Tag Archives: Aristotle

AMERICA LOST THE ELECTION

When as man as dishonest as any who has ever held the office, with an economic record as dismal as that of the last four years, a man who refused to wear a flag pin on his lapel because he disdains the country he aspires to lead, a man who chose as his mentor a preacher who called in no uncertain terms upon God to bring damnation on America, when the people elect and then re-elect such a man to the Presidency you know you are no longer living in the land envisioned by the founders.  You are no longer living in an America as you have always known it.

Tuesday marked the start of the Post-American period for the United States.  Benjamin Franklin feared it; sages from Aristotle to Tocqueville predicted it; Democracy guaranteed it; too few people understand it; Barack Obama neither caused it nor led it.  He simply is presiding over the culmination of it.

It would take a thick book and a half to explain it but I will be foolish enough to try to do it in one paragraph.

Aristotle was the first to say that Democracy would bankrupt a society.  Karl Marx promoted the process with the populist theme “From each according to his ability to each according to his need.”  Today the same philosophy is expressed in the simple phrase Social Justice, which is defined as equal wealth for all.  Government is the vehicle for reaching that goal by taxing wealth away from those who produced it and re-distributing it to those who did not.  In any society achievers will be outnumbered by the masses and Aristotle warned that the masses would eventually deplete the national treasury by voting the wealth of the nation unto themselves and then squandering it.  He called it “the ultimate greed.”

It’s a slow process in a country with a large and prosperous middle class.  Freedoms must be taken away slowly and dependence created gradually.  It has been said that “The American people would never vote for socialism, but under the name of liberalism the American people would adopt every fragment of the socialist program.”  If Socialism is the ultimate greed then Obamacare was the ultimate deception.  It’s primary purpose was dependance, not healthcare.

How will it all end?  That’s the ultimate question.  Democratic countries like Spain, France and Greece have been ravished by overspending.  Unemployment is worse than it is in the United States.  The governments are literally running out of money to pay for benefits the people have come to believe really are entitlements.  The people riot, demonstrate and take to the streets demanding change then vote for a man like Hollande who promises to bring about the desired change by accelerating the very policies that caused the problem in the first place.

I am 81 years of age and will never know how it ends, but my grandchildren will.  That’s why my tagline reads “Driven by love of country and concern for its people, both present and yet to be.”

WHY ARE OBAMA’S VOTER POLLS SO STRONG WHEN HIS RECORD IS SO BAD? Part II

In our first post exploring the dichotomy between Obama’s poor record and strong support we explained that with true believers his record doesn’t count.  He’s a Democrat and he is black, and that is good enough.  But there is another and more disturbing reason for the apparent dichotomy.  We are approaching Tocqueville time in America.

The answer may lie in the very nature of democracy itself.  If that’s the case, we can’t say we weren’t warned.  Aristotle said democracy would lead to great corruption.  Plato warned that the demos (the masses) lacked sufficient understanding to differentiate the charmers from the honest and capable candidates and they would choose the charmers.  Given the nature of man and the fact that in any society the masses will outnumber the elites, both philosophers held that democracy would lead to the demos voting largesse unto themselves from the nation’s accumulated wealth to the ultimate detriment of the entire society.

Aristotle and Plato did not have the benefit of history to confirm their opinions because democracy was a new concept in their day.  But Alexis de Tocqueville, a noted French writer and historian who came more than 2,000 years later did look back on the rise and fall of great empires some of which were limited democracies.

Tocqueville was born to French aristocracy and lived during the period of the French Revolution.  He was a keen observer of the American Experiment that combined free markets, rights to private property and a level of democracy theretofore unknown.  The young Frenchman noted at the time that the “experiment” was a great success.  However, as our long running sidebar suggests, he also warned that over time the public will vote themselves more and more benefits until the government’s treasury is depleted and the system collapses in fiscal insolvency.  Usually to be followed by some form of despotic governance.

Obama is a charmer, Romney is not.  Obama promises ever greater largesse to the people, Romney does not.  The combination of true believers and largesse voters forms a base of unwavering support.  The stable of true believers is relatively static; but the percentage of largesse voters grows over time.  The time Tocqueville gave for the American democracy to run its course was about 200 years; we are well beyond that.  The 2012 election will answer the question, have we reached Tocqueville time in America ?