... what would George Washington say?

1. 81

   Kathryn L Hillposted 14 months ago

   The first president of this country would say, "Read and understand the Constitution of the United States."
   We need to understand exactly  w h a t  we are trying to MAINTAIN.
   
   NOT Destroy/Obliterate/Pulverize.
   
   Changing our democratic republic into a social democracy of some sort will not provide the freedom we were given by the founders of the nation and by those who fought against the tyranny of the world and the times.
    
   The thinkers of the enlightened age did much to contribute to expanding the awareness of many people of those times.
   
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment
   
   We, today, do not seem to refer to them.
   Its a devastating pity.

   replyreport
2. 81

   Kathryn L Hillposted 14 months ