Choices that can be freely made
Choices that can be freely made:-
Much has come of the polarization of the American Electorate, and many have come to the aid to explain the quandary. I suppose if one were well read, he or she would have answers in hand. Some profess to a bipartisan inclination, hoping it would work. I do still have hope.
However I think causes exist, which would give credence to a new look at this dilemma faced by both sides of the aisle. I remarked that in Britain, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats are both in the minority, and would that it be so over here, with the political strife and end-playing in Congress.
It is easy to look to the Civil War, and the differences that divided us then, and the Army which so chafed the South, which didn't recover even after all the troops were withdrawn about 1879, after a very contentious and disputed presidential election the previous year.
One must start much earlier, and one could point out that the invention of the cotton gin in 1793, which greatly expanded the commercial value of slaves, and the value of their labor, enabled large plantations to obtain a superior position economically, making it a necessity for the South to persist in their "peculiar institution." Slaves were no benefit to the Colonies, in fact, Quakers renounced slavery and freed their slaves as early as 1676, when George Fox made a proposal that they should be freed after a number of years, while preparing them for freedom. By 1785 all slaves of Quakers had been freed. At that time, the Northwest Ordinance of 1785 came up for considerable discussion, for lands that had been obtained by the Virginia Militia and Col. George Rogers Clark. Our ancestor, Robert Walker participated in one of the battles, which were followed by the 1795 Fallen Timbers victory of Gen. Anthony Wayne, and Gen. Harrison's sweep after Tippecanoe in 1813.
A second Ordinance (of 1787) further spelled out the government ambitions in the Northwest Territory, North of the Ohio and as far as the Mississippi. In this ordinance, slavery would not be permitted. A political victory by Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton was celebrated as Jefferson's anti-slavery clauses were rejected by the authors of the Declaration of Independence. They felt that the arguments over slaves were largely over, and in the Constitutional deliberations, prohibition was not really considered but, to forestall the evil, a prohibition of the slave trade was inserted ending 20 years after adoption, or 1809. Meanwhile, the numbers were dealt with by reducing the population of slave holding states by counting only 3/5ths of "other persons."
In time, the fact that the issue had not been settled, created problems, particularly with Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase. Henry Clay, working with John C. Calhoun and Daniel Webster are credited with a series of compromises, starting with the 1820 Missouri Compromise, which defined the early political atmosphere in Washington. This first effort was flawed however, as slavery was allowed to extend into Missouri, where it had already gained a foothold, the decision rendered the Federal Government helpless in territories, where the sentiment of the inhabitants were in favor, in this case, of extending slavery. And so slavery was permitted to advance, even in the 1845 annexation of the Republic of Texas, equal to most of the original colonies in area, combined. Iowa and Wisconsin and other states were admitted as Free States
Soon after his last compromise in 1850, Henry Clay died, and the question of Kansas and Nebraska's admissions came up. Citizens of Lawrence, MA chose to settle in Kansas, and create an abolitionist block to westward slavery expansion, calling it the Kansas Free State. Because slave-holder interests chose to blow up the central hotel in Lawrence, President Buchanan was compelled to restore order, and sent Sen. Robert J. Walker to serve as Territorial Governor. Soon, John Brown, his sons and abolitionist adherents were rounded up and deported to Iowa and other places to reduce tension among the many Missouri settlers, who were hoping to expand their slave holding control.
It is judged that many of these citizens were misguided, as the only people to profit from a slave permissive environment were wealthy plantation owners. Small farms could not profit from owning slaves, could not afford overseers and the like. Wealthy people induced poor people to "stand up for their rights," and in some cases, fight. The true facts were that the cash value of slaves on the auction block had risen many-fold, and that large plantations were worth much less than the slaves held against their will. One slave owner moved to a Free State, and his "property" proclaimed his own freedom, and this case went to the Supreme Court as the Dred Scott affair, which resulted in the widely criticized "Dred Scott" decision. He remained a slave.
The principle cause of the Civil War was the election, in 1860, of Abraham Lincoln to be the 16th President of the United States. Yes, a number of other factors, such as John Brown's concerted efforts to "free the slaves," and his execution, other polarizing events, contributed, but the upcoming inaugural of Lincoln precipitated the firing on Ft. Sumpter. It is unfortunate that John C. Calhoun's home state chose to become the first to rebel, as he had stood stalwart for the Union, and in fact owned a perfectly beautiful 16 acre estate as his Georgetown Washington residence, called Dumbarton Oaks, which later served as the site for the famous conference after WWII which got the United Nations off the ground.
