demands to balance out influence in the region.
The agreement largely neglected to allow for the future growth of Arab nationalism, which at that same moment the British government and military were working to use to their advantage against the Turks.
In the Sykes-Picot agreement, concluded on May 19, 1916, France and Britain divided up the Arab territories of the former Ottoman Empire into spheres of influence.
In its designated sphere, it was agreed, each country shall be allowed to establish such direct or indirect administration or control as they desire and as they may think fit to arrange with the Arab State or Confederation of Arab States.
Under Sykes-Picot, the Syrian coast and much of modern-day Lebanon went to France; Britain would take direct control over central and southern Mesopotamia, around the Baghdad and Basra provinces.
Palestine would have an international administration, as other Christian powers, namely Russia, held an interest in this region.
The rest of the territory in question—a huge area including modern-day Syria, Mosul in northern Iraq, and Jordan—would have local Arab chiefs under French supervision in the north and British in the south.
Also, Britain and France would retain free passage and trade in the other’s zone of influence.
There is the beginning of the mess in the Middle East that continues to this day, thanks to the meddling and greed of France and Great Britain.
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/i ... ment-94460
Re: Just musings, is all
THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR November 16, 2018 at 11:09 am
Paul Plante says :
England and France should have to wear Dunce’s Caps to the U.N. and sit facing the wall in the corner to reflect the mess of things those two countries are responsible for over the last several hundred years, including appeasing Hitler, as we can clearly see from this excerpt from World Wars and Revolutions – The Course of Europe Since 1900 by Walter Phelps Hall, Ph.D, Dodge Professor of History, Princeton University, copyright 1943, as follows:
CZECHOSLOVAKIA
The Czechs had watched with anxious eye, as well they might, the submergence of their southern neighbor in the German Reich.
Not only did they have Nazis to the north of them and Nazis to the south of them, but within their own border was a clamorous German minority, the redemption of which might be sponsored any day by Adolf Hitler.
That minority had received more consideration than that given to any other minority in the post-war world.
It had full parliamentary representation and equal educational opportunities – in fact, there were more German secondary schools in Czechoslovakia in proportion to the population than there were schools for Czechs.
On the other hand, that German had just cause for complaint: Public officials were generally Czechs; and minor officials, such as postmen and ticket agents, were apt to pretend that they could not understand German.
The great estates in Czechoslovakia before the war (World War I) had been owned by German landlords who were dissatisfied with the compensation paid them when the lands were subdivided after the war among the peasants.
More important yet, the condition of the German workingmen in the industrial districts was deplorable.
The Czechs were not responsible for the world economic depression of the nineteen-thirties, but they might have been more generous in the relief given to the stricken areas.
At one time there were nearly a million unemployed in this little country, and over a half were Germans!
Until 1935 most of the Germans in Czechoslovakia cooperated with the Czechs in carrying on parliamentary government, but in that year, Konrad Henlein’s Sudetendeutsch Partei, intransigent and dissaffected, captured sixty percent of the German vote.
This party, the S.d.P., was not originally allied with the German Nazis.
It did, however, stress certain German principles: hatred of democracy, devout obedience to a Fuehrer – Henlein – and racial particularism.
The S.d.P.’s demands now increased, one of them being “full liberty for Germans to proclaim their Germanism and their adhesion to the ideology of Germans,” and another a demand that Czechoslovakia should renounce its treaties with France and Russia, the former calling for the military support of the Third Republic should Germany threaten invasion, the latter promising Russian aid, provided France aided the threatened state first.
Neither of these demands could safely be granted by the Czech majority; to accede to the first would invite open propaganda against democracy in a democratic state; to accede to the second would make Czechoslovakia defenseless in case of attack.
War was narrowly averted in the month of May, 1938.
A frontier incident resulted in the death of two Germans; Hitler promptly cut off negotiations with the Czechs and hastened troops to the border.
Czechoslovakia as promptly mobilized and rushed 400,000 men to the German frontier.
France affirmed her support for Czechoslovakia and that meant that Russia must follow suit.
Britain agreed to support France, and Hitler withdrew his troops.
But he did not change his intentions, nor did the Czechs their resolution to fight for their country.
What did take place during the four succeeding months was the betrayal of Czechoslovakia by France, aided and abetted to no little degree by England.
It is very difficult to fathom what lay behind French and British policy in the crisis of 1938.
Mile by mile the two governments gave way to Hitler’s threats and bombast, until finally there was nothing left of Czechoslovakia except a completely disillusioned and discouraged little rump of a country, which could not fight if it wanted to, and which was occupied without a shot by the Fuehrer the following spring.
Czechoslovakia was by no means defenseless in the summer of 1938.
She had a good country, a mountainous frontier, defended by a Maginot line reputed stronger than even the famous line of that name in France.
Near Prague were the strategic Skoda munitions works, the largest in all Europe, owned by a resolute people, protected not simply by their natural frontiers but by the pledged word of France.
In addition, Czechoslovakia was a member of the Little Entente, and both Yugoslavia and Rumania were sworn to aid her.
True, Yugoslavia might stand aside for fear of Mussolini, and Rumania was not a dependable ally.
But the Rumanians presumably would at least permit the passage of Soviet troops through their territory to aid the Czechs if they were attacked.
With France, England, and Russia behind them it seemed improbable that Mussolini would give any active aid to Hitler in order that the latter might occupy Prague.
Nevertheless, the British and the French between them opened the mountain passes to the Bohemian plain, permitted Nazi troops to pass through unopposed, and thus made sure of a war in which they would not have Czechoslovakia as their ally, and Hitler would have Skoda.
The feeble and inept behavior of Britain and France during the last six months of 1938 is incredible.
It began to be in evidence when the British sent Lord Runciman to Prague as a kind of unofficial advisor to the Czechs.
The Czechs did not ask for him; they did not want him; but they were afraid if they did not accept him Britain would wash her hands altogether and persuade France to do likewise.
Chamberlain had blown neither hot nor cold.
He had refused a definite guarantee of Czechish independence, but at the same time he had intimated that British policy was not to be interpreted as one of non-intervention under all circumstances.
Plainly, they had better accept Runciman.
The Czechs, urged on by his Lordship, now offered generous concessions to the S.d.P. and Henlein.
They agreed to a cantonal division of Czechoslovakia on the Swiss model.
“All nationalities should share proportionately in all state offices and in state enterprises, monopolies, institutions and other organizations.”
Autonomy in all local matters was assured the Sudetendeutsch, and a large sum of money was to be granted for their economic relief.
This was fair enough, but not sufficiently fair for the London Times.
It proposed that Czechoslovakia cede its border districts to Germany.
The Times, of course, was not an official organ of the British government, but the Nazis had good reason to believe that it flew the Chamberlain kite.
Hitler took the cue.
A few days later, September 12, he addressed a huge meeting of Nazis and said that he intended to come instantly to the relief of his oppressed racial comrades in Czechoslovakia and announced simultaneously that the most impregnable defenses ever built by man were being rushed to completion on the western frontier of Germany.
On September 13 there were uprisings among the Sudenten Germans (acknowledged later by Runciman to have been stirred up by Nazi agitators) and the instant reply of Benes, President of Czechoslovakia, was to proclaim martial law.
One day later Chamberlain announced that he would go by airplane to consult with Hitler.
This was to be the first of three trips by air to Canossa which the Prime Minister of England was to take – successive steps, all of them, in humiliating subservience to the will of the German dictator.
The first flight was to Berchtesgaden, where he was told by Hitler that Germany insisted on the instant inclusion of the Sudeten Germans in the Third Reich, even at the cost of general war.
Time would be given Chamberlain to consult with his ministers; no other concession was offered.
What was to be done?
The British cabinet was divided; so was the French.
The premier of France and his foreign secretary flew to London and a decision was reached without consulting Prague.
Czechoslovakia was told by England and France that she must deliver “the districts mainly inhabited by the Sudeten Germans” to Germany.
If this was done there would be guarantees of her future independence.
This was selling the pass, for the districts to be ceded lay along the frontier where the Czechs had their fortifications.
