Jeff Davis
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Jeff Davis is a retired radio-TV journalist living in Gainesville, GA. Active in
civic and political affairs, he is past president of the Georgia Jaycees and former campaign chairman of the Georgia
Republican party. He volunteers as chairman of the Georgia Heritage Council.
He is a collateral descendant of President Jefferson Davis and a member of SCV Camp 1404 in Gainesville and National
Chairman of Public Relations and Media for SCV.
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Steve Scroggins is a volunteer contributor to the Georgia
Heritage Council who lives in Macon. He is the deranged creative force behind the
X-Files parody and satire feature.
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Steve Scroggins
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The Perils of Democracy, Part 2
Threats to the Republic: Economic and Political -
Commentary by J. A. Davis & Steve Scroggins
"Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be
their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives. " --James Madison
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of
civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." --Thomas Jefferson
In Part 1 of this
series we established that the prevailing ignorance of
history and civics on the part of American citizens poses a grave threat to our future. Only an informed citizenry
can properly carry out its duty and maintain its liberty. Those who are not vigilant
cannot maintain their existing Liberty, much less restore Liberty Lost. To briefly recap, we established that:
- America's Founders rejected democracy as a form of government dangerous to liberty.
- Democracies create governments of the Majority Unlimited and result in tyranny.
- Our Constitution defines a Republic; this is an
important distinction.
- Republics grant only LIMITED powers to government through written constitutions; they better safeguard the rights of the Individual and the Minority.
- Core Principle: Our rights originate from God; government's purpose is to secure citizen rights.
- Twelve American Principles
are embodied in the Constitution and represent the accumulated wisdom of the ages and eternal truth.
- The Federalist Papers, the
Anti-Federalist Papers and Madison's notes on the
convention best define the Founders' orginal intent.
- Ideological opponents and America's socialist/communist enemies have stated goals to subvert and alter the Constitution.
- Those enemies have succeeded, at least in part, by attempting to discredit the Constitution (as outdated and inflexible),
to discredit the
Founding Fathers (as selfish aristocrats, advocates of slavery, etc.), and by discouraging the teaching of American history
by suggesting its irrelevance to the 'big picture' and the brave new 'globalist' world.
Americans have a duty to understand their common history and their
government in context or else they cannot preserve and pass on the inheritance of liberty bequeathed from our ancestors
who risked their all and purchased it with blood and treasure. We owe an undeniable debt to our ancestors and equally, if
not more importantly, to our descendants.
"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." --James Madison
"Society is indeed a contract . . . it becomes a partnership not
only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to
be born." --Edmund Burke [English statesman and member of Parliament during the Revolution]
After further discussion, we'll return to the question of what American
patriots should do to prepare and to honor their debts to themselves and their posterity.
In Part 1
we also established that Communitarianism
has been the popular vogue in European forms of government and that those socialist experiments are in various stages
of their death throes.
Now, and indeed throughout history, all these expeditions into the
various forms of democracy and socialism are sinking under their own weight, which includes the pursuit of Utopia, mass corruption
and copy-cat stupidity. Like the democracies of antiquity and the socialist/communist regimes of the 20th century,
modern socialist democracies are self-destructing as a direct result of unsound fiscal policy, their oppression of
minorities, and their innate injustice to their people
....in Madison's words "as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death."
"Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have
ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in
their lives as they have been violent in their death." -- James Madison, from
Federalist #10
“The worst thing that can happen to a good cause is, not to be skillfully attacked, but to be ineptly defended.”
--Frederic Bastiat
"It has been said that all Government is an evil. It would be more proper
to say that the necessity of any Government is a misfortune. This necessity however exists; and the problem to be
solved is, not what form of Government is perfect, but which of the forms is least imperfect." --James Madison, 1833
We know that the U.S. Constitution is not perfect; history proves that it can
be subverted if not properly defended (as we'll detail in Part 3), but we believe it is less imperfect than any
of the socialist forms of
government. The history of the 20th and 21st centuries bears witness that the socialist pursuit of Utopia is
folly, a study in abject failure.
Socialism and communism fail to account for human nature and corruption. Deluded
Americans fail to see that what made America great in the first place was its Freedom or better stated, its lack of
government coercion and interference. As America's government has grown, its liberty and its greatness has receded.
Despite the repeated failures of socialism, many Americans avert their eyes and cling to
their belief that Utopia is within our grasp, just a few billion or trillion dollars away. We noted earlier that American
academia has been infiltrated with Marxists and socialists of various stripes, such as those who teach communitarianism
in American law schools (like George Washington Univ.) and in universities across the land.
The Founders believed that the most formidable threats to liberty were internal,
but they also recognized that external threats and wars, and our reaction to them, posed a significant opportunity for
tyrants to seize unauthorized powers and ultimately undermine liberty at home.
"It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be
charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad." -- James Madison
"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise
of fighting a foreign enemy." --James Madison
The enemy within certainly poses a great threat, but the external
"crisis" has historically preceded the greatest power-grabs throughout
American history. As government power and size has grown, liberty has retreated. Obvious external
threats include wars and economic turmoil.
The 20th century featured world-wide wars and
economic turmoil. America's reaction to all of those events has been expansion of government with its
attendant repression of liberty. Reaction to economic crisis in the 21st century has included
proposals to do the same, expand government.
We have
the recent news
of the bankruptcy of Iceland and collapse of its government. Iceland, where the major banks have been taken
over by the government, the people have lost the value of their currency. Riots and civil strife have broken out
throughout the land.