And the war went on, as expected. Afterwards, Reconstruction was a messy affair, with little effort expended to ameliorate persistent resentment among the Southerners, before and after the Occupation. For a number of years, rebels were considered felons, and were disqualified from running for public office, or even voting. A bunch of Constitutional Amendments were required to bring some stability in the rules for governing, but they lay mostly inadequate. Eventually a three party system emerged, with the party of Lincoln, the Republicans, dominating, and the two branches of the Democratic Party, which had existed before the "terrible war." The Southerners were called Conservative Democrats, and the Northerners, in lieu of other labels, Liberals. People like Woodrow Wilson, who was born in Georgia, and had a career in New Jersey, ending in being Governor, were considered moderates, and had popular support.
At the same time, differences between Theodore Roosevelt and Wm. Howard Taft over measures Roosevelt had prevailed over a largely Republican Legislature, like the Sherman Antitrust Act, caused a split, with Roosevelt running as a Progressive against Taft's decision to seek a second term. These events resulted in Wilson winning the election of 1912, and with a Southern Democrat as Vice President, the South could see some progress toward "The South Shall Rise Again." After more Republican Years, and corruption in the Executive Branch, again another Roosevelt, Franklin, with a southerner as VP, ran as a Democrat and became President in 1933. Wilson called his program, the New Freedom, emphasizing the many new republics that had been created from the Spanish Colonial Empire, some as a result of the Spanish-American War. European Powers had been remarkably free of war for 40 some years, but trouble lurked in the economic relationships between the mostly Imperial governments. War broke out in 1914 with the assassination of the Austrian Archduke in Sarajevo, one of the Balkan capitals. Wilson sent Col. Edward House, his chief assistant to Europe to see if an all out war could be avoided, but that was not the case. France nursed wounds over the loss of Alsace-Lorraine, and set out to establish the Dual Alliance with Czarist Russia. Russia in turn was spoiling for a fight with Austria over the seeming breakup of the Ottoman Empire.
Henry Cabot Lodge, a leading Republican senator, proposed a league of Nations which had compulsory arbitration as a tool to resolve conflicts, but his party called for Wilson to join the in the European conflict, with urgent cries after the sinking of the American Ocean-liner Lusitania, with the loss of many lives. Wilson was forced to send the American Expeditionary Forces over to join the battles, after the Russians, defeated, withdrew, and the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy were nearing an ability of rescuing the Ottomans from certain dismemberment. The Americans lost over 50,000 soldiers, many more as casualties in the conflict, known today as World War I. As the Allied armies "The Triple Entente" neared the German borders, on Jan 5, 1918, foreseeing a resolution to the hostilities, Wilson gave a speech to Congress in which he outlined his "Fourteen Points" six of which had to do with establishing new national boundaries, for peoples who, like Poland, were newly liberated from Imperial domination. Wilson felt it necessary to sell his program to the World, and traveled about the country, mentioning the Four Principles, Four Ends and the Five Particulars. However, the centerpiece of the proposals was Point Fourteen, the creation of the League of Nations.
Much of the credit for the Fourteen Points must go to Col. House, but later that year, the 1918 election, gave Wilson a Republican controlled Senate, and Sen. Lodge became chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. Lodge, with an advanced degree in Law, had taught at Harvard, and had considerable background in History and was Wilson's equal in this regard.
By cultivating the Count of Baden, the German Foreign Minister and the Austrian representative, Wilson and House obtained their aquiesance, and with great difficulty overcame most of the plans the British and French had when the Versailles Peace Conference was convened in 1919 after the Armistice of Nov 11, the previous year. Their representatives, David Lloyd George and Georges Clemenceau, were seriously challenging the American President, because they felt their economic position had deteriorated during the war, and Germany's War machine was still largely intact. Wilson's altruism became a liability, and his grand hopes to conclude this War to End all Wars, became seriously compromised in the agreements. Largely the boundary questions were settled essentially on the six Wilson points that had been heavily promoted.
Returning in ill health to Washington, and the Republican Senate, Wilson asked them to ratify the Versailles Treaty as well as the new League of Nations. The former was successful, but Lodge objected to the compulsory arbitration feature of the League that he had previously proposed. He felt that America was in no position to dilute American Sovereignty, which the covenants agreed upon by Wilson, George and Clemenceau apparently put in writing. After making some revisions, a proposal was sent to Wilson, but he refused, and for the next 25 years, the absence of Americans in the League would be cited as one of the major precipitating factors leading to a Second World WAR.
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
DUMBARTON OAKS CONFERENCE EB 2003
(Aug. 21–Oct. 7, 1944), was a meeting at Dumbarton Oaks, a mansion in Georgetown, Washington, D.C., where representatives of China, the Soviet Union, the United States, and the United Kingdom formulated proposals for a world organization that became the basis for the United Nations.