England and France were now offering Hitler all that he demanded.
Benes and his cabinet begged for reconsideration.
Czechoslovakia had, they said, a treaty of arbitration with Germany.
Why not invoke it?
Runciman, meanwhile, made his formal report.
It proposed not only to give Germany all that Hitler had demanded but a little more, for he suggested not only that parts of Czechoslovakia be ceded Germany but also that the rump which remained should renounce all treaties of defense with other countries, suppress all anti-German agitation, and enter into close economic relations with the Reich.
The Runciman report was followed by sharp insistence at Prague on the part of the French and British ambassadors that Benes agree to the Anglo-French proposals.
Benes asked that the demands be given him in writing; he was refused.
Would the Czechs yield or not?
If France fought on their side they had a good chance, but even so there were German divisions to the south of them in Austria and their own Maginot line was in the north.
They would, in any case, be subject to a severe bombardment from the air.
But France had now repudiated her word, and without France, Russia was under no obligation.
Benes and his colleagues decided to yield – with the understanding, they said, that Britain and France would guarantee the future independence of what was left of their country, and that the land transferred to Germany would not be occupied by German troops until the new frontiers had been delimited.
Whereupon followed Chamberlain’s second flight to Canossa, this time to the little German town of Godesberg.
To his surprise he found Hitler in a towering rage.
The German army was going to march on October first, roared the Fuehrer, and nothing could stop it.
There might be “subsequent corrections” in the boundaries suggested, and perhaps plebiscites.
But Germany was going to take by force what was hers by right and would listen to no one.
Hitler presented Chamberlain with a map showing what districts Germany was going to annex immediately, and Chamberlain received it, agreed to present it to the Czechs without recommendation, and flew back to London.
The Czechs indignantly rejected the Godesberg ultimatum, the British mobilized their fleet, the French their army.
It looked like war.
Trenches were dug in London streets, tanks and trucks rolled through Berlin on their way south, and gas masks were distributed in Paris.
The British foreign office gave categorical assurance to France that Britain would come to her assistance if she took military action against Germany in the event of that country’s invading of Czechoslovakia – a much stronger guarantee than Britain gave France on August 2, 1914.
Seemingly, Hitler must give way or the second World War would break.
The Fuehrer gave no indication of yielding.
Within five days his Germans were to march.
He had no qualms, he said, against Poland or France.
“After the Sudeten German question is regulated,” he asserted, “we have no further territorial claims to make in Europe.”
But October first was the deadline, and to prove that he meant business, German divisions were concentrated on the Czech frontier, and German workmen labored day and night on the “Westwall.”
To frighten the democracies he even took another step: “German action” (whatever that meant), he told the British ambassador, would commence the next day at 2 P.M., namely, on September 28.
The democracies, on the other hand, did give signs of yielding.
The French newspapers deliberately minimized as unofficial the British guarantee of standing by France; and Chamberlain, in a most ambiguous speech, showed that he was of two minds – he spoke of Czechoslovakia as a “far-away country” for whom it seemed almost impossible that England would be fighting, and the general tenor of his remarks in the House of Commons sounded more like Hamlet than Pitt or Palmerston.
Then, just as the last sands were running out of the hour-glass, the Fuehrer, at the request of Mussolini, postponed mobilization twenty-four hours and invited Daladier and Chamberlain to a conference with the Duce and himself at Munich.
Chamberlain accepted, and for the third time made a journey to Canossa.
This Munich conference was still another victory for the dictators.
Czechoslovakia was an uninvited onlooker as the four statesmen carved up that unhappy country in accordance with the Godesberg ultimatum.
Minute concessions of no importance were made by which England and France might save face.
Four zones were to be occupied by the Germans “in four rapid bites instead of one.”
A fifth zone was created in which there were supposed to be plebiscites.
“But the final result was worse for the Czechs than Godesberg would have been.”
The international commission supposedly in control of plebiscites was a farce.
The Germans took what they wanted, marched to within forty miles of Prague, and absorbed about 750,000 Czechs in the new Germany.
As they did so the Poles invaded Teschen, annexing about 80,000 Poles and 120,000 Czechs.
Hungary then advanced on the helpless Czechs from the south, crossed the Danube, took Bratislava, and would have divided Ruthenia and perhaps Slovakia with Poland had she been permitted to by the all-powerful Germans.
The latter, together with the Italians, decided everything.
All French and British guarantees vanished into thin air.
“I return from Germany,” said Chamberlain to cheering thousands, “bringing peace with honor.”
He brought back neither.
Peace the Prime Minister might have envisaged, but how about honor?
We are too close to these events to write now with assurance of the motives which underlay them.
Perhaps some day history will show that the French were more to blame than the British, for it was France, not England, that guaranteed the independence of Czechoslovakia, and England had simply guaranteed to help France.
Nevertheless, the British had joined the French in pressing on Czechoslovakia the Franco-British plan which the Czechs accepted, and from that moment Britain was bound by implication to defend those who took her advice and yielded at her insistence.
Why did the British give way all along the line?
Several explanations have been offered.
A number of journalists asserted that the British Tories were bluffing from the beginning, that the mobilization of the fleet was a blind and a fake, carried on to deceive the simple, the real intent of the Tories being to support Hitler so that he might become strong enough to be ultimately victorious over Soviet Russia, or at least strong enough to act as their agent in staving off the Red menace.
This is pure assumption and a rather silly one, for it lays too much emphasis on economic determinism and suggests an altogether too complicated and subtle a plot.
The Tories, afterall, were British citizens, and to impugn their patriotism and common sense without evidence is, to say the least, not being historically minded.
Another conjecture was that Britain was profoundly pacifistic, unwilling to fight in any cause which did not directly concern land over which flew the Union Jack.
In this there was probably an element of truth, but not a great deal.
Pacifistic or otherwise, the sons of John Bull presumably had not been transformed in less than a generation into gentle Quakers.
Two other reasons for Chamberlain’s stand come closer to the truth.
He knew that, arrogant and boastful though Hitler might be, he had a good talking point in demanding the inclusion of Sudeten Germans in the Reich on the grounds of self-determination.
Bohemia had been a part of the old Austria, not a part of the old Germany, but that could not offset altogether the argument for self-determination.
Might not Hitler be content with just annexing Germans?
Perhaps there was a possibility that he would be.
And finally, and perhaps most important of all, was the military argument.
Russia was an uncertain factor.
The Soviets were said to have promised 200 airplanes for the defense of Czechoslovakia, but on the border of that country were 1,000 German planes that probably would sweep over it before France, England, and Russia could do anything.
Stalin had but recently put to death so many generals that Chamberlain might well have questioned the importance of any help Russia might provide, even if she honored her treaty with France.
The French were well prepared with their Maginot line for defense, but how could they reach Czechoslovakia to rescue that country from Hitler’s maw?
And if the French could not, how about England?
His first duty was to secure the safety of his own country.
He knew that Germany was better prepared for air battles than Britain, and it is possible that he had reliable information that the Reich had a two-to-one superiority in the air.
Could he afford to risk a war under such circumstances?
Possibly Hitler was bluffing; but on the other hand, possibly he was not.
Chamberlain’s role in this affair certainly was not brilliant, but that does not necessarily mean that it was absurd.
Perhaps he had some right to feel that Baldwin and MacDonald were more responsible in the long run than himself, for it was they who neglected for so many years to make ready against the day when no argument could prevail against Hitler’s lawless will unless backed by superior force.
The triumphant Germans, meanwhile, had won two astonishing diplomatic victories in less than six months, since without any fighting at all not only Austria but also the mountain bastions of Bohemia lay in their hands.
Hitler had solemnly pledged himself to go no farther, but he had not the slightest intention of keeping his word.
Having swallowed somewhat more than one-third of the area of Czechoslovakia, and somewhat less than one-third of the population, he was still greedy for more.
What was left of the Republic of Czechoslovakia soon found that it was independent in name only and that it must look to Berlin for guidance.
