"In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history will be the majority and will dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance."
There were some very, very sound reasons the Founders designed the Constitution to define a timocratic republic, and very,very sound reasons they eschewed mob rule (democracy).
And there are some very, very shrewd–and really stupid–reasons why our political masters have sold the sheeple a bill of goods concerning democracy.
Chew on those two thoughts for a while and get back to me, ‘K?
With the open display of antipathy toward democracy in recent days–so-called “Democrats” using various tactics to avoid the outcomes of democratically-decided elections, beginning with the “Democratic” State senators of Wisconsin fleeing the state to avoid providing a quorum–isn’t it time the party was formally renamed the Anti-Democratic Party?
Orson Scott Card, as he so often does, says it better than I can:
In America we’re all voters — but nobody checks to make sure we have any sense at all about how we vote. I urge every American to regard history as the first and most important study of our lives — the minimum requirement to be a good citizen.
And instead of relying on our castrated and/or politicized textbooks (by Left and Right), which grossly under- and mis-educate our young, we should be reading independent histories every chance we get.
As I have often said–heck, it was long in my blog header–
“In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history are in the majority and dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance.”-third world county’s corollary to Santayana’s Axiom
I think there were originally 33 from some unknown asker, but my archive of an archive of an archive only lists 14.
1. Were the American Indians really environmentalists?
2. Is the U.S. government too stingy with foreign aid – or not stingy enough?
3. Was the U.S. Constitution meant to be a “living, breathing” document that changes with the times?
4. What really happened in the Whiskey Rebellion, and why will neither your textbook nor George Washington tell you?
5. What made American wages rise? (Hint: it wasn’t unions or the government.)
6. Did the Iroquois Indians influence the United States Constitution?
7. Did school desegregation narrow the black-white achievement gap?
8. Did the Founding Fathers support immigration? If so, what forms of immigration did they support?
9. What was “the biggest unknown scandal of the Clinton years”?
10. The three constitutional clauses that have caused the most mischief – what are they, and what did the Founders and Framers say they were supposed to mean?
11. Did capitalism cause the Great Depression? If not, what did?
12. Does the Constitution really contain an “elastic clause”?
13. Did the Founding Fathers believe in jury nullification – that juries could refuse to enforce unjust laws?
14. Was George Washington Carver (who supposedly developed 300 products out of the peanut) really one of America’s greatest scientific geniuses, as Henry Ford claimed?
Anyone with the grasp of American history and civics my eighth grade American History teacher expected of us would be able to discuss all but two of these, supporting all discussion with clear and unequivocal historical facts, and the two that we would not have been expected to be able to discuss meaningfully at the time depend on history that’s occurred since that time.
Once again, may I commend to your attention the ISI’s Civics Literacy Quiz? The link’s to one of the “Findings” pages on the site, but the quiz itself, as well as a wealth of other information, is available from there. The quiz doesn’t require as muc or as detailed an American History knowledge base as the 14 questions above, but is, IMO, a fairly decent gauge of someone’s basic civics literacy.
I have a suggestion for transparency in campaigning for The Zero, adapted from a graphic I ran across on FB:
Of course, complete transparency would attach this to a certified copy of an actual birth certificate, adoption records, Indonesian citizenship records and a statement that “Barry Hussein Obama-Soetoro is running for the position of unconstitutional holder of the office of the presidency of the United States of America as the illegal alien communist candidate from Kenya-Indonesia”.
(Yes, I do think that, given the millions he’s spent to deny the public access to his past, Barry Hussein Obama-Soetoro is “a fraud of monstrous size” perpetrated on the citizens of the United States of America by a coalition of the corrupt, stupid, naive, and deliberately disinformed.)
…I’ll go ahead and post this, since it’s just so much fun to watch. And outbreak of good citizenship catches the Dhimmicraps by the short hairs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jy9r6H-czWA
And here’s another with a slightly different message:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AF5hWbgrzGI&NR=1
…unless you have had your stomach pumped to rid yourself of the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind KoolAid and have THEN done your due diligence to inform yourself (as opposed to the misinformation, disinformation and outright lies of the Hivemind and its co-conspirators in the “assisted suicide” of the West). But if you HAVE done these things, then
“The opinion of ten thousand men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject.” —Marcus Aurelius
Nowadays, our electorate can more properly be described by,
“The opinion of ten thousand men is of no value if they are all willfully ignorant.”
There are adequate means now for ANY person in these (dys)United States to be adequately well-informed about the important issues of the day, but, sadly, few bother to take the time or make the effort to do anything but soak up–directly or indirectly–the viewpoints of the Ruling Elite mostly via the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind.
Keep in mind: your ignorant, self-enstupiated neighbor’s vote counts just as much as yours does.
Educate the stupid.
…and things look bleak for genuine human rights and the rule of law, here’s a motto to remember:
“[T]he only use I have for the moral high ground is a place to put my artillery.”
Remember the Founders, the price they paid for liberty from an oppressive government, and ponder the moral high ground.
In a very Common Man’s vein, here is my summation of a Declaration of Independence From D.C. Political Sluts:
(Thank you, Monty Python.)