This conference constituted the first important step taken to carry out paragraph 4 of the Moscow Declaration of 1943, which recognized the need for a postwar international organization to succeed the League of Nations. The Dumbarton Oaks proposals (Proposals for the Establishment of a General International Organization) did not furnish acomplete blueprint for the United Nations. They failed to provide an agreed arrangement on such crucial questions as the voting system of the proposed Security Council and the membership provisions for the constituent republics of the Soviet Union. These issues were resolved at the Yalta Conference in February 1945, which also resulted in the proposal of a trusteeship system under the new agency to take the place of the League mandate system. The proposals, as thus supplemented, formed the basis of negotiations at the San Francisco Conference, out of which came the Charter of the United Nations in 1945.
UNITED NATIONS (UN) EB 2003
international organization established on October 24, 1945. The United Nations was the second multipurpose international organization established in the 20th century that was worldwide in scope and membership. Its predecessor, the League of Nations, was created by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 and disbanded in 1946. Headquartered in New York City, the UN also has offices in Geneva, Vienna, and other cities.
According to its Charter, the UN aims:
to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war,...to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights,...to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.
In addition to maintaining peace and security, other important objectives include developing friendly relations among countries based on respect for the principles of equal rights and self-determination of peoples; achieving worldwide cooperation to solve international economic, social, cultural, and humanitarian problems; respecting and promoting human rights; and serving as a centre where countries can coordinate their actions and activities toward these various ends.
The UN formed a continuum with the League of Nations in general purpose, structure, and functions; many of the UN's principal organs and related agencies were adopted from similar structures established earlier in the century. In some respects, however, the UN constituted a very different organization, especially with regard to its objective of maintaining international peace and security and its commitment to economic and social development.
Changes in the nature of international relations resulted in modifications in the responsibilities of the UN and its decision-making apparatus. Cold War tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union deeply affected the UN's security functions during its first 45 years. Extensive post-World War II decolonization in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East increased the volume and nature of political, economic, and social issues that confronted the organization. The Cold War's end in 1991 brought renewed attention and appeals to the UN. Amid an increasingly volatile geopolitical climate, there were new challenges to established practices and functions, especially in the areas of conflict resolution and humanitarian assistance. At the beginning of the 21st century, the UN and its programs and affiliated agencies struggled to address humanitarian crises and civil wars, unprecedented refugee flows, the devastation caused by the spread of AIDS, global financial disruptions, international terrorism, andthe disparities in wealth between the world's richest and poorest peoples.
Principles and membership
The purposes, principles, and organization of the United Nations are outlined in the Charter. The essential principles underlying the purposes and functions of the organization are listed in Article 2 and include the following: the UN is based on the sovereign equality of its members; disputes are to be settled by peaceful means; members are to refrain from the threat or use of force in contravention of the purposes of the UN; each member must assist the organization in any enforcement actions it takes under the Charter; and states that are not members of the organization are required to act in accordance with these principles insofar as it is necessary to maintain international peace and security. Article 2 also stipulates a basic long-standing norm that the organization shall not intervene in matters considered within the domestic jurisdiction of any state. Although this was a major limitation on UN action, over time the line between international and domestic jurisdiction has become blurred.
New members are admitted to the UN on the recommendation of the Security Council and by a two-thirds vote of the General Assembly. Often, however, the admittance of new members has engendered controversy. Given Cold War divisions between East and West, the requirement that the Security Council's five permanent members (sometimes known collectively as the P-5)—China, France, the Soviet Union (whose seat and membership were assumed by Russia in 1991), the United Kingdom, and theUnited States—concur on the admission of new members at times posed serious obstacles. By 1950 only 9 of 31 applicants had been admitted to the organization. In 1955 the 10th Assembly proposed a package deal that, after modification by the Security Council, resulted in the admission of 16 new states (4 eastern European communist states and 12 noncommunist countries). The most contentious application for membership was that of the communist People's Republic of China, which was placed before the General Assembly and blocked by the United States at every sessionfrom 1950 to 1971. Finally, in 1971, in an effort to improve its relationship with mainland China, the United States refrained from blocking the Assembly's vote to admit the People's Republic and to expel the Republic of China (Taiwan); there were 76 votes in favour of expulsion, 35 votes opposed, and 17 abstentions. As a result, the Republic of China's membership and permanent Security Council seat were given to the People's Republic.
Controversy also arose over the issue of "divided" states, including the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), North and South Korea, and North and South Vietnam. The two German states were admitted as members in 1973; these two seats were reduced to one after the country's reunification in October 1990. Vietnam was admitted in 1977, after the defeat of South Vietnam and the reunification of the country in 1975. The two Koreas were admitted separately in 1991.