The Germans demanded and obtained a corridor across the country for a military highway; they demanded and obtained the right to decide on the destinies of Slovakia and Ruthenia, not only in respect to government but also in respect to how much land should be ceded to Poland and Hungary.
And when Hacha, the last president of the republic, protested against Germany’s high-handed interference, he, like Schuschnigg, was summoned to Hitler’s presence.
His going to Germany was a formality.
Even before he reached Berlin, the German army had started south again.
Hacha, berated and browbeaten by Hitler, signed away the independence of his country, and almost simultaneously with his so doing, the Germans entered Prague, none resisting.
A few snowballs were thrown at the Teutonic invader; that was all.
Czechoslovakia was made a German protectorate, and Hitler could boast of adding still more military booty, to say nothing of much needed gold, to Germany’s store.
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/i ... ment-94460
Paul Plante says :
England and France should have to wear Dunce’s Caps to the U.N. and sit facing the wall in the corner to reflect the mess of things those two countries are responsible for over the last several hundred years, including appeasing Hitler, as we can clearly see from this excerpt from World Wars and Revolutions – The Course of Europe Since 1900 by Walter Phelps Hall, Ph.D, Dodge Professor of History, Princeton University, copyright 1943, as follows:
CZECHOSLOVAKIA
The Czechs had watched with anxious eye, as well they might, the submergence of their southern neighbor in the German Reich.
Not only did they have Nazis to the north of them and Nazis to the south of them, but within their own border was a clamorous German minority, the redemption of which might be sponsored any day by Adolf Hitler.
That minority had received more consideration than that given to any other minority in the post-war world.
It had full parliamentary representation and equal educational opportunities – in fact, there were more German secondary schools in Czechoslovakia in proportion to the population than there were schools for Czechs.
On the other hand, that German had just cause for complaint: Public officials were generally Czechs; and minor officials, such as postmen and ticket agents, were apt to pretend that they could not understand German.
The great estates in Czechoslovakia before the war (World War I) had been owned by German landlords who were dissatisfied with the compensation paid them when the lands were subdivided after the war among the peasants.
More important yet, the condition of the German workingmen in the industrial districts was deplorable.
The Czechs were not responsible for the world economic depression of the nineteen-thirties, but they might have been more generous in the relief given to the stricken areas.
At one time there were nearly a million unemployed in this little country, and over a half were Germans!
Until 1935 most of the Germans in Czechoslovakia cooperated with the Czechs in carrying on parliamentary government, but in that year, Konrad Henlein’s Sudetendeutsch Partei, intransigent and dissaffected, captured sixty percent of the German vote.
This party, the S.d.P., was not originally allied with the German Nazis.
It did, however, stress certain German principles: hatred of democracy, devout obedience to a Fuehrer – Henlein – and racial particularism.
The S.d.P.’s demands now increased, one of them being “full liberty for Germans to proclaim their Germanism and their adhesion to the ideology of Germans,” and another a demand that Czechoslovakia should renounce its treaties with France and Russia, the former calling for the military support of the Third Republic should Germany threaten invasion, the latter promising Russian aid, provided France aided the threatened state first.
Neither of these demands could safely be granted by the Czech majority; to accede to the first would invite open propaganda against democracy in a democratic state; to accede to the second would make Czechoslovakia defenseless in case of attack.
War was narrowly averted in the month of May, 1938.
A frontier incident resulted in the death of two Germans; Hitler promptly cut off negotiations with the Czechs and hastened troops to the border.
Czechoslovakia as promptly mobilized and rushed 400,000 men to the German frontier.
France affirmed her support for Czechoslovakia and that meant that Russia must follow suit.
Britain agreed to support France, and Hitler withdrew his troops.
But he did not change his intentions, nor did the Czechs their resolution to fight for their country.
What did take place during the four succeeding months was the betrayal of Czechoslovakia by France, aided and abetted to no little degree by England.
It is very difficult to fathom what lay behind French and British policy in the crisis of 1938.
Mile by mile the two governments gave way to Hitler’s threats and bombast, until finally there was nothing left of Czechoslovakia except a completely disillusioned and discouraged little rump of a country, which could not fight if it wanted to, and which was occupied without a shot by the Fuehrer the following spring.
Czechoslovakia was by no means defenseless in the summer of 1938.
She had a good country, a mountainous frontier, defended by a Maginot line reputed stronger than even the famous line of that name in France.
Near Prague were the strategic Skoda munitions works, the largest in all Europe, owned by a resolute people, protected not simply by their natural frontiers but by the pledged word of France.
In addition, Czechoslovakia was a member of the Little Entente, and both Yugoslavia and Rumania were sworn to aid her.
True, Yugoslavia might stand aside for fear of Mussolini, and Rumania was not a dependable ally.
But the Rumanians presumably would at least permit the passage of Soviet troops through their territory to aid the Czechs if they were attacked.
With France, England, and Russia behind them it seemed improbable that Mussolini would give any active aid to Hitler in order that the latter might occupy Prague.
Nevertheless, the British and the French between them opened the mountain passes to the Bohemian plain, permitted Nazi troops to pass through unopposed, and thus made sure of a war in which they would not have Czechoslovakia as their ally, and Hitler would have Skoda.
The feeble and inept behavior of Britain and France during the last six months of 1938 is incredible.
It began to be in evidence when the British sent Lord Runciman to Prague as a kind of unofficial advisor to the Czechs.
The Czechs did not ask for him; they did not want him; but they were afraid if they did not accept him Britain would wash her hands altogether and persuade France to do likewise.
Chamberlain had blown neither hot nor cold.
He had refused a definite guarantee of Czechish independence, but at the same time he had intimated that British policy was not to be interpreted as one of non-intervention under all circumstances.
Plainly, they had better accept Runciman.
The Czechs, urged on by his Lordship, now offered generous concessions to the S.d.P. and Henlein.
They agreed to a cantonal division of Czechoslovakia on the Swiss model.
“All nationalities should share proportionately in all state offices and in state enterprises, monopolies, institutions and other organizations.”
Autonomy in all local matters was assured the Sudetendeutsch, and a large sum of money was to be granted for their economic relief.
This was fair enough, but not sufficiently fair for the London Times.
It proposed that Czechoslovakia cede its border districts to Germany.
The Times, of course, was not an official organ of the British government, but the Nazis had good reason to believe that it flew the Chamberlain kite.
Hitler took the cue.
A few days later, September 12, he addressed a huge meeting of Nazis and said that he intended to come instantly to the relief of his oppressed racial comrades in Czechoslovakia and announced simultaneously that the most impregnable defenses ever built by man were being rushed to completion on the western frontier of Germany.
On September 13 there were uprisings among the Sudenten Germans (acknowledged later by Runciman to have been stirred up by Nazi agitators) and the instant reply of Benes, President of Czechoslovakia, was to proclaim martial law.
One day later Chamberlain announced that he would go by airplane to consult with Hitler.
This was to be the first of three trips by air to Canossa which the Prime Minister of England was to take – successive steps, all of them, in humiliating subservience to the will of the German dictator.
The first flight was to Berchtesgaden, where he was told by Hitler that Germany insisted on the instant inclusion of the Sudeten Germans in the Third Reich, even at the cost of general war.
Time would be given Chamberlain to consult with his ministers; no other concession was offered.
What was to be done?
The British cabinet was divided; so was the French.
The premier of France and his foreign secretary flew to London and a decision was reached without consulting Prague.
Czechoslovakia was told by England and France that she must deliver “the districts mainly inhabited by the Sudeten Germans” to Germany.
If this was done there would be guarantees of her future independence.
This was selling the pass, for the districts to be ceded lay along the frontier where the Czechs had their fortifications.
England and France were now offering Hitler all that he demanded.
Benes and his cabinet begged for reconsideration.
Czechoslovakia had, they said, a treaty of arbitration with Germany.
Why not invoke it?
Runciman, meanwhile, made his formal report.
It proposed not only to give Germany all that Hitler had demanded but a little more, for he suggested not only that parts of Czechoslovakia be ceded Germany but also that the rump which remained should renounce all treaties of defense with other countries, suppress all anti-German agitation, and enter into close economic relations with the Reich.
