Arthur Robinson has a must read column:
While most of the nations of the world chose to continue on various roads to oppression – roads that led to socialism, fascism, Marxism, dictatorship and other forms of tyranny, the American people chose individual human freedom.
Now, America has retraced her steps to that fateful intersection. Now, she is poised to travel the road of slavery and tyranny. Now, those who still understand her greatness must prevent this. They must turn America back to the road of freedom.
Standing upon the shoulders of thousands of years of human experience and upon the inherent character of man that had emerged in the unique freedom of a new continent, the Founding Fathers of the United States built a government based upon the truth that individual human beings have certain unalienable rights that are derived from their Creator and that these rights transcend any and all powers of government. Their Declaration of Independence states:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
These men knew that government tyranny was an ever-present threat to those unalienable rights, so they carefully elaborated further upon the rights of man and created a government that, they hoped, would be protective of those rights. This was done with the U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights. Nowhere in these founding documents does the word "democracy" appear. They created a republic.
This omission was not inadvertent. These men knew that unbridled democracy leads to tyranny. Edmund Randolph, Elbridge Gerry, Samuel Adams, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison are remembered for specific statements warning against "democracy," and Thomas Jefferson and many of his illustrious successors made very clear in their speeches and writings that the United States is a republic – not a democracy.
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