Following worldwide decolonization from 1955 to 1960, 40 new members were admitted, and by the end of the 1970s there were about 150 members of the UN. Another significant increase occurred after 1989–90, when many former Soviet republics gained their independence. By the early 21st century the UN comprised nearly 190 member states.
History of Democracy
A Quick Review of the History of Democracy
In the first instance, Democracy, or rule by the DEMOS or people of Athens occurred before the appearance of Socrates, the greatest of philosophers. The Ruler, Pericles, was corrupt to some extent, but the Golden age of Greece lasted about 30 years.
Plato, the most famous of Socrates' students wrote "The Republic," which has survived as one of the greatest organized proposed utopias man has yet to face. Some feel that the ideals expressed in this document were the inspiration for the writers, like Nietzche, who were read by Hitler, and implemented in his "New World Order."
Nontheless, Plato's student, Aristotle, fell back on the master, Socrates, and created the greatest school of antiquity, in Athens, and was credited with the first World Emperor, Alexander (the Great). Dying at age 25 left a great gap on which to project what might have become of the Greek Empire.
A hundred or so years later, the brothers Gracchi attempted to institute Land Reform measures in a political atmosphere controlled by the Roman Senate, that resulted in their being killed by the existing powers, and the Reform eventually failed.
Over a thousand years later, on the banks of the Thames at Runnymede, a group of 46 nobles commandeered King John into using his great seal to approve the Magna Carta in 1215, to which he added several rights of the monarch to a list of demands from the nobles. John repudiated it soon after, which was confirmed by the Pope. A year later John I was dead and his immature son, Henry (III) succeeded, and soon approved of revisions to the Charter (1216) and (1217), and in 1225, after the pope ruled that Henry had attained his majority, the nobles returned and jointly created the Great Charter, by which England has been ruled in the years since. (See Constitution Below). I like to think of the signing of the Magna Carta as having occurred under a giant tree, symbolicly, an umbrella government under which the people could survive and talk in harmony.
The word charter has prevailed, with each of the American Colonies having a grant with a charter as an instrument by which they each in turn possessed the land they settled. The new Restored Government (Monarchy) of England granted Connecticut its rights in 1662, gaining independence from Massachusetts. In 1686 Gov. Andrus, acting on behalf of the then King James II attempted to reverse a number of the provisions of that charter, which incident is recalled by the present Governor of that state in his dedication of the Connecticut quarter of the present 50 piece Washington series of coins. (See Below) Here again, is the symbolic tree, the Charter Oak, which, pictured on the reverse, served to shield the colony from its enemies. Later charters, promoting democracy were generated by Japan, and in Russia (Charter of the Gentry). The latter served to inhibit democracy, however, because great powers were granted to Nobles, which served to increase their domination of the peasants(serfs) rather than free them.
The success of the American Revolution, under the Declaration of Independence, has been widely copied, for instance, in France. In America, British institutions were found to be wanting in the relatively primative frontier, and the founders chose to create a Constitution, so that the words, spoken so eloquently, could be reduced to paper, and afterward supervised as to law by one of the newly created branches of government, the courts. In Britain, the people chose to remain under their well established Constitution, which had never been reduced to writing save the Great Charter, and a few subsequent revisions. (See Below)
In fact, a movement in the early 19th century to spread sufferage and other reforms, called Chartism, failed on repeated attempts, but over the passage of years, five of the six major premises have been granted by Parliament. Still, no movement to strengthen the rights of the British people have been instituted. Possibly, the cause of this is simple. An Empire cannot have rights, which extend to conquerored people. In the beginning of modern England, William chose to administer his newly acquired dominions by fiat, but, when his son, Henry (I) succeeded, he had to be coronated along with his charter, which spelled out various rights and priviledges. Succeeding Kings, Stephen, Henry II, and Richard also had charters, but somehow it was omitted in the case of John I, and a great benefit resulted therefrom. At time great accomplishments come from purposeless events.
DEMOCRACY EB 2003
literally, rule by the people (from the Greek demos, "people," and kratos, "rule"). The term has three basic senses in contemporary usage: (1) a form of government in which the right to make political decisions is exercised directly by the whole body of citizens, acting under procedures of majority rule, usually known as direct democracy; (2) a form of government in which the citizens exercise the same right not in person but through representatives chosen by and responsible to them, known as representative democracy; and (3) a form of government, usually a representative democracy, in which the powers of the majority are exercised within a framework of constitutional restraints designed to guarantee all citizens the enjoyment of certain individual or collective rights, such as freedom of speech and religion, known as liberal, or constitutional, democracy.
