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Gold/Mining/Energy : Gold Price Monitor -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: long-gone who wrote (61935)	12/12/2000 2:43:47 PM
From: Rarebird	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 116759

<OK, let's get after it & debunk your liberal bias & trash> Nice try, but if you are going to pay heed to founding principles, you need to study them more closely. Traditionally, even proponents of republican government have noted important exceptions. One is amending the constitution. The reason is that such a fundamental and permanent alteration of the government demands a public consensus. Similarly, most republicans have viewed the issuance of major public debts as requiring a vote of the people. Debts also have long-lasting implications. They bind future generations. Politicians ought not to be able unilaterally to determine the fiscal course of a government over 20 or 30 years. For decades, representative government has been channeling the desires of the wealthy into immense problems for the American majority, such as the environment and labor. Many citizen groups that you despise have devised ingenious, practical solutions to those immense problems. However, the citizen groups have had nowhere to go with their solutions except to the same representative government. Until national governance is expanded to include the making of law by the sovereign majority through civic initiative and referendum, representative government will be an increasing danger to the American majority. Liberty vs Equality One of the purposes of the United States Constitution, as stated in the Preamble, is to "secure the blessings of liberty." Equality is nowhere mentioned, because the writers of the Constitution did not envision a popular democracy of the 20th-century style. They were establishing a constitutional republic in which only some citizens had full political rights. For the founding fathers who created the Constitution, liberty was more in the foreground than democracy. Those who had fought in the American Revolution did so in order to liberate themselves from Great Britain. They wanted to pursue the opportunities available in the New World, without the restrictions of the laws, demands, and taxes set by Parliament and the king. When they made a new constitution, they set up a government that, for the first time, did not automatically claim the right to oversee all aspects of society, including its economic pursuits. Because there was obviously opportunity enough for all in a large and mostly unsettled country, the Constitution was designed to secure the blessings of liberty for all Americans to pursue their own livelihoods. To help them do this, the first Congress passed the Bill of Rights--the first ten amendments to the Constitution. While the government guaranteed the individual's right to the pursuit of happiness, how well the individual succeeded in attaining happiness was not the government's concern. If a person failed, government offered little assistance. Freedom only removed the barriers to advancement. The Founding Fathers exalted liberty and were willing to let equality take care of itself. The French Revolution, however, espoused equality at all costs. A real conflict emerges between liberty and equality if either is carried to an extreme. When equality is forced, personal freedoms usually give way, and inequality is inevitable in a society granted unlimited liberties. Modern democracies have not been able to completely resolve this conflict. If you can take a break from your Cheap Dogmatic Texas Redneck Rhetoric for a moment, perhaps you'll be able to digest the meaning of these words by Abraham Lincoln at his Gettysburg address in November 1863: : "government of the people, by the people, for the people."