The Runciman report was followed by sharp insistence at Prague on the part of the French and British ambassadors that Benes agree to the Anglo-French proposals.
Benes asked that the demands be given him in writing; he was refused.
Would the Czechs yield or not?
If France fought on their side they had a good chance, but even so there were German divisions to the south of them in Austria and their own Maginot line was in the north.
They would, in any case, be subject to a severe bombardment from the air.
But France had now repudiated her word, and without France, Russia was under no obligation.
Benes and his colleagues decided to yield – with the understanding, they said, that Britain and France would guarantee the future independence of what was left of their country, and that the land transferred to Germany would not be occupied by German troops until the new frontiers had been delimited.
Whereupon followed Chamberlain’s second flight to Canossa, this time to the little German town of Godesberg.
To his surprise he found Hitler in a towering rage.
The German army was going to march on October first, roared the Fuehrer, and nothing could stop it.
There might be “subsequent corrections” in the boundaries suggested, and perhaps plebiscites.
But Germany was going to take by force what was hers by right and would listen to no one.
Hitler presented Chamberlain with a map showing what districts Germany was going to annex immediately, and Chamberlain received it, agreed to present it to the Czechs without recommendation, and flew back to London.
The Czechs indignantly rejected the Godesberg ultimatum, the British mobilized their fleet, the French their army.
It looked like war.
Trenches were dug in London streets, tanks and trucks rolled through Berlin on their way south, and gas masks were distributed in Paris.
The British foreign office gave categorical assurance to France that Britain would come to her assistance if she took military action against Germany in the event of that country’s invading of Czechoslovakia – a much stronger guarantee than Britain gave France on August 2, 1914.
Seemingly, Hitler must give way or the second World War would break.
The Fuehrer gave no indication of yielding.
Within five days his Germans were to march.
He had no qualms, he said, against Poland or France.
“After the Sudeten German question is regulated,” he asserted, “we have no further territorial claims to make in Europe.”
But October first was the deadline, and to prove that he meant business, German divisions were concentrated on the Czech frontier, and German workmen labored day and night on the “Westwall.”
To frighten the democracies he even took another step: “German action” (whatever that meant), he told the British ambassador, would commence the next day at 2 P.M., namely, on September 28.
The democracies, on the other hand, did give signs of yielding.
The French newspapers deliberately minimized as unofficial the British guarantee of standing by France; and Chamberlain, in a most ambiguous speech, showed that he was of two minds – he spoke of Czechoslovakia as a “far-away country” for whom it seemed almost impossible that England would be fighting, and the general tenor of his remarks in the House of Commons sounded more like Hamlet than Pitt or Palmerston.
Then, just as the last sands were running out of the hour-glass, the Fuehrer, at the request of Mussolini, postponed mobilization twenty-four hours and invited Daladier and Chamberlain to a conference with the Duce and himself at Munich.
Chamberlain accepted, and for the third time made a journey to Canossa.
This Munich conference was still another victory for the dictators.
Czechoslovakia was an uninvited onlooker as the four statesmen carved up that unhappy country in accordance with the Godesberg ultimatum.
Minute concessions of no importance were made by which England and France might save face.
Four zones were to be occupied by the Germans “in four rapid bites instead of one.”
A fifth zone was created in which there were supposed to be plebiscites.
“But the final result was worse for the Czechs than Godesberg would have been.”
The international commission supposedly in control of plebiscites was a farce.
The Germans took what they wanted, marched to within forty miles of Prague, and absorbed about 750,000 Czechs in the new Germany.
As they did so the Poles invaded Teschen, annexing about 80,000 Poles and 120,000 Czechs.
Hungary then advanced on the helpless Czechs from the south, crossed the Danube, took Bratislava, and would have divided Ruthenia and perhaps Slovakia with Poland had she been permitted to by the all-powerful Germans.
The latter, together with the Italians, decided everything.
All French and British guarantees vanished into thin air.
“I return from Germany,” said Chamberlain to cheering thousands, “bringing peace with honor.”
He brought back neither.
Peace the Prime Minister might have envisaged, but how about honor?
We are too close to these events to write now with assurance of the motives which underlay them.
Perhaps some day history will show that the French were more to blame than the British, for it was France, not England, that guaranteed the independence of Czechoslovakia, and England had simply guaranteed to help France.
Nevertheless, the British had joined the French in pressing on Czechoslovakia the Franco-British plan which the Czechs accepted, and from that moment Britain was bound by implication to defend those who took her advice and yielded at her insistence.
Why did the British give way all along the line?
Several explanations have been offered.
A number of journalists asserted that the British Tories were bluffing from the beginning, that the mobilization of the fleet was a blind and a fake, carried on to deceive the simple, the real intent of the Tories being to support Hitler so that he might become strong enough to be ultimately victorious over Soviet Russia, or at least strong enough to act as their agent in staving off the Red menace.
This is pure assumption and a rather silly one, for it lays too much emphasis on economic determinism and suggests an altogether too complicated and subtle a plot.
The Tories, afterall, were British citizens, and to impugn their patriotism and common sense without evidence is, to say the least, not being historically minded.
Another conjecture was that Britain was profoundly pacifistic, unwilling to fight in any cause which did not directly concern land over which flew the Union Jack.
In this there was probably an element of truth, but not a great deal.
Pacifistic or otherwise, the sons of John Bull presumably had not been transformed in less than a generation into gentle Quakers.
Two other reasons for Chamberlain’s stand come closer to the truth.
He knew that, arrogant and boastful though Hitler might be, he had a good talking point in demanding the inclusion of Sudeten Germans in the Reich on the grounds of self-determination.
Bohemia had been a part of the old Austria, not a part of the old Germany, but that could not offset altogether the argument for self-determination.
Might not Hitler be content with just annexing Germans?
Perhaps there was a possibility that he would be.
And finally, and perhaps most important of all, was the military argument.
Russia was an uncertain factor.
The Soviets were said to have promised 200 airplanes for the defense of Czechoslovakia, but on the border of that country were 1,000 German planes that probably would sweep over it before France, England, and Russia could do anything.
Stalin had but recently put to death so many generals that Chamberlain might well have questioned the importance of any help Russia might provide, even if she honored her treaty with France.
The French were well prepared with their Maginot line for defense, but how could they reach Czechoslovakia to rescue that country from Hitler’s maw?
And if the French could not, how about England?
His first duty was to secure the safety of his own country.
He knew that Germany was better prepared for air battles than Britain, and it is possible that he had reliable information that the Reich had a two-to-one superiority in the air.
Could he afford to risk a war under such circumstances?
Possibly Hitler was bluffing; but on the other hand, possibly he was not.
Chamberlain’s role in this affair certainly was not brilliant, but that does not necessarily mean that it was absurd.
Perhaps he had some right to feel that Baldwin and MacDonald were more responsible in the long run than himself, for it was they who neglected for so many years to make ready against the day when no argument could prevail against Hitler’s lawless will unless backed by superior force.
The triumphant Germans, meanwhile, had won two astonishing diplomatic victories in less than six months, since without any fighting at all not only Austria but also the mountain bastions of Bohemia lay in their hands.
Hitler had solemnly pledged himself to go no farther, but he had not the slightest intention of keeping his word.
Having swallowed somewhat more than one-third of the area of Czechoslovakia, and somewhat less than one-third of the population, he was still greedy for more.
What was left of the Republic of Czechoslovakia soon found that it was independent in name only and that it must look to Berlin for guidance.
The Germans demanded and obtained a corridor across the country for a military highway; they demanded and obtained the right to decide on the destinies of Slovakia and Ruthenia, not only in respect to government but also in respect to how much land should be ceded to Poland and Hungary.
And when Hacha, the last president of the republic, protested against Germany’s high-handed interference, he, like Schuschnigg, was summoned to Hitler’s presence.
His going to Germany was a formality.
Even before he reached Berlin, the German army had started south again.
Hacha, berated and browbeaten by Hitler, signed away the independence of his country, and almost simultaneously with his so doing, the Germans entered Prague, none resisting.