Democracy had its beginnings in certain of the city-states of ancient Greece in which the whole citizen body formed the legislature; such a system was possible because a city-state's population rarely exceeded 10,000 people, and women and slaves had no political rights. Citizens were eligible for a variety of executive and judicial offices, some of which were filled by elections, while others were assigned by lot. There was no separation of powers, and all officials were fully responsible to the popular assembly, which was qualified to act in executive and judicial as well as legislative matters. Greekdemocracy was a brief historical episode that had little direct influence on the development of modern democratic practices. Two millennia separated the fall of the Greek city-state and the rise of modern constitutional democracy.
Modern concepts of democratic government were shaped to a large extent by ideas and institutions of medieval Europe, notably the concept of divine, natural, and customary law as a restraint on the exercise of power. Highly significant was the growing practice by European rulers of seeking approval of their policies—including theright to levy taxes—by consulting the different "estates," or group interests, in the realm. Gatherings of representatives of these interests were the origin of modern parliaments and legislative assemblies. The first document to notice such concepts and practices is Magna Carta (q.v.) of England, granted by King John in 1215.
Also of fundamental importance were the profound intellectual and social developments of the Enlightenment and the American and French revolutions, notably the emergence of concepts of natural rights and political equality. Two seminal documents of this period are the American Declaration of Independence (1776) and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789; see Independence, Declaration of; Rights of Man and of the Citizen, Declaration of the).
Representative legislative bodies, freely elected under (eventual) universal suffrage, became in the 19th and 20th centuries the central institutions of democratic governments. In many countries, democracy also came to imply competition for office, freedom of speech and the press, and the rule of law.
Numerous authoritarian and totalitarian states, notably the communist nations of the 20th century, have adopted outwardly democratic governments that nonetheless were dominated by a single authorized party without opposition. States with Marxist ideologies asserted that political consensus and collective ownership of the means of production (i.e., economic democracy) were sufficient to ensure that the will of the people would be carried out.
British Constitution and Connecticut Charter
The Connecticut quarter's reverse celebrates "The Charter Oak" tree, which proved to be a good hiding place. (NOT SHOWN
Connecticut
The Connecticut quarter, the last 50 State Quarters® Program coin issued in 1999, features "The Charter Oak": an integral part of Connecticut's heritage and existence. If not for the famed "Charter Oak", Connecticut - and this country in general - might be a very different place than it is today!
On the night of October 31, 1687, Connecticut's Charter was put to a test. A British representative for King James II, challenged Connecticut's government structure and demanded its surrender. In the middle of the heated discussion, with the Charter on the table between the opposing parties, the candles were mysteriously snuffed out, darkening the room. When visibility was reestablished, the Connecticut Charter had vanished. Heroic Captain Joseph Wadsworth saved the Charter from the hands of the British and concealed it in the safest place he could find - in a majestic white oak. This famous tree, "The Charter Oak," finally fell during a great storm on August 21, 1856.
In a press release issued February 3, 1998, Governor John G. Rowland announced the Connecticut Coin Design Competition. More than 112 citizens ranging from ages six to 87 from 46 cities and towns submitted design concept entries to the Connecticut Commission on the Arts. Nineteen entrants submitted renditions of the Charter Oak and five of those were selected and forwarded to the United States Mint. Following the required review and approval process, three designs were returned to Governor Rowland for consideration. The Connecticut Commemorative Coin Design Competition Review Committee, with the governor's approval, unanimously selected the Connecticut circulating quarter design. Twenty-three people from 18 towns received honorable mentions for their design concepts.
THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION
A constitution is a set of laws on how a country is governed. The British Constitution is unwritten, unlike the constitution in America, and, as such, is referred to as an uncodified constitution. The British Constitution can be found in a variety of documents. Supporters of our constitution believe that the current way allows for flexibility and change to occur without too many problems. Those who want a written constitution believe that it should be codified so that the public as a whole has access to it – as opposed to just constitutional experts who know where to look and how to interpret it.
Amendments to Britain’s unwritten constitution are made the same way – by a simply majority support in both Houses of Parliament to be followed by the Royal Assent.
The British Constitution comes from a variety of sources. The main ones are:
• Statutes such as the Magna Carta of 1215 and the Act of Settlement of 1701.
• Laws and Customs of Parliament; political conventions
• Case law; constitutional matters decided in a court of law
• Constitutional experts who have written on the subject such as Walter Bagehot and A.V Dicey.
