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New York magazine put up a lengthy post that doesn't quite endorse cyclical history but pretty darn close. Disastrous culture shattering events happen about when the people die off that remember the last such disaster. One mechanism mentioned in the article is a tendency for tyranny to follow democracy. At a time when the most freedom and equality triumph, when the many are the most free, when the elite are least potent, that is the time when a narcissistic demagogue will rise, blame some other race or culture for not so serious problems, and bring the whole thing down.
Originator of the theory? Plato.
Reason the United States lasted so long as a democracy? The founding fathers read Plato. They put certain mechanisms in the Constitution, now fading in influence, that kept the elite in power.
Theme of the article? Trump is Hitler. Doom and the destruction of civilization as we know it is coming.
It's worth a read. Democracies end... when they are too democratic
That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.
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(07-25-2016, 12:53 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: New York magazine put up a lengthy post that doesn't quite endorse cyclical history but pretty darn close. Disastrous culture shattering events happen about when the people die off that remember the last such disaster. One mechanism mentioned in the article is a tendency for tyranny to follow democracy. At a time when the most freedom and equality triumph, when the many are the most free, when the elite are least potent, that is the time when a narcissistic demagogue will rise, blame some other race or culture for not so serious problems, and bring the whole thing down.
Originator of the theory? Plato.
Reason the United States lasted so long as a democracy? The founding fathers read Plato. They put certain mechanisms in the Constitution, now fading in influence, that kept the elite in power.
Theme of the article? Trump is Hitler. Doom and the destruction of civilization as we know it is coming.
It's worth a read. Democracies end... when they are too democratic
I read an op-ed in my local paper that had many of the hallmarks of pre-war Nazi propaganda. The paper prints anything that not outright incendiary, so I'm not shocked by that so much as the fact that anyone would actually write it.
The Roanoke Time on Sunday July 24th Wrote:
Posted: Sunday, July 24, 2016 2:00 am
Buchanan: How can Christians vote for Democrats?
Timothy Buchanan | Buchanan is a U.S. Navy veteran, the author of two published books and a regular contributor to BarbWire.com. He lives in Buchanan roanoke.com
According to a 2012 Gallup poll, 77 percent of Americans identified themselves as “Christians.” While this number is down nearly 15 points from 1990, something is clearly wrong in America.
The Pew Research Center, in 2012, found that Protestants and those identified as “Other Christians” were almost evenly split in their voting preferences between the two major political parties, and have been since 2000. White Protestants tended to favor conservative candidates by nearly 2-to-1, and born-again Christians or evangelicals by 3-to-1. Also in 2012, black Protestants, voted for Barack Hussein Obama, Barry Soetoro, or whatever his name is, nearly unanimously (95 percent).
[url=http://www.roanoke.com/content/tncms/live/#][/url]
How is it that people who claim to be Christians, attend churches every week and support them financially and do good works in their communities, can go into the polls on the first Tuesday in November and defy everything they profess to believe and value?
Over the past seven years, we have seen horrifying and malignant changes in America. An unknown mediocre, do-nothing, part-time U.S. senator from Illinois arose to occupy the White House with two bags full of negatives and no coherent message except his race and a few vague platitudes about hope and change, whose eligibility for office is still in doubt. Rampant sexual perversion of every kind is being forced upon the public through the news media, judicial tyranny and executive orders sanctioning same-sex marriages and transsexual absurdity.
In 2016, America’s longtime friends and allies are being snubbed, as our government courts terrorist Muslim states. Christians are viciously targeted by the administration and its media operatives simply because they oppose the hideous changes wrought by a belligerent godless culture, refuse to participate in them and refuse to remain silent about the dangers they portend.
The Democratic Party has given America Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton and asked the public to choose between them. Her incompetence cost American lives at the Libyan Embassy in Benghazi. When questioned about the incident, waving her arms wildly, she callously responded, “People died; what difference does that make now?”
It’s no secret that the Democratic Party preaches abortion-on-demand from every rooftop. In fact, it’s been one of Clinton’s primary issues in her campaign that too many women still “do not have access to abortion services.” This same Democratic party has been pushing the gay agenda for over 30 years. The DNC is the party of abortion, celebrating perversity, fomenting racial and economic division, institutionalized theft and misinterpretation of the Constitution.
