Tuesday, February 24, 2009
The American Form of Government: A Necessary Review
A lesson we and our "leaders" would be smart to review ... political ideologies, such as a monarchy, oligarchy, democracy, republic, or anarchy. Our founding fathers made us a republic and not a democracy. A republic limits government power and leaves the people alone. With limited government, the people are free to produce and allowed to keep the fruits of their labor.
"The Founders did everything thing they could to keep us from having a Democracy."
"The essence of freedom is the proper limitation of government."
"When government grows, people's freedom recede."
"Thus democracy itself is not a stable form of government. Instead it is the gradual transition from limited government to the unlimited rule of an oligarchy."
"We can keep our Republic, or we will inevitably end up with an Oligarchy: a tyranny of the elite." -- Benjamin Franklin
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2 comments:
For an 'educator' you're not very educated.
That's a shame and a tragedy for your students, because contrary to popular belief, ignorance is a learned behavior. This video is obviously a rightwing propaganda piece, albeit well-crafted, and you fell for it.
Go to politicalcompass.org and take the test. Begin your education.
Yet another sad case where, rather than engage in simply stating one's disagreement and/or expressing one's own opinion, a personal attack must be launched. Stevie: you've never set foot in my classroom, let along have ever met me, nor know what I teach.
First, this is not an education blog. I merely vent here, express opinions about society, etc. Your attack on me as a teacher for simply expressing an opinion contrary to yours is about as lame as my attacking you as a human being -- I have never met you.
I did check out the website you proposed. However, I am on vacation and don't intend to take the test until later. I did find it interesting, however, that the introduction to the website pretty much asserted the same thing as the video I posted: that nowadays just using "leftwing" and "rightwing" is no longer accurate. Here's from the politicalcompass intro:
"There's abundant evidence for the need of it. The old one-dimensional categories of 'right' and 'left', established for the seating arrangement of the French National Assembly of 1789, are overly simplistic for today's complex political landscape. For example, who are the 'conservatives' in today's Russia? Are they the unreconstructed Stalinists, or the reformers who have adopted the right-wing views of conservatives like Margaret Thatcher ?
On the standard left-right scale, how do you distinguish leftists like Stalin and Gandhi? It's not sufficient to say that Stalin was simply more left than Gandhi. There are fundamental political differences between them that the old categories on their own can't explain. Similarly, we generally describe social reactionaries as 'right-wingers', yet that leaves left-wing reactionaries like Robert Mugabe and Pol Pot off the hook."
I also found it interesting that it was difficult to find who was behind this website of yours. I did find viewer complaints ... and in just scanning through the comments (again, I am on vacation and don't intend to expend too many brain cells today) the comments criticized the website for its "slantedness" and some of the political angles of the questions.
But, in spite of this cursory viewing and seeing some criticisms of your suggested website, I still think you're a fabulous human being, Stevie.
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