There are two basic principles to the British Constitution:
• The Rule of Law
• The Supremacy of Parliament
Democracy
DEMOCRACY EB 2003
literally, rule by the people (from the Greek demos, "people," and kratos, "rule"). The term has three basic senses in contemporary usage: (1) a form of government in which the right to make political decisions is exercised directly by the whole body of citizens, acting under procedures of majority rule, usually known as direct democracy; (2) a form of government in which the citizens exercise the same right not in person but through representatives chosen by and responsible to them, known as representative democracy; and (3) a form of government, usually a representative democracy, in which the powers of the majority are exercised within a framework of constitutional restraints designed to guarantee all citizens the enjoyment of certain individual or collective rights, such as freedom of speech and religion, known as liberal, or constitutional, democracy.
Democracy had its beginnings in certain of the city-states of ancient Greece in which the whole citizen body formed the legislature; such a system was possible because a city-state's population rarely exceeded 10,000 people, and women and slaves had no political rights. Citizens were eligible for a variety of executive and judicial offices, some of which were filled by elections, while others were assigned by lot. There was no separation of powers, and all officials were fully responsible to the popular assembly, which was qualified to act in executive and judicial as well as legislative matters. Greekdemocracy was a brief historical episode that had little direct influence on the development of modern democratic practices. Two millennia separated the fall of the Greek city-state and the rise of modern constitutional democracy.
Modern concepts of democratic government were shaped to a large extent by ideas and institutions of medieval Europe, notably the concept of divine, natural, and customary law as a restraint on the exercise of power. Highly significant was the growing practice by European rulers of seeking approval of their policies—including theright to levy taxes—by consulting the different "estates," or group interests, in the realm. Gatherings of representatives of these interests were the origin of modern parliaments and legislative assemblies. The first document to notice such concepts and practices is Magna Carta (q.v.) of England, granted by King John in 1215.
Also of fundamental importance were the profound intellectual and social developments of the Enlightenment and the American and French revolutions, notably the emergence of concepts of natural rights and political equality. Two seminal documents of this period are the American Declaration of Independence (1776) and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789; see Independence, Declaration of; Rights of Man and of the Citizen, Declaration of the).
Representative legislative bodies, freely elected under (eventual) universal suffrage, became in the 19th and 20th centuries the central institutions of democratic governments. In many countries, democracy also came to imply competition for office, freedom of speech and the press, and the rule of law.
Numerous authoritarian and totalitarian states, notably the communist nations of the 20th century, have adopted outwardly democratic governments that nonetheless were dominated by a single authorized party without opposition. States with Marxist ideologies asserted that political consensus and collective ownership of the means of production (i.e., economic democracy) were sufficient to ensure that the will of the people would be carried out.
The Social Contract
EB 2003--
in political philosophy, an actual or hypothetical compact, or agreement, between the ruled and their rulers, defining the rights and duties of each. In primeval times, according to the theory, individuals were born into an anarchic state of nature, which was happy or unhappy according to the particular version. They then, by exercising natural reason, formed a society (and a government) by means of a contract among themselves.
Although similar ideas can be traced back to the Greek Sophists, social-contract theories had their greatest currency in the 17th and 18th centuries and are associated with such names as the Englishmen Thomas Hobbes and John Locke and the Frenchman Jean-Jacques Rousseau. What distinguished these theories of political obligation from other doctrines of the period was their attempt to justify political authority on grounds of individual self-interest and rational consent. They attempted to demonstrate the value and purposes of organized government by comparing the advantages of civil society with the disadvantages of the state of nature, a hypothetical condition characterized by a complete absence of governmental authority. The purpose of this comparison was to show why and under what conditions government is useful and ought therefore to be accepted by all reasonable people as a voluntary obligation. These conclusions were then reduced to the form of a social contract, from which it was supposed that all the essential rights and duties of citizens could be logically deduced.
Theories of the social contract differed according to their purpose: some were designed to justify the power of the sovereign; on the other hand, some were intended to safeguard the individual from oppression by an all-too-powerful sovereign.
According to Hobbes (Leviathan, 1651), the state of nature was one in which there were no enforceable criteria of right and wrong. Each person took for himself all that he could; human life was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” The state of nature was therefore a state of war, which could be ended only if individuals agreed (in a social contract) to give their liberty into the hands of a sovereign, who was thenceforward absolute, on the sole condition that their lives were safeguarded by sovereign power.
Locke (in the second of Two Treatises of Government, 1690) differed from Hobbes insofar as he described the state of nature as one in which the rights of life and property were generally recognized under natural law, the inconveniences of the situation arising from insecurity in the enforcement of those rights. He therefore arguedthat the obligation to obey civil government under the social contract was conditional upon the protection not only of the person but also of private property. If a sovereign violated these terms, he could be justifiably overthrown.
