tagged w/ Folly
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Recently reading a left-wing blog, I came across this lament. It is striking in that it conveys clearly the nature of the battle that is brewing throughout America. The blogger who goes by the handle of “Teacherken” wrote:
“Unless and until we can accept – even actively embrace – the idea of shared sacrifice and collective responsibility, unless and until we understand that we cannot hold on to some things we value in isolation from those we know have to change, we will not be able to make the kinds of changes we need to survive as a liberal democracy.”
Where to start? First, and most important, is the fact that America was never intended to be a “liberal democracy.” From Day One, we were a constitutional Republic. What’s the difference you say? A very big one.
The “liberal democracy” our friend so desperately wants, throws everyone into a pot and dictates government policy on the whims of a scant majority. As virtually all the founders observed, such a form of government means that a majority bands together to take from the minority.
Perhaps Benjamin Franklin said it best when he wrote:
“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what to have for dinner. Liberty is a well-armed lamb.”
The constitutional Republic our founders gave us was based on the rights of the individual. Government was restricted, in Jefferson’s words “chained down.” But thanks to people like the good Teacherken, those chains have been broken and the voracious beast that government easily becomes is now prowling the countryside looking for victims.
This condition didn’t come out of the blue, it was predicted. Vice President and Senator John Calhoun saw our current state of affairs very clearly 150 years ago when he wrote:
“To maintain the ascendancy of the Constitution over the lawmaking majority is the great and essential point on which the success of the [American] system must depend; unless that ascendancy can be preserved, the necessary consequence must be that the laws will supersede the Constitution; and, finally, the will of the Executive, by influence of its patronage, will supersede the laws.”
Continued at link above:Recently reading a left-wing blog, I came across this lament. It is striking in that... more
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THE Galwayman who bought Ireland is dead, England is deserted, while Australia and New Zealand have merged.
They were designed to make Dubai the envy of the world: a series of paradise islands inhabited by celebrities and the super-rich reclaimed from the azure waters of the Arabian Gulf and shaped like a map of the Earth. It was called The World.
As millions of tonnes of rock were dumped into the sea for the foundations, timely leaks suggested that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were to buy Ethiopia, Richard Branson was tipped to occupy England, while Rod Stewart would border him in Scotland.
Hazard
Instead it has become the world's most expensive shipping hazard, guarded by private security in fast boats and ringed by warning buoys to keep the curious away.
A development that was meant to send Dubai's star into the firmament of First World cities has been left to the mercy of the waves and the baking winds.
Mile after mile of breakwater built from boulders brought hundreds of miles by ship has been laid, but inside its man-made lagoon, work has completely stopped.
The expected map of the world of 300 islands is instead a disjointed and desolate collection of sandy blots -- a monumental folly just out of sight of Dubai's shore.
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More at link.
Rising seas due to climate change would have drowned these islands anyway.THE Galwayman who bought Ireland is dead, England is deserted, while Australia and New... more
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