Maureen Dowd of the NY Times has complained that Barack Obama needs to be more like Lyndon Johnson, and others would say Franklin D. Roosevelt.
This is preposterous, as both LBJ and FDR had MASSIVE majorities in the US Senate, while Obama has to deal with having only 55 members of his party in the Senate, plus a Republican House of Representatives for the past two and a half years, the next year and a half, and likely beyond that!
Johnson had 68 Democrats at the time of the Civil Rights Act, and 64 for the Voting Rights Act, and FDR had 75 Senators at his peak.
It is true that LBJ had to deal with segregationist Southern Senators, but he also had moderate and liberal Northern Republicans he could count on, and FDR had progressive Republicans, including those that this author published about in his monograph, TWILIGHT OF PROGRESSIVISM (1981), who were willing to cross party lines to back him on many issues!
Obama has found the opposition party unwilling, in either house of Congress, to back him on almost anything he promotes, with an occasional few Senators helping out, but with the filibuster requiring 60 votes, the result is a total stalemate, something he has not been able to overcome, even after having lunches and dinners with Republicans, particularly in the Senate, as they are dedicated to prevention of any legislation that might make him look good in history.
But despite that, Obama is accomplishing a record that will make him look good in history, even with the opposition of conservatives and Republicans, and the criticism of Maureen Dowd and other unrealistic liberals and progressives!
Being bought off by a cheap lunch would not say much for a man’s principles.
Amen to that Professor!
“Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems. Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave, and creative, and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can’t be trusted.”- President Barack Hussein Obama, Ohio State University on May 5, 2013.
Article IV Section 4, of the Constitution “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion”, the word Democracy is not mentioned in the Constitution at all. Madison warned us of the dangers of democracies with this quote, along with more warnings from others.
“Hence it is that democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and in general have been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths… A republic, by which I mean a government in which a scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect and promises the cure for which we are seeking.” James Madison, Federalist Papers No. 10 (1787).
“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!” Ben Franklin
“A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.†Thomas Jefferson
“Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories.” – Thomas Jefferson in his Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 14 in 1781
“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.†John Adams
“The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.” James Madison – Virginia State Convention, Dec. 2, 1829.
“Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall, when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people, in order to betray them.” — John Jay, first Chief Justice of the United States
“I apprehend no danger to our country from a foreign foe . . . Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing.Make them intelligent, and they will be vigilant; give them the means of detecting the wrong, and they will apply the remedy.” Daniel Webster
Our military training manuals use to contain the correct definitions of Democracy and Republic. The following comes from Training Manual No. 2000-25 published by the War Department, November 30, 1928. RON THIS MANUAL MIGHT HAVE SOME HISTORICAL INTEREST FOR YOU..( http://www.barefootsworld.net/tm_2000-25.html )
Below is what the Manual No. 2000-25 says in Section IX Lesson 9.
DEMOCRACY:
A government of the masses.
Authority derived through mass meeting or any other form of “direct” expression.
Results in mobocracy.
Attitude toward property is communistic–negating property rights.
Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate, whether is be based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences.
Results in demagogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy.
REPUBLIC:
Authority is derived through the election by the people of public officials best fitted to represent them.
Attitude toward property is respect for laws and individual rights, and a sensible economic procedure.
Attitude toward law is the administration of justice in accord with fixed principles and established evidence, with a strict regard to consequences.
A greater number of citizens and extent of territory may be brought within its compass.
Avoids the dangerous extreme of either tyranny or mobocracy.
Results in statesmanship, liberty, reason, justice, contentment, and progress.
Is the “standard form” of government throughout the world.
The manuals containing these definitions were ordered destroyed without explanation about the same time that President Franklin D. Roosevelt made private ownership of our lawful money (US Minted Gold Coins) illegal. His right hand man, Harry Lloyd Hopkins, the New Deal architect, who suggested many of F.D.R.’s policies said.
“We shall Tax and Tax, Spend and Spend, Elect and Elect, because the people are too damn dumb to know the difference”. Harry Hopkins
I think I will stick to the voices of Madison, Adams, Franklin, Jefferson and Webster instead. Voices I bet those Ohio college students listening to President Obama haven’t even heard of.
Juan, you know very well how much these men changed their views and said and wrote contradictory statements, particularly Jefferson. Remember they were politicians too, and wanted to preserve their property and their power in the 1780s, but as times changed, they changed, which is part of the evolution of a society and government. This sounds as if it came from the American Enterprise Institute or the Heritage Foundation, part of their propaganda to keep power in the hands of the few and the rich!
Ron: The differences between a Republic and Democracy come from Aristotle’s and Plato’s time! It’s classics! Part of Greek and Roman antiquity, it’s part of history. It has nothing to do with the rich and the few and the yabba dabba dooo! LOL!
I know that, but politicians are inconsistent in their statements, including the Founding Fathers!
But were they inconsistent with regard to the fact that we are a Republic? That we are governed by the rule of law, not by a circumstantial majority that can vote away our rights? Do you prefer unlimited democratic government?
I prefer a government that is able to accomplish goals, and the system we have now is not working properly. I do not want unlimited democratic government, but i want a government of the people, by the people, for the people! That is not the case now!
Well then we agree. No special treatment for special interest groups, like crony capitalist friends of government (Solyndra), unions preferences , like SEIU, special waivers from Obamacare for friends, and bailouts for Wall Street and failed corporations like GM. The thing is that I believe that the bigger the government the harder it is not to pass along special favors, it’s just the nature of the beast. A President once said in his Inaugural Address,
” We hear much of special interest groups. Our concern must be for a special interest group that has been too long neglected. It knows no sectional boundaries or ethnic and racial divisions, and it crosses political party lines. It is made up of men and women who raise our food, patrol our streets, man our mines and our factories, teach our children, keep our homes, and heal us when we are sick—professionals, industrialists, shopkeepers, clerks, cabbies, and truckdrivers. They are, in short, “We the people,” this breed called Americans.”
agree