Under the Obama administration, the national debt has doubled and will continue to grow at an unsustainable rate. Obamacare has been a monumental failure that has helped almost no one, but costs everyone a great deal. Illegal and lawless executive orders have cost the lives of hundreds of innocent Americans as illegal criminal aliens are released onto an unsuspecting public.
Thousands of Syrian “refugees” are coming to our neighborhoods who have not been examined to determine if ISIS terrorists are among them. Ten thousand Muslims are already here who have ties to terrorism that the Department of Homeland Security has lost track of. They are in the United States and their visas have expired and DHS has no idea where they are.
Nevertheless, in November, millions of Americans who call themselves “Christians” will cast their votes for Democrat candidates, who will do all that they can to keep the river of innocent blood flowing from Planned Parenthood “clinics.” How can these things be? The answer is simple — deception.
For the true Christian, his faith and love of Christ rules over every decision he makes. With the fraudulent and the Democrat, his “faith” is always held in ruthless submission to his political preference. The lesson in the ongoing controversy over transsexuals invading women’s restrooms, locker rooms and showers is that the freedom of the righteous cannot coexist with the liberty of the wicked. The two will always be in mortal conflict. This November, Americans will decide which one shall prevail. May God help us choose rightly.
Intelligence is not knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom, but they all play well together.
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I think Mr. Sander's appeal to make an America that fits the Nordic model is the way forward. The only ? is which shall we choose the House of Oldenburg or the House of Bernadotte?
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It's obvious that many so-called "Christians" attribute their regressive and intolerant beliefs to their religion, and dismiss other Christians who do not share their beliefs as "unbiblical" or some such malarcky. They are entitled to their opinions and beliefs, but distortions of the facts, which they make, are subject to correction. Not that they listen to these corrections, but Americans should listen to them.
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11-25-2016, 11:18 AM
(This post was last modified: 11-25-2016, 11:26 AM by Mikebert.)
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(11-25-2016, 11:18 AM)Mikebert Wrote: Scary article by Steven Walt in Foreign Policy
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/11/23/ten-...-dictator/
Ten Ways to Tell if Your President Is a Dictator
-- listed in the event that the article is no longer available or you dither on reading the article:
1. Muzzling the media. The earliest warning is his stated desire to make lawsuits for libel of media easier to initiate and win libel suits against hostile reporters and editors.
2. Building a sympathetic media network. So FoX News is too unreliable for his purposes? Who'd a thunk it?
3. Politicizing the civil service, military, National Guard, and law enforcement. Just think of how much easier it will be if the IRS targets dissidents, the Postal Service refuses to deliver mail by or to identified dissidents or rivals, Keitel*-like flunkies advance rapidly in the Armed Forces, and if police commanders had the guts to mow down peaceful protesters.
4. Government surveillance of domestic opponents. Just think of the CIA given authority to spy on Americans or some new agency given such authority. Welcome to a mirror image of the Soviet Union, only ultra-capitalist and for right-wing Christianity.
5. Using state power to reward supporters and punish opponents. Corruption through connections -- supporters get richer at expense of those who fail to comply.
6. Stacking the Supreme Court -- filling openings with legal cronies and fanatics. Look at his cabinet choices and ask yourself whether you expect anything different.
7. Enforcing the law for only one side. Remember -- justice is fair and impartial or it is a tool of oppression and political control.
8. Really rigging the system. Intensification of voter suppression and gerrymandering.
9. Fear-mongering. Racial, religious, and ethnic bigotry; attacks on cultural expressions that he considers hostile to his politics as treasonable.
10. Demonizing the opposition. Showing the world, including critical parts of American life, as parts of a hostile conspiracy against the rightful American way for mass attacks in media and for official persecution.
*Field-Marshal Wilhelm Keitel (1882-1946), Chief of the Staff of the German Army just before and during World War II, who destroyed the political independence of the German Army, planned Nazi aggression, and ordered the German Army to participate in crimes against humanity including the Holocaust. Utterly incompetent for service beyond the level of a junior officer, he never questioned the wisdom of the Fuehrer. A week after Hitler offed himself in his bunker, he signed the official surrender of Germany to the Soviet Union, probably the only decent thing he ever did as a senior officer. He was soon arrested by the Allies and tried in the main Nuremberg trial on counts of Crimes Against Peace, Conventional War Crimes, and Crimes Against Humanity; his sole defense was the "superior orders" claim rejected by the Allies. He was convicted of monstrous crimes and executed by hanging.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
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