Rousseau (in Du contrat social, 1762) held that in the state of nature man was unwarlike and somewhat undeveloped in his reasoning powers and sense of morality and responsibility. When, however, people agreed for mutual protection to surrender individual freedom of action and establish laws and government, they then acquired a sense of moral and civic obligation. In order to retain its essentially moral character, government must thus rest on the consent of the governed, the volonté générale (“general will”).
The more perceptive social-contract theorists, including Hobbes, invariably recognized that their concepts of the social contract and the state of nature were unhistorical and that they could be justified only as hypotheses useful for the clarification of timeless political problems.
EB 1972--
These theories are historically important for the part they played in the development of modern ideas of government, especially the idea of government by popular consent. Toward the end of the 18th century, however, with the rise of modern historicism, they became increasingly unacceptable, not so much because of their content as because of the abstractly rationalistic terms in which they were formulated. The more perceptive social contract theorists, including Hobbes, had always recognized that their con-cepts of the social contract and the state of nature were unhistorical. and could be justified only as hypotheses useful for the clarification of timeless political problems.
As people grew increasingly interested in history, however, and tried to understand political problems in terms of the historical origins and growth of specific institutions, the earlier types of ab-stract analysis seemed to become ever less relevant. Thus the term social contract fell gradually into disuse, and ceased to play a significant part in the vocabulary of modern politics.
(F. M. W.)
Filibuster - Definition
Filibuster (EB)
in legislative practice, the parliamentary tactic used in the United States Senate by a minority of the senators—sometimes even a single senator—to delay or prevent parliamentary action by talking so long that the majority either grants concessions or withdraws the bill.
Unlike the House of Representatives, in which rules limit speaking time, the Senate allows unlimited debate on a bill. Speeches can be completely irrelevant to the issue.
The word is derived from the Spanish filibustero (“freebooting”) and originally described piratical 16th-century privateers; it came into English usage to designate anyirregular military adventurer, such as the Americans who took part in Latin-American insurrections in the 1850s. Filibuster was in use in the political sense by the mid-1800s. In 1957 Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina talked for more than 24 hours, the longest individual filibuster on record, as part of an unsuccessful attempt by Southern senators to obstruct civil-rights legislation.
Invoking cloture on debate (i.e., limiting or ending a debate by calling for a vote) and holding round-the-clock sessions to tire the minority are measures used to defeat a filibuster.
Filibuster and Cloture US Senate Historian
Using the filibuster to delay debate or block legislation has a long history. In the United States, the term filibuster -- from a Dutch word meaning "pirate" -- became popular in the 1850s when it was applied to efforts to hold the Senate floor in order to prevent action on a bill.
In the early years of Congress, representatives as well as senators could use the filibuster technique. As the House grew in numbers, however, it was necessary to revise House rules to limit debate. In the smaller Senate, unlimited debate continued since senators believed any member should have the right to speak as long as necessary.
In 1841, when the Democratic minority hoped to block a bank bill promoted by Henry Clay, Clay threatened to change Senate rules to allow the majority to close debate. Thomas Hart Benton angrily rebuked his colleague, accusing Clay of trying to stifle the Senate's right to unlimited debate. Three quarters of a century later, in 1917, the Senate adopted a rule (Rule 22) at the suggestion of President Woodrow Wilson that allowed the Senate to end a debate with a two-thirds majority vote -- a tactic known as "cloture."
The new Senate rule was put to the test in 1919, when the Senate invoked cloture to end a filibuster against the Treaty of Versailles. Despite the new cloture rule, however, filibusters continued to be an effective means to block legislation, due in part to the fact that a two-thirds majority vote is difficult to obtain. Over the next several decades, the Senate tried numerous times to evoke cloture, but failed to gain the necessary two-thirds vote. Filibusters were particularly useful to southern senators blocking civil rights legislation in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1975, the Senate reduced the number of votes required for cloture from two-thirds (67) to three-fifths (60) of the 100-member Senate.
Many Americans are familiar with the hours-long filibuster of Senator Jefferson Smith in Frank Capra's film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but there have been some famous filibusters in the real-life Senate as well. During the 1930s, Senator Huey P. Long effectively used the filibuster against bills that he thought favored the rich over the poor. The Louisiana senator frustrated his colleagues while entertaining spectators with his recitations of Shakespeare and his reading of recipes for "pot-likkers." Long once held the Senate floor for fifteen hours. The record for the longest individual speech goes to South Carolina's J. Strom Thurmond who filibustered for 24 hours and 18 minutes against the Civil Rights Act of 1957.