A few snowballs were thrown at the Teutonic invader; that was all.
Czechoslovakia was made a German protectorate, and Hitler could boast of adding still more military booty, to say nothing of much needed gold, to Germany’s store.
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/i ... ment-94460
Re: Just musings, is all
THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR November 14, 2018 at 8:03 pm
Paul Plante says :
We are becoming a parody of a nation like Rome in the days of Caligula and Valeria Messalina.
Our United States Senate is supposed to exist to protect the interests of the states.
So why did NBC News have to tell us that Kyrsten Sinema made history as first bisexual member of U.S. Senate?
What kind of history was that, exactly?
And how does NBC News know she is bi-sexual?
Because she told them?
And if she did, why is a candidate for the supposedly high office of United States Senator telling the press about her sexual habits?
Because like releasing your tax returns, it has become mandatory when running for high office in America to tell people how it is you have sex, and with whom, or what?
It is the last thing I could imagine having a conversation with a United States Senator about – “getting much lately on either side?”
I mean seriously, Mike – WTF?
How does NBC News think that that is news?
Kind of salacious, isn’t it?
But then, that is what makes it news for NBC today – that headline will get them noticed for being in tune with the times.
As to the purpose of the United States Senate in the constitutional scheme laid out in the Federalist Papers, in FEDERALIST No. 59, specifically, entitled “Concerning the Power of Congress to Regulate the Election of Members” from the New York Packet to the People of the State of New York by Alexander Hamilton on Friday, February 22, 1788, spake thusly on the subject, to wit:
The interest of each State, it may be added, to maintain its representation in the national councils, would be a complete security against an abuse of the trust.
end quotes
The representation the states have in the national councils is the United States Senate.
So how does somebody being bi-sexual enter into the equation there?
Is bi-sexuality now a requirement to be a United States Senator from Arizona?
And how is that at all constitutional?
Getting back to FEDERALIST No. 59, Hamilton reinforces that as follows:
So far as that construction may expose the Union to the possibility of injury from the State legislatures, it is an evil; but it is an evil which could not have been avoided without excluding the States, in their political capacities, wholly from a place in the organization of the national government.
If this had been done, it would doubtless have been interpreted into an entire dereliction of the federal principle; and would certainly have deprived the State governments of that absolute safeguard which they will enjoy under this provision.
end quotes
I wonder what Alexander Hamilton would think if he was reading the NBC News headline above that Kyrsten Sinema makes history as first bisexual member of U.S. Senate.
Probably something like we are becoming a parody of a nation like Rome in the days of Caligula and Valeria Messalina.
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/a ... ment-93831
Paul Plante says :
We are becoming a parody of a nation like Rome in the days of Caligula and Valeria Messalina.
Our United States Senate is supposed to exist to protect the interests of the states.
So why did NBC News have to tell us that Kyrsten Sinema made history as first bisexual member of U.S. Senate?
What kind of history was that, exactly?
And how does NBC News know she is bi-sexual?
Because she told them?
And if she did, why is a candidate for the supposedly high office of United States Senator telling the press about her sexual habits?
Because like releasing your tax returns, it has become mandatory when running for high office in America to tell people how it is you have sex, and with whom, or what?
It is the last thing I could imagine having a conversation with a United States Senator about – “getting much lately on either side?”
I mean seriously, Mike – WTF?
How does NBC News think that that is news?
Kind of salacious, isn’t it?
But then, that is what makes it news for NBC today – that headline will get them noticed for being in tune with the times.
As to the purpose of the United States Senate in the constitutional scheme laid out in the Federalist Papers, in FEDERALIST No. 59, specifically, entitled “Concerning the Power of Congress to Regulate the Election of Members” from the New York Packet to the People of the State of New York by Alexander Hamilton on Friday, February 22, 1788, spake thusly on the subject, to wit:
The interest of each State, it may be added, to maintain its representation in the national councils, would be a complete security against an abuse of the trust.
end quotes
The representation the states have in the national councils is the United States Senate.
So how does somebody being bi-sexual enter into the equation there?
Is bi-sexuality now a requirement to be a United States Senator from Arizona?
And how is that at all constitutional?
Getting back to FEDERALIST No. 59, Hamilton reinforces that as follows:
So far as that construction may expose the Union to the possibility of injury from the State legislatures, it is an evil; but it is an evil which could not have been avoided without excluding the States, in their political capacities, wholly from a place in the organization of the national government.
If this had been done, it would doubtless have been interpreted into an entire dereliction of the federal principle; and would certainly have deprived the State governments of that absolute safeguard which they will enjoy under this provision.
end quotes
I wonder what Alexander Hamilton would think if he was reading the NBC News headline above that Kyrsten Sinema makes history as first bisexual member of U.S. Senate.
Probably something like we are becoming a parody of a nation like Rome in the days of Caligula and Valeria Messalina.
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/a ... ment-93831
Re: Just musings, is all
THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR November 17, 2018 at 7:39 pm
Paul Plante says:
Reading that above, dear friend and fellow American patriot Chas Cornweller, and coming across these words, “(T)o frighten the democracies he even took another step: ‘German action’ (whatever that meant), he told the British ambassador, would commence the next day at 2 P.M., namely, on September 28” and “(T)he democracies, on the other hand, did give signs of yielding,” gives you an example of why loyal American citizens of our Republic bristle when we hear powerful Democrats like the Marxist half-black man Barack Hussein Obama and empty-headed, “lying” Hillary Clinton and sell-outs like Nancy Pelosi, who had the office of speaker of our House of Representatives for sale to the highest bidders when she was speaker of the house, prattling on about OUR REPUBLIC being a “democracy,” instead.
Democracies in that case did exactly what democracies have done for the last 2500 years or so – they sold out the people of Czechoslovakia, like our democracy sold out the Vietnamese in 1975, and in the course of selling out the people of Czechoslovakia, they strengthened Hitler while weakening themselves, which is exactly what people in this country loyal to the REPUBLIC thought Hussein Obama was doing – making America weak, because like Chamberlain and Deladier, the heads of the democracies back then, Obama himself was weak.
After selling out the people of Czechoslovakia, how long after did the democracy of France fall?
What did it take?
Three days, wasn’t it, and that was the end of democracy in France, because democracy breeds the kind of weakness displayed by Hussein Obama, which weakness is the reason Donald Trump is now in the White House as a reaction to the contemptable weakness of Barack Obama.
And but for our Republic coming in to save the democracy of Britain, it too would have been gone.
And Chas Cornweller, Germany was a democracy, and Hitler was a product of that democracy, because it is a prerogative of a democracy to put a tyrant or dictator or monster in power over itself, so there is one more reason hearing people like Obama and Clinton and Pelosi referring to the United States of America as a weakling democracy causes loyal Americans to bristle.
Democracy in Germany put the rug-chewing madman Hitler in power as their dictator, and it took our Republic to put an end to that experiment, at great cost to our Republic.
As I am sure you will recall, dear friend Chas Cornweller, in FEDERALIST No. 57, The Alleged Tendency of the New Plan to Elevate the Few at the Expense of the Many Considered in Connection with Representation, from the New York Packet to the People of the State of New York on Tuesday, February 19, 1788, the author, either Hamilton or Madison stated thusly:
If it be asked, what is to restrain the House of Representatives from making legal discriminations in favor of themselves and a particular class of the society?
I answer: the genius of the whole system; the nature of just and constitutional laws; and above all, the vigilant and manly spirit which actuates the people of America, a spirit which nourishes freedom, and in return is nourished by it.
end quotes
“The vigilant and manly spirit which actuates the people of America,” Chas Cornweller, is now largely gone, and has been since at least the 1960s.
In fact, if we today dare to talk about the “vigilant and manly spirit which actuates the people of America,” in a public setting like this, we open ourselves up to charges of being misogynists and knuckle-dragging conservatives and homophobes and neo-nazis and such, n’est-ce pas, because today, it is a simpering and weak spirit which actuates the people of America, and we have to be sympathetic to that, so as to not hurt anyone’s feeling, while realizing that our time in this country is now past along with the vigilant and manly spirit which actuated the people of America at the time of independence from the democracy of England in 1776.