Observers anticipate similar strife following closely in
a number of other nations across Europe, beginning most likely in Latvia, (more than 10,000 just rioted there) then, probably
the Ukraine. Hungary and Bulgaria are not far behind. Bailout talk in the U.S. has been equated by some to nationalizing
the U.S. banking system and we're led to ask, "How close is America to following the democratic communitarian
lemmings over the cliff?"
Please don't think we're trying to spread doom and gloom. We're concerned
based on knowing the history of world wide economic collapse. Some optimists argue that the current
crisis must lead to a massive "reverse ratchet effect" and a resurgence of political liberty.
There is only so much a U. S. Treasury or the American taxpaying public can and
should do. The same is true of the International Monetary Fund which is emulating the U.S. bailouts in Europe,
or trying to. The suggestion to "do nothing,"
despite its obvious historical wisdom, falls on deaf ears. Renowned economist Robert Higgs (known
for defining the Ratchet Effect) proposes that government should stay out of the way. His essay
entitled, "Instead of stimulus, do nothing – seriously," is of course
being widely ignored by the powers that be.
[t]he failure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, setting in motion the biggest government
bailout/takeover in U.S. history, brings a grim sense of fulfillment to competent economists....
Our political economy is rife with such catastrophes in waiting, yet the public always seems
startled, and outraged, when the day of reckoning can no longer be deferred, and another
apartment collapses in the state’s Hotel of Impossible Promises, loading onto the taxpayers
more visibly the burden of sheltering the previous occupants.... Call it democracy in action or
utterly corrupt governance; they are the same thing." --Robert Higgs, from
"Ticking Time Bomb Explodes, Public Is Shocked" 9/10/08
New tricks like changing the currency in Europe, or printing more money
in the U. S. without regard to the crushing debt that is mounting to almost impossible totals and that can
never be repaid within the lifetimes of distant generations of our descendants.
In addition to the economic insanity of Higgs'
Hotel of Impossible Promises, another proposed perilous trick directly alters the Constitution. We have
various special interest groups pressing
for a Constitutional Convention (Con Con for short) in order to address various political issues such as balanced
budget, flag-burning, abortion, etc.
As we've noted before,
there are many Americans (70% according to polls) who favor the abolition of the U.S. electoral college (designed by the Framers)
in favor of a nationalist, presumably more 'democratic,' popular vote model. There are currently 32
state legislatures calling for a con con, that's just two shy of the 34 required to make it
mandatory. We stand on that precarious precipice looking down into the abyss of the unknown.
The Constitution is under siege and attackers approach from all directions.
Following the propaganda masquerading as 'news,' we see gathering
interest in further restricting or revising the Bill of Rights.
Proposals include repealing the Second Amendment,
regarding individual gun rights. We note by way of example that Eric Holder, President Obama's nominee for Attorney General, has
long held the position that the Second Amendment affirms no right of individual gun possession by private citizens. Never
mind that recent scholarship supports the obvious intent of the Founders, for example, Stephen P. Halbrook's well-researched
book entitled, "The Founders' Second Amendment - Origins of the Right to Bear Arms." Holder marches on
ignoring clear original intent because, in his mind, "community" collective concerns outweigh and supercede
Individual rights.
We believe that an armed citizenry makes everyone safer from crime
and tyranny. Our would-be Attorney General disagrees and
struggles with logical acrobatics and semantic sophistry to argue that our Founders intended to protect only a collective
right to bear arms within an organized miltary unit. The Founders aversion to a standing army and their definition of
'militia' are a discussion for another day.
Patriot Mark Alexander,
expresses our shared commitment to resist
confiscation of our means of self-defense when he wrote, "...the only guns
that will ever be taken from my hands, or those of tens of millions of like-minded gun owners, will be seized
posthumously, and with empty magazines..." In addition to direct assaults on the Second Amendment, modern
gun-grabbers try various
back-door methods
to disarm the people by outlawing or taxing ammunition. As the Founders repeatedly noted, the right to bear arms defends all of our
other rights. American gun owners are, in Alexander's words, "the vanguard between liberty and tyranny."
"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately,
nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined." --Patrick Henry
"Firearms are second only to the Constitution in importance; they
are the peoples' liberty's teeth." --George Washington
In addition to the Second Amendment, some Americans consider other articles
of the Bill of Rights as outdated or inconvenient. We will review those in greater detail in
Part 3 of this series and address further threats (economic and political)
to our Constitution.
Related Links
The American Ideal of 1776: The Twelve Basic American Principles - Hamilton Abert Long
Founders' Wisdom v. ignorance and 'democracy' - Steve Scroggins
The Judicial Activist Coup D'Etat -- Steve Scroggins
Slavery, Apologies & Duty - Steve Scroggins
The will of the uninformed - Jonah Goldberg
An Important Distinction: Democracy versus Republic
America's Worst Scandal: the 14th Amendment - J.A. Davis
Liberty Lost - Part 1 - J.A. Davis
Liberty Lost - Part 2 - J.A. Davis
Liberty Lost - Part 3 - J.A. Davis
Liberty Lost - Part 8 - J.A. Davis
Repeal the 17th Amendment - articlev.com
Anti Communitarian League - ACL
Contact: Telephone 770 297-4788 P-6, 2363 North Cliff Colony Drive Gainesvlle,
GA 30501
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