Dualism
"Mind-Body Dualism in the current philosophical understanding of the term originates from one man, the seventeenth century French philosopher Rene Descartes. It was Descartes who gave the world that much quoted utterance "I think, therefore I am". He was also the one who popularised the idea of reality as a dichotomy of matter (extended or spatial substance) and spirit (thinking substance, including God). This form of mind-body dualism became known as "Cartesian Dualism", after the Latin pronunciation of Descartes (Cartes). (from the Kheper web site, on Rene Descartes)
Ancient Chinese held that yin and yang were the central explanation of the universe as typified by the male and female sexes of nature's creations. Later the church, after wrestling for centuries over the God - Devil dichotomy of their faith, proclaimed dualism to be a heresy, and that God was supreme, and that the dark side was a symbol of his, the extent of his greatness and power. This leads to a God with both male and female attributes, and an absolute meaning of dualism. In this context Emmanuel Kant struggled to employ dualism into a universal theory of philosophy, phenomena and nonumena, losing most of his readers in the process. I suppose it can be done. And people will try.
Meanwhile we have to struggle with up or down votes; Tories vs. Labor, Conservatives and Liberals, appearance and reality, body and mind, practical reason and desire, reason and faith. But in all truth "In God we Trust, all others pay cash."
Do You have a List?
Today's plain dealer has a column by Tom Feran, whom I admire, which supports the merits of keeping a list.
SEE: http://www.cleveland.com/living/plaindealer/tom_feran/index.ssf?/base/living/1115113128102151.xml
In this feature he reports that someone gave him a gift coupon for a local restaurant, but when he got there they discovered their was an expiration date, hence no dinner. That earned the restaurant a place on his list. He has more.
I have a book right here handy called "The Book of Lists 2' by Irving Wallace, David Wallechinsky and other, who also published "The People's Almanac" which is also handy.
But I digress, tonite, on Live on Five, this guy had ordered as suite of furniture, paid for it, from Kronheims. Then he learned they were going out of business, all SIX stores. No bankruptcy, just plain going out of business. And instead of putting them on his list, she tattled, telling Live on Five what poor business people they are! Well they already know that, why do you suppose they are going out of business. I keep a list too, and right at the top is Proctor and Gamble.
Now this is a long story, but one of my ancestors was a fighter in the Revolutionary War, when he returned his wife was gone and Thomas Proctor had a deed purporting to show that Proctor, not my ancestor owned the land called The Point, at the mouth of Pine Creek in Northern Pennsylvania. So my ancestor got before the Fair Play judges with his case, and won his suit against Proctor. Later Proctor teamed up with Gamble and became rich. Don't try to take them to court tho., just put them on your list.
Also the Israelies took Jerusalem from the Palestinians back in 1967, evicted most of them, now are doing business at the main corner of Jerusalem, and the Palestinians are left out. They go around blowing themselves up etc., when they could very easily put them on a list!
Remember how nice Al Gore was after GW, Jim Baker and the Supreme Court stole the election, even though Al got the most votes? I guess Al must have put them on his list, I sure would have.
And the Irish in Northern Ireland, remember back when the English created a disturbance around 1600, just before King James took over, and the Earl of Essex came over and since then Northern Ireland is not Ireland. They have fussed about it ever since, when they could have smiled, and put the English on their list, like my ancestor did after spending six months of the Revolutionary War in one of their nast y prison ships.
Then there's the black people, you get the idea, make a list!
TULIP MANIA
Now on to economics. Dutch Tulip Mania should be taught in all economic curricula. This is from the Encyclopedia Brittanica, and is for someone who is looking for a quick fast scheme to invest their newly acquired private accounts into.
"Tulip Mania, also called Tulip Craze, Dutch Tulpenwoede, a speculative frenzy in 17th-century Holland over the sale of tulip bulbs. Tulips were introduced into Europe from Turkey shortly after 1550, and the delicately formed, vividly coloured flowers became a popular if costly item. The demand for differently coloured varieties of tulips soon exceeded the supply, and prices for individual bulbs of rare types began to rise to unwarranted heights in northern Europe. By about 1610 a single bulb of a new variety was acceptable as dowry for a bride, and a flourishing brewery in France was exchanged for one bulb of the variety Tulipe Brasserie. The craze reached its height in Holland during 1633–37. Before 1633 Holland'stulip trade had been restricted to professional growers and experts, but the steadily rising prices tempted many ordinary middle-class and poor families to speculate in the tulip market. Homes, estates, and industries were mortgaged so that bulbs could be bought for resale at higher prices. Sales and resales were made many times over without the bulbs ever leaving the ground, and rare varieties of bulbs sold for the equivalent of hundreds of dollars each. The crash came early in 1637, when doubts arose as to whether prices would continue to increase. Almost overnight the price structure for tulips collapsed, sweeping away fortunes and leaving behind financial ruin for many ordinary Dutch families."
