A Brief History Lesson

Let me say something real quickly about the non-conservative people who currently call themselves conservative, and they way that they argue. They believe that if they can shout loudly enough and long enough to make everyone else stop arguing with them, then they win the argument. If you define victory in an argument as being the last one talking, then they're right. If you define it by proving your point (which is really the objective of an argument) then they're wrong.

Part of my day job is to ask customers if they would like to include postage stamps with their order. And let me tell you… I am grievously tired of hearing pea-brains right now who feel the necessity of telling me how they "no longer support our government" when I can't really say anything back. I mean eight years of a guy who drove us deeper into debt than any man in the oval office before and pissed all over the Constitution was fine… but you want to give me HEALTH CARE? Fuck you, I'm not playing no more. Morons.

Anyway, I had another of these morons through my line today, and couldn't completely hold my tongue. So I quoted Ben Franklin to him. "A democracy deserves the government that it gets." And trust me, I had to keep this firmly in mind through the Bush years. It was tough for me to accept that we basically allowed our democratic process to be highjacked, but we did. So a co-worker who fancies himself conservative (he's not) came up behind me and shouted "IT'S A GOOD THING THAT WE LIVE IN A REPUBLIC THEN, ISN'T?" Now I know… KNOW in my heart that having intellectual discourse with this guy is a little like trying to talk a rabid pit bull out of biting you, but I said "Technically what we have in America is a democratic republic." He shouted back (because remember - when you don't have facts, volume is the next best thing) "THAT'S A REDUNDANCY, MY FRIEND!" So I stopped. Not the place or the time, and I realized that, even if he didn't.

So I thought the next best thing to trying to replace the rhetorical 8-track perpetually running in his head with facts was to put those facts here for the record.

First off, if I'm speaking a redundancy, then democracy and a republic are the same thing, which they aren't.

Second off, I wonder if there's any way to stop people like this who are not my friend and never will be from calling me their friend? Or worse… another sobriquet that he likes to apply to people… brother. Granted, he has more in common with the other two sons of my parents than I do, but that's beside the point.

Finally… and perhaps most importantly… is this guy trying tell me that Benjamin Franklin… one of the people who CREATED our government is wrong about what he was creating? Man. That statement takes not just stupid, but a very special variety of stupid.

Our founders had the right idea. Republic was good, but it didn't work. Democracy was also good… also didn't work. So they created a fusion of the two systems.

Republic is what they had in ancient Rome that eventually led to empire. In a republic, the people are represented in government. They do not have a direct voice. The question is… how are those representatives appointed? In Rome, the representatives… called Senators… were appointed by the pro-council, or procurator. The last procurator (and first emperor) of Rome, Julius Caesar, figured it out. If HE appoints the senators, then they are all loyal to him. And he can get them to make him emperor. Of course, he was eventually assassinated by his senators, but that's a different kettle of fish, and by then it was too late. The empire was established, and the emperors of Rome were called the Caesars, after him.

In a pure democracy, the people make all of the decisions. The closest thing that we have to a pure democracy in America is California, where the decision making process is so slowed by the process that it effectively doesn't work at all.

So what the founders set up was a process by which our decisions are made by representatives, who are guided by a Constitution and elected by the people. A democratic republic.

I also saw a book come through my line today called "A Patriot's History of America". I read the first paragraph of the back of the book which said something like "Is America a land that was established by Columbus coming here and killing all the Indians and stealing their lands, and then went straight into enforced slavery and Jim Crow…"

The answer, of course, is no. But the questions are amazingly over-simplified. I think that when we ignore the dark parts of our history, we are not only being unpatriotic, but also intellectually dishonest. And I think that we do this at our peril. In point of fact, Columbus dealt fairly with the Indians. The massacres of both Indians and whites didn't really start until the early 1800's. And what was the impetus for this? The whites breaking treaties with the Indians. For instance, by treaty, the Black Hills, sacred to the Sioux Indians, was promised to them as long as the sun shone and the grass grew. Or, as it turned out, until gold was discovered in the Black Hills. Then the cavalry was sent in to force the Sioux off of this land.

All I can say to people like this is get your head out of your ass and learn your history. Read "Conscience of a Conservative" by Barry Goldwater, who was called "Mr. Conservative" by his peers. He is vilified by modern liberals for opposing the federal civil rights law. In fact, he spearheaded amazingly progressive civil rights legislation in his state, Arizona. He simply didn't feel that the federal government had the right to impose civil rights laws on the states. I'm not saying that he was right or wrong, simply that that's the way that it was.

Learn your history, people. Being the loudest person in the room doesn't make you right… it simply makes you wrong WITH VOLUME.

Peace.

Rev. Randal