When it comes to political orders, I supposethat the best one is the one that's least worst for the circumstances. Churchill said that democracy was the worst form, except for the others.
Worst for whom? For what kinds of people, in what place and time? Should we have tried parliamentary democracy in 9th century Europe?
And, of course, it all depends what you mean by democracy. For the Founding Fathers --not the gender-neutral "Founders", as if women wrote the Constitution-- democracy was a bad word. It meant rule by the mob via a ballot box. For them, Republic was the opposite of democracy as well as of monarchy. Smart fellas.
If cultures are different, diverse and to be celebrated, why should they all have the same form of government?
I mean, really, who expects that 1 billion Chinese --just on the basis size if nothing else-- would be well-governed by a parliamentary system? One of the reasons for my growing skepticism about the survival capacity of the American republic is size. Now at over 300 million, in 50 years this country is likely to have a population of more than 435 million. And about a third will be Hispanic.
Watching the "transformative" decomposition and dismantling of the US at the hands of the Liberal alliance of aggrieved minorities and their morally disarmed White allies, I have shifted my point of view, my vantage point, about my country and its institutions. As I've come to suspect, IMHO, the Founding Fathers erred by not making explicit who "The People" were, in whose name this Republic was set up. Their assumptions and intentions were pretty clear; the first immigration act in 1790 limited citizenship to free White persons of good moral character. But they did not make it explicit in the Constitution, and so we became a "creedal nation", abstracted from race and culture. Especially abstracted now from the race and culture that created it but which now Dare Not Speak Its Name.
Even with a hugely dominant White Protestant citizenry, the Civil War still happened. The abstraction of Union vs the deep divide between North and South. (Though one way to look at that war was that it was a battle between Whites about non-Whites. Rather like contemporary politics.) All sorts of bad things happened. No political order changes that. As I say, it's about least worst.
But a hugely dominant --and self-confident-- demographic gives the stability of shared cultural norms, even language...something we can no longer take for granted in the age of Para espanol, oprima dos. Without that, when America becomes a country of competing and antagonistic minorities in mid-century, how does that inherently unstable Balkanized power dynamic support a constitutional republic?
Have a nice day.
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Worst for whom? For what kinds of people, in what place and time? Should we have tried parliamentary democracy in 9th century Europe?
And, of course, it all depends what you mean by democracy. For the Founding Fathers --not the gender-neutral "Founders", as if women wrote the Constitution-- democracy was a bad word. It meant rule by the mob via a ballot box. For them, Republic was the opposite of democracy as well as of monarchy. Smart fellas.
If cultures are different, diverse and to be celebrated, why should they all have the same form of government?
I mean, really, who expects that 1 billion Chinese --just on the basis size if nothing else-- would be well-governed by a parliamentary system? One of the reasons for my growing skepticism about the survival capacity of the American republic is size. Now at over 300 million, in 50 years this country is likely to have a population of more than 435 million. And about a third will be Hispanic.
Watching the "transformative" decomposition and dismantling of the US at the hands of the Liberal alliance of aggrieved minorities and their morally disarmed White allies, I have shifted my point of view, my vantage point, about my country and its institutions. As I've come to suspect, IMHO, the Founding Fathers erred by not making explicit who "The People" were, in whose name this Republic was set up. Their assumptions and intentions were pretty clear; the first immigration act in 1790 limited citizenship to free White persons of good moral character. But they did not make it explicit in the Constitution, and so we became a "creedal nation", abstracted from race and culture. Especially abstracted now from the race and culture that created it but which now Dare Not Speak Its Name.
Even with a hugely dominant White Protestant citizenry, the Civil War still happened. The abstraction of Union vs the deep divide between North and South. (Though one way to look at that war was that it was a battle between Whites about non-Whites. Rather like contemporary politics.) All sorts of bad things happened. No political order changes that. As I say, it's about least worst.
But a hugely dominant --and self-confident-- demographic gives the stability of shared cultural norms, even language...something we can no longer take for granted in the age of Para espanol, oprima dos. Without that, when America becomes a country of competing and antagonistic minorities in mid-century, how does that inherently unstable Balkanized power dynamic support a constitutional republic?
Have a nice day.
---
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