The Emerald Rose

Question for you;

           To which form of government was historian Alexander Tyler referring when he made the following statement in 1804: “”(It) cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until (a majority of) the voters discover they can vote themselves largesse (gifts) from the public treasury. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that (it) always collapses over loose fiscal policy (taxing and spending), always followed by a dictatorship. The average life of the world’s greatest civilizations has been two hundred years”?

         The answer,…. a Democracy,….surprised?

        Well don’t be. We are moving very quickly in that direction if you really think about it for more than 30 seconds. But enough of that, you can think as well.

        A week or two ago was Father’s day, and my daughter called, (She’s 39 years old now, I reckon that makes me,….never mind, I’m not going there.)  Anyway she tells me she’s sending me a gift card for Barnes & Noble Booksellers but I can’t have it until I read a book she’s sending as well. (Thought it maybe something like “I guess my parents were right about everything.” or perhaps “My daughter is wearing trashy outfits, now I know what my mother meant back then.”)

       Anyway UPS arrives a few days later and I get three books. One entitled “A miracle that changed the world, …The 5000 year Leap” with a sub-title of “Principles of Freedom 101”. The second was Glenn Beck’s “Common Sense – The case against out of control government, inspired by Thomas Paine” , and the third was “An inconvenient Book – real solutions to the world’s biggest problems” by Glenn Beck.

          Having heard Glenn Becks name I knew he was what I classify as a “talking-head” from the Fox TV network, so I went for the “5000 year Leap” first, and f0ound out it was all about the origins and mindsets of the Founding Father’s of the United States Constitution and how they developed the cornerstone of our democratic republic that we know today.

        Now having been a really interested student of history, and racking up a ton of credit hours in the subject, I wondered why I had never really, what’s the new term,..”drilled down” more into the constitution, and the why’s and wherefores of it’s creation. I thought it a bit odd that all I remember was “glossing over” it in high school and College. Sort of the “…and then they wrote the Constitution and subsequently the Bill of Rights we are all familiar with today.”

        Beyond that I know the “flap” about new appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court and the debate over “writing new laws” versus simply interpreting them within the strict guidance of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. So that’s where I started,…”The 5000 Year Leap”

         It’s a really compelling read, I find I’m reading it during meals, at every commercial, after I come in from a “brisk” walk, and I must admit that while I have been writing this entry I’ve popped in on it and read a few more pages,…..sorry, the devil made me do it!

          From having “perused” it, as well as the other two books, and having read a column written by a friend of mine who is a hard line Libertarian in the newspaper yesterday morning, it jogged a quote I remember seeing by either Ben Franklin, or Thomas Jefferson saying that there was only one reason for the Second Amendment to our Constitution, ( “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”) saying that it existed to insure the people (of “We the people” fame) having the ability to deal with either the militia mentioned, and by natural extension, a tyrannical government, should the occasion arise.

        So I flipped through the pages of everything I’ve read for the past few days, googled it, and re-read the book as well as re-scanned the other two I hadn;t read and got up at 6:30 this morning to re-read my friends article again to see if it was there. No luck so far, but I never really thought of it that way.

       If gun control was in place, then it would be very easy to go and “round up” everyone with a gun, ensuring that “We the people” would only have sticks and stones to go up against a tyrannical government or it’s “well regulated militia”, a/k/a the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force. No doubt on the outcome of that is there?

         Digging a little further I found out that Hitler installed gun control in Pre-WWII Germany, Lenin in the Soviet Union, and Mao Sae Tung in China. AND they were all quoted as well referring to gun control as being the “power to set government, and make laws”,….now I find that scary!

         I am not a member of the National Rifle Association, nor do I own any guns, but I sure as hell glad a bunch of other folks do, and I may entertain getting one now myself. Naive things like , “Do you really think the crooks, thieves, rapists, and murderers are going to register their guns?”, or the nine most feared words in the English language according to former President Ronald Reagan, “Hi, I’m from the government, and I’m here to help you.”

        Back to the point I was trying to make, embarrassingly enough I am 64 years old and have never read the range and depth of books and other media of thier day that our Founding Faters have read. Like Cicero, who defined the “Natural Laws” upon which the constitution is based, giving ALL people certain unalienable rights, among which are ” life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.

        They were extremely well read, internationally, yet some were farmers, some storekeepers and merchants, not all the “landed Aristocracy” but the question begs answering, can we read, or bother to read, or bother to even care to read, or are we content with the “Cliff Notes” from great thinkers 0of the world?

         Me thinks we are getting more illiterate every day, and that all men may be created equal, but a hell of a lot are going backwards at record speed and developing mindsets that the world owes them. Will a politician promise the world, or as Obama has the “redistribution of wealth”, the fix for Medical Insurance so “every American will be insured”, and that even lazy bastards sitting at home watching Oprah instead of trying to find a job “deserve” the “American Dream”. I’m fast becoming a much more interested student of our history as well as getting very educated and educated enough to know that we , as a country, are in extremely deep doo-doo.

     The good news is that I’m sure I raised my daughter right, and she’ll carry on whatever needs to be to push us back in the right direction to make this country survive, but it’s going to take more than her and I, and we better start now or the next five generations are going to be buried in our national debt from “bailing out” businesses that should have nbeen allowed to crumble under thier own weight. After all while I have knowledgable friends who say it would have been “catastrophic” how bad can it really be? Maybe we need to get a good slap in the face and a wake up call before one morning it’s just too late and we don;t wake up anymore.

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