Such it is when it is, Chas Cornweller.
As Benjamin Franklin said, “a republic, if you can keep it!”
And obviously, Chas Cornweller, we couldn’t, so we didn’t, and now we are stuck with this pitiful democracy instead!
Alas and alack – what more can be said!
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/i ... ment-95002
Paul Plante says:
Reading that above, dear friend and fellow American patriot Chas Cornweller, and coming across these words, “(T)o frighten the democracies he even took another step: ‘German action’ (whatever that meant), he told the British ambassador, would commence the next day at 2 P.M., namely, on September 28” and “(T)he democracies, on the other hand, did give signs of yielding,” gives you an example of why loyal American citizens of our Republic bristle when we hear powerful Democrats like the Marxist half-black man Barack Hussein Obama and empty-headed, “lying” Hillary Clinton and sell-outs like Nancy Pelosi, who had the office of speaker of our House of Representatives for sale to the highest bidders when she was speaker of the house, prattling on about OUR REPUBLIC being a “democracy,” instead.
Democracies in that case did exactly what democracies have done for the last 2500 years or so – they sold out the people of Czechoslovakia, like our democracy sold out the Vietnamese in 1975, and in the course of selling out the people of Czechoslovakia, they strengthened Hitler while weakening themselves, which is exactly what people in this country loyal to the REPUBLIC thought Hussein Obama was doing – making America weak, because like Chamberlain and Deladier, the heads of the democracies back then, Obama himself was weak.
After selling out the people of Czechoslovakia, how long after did the democracy of France fall?
What did it take?
Three days, wasn’t it, and that was the end of democracy in France, because democracy breeds the kind of weakness displayed by Hussein Obama, which weakness is the reason Donald Trump is now in the White House as a reaction to the contemptable weakness of Barack Obama.
And but for our Republic coming in to save the democracy of Britain, it too would have been gone.
And Chas Cornweller, Germany was a democracy, and Hitler was a product of that democracy, because it is a prerogative of a democracy to put a tyrant or dictator or monster in power over itself, so there is one more reason hearing people like Obama and Clinton and Pelosi referring to the United States of America as a weakling democracy causes loyal Americans to bristle.
Democracy in Germany put the rug-chewing madman Hitler in power as their dictator, and it took our Republic to put an end to that experiment, at great cost to our Republic.
As I am sure you will recall, dear friend Chas Cornweller, in FEDERALIST No. 57, The Alleged Tendency of the New Plan to Elevate the Few at the Expense of the Many Considered in Connection with Representation, from the New York Packet to the People of the State of New York on Tuesday, February 19, 1788, the author, either Hamilton or Madison stated thusly:
If it be asked, what is to restrain the House of Representatives from making legal discriminations in favor of themselves and a particular class of the society?
I answer: the genius of the whole system; the nature of just and constitutional laws; and above all, the vigilant and manly spirit which actuates the people of America, a spirit which nourishes freedom, and in return is nourished by it.
end quotes
“The vigilant and manly spirit which actuates the people of America,” Chas Cornweller, is now largely gone, and has been since at least the 1960s.
In fact, if we today dare to talk about the “vigilant and manly spirit which actuates the people of America,” in a public setting like this, we open ourselves up to charges of being misogynists and knuckle-dragging conservatives and homophobes and neo-nazis and such, n’est-ce pas, because today, it is a simpering and weak spirit which actuates the people of America, and we have to be sympathetic to that, so as to not hurt anyone’s feeling, while realizing that our time in this country is now past along with the vigilant and manly spirit which actuated the people of America at the time of independence from the democracy of England in 1776.
Such it is when it is, Chas Cornweller.
As Benjamin Franklin said, “a republic, if you can keep it!”
And obviously, Chas Cornweller, we couldn’t, so we didn’t, and now we are stuck with this pitiful democracy instead!
Alas and alack – what more can be said!
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/i ... ment-95002
Re: Just musings, is all
THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR November 18, 2018 at 7:36 pm
Paul Plante says :
And getting back to the false and specious claim of the pompous (affectedly and irritatingly grand, solemn, or self-important) windbag Joseph Eugene Stiglitz (born February 9, 1943), a.k.a. “Bad Boy Joe,” because he dared to question the World Bank and was fired by the World Bank for expressing dissent with its policies, in his recent essay courtesy of Marketwatch entitled “Opinion: The fight to preserve democracy has come home to America” published Nov. 6, 2018, where “Bad Boy Joe,” who is making up American history as he goes for partisan political reasons, given that the dude self-identifies on his Wikipedia page as a notorious Democrat, that “(T)he U.S. was founded as a representative democracy,” which we have previously identified as a hog**** statement, because it is false, one has to wonder how he thinks he can simply sail that blatant falsehood past us without it being questioned.
“Bad Boy Joe,” the notorious Democrat, is using his considerable influence as one of Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world to feed us a snow job here, and but for the Cape Charles Mirror, he would be getting away with it, scot-free, as they say, completely unchallenged.
So why is he lying to us, telling us “(T)he U.S. was founded as a representative democracy,” when any schoolchild knows that when we say the Pledge of Allegiance, we say, “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands.”
What, pray tell, is his agenda, beyond sowing confusion among the American people on behalf of the Democrats who have just taken back control of the United States House of Representatives?
And that thought takes us to a NBC News article entitled “Democrats’ investigative dreams to meet cold, hard congressional reality – Democrats conducting presidential oversight will soon have legal authority to demand answers from the Trump administration. That doesn’t mean they’ll get them.” by Rebecca Shabad on Nov. 12, 2018, where we are told as follows:
WASHINGTON — When Democrats take control of the House next year, they will find themselves with new powers to investigate and embarrass the Trump administration.
end quotes
Oh, really, Rebecca!
And tell us, Rebecca, where in the United States Constitution does it give the Democrats in the United States House of Representatives, that branch of our national government most dangerous to our liberty, any authority, jurisdiction or discretion to waste our national resources in an obviously partisan effort intended to embarrass a sitting American president?
Oh, but you are a member of the American press, so you probably don’t know, and further, don’t have a clue, since you are there not to question, but to write it down as you are told to write it, which takes us back to the NBC News article, as follows:
But their ability to use those powers may be more limited than many progressive voters may imagine.
The liberal wish-list has been circulating for months, and Democratic base voters are hungry for results.
end quotes
And there we see it, people, the passions of the mob controlling what the Democrats in the House of Representatives are going to do, as opposed to what the United States Constitution says they are there to do.
In FEDERALIST No. 62, The Senate, for the Independent Journal to the People of the State of New York by either James Madison or Alexander Hamilton writing as Publius circa 1788, it was stated thusly about our national government, to wit:
A good government implies two things: first, fidelity to the object of government, which is the happiness of the people; secondly, a knowledge of the means by which that object can be best attained.
end quotes
In that same essay, Publius stated as follows:
No government, any more than an individual, will long be respected without being truly respectable; nor be truly respectable, without possessing a certain portion of order and stability.
end quotes
When we today some 230 years later put those two together, can we say that the Democrats in the House of Representatives using our national resources in a partisan effort to embarrass Donald Trump is worthy of respect?
Does it contribute to order and stability in our national government?
Or is it a blatant effort by the Democrats in the House of Representatives to disrupt our national government?
In FEDERALIST No. 62, The Senate, for the Independent Journal to the People of the State of New York by either James Madison or Alexander Hamilton writing as Publius circa 1788 stated thusly, to wit:
Another defect to be supplied by a senate lies in a want of due acquaintance with the objects and principles of legislation.
end quotes
And right there, Publius is making a direct reference to what we are seeing taking place here in America as the Democrats take control of the U.S. House of Representatives – quite simply, they are totally unacquainted with the objects and principles of legislation, so they don’t know what the **** it is they are doing, other than lashing out on behalf of the howling mob, which is a blatant misuse of our national government resources, which takes us back to FEDERALIST No. 62, as follows:
The necessity of a senate is not less indicated by the propensity of all single and numerous assemblies to yield to the impulse of sudden and violent passions, and to be seduced by factious leaders into intemperate and pernicious resolutions.
Examples on this subject might be cited without number; and from proceedings within the United States, as well as from the history of other nations.
end quotes
And here is yet another blatant example of it, 230 years later, where we see our House of Representatives, now that the Democrats are taking power, yielding to the impulse of the sudden and violent passions of the howling, shrieking and screaming mob, and being seduced by factious leaders into intemperate and pernicious resolutions, which again takes us back to FEDERALIST No. 62, as follows:
It is a misfortune incident to republican government, though in a less degree than to other governments, that those who administer it may forget their obligations to their constituents, and prove unfaithful to their important trust.
end quotes
And there, people, 230 years later, Publius is talking about Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats in the House of Representatives when he says it is a misfortune incident to republican government that those who administer it, like Nancy Pelosi as speaker of the house, forget their obligations to the nation and prove unfaithful to their important trust, which takes us back in time a bit to a Tribune Washington Bureau article entitled “Embattled Pelosi’s big survival weapon: money” by Anshu Siripurapu on 6/22/2017, as follows:
WASHINGTON — Here’s a huge reason Nancy Pelosi maintains her iron grip on House Democrats, even after another bruising — and in many party circles embarrassing — election loss: her ability to raise lots and lots of money.
The House Democratic leader has few current peers when it comes to pumping money into colleagues’ campaigns.
No other potential up-and-coming Democratic challenger to her leadership comes close.
Since 1990, she’s raised more than $9.2 million for party candidates, including $739,000 in the 2016 election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks contributions from candidate committees and affiliated PACs.
Pelosi’s office claims even loftier triumphs, saying she’s raised more than $500 million for Democrats since entering the party leadership in the early 2000s, including $141.5 million in the 2015-2016 cycle.
The totals, her office says, include money raised for the party not directly controlled by her committees.
Big donors to the party’s congressional campaign committee were also available to Pelosi through her “Speaker’s Cabinet” program, which gave them special access to the Democratic leader.
end quotes
That is what we just got back in control of OUR United States House of Representatives – somebody and a party with a history of selling out the American people to the highest bidders.
What a swamp, but it doesn’t end there, so please, stay tuned for further installments of Making It Up As they Go!
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/o ... ment-95375
Paul Plante says :
And getting back to the false and specious claim of the pompous (affectedly and irritatingly grand, solemn, or self-important) windbag Joseph Eugene Stiglitz (born February 9, 1943), a.k.a. “Bad Boy Joe,” because he dared to question the World Bank and was fired by the World Bank for expressing dissent with its policies, in his recent essay courtesy of Marketwatch entitled “Opinion: The fight to preserve democracy has come home to America” published Nov. 6, 2018, where “Bad Boy Joe,” who is making up American history as he goes for partisan political reasons, given that the dude self-identifies on his Wikipedia page as a notorious Democrat, that “(T)he U.S. was founded as a representative democracy,” which we have previously identified as a hog**** statement, because it is false, one has to wonder how he thinks he can simply sail that blatant falsehood past us without it being questioned.
“Bad Boy Joe,” the notorious Democrat, is using his considerable influence as one of Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world to feed us a snow job here, and but for the Cape Charles Mirror, he would be getting away with it, scot-free, as they say, completely unchallenged.
So why is he lying to us, telling us “(T)he U.S. was founded as a representative democracy,” when any schoolchild knows that when we say the Pledge of Allegiance, we say, “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands.”
What, pray tell, is his agenda, beyond sowing confusion among the American people on behalf of the Democrats who have just taken back control of the United States House of Representatives?
And that thought takes us to a NBC News article entitled “Democrats’ investigative dreams to meet cold, hard congressional reality – Democrats conducting presidential oversight will soon have legal authority to demand answers from the Trump administration. That doesn’t mean they’ll get them.” by Rebecca Shabad on Nov. 12, 2018, where we are told as follows:
WASHINGTON — When Democrats take control of the House next year, they will find themselves with new powers to investigate and embarrass the Trump administration.
end quotes
Oh, really, Rebecca!
And tell us, Rebecca, where in the United States Constitution does it give the Democrats in the United States House of Representatives, that branch of our national government most dangerous to our liberty, any authority, jurisdiction or discretion to waste our national resources in an obviously partisan effort intended to embarrass a sitting American president?
Oh, but you are a member of the American press, so you probably don’t know, and further, don’t have a clue, since you are there not to question, but to write it down as you are told to write it, which takes us back to the NBC News article, as follows:
But their ability to use those powers may be more limited than many progressive voters may imagine.
The liberal wish-list has been circulating for months, and Democratic base voters are hungry for results.
end quotes
And there we see it, people, the passions of the mob controlling what the Democrats in the House of Representatives are going to do, as opposed to what the United States Constitution says they are there to do.
In FEDERALIST No. 62, The Senate, for the Independent Journal to the People of the State of New York by either James Madison or Alexander Hamilton writing as Publius circa 1788, it was stated thusly about our national government, to wit:
A good government implies two things: first, fidelity to the object of government, which is the happiness of the people; secondly, a knowledge of the means by which that object can be best attained.
end quotes
In that same essay, Publius stated as follows:
No government, any more than an individual, will long be respected without being truly respectable; nor be truly respectable, without possessing a certain portion of order and stability.
end quotes
When we today some 230 years later put those two together, can we say that the Democrats in the House of Representatives using our national resources in a partisan effort to embarrass Donald Trump is worthy of respect?
Does it contribute to order and stability in our national government?
Or is it a blatant effort by the Democrats in the House of Representatives to disrupt our national government?
In FEDERALIST No. 62, The Senate, for the Independent Journal to the People of the State of New York by either James Madison or Alexander Hamilton writing as Publius circa 1788 stated thusly, to wit:
Another defect to be supplied by a senate lies in a want of due acquaintance with the objects and principles of legislation.
end quotes
And right there, Publius is making a direct reference to what we are seeing taking place here in America as the Democrats take control of the U.S. House of Representatives – quite simply, they are totally unacquainted with the objects and principles of legislation, so they don’t know what the **** it is they are doing, other than lashing out on behalf of the howling mob, which is a blatant misuse of our national government resources, which takes us back to FEDERALIST No. 62, as follows:
The necessity of a senate is not less indicated by the propensity of all single and numerous assemblies to yield to the impulse of sudden and violent passions, and to be seduced by factious leaders into intemperate and pernicious resolutions.
Examples on this subject might be cited without number; and from proceedings within the United States, as well as from the history of other nations.
end quotes
And here is yet another blatant example of it, 230 years later, where we see our House of Representatives, now that the Democrats are taking power, yielding to the impulse of the sudden and violent passions of the howling, shrieking and screaming mob, and being seduced by factious leaders into intemperate and pernicious resolutions, which again takes us back to FEDERALIST No. 62, as follows:
It is a misfortune incident to republican government, though in a less degree than to other governments, that those who administer it may forget their obligations to their constituents, and prove unfaithful to their important trust.
end quotes
And there, people, 230 years later, Publius is talking about Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats in the House of Representatives when he says it is a misfortune incident to republican government that those who administer it, like Nancy Pelosi as speaker of the house, forget their obligations to the nation and prove unfaithful to their important trust, which takes us back in time a bit to a Tribune Washington Bureau article entitled “Embattled Pelosi’s big survival weapon: money” by Anshu Siripurapu on 6/22/2017, as follows:
WASHINGTON — Here’s a huge reason Nancy Pelosi maintains her iron grip on House Democrats, even after another bruising — and in many party circles embarrassing — election loss: her ability to raise lots and lots of money.
The House Democratic leader has few current peers when it comes to pumping money into colleagues’ campaigns.
No other potential up-and-coming Democratic challenger to her leadership comes close.
Since 1990, she’s raised more than $9.2 million for party candidates, including $739,000 in the 2016 election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks contributions from candidate committees and affiliated PACs.
