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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (114834)	9/14/2003 10:38:02 PM
From: Sam	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

The US was the first democratic society since Greece and the Roman Republic, and within the space of 100 years we saw dozens of other former monarchies had became democracies (or at least experimented with the concept). Furthermore, I believe the US differentiated from Greece and Rome by introducing the concept of inalienable rights into their governmental system. You need to read The Federalist Papers, and perhaps some of Jefferson's letters and papers as well. First, neither Hamilton nor Madison believed that the country they perhaps more than anyone else invented was a "democracy," it was a republic, and to them that was a crucial distinction. And it was a "mixed" republic at that--that is, they introduced oligarchic elements into the constitution in order to make democracy workable. And second, they didn't believe that the govt they invented was unique due to "inalienable rights." They thought that their brand of federalism and representation (Madison's notion of the "extended republic") was what was unique about it; pretty much everything else was in writers from Aristotle and Plutarch through Locke and Montesquieu. But it is true that Jefferson and perhaps also Madison thought that separation of religion and state--what they often called "freedom of conscience" and the right to private conscience--was perhaps the most important part of the revolution. It is a short step from there to the right to privacy.

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (114834)	9/15/2003 2:16:41 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hawk, we have wide open blue sky down here, and hordes of people wanting to immigrate here instead of the USA. Indeed, we have swarms of Americans wanting to immigrate and many have fled the USA and live all over the place here. There are also hordes of Kiwis who have fled to the USA for financial and professional development reasons. Not for the freedom. I haven't heard of any going for personal freedom. Totalitarian and theocratic aren't modern inventions. Totalitarian is timeless. Theocratic goes back to Aztecs and beyond, with the powerful propitiating the gods with the bodies of the victims. Democratic and freedom and equal rights stuff was recent for those melanin rich people not to mention the XX chromosome crowd. The USA followed NZ, far behind. Freedom isn't an on or off business. It's a matter of degree. In some respects the USA is very unfree, in others el supremo. Many countries excel in one aspect or another of freedom. It's an ideal that no country even slightly approaches. See Libertarian propaganda for what free really means. Democratic process does not provide freedom. It's mob rule writ large as any minority soon discovers. But hey, as they say, the USA is not bad. And some of my best friends are American. I fear however that freedom will be fleeting, even if the Libertarians rule the world. That's because like it or not, we are all part of a synergistic whole as per Ted Kaczynski's Manifesto. Personally, I think that's a good thing, overall. The balance between individuals and autocratic Big Brother is the tricky part. No longer are we self-sustaining individual tribes competing in biological evolutionary processes, red in tooth and claw with burgeoning populations to act as cannon fodder. The synapatic links around the world are too strong and valuable to be broken for anachronistic nationalistic or tribal values. The USA, pre-eminent in some many ways, is just one of the crowd, like it or not. Welcome to the club. While France is persona non grata in the USA right now, remember that it was they who gave the USA the Statue of Liberty, a copy of their local version. Mqurice