Pelosi’s office claims even loftier triumphs, saying she’s raised more than $500 million for Democrats since entering the party leadership in the early 2000s, including $141.5 million in the 2015-2016 cycle.
The totals, her office says, include money raised for the party not directly controlled by her committees.
Big donors to the party’s congressional campaign committee were also available to Pelosi through her “Speaker’s Cabinet” program, which gave them special access to the Democratic leader.
end quotes
That is what we just got back in control of OUR United States House of Representatives – somebody and a party with a history of selling out the American people to the highest bidders.
What a swamp, but it doesn’t end there, so please, stay tuned for further installments of Making It Up As they Go!
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/o ... ment-95375
Re: Just musings, is all
THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR November 18, 2018 at 8:17 pm
Paul Plante says :
And might I say, Bruce Taylor, that you have a quite unique view of both government in the United States of America, and the education of its citizens, and it is so foreign to how I see things as an American citizen that I am wondering from where on earth you could have gotten your version of operational reality here in the United States of America, where every American citizen is subject to federal law pursuant to our Republican frame of government.
You say that people naturally assume that the public school system is trying to do what’s best of the children, but I am clearly not one of those people.
I naturally assume that the public school system is trying to do what is best for the community and the nation, which is to turn out productive American citizens, instead of a bunch of useless burdens on society who know nothing more than how to scan through TWITTER on their personal hand-held devices.
You say, perhaps on good authority, that the fact of the matter is that these institutions have nothing to do with education, and today, there you appear to be quite right, at least when it comes to teaching personal responsibilty.
You say they are set up by people who, like all other people, have their own personal agendas, which is why we are supposed to have local school boards making sure that the purpose of the local school system, which is tax-payer funded, is there to educate the students to be productive American citizens, and not a burden on society who thinks he or she is entitled to a good living, simply because they were born.
You say the public school’s true purpose is to put certain messages into the children’s heads so they’ll be more obedient of the government when they get older, and would you have it any other way, Bruce Taylor?
Would you be for turning out children who were disobedient of the government?
Are you for anarchy, Bruce Taylor?
Do you think anarchy is a viable form of government for the United States of America?
Is that what you are advocating in here?
Getting back to your essay, you say, “(C)onsider the ‘grade’ system.”
“You start off in first grade, where you’re placed not by academic ability, nor by willingness to learn, but by age.”
end quotes
Actually, I started out in kindergarten, and today, many children start out in pre-school, graded, of course, by age, since that is a rational method by which to begin their education.
Back when I was young, there were still one-room schoolhouses around where kids from grades one through six were all in the same room, but of course, the younger kids were not expected to know what the six graders were studying.
So even though they were in the same room, they didn’t all study the same subjects.
In your essay, you say “(T)he reason for this is very simple, most children already think of adults as if they’re their superiors, and now they’ll associate their position in the grade system with superiority.”
end quotes
How so?
And where on earth did you get that bit of illogic from?
When I was in first grade, my association with my position in the grade system was that I didn’t know enough yet to be in second grade.
That was it.
There was no sense of superiority involved, which takes us back to your essay as follows:
“Obviously, that’s nonsense.”
“A kid in the 5th grade may very well have less overall academic ability then a kid in the 2nd grade.”
end quotes
And how true that is, Bruce Taylor.
When I was in the Army back in the VEET NAM times, they were scouring every swamp and bayou and backwater they could to come up with cannon-fodder for LBJ’s war of aggression on the Vietnamese people, and they were dredging up people who couldn’t even read or write, and here we are talking about people over 18.
And look at how many people in America today with a college degree are as dumb as a box of rocks – it is pitiful, is it not, which takes us back to your essay as follows:
“Moreover, education isn’t something that can be ranked.”
“The kind of education that tends to be more valuable later on in life is your specialization, not the sheer quantity of raw general knowledge.”
end quotes
No arguments there from me, Bruce Taylor, outside of me saying some of the most stupid, supposedly educated people I have met have been law school graduates.
Go figure that one out, if you can.
Getting back to your essay, you say, “Next, consider the way a classroom is structured, the teacher is in charge, the students are to listen to the teacher.”
Damn right is my response, which takes us back to your essay, as follows:
The reason the classroom setting is set up in this way is clear.
The students learn at an early age to respect authority figures, so later on, they obey the government.
end quotes
What they are supposed to learn, Bruce Taylor, is that in OUR REPUBLIC, they are the government.
How come they don’t, do you think?
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/i ... ment-95387
Paul Plante says :
And might I say, Bruce Taylor, that you have a quite unique view of both government in the United States of America, and the education of its citizens, and it is so foreign to how I see things as an American citizen that I am wondering from where on earth you could have gotten your version of operational reality here in the United States of America, where every American citizen is subject to federal law pursuant to our Republican frame of government.
You say that people naturally assume that the public school system is trying to do what’s best of the children, but I am clearly not one of those people.
I naturally assume that the public school system is trying to do what is best for the community and the nation, which is to turn out productive American citizens, instead of a bunch of useless burdens on society who know nothing more than how to scan through TWITTER on their personal hand-held devices.
You say, perhaps on good authority, that the fact of the matter is that these institutions have nothing to do with education, and today, there you appear to be quite right, at least when it comes to teaching personal responsibilty.
You say they are set up by people who, like all other people, have their own personal agendas, which is why we are supposed to have local school boards making sure that the purpose of the local school system, which is tax-payer funded, is there to educate the students to be productive American citizens, and not a burden on society who thinks he or she is entitled to a good living, simply because they were born.
You say the public school’s true purpose is to put certain messages into the children’s heads so they’ll be more obedient of the government when they get older, and would you have it any other way, Bruce Taylor?
Would you be for turning out children who were disobedient of the government?
Are you for anarchy, Bruce Taylor?
Do you think anarchy is a viable form of government for the United States of America?
Is that what you are advocating in here?
Getting back to your essay, you say, “(C)onsider the ‘grade’ system.”
“You start off in first grade, where you’re placed not by academic ability, nor by willingness to learn, but by age.”
end quotes
Actually, I started out in kindergarten, and today, many children start out in pre-school, graded, of course, by age, since that is a rational method by which to begin their education.
Back when I was young, there were still one-room schoolhouses around where kids from grades one through six were all in the same room, but of course, the younger kids were not expected to know what the six graders were studying.
So even though they were in the same room, they didn’t all study the same subjects.
In your essay, you say “(T)he reason for this is very simple, most children already think of adults as if they’re their superiors, and now they’ll associate their position in the grade system with superiority.”
end quotes
How so?
And where on earth did you get that bit of illogic from?
When I was in first grade, my association with my position in the grade system was that I didn’t know enough yet to be in second grade.
That was it.
There was no sense of superiority involved, which takes us back to your essay as follows:
“Obviously, that’s nonsense.”
“A kid in the 5th grade may very well have less overall academic ability then a kid in the 2nd grade.”
end quotes
And how true that is, Bruce Taylor.
When I was in the Army back in the VEET NAM times, they were scouring every swamp and bayou and backwater they could to come up with cannon-fodder for LBJ’s war of aggression on the Vietnamese people, and they were dredging up people who couldn’t even read or write, and here we are talking about people over 18.
And look at how many people in America today with a college degree are as dumb as a box of rocks – it is pitiful, is it not, which takes us back to your essay as follows:
“Moreover, education isn’t something that can be ranked.”
“The kind of education that tends to be more valuable later on in life is your specialization, not the sheer quantity of raw general knowledge.”
end quotes
No arguments there from me, Bruce Taylor, outside of me saying some of the most stupid, supposedly educated people I have met have been law school graduates.
Go figure that one out, if you can.
Getting back to your essay, you say, “Next, consider the way a classroom is structured, the teacher is in charge, the students are to listen to the teacher.”
Damn right is my response, which takes us back to your essay, as follows:
The reason the classroom setting is set up in this way is clear.
The students learn at an early age to respect authority figures, so later on, they obey the government.
end quotes
What they are supposed to learn, Bruce Taylor, is that in OUR REPUBLIC, they are the government.
How come they don’t, do you think?
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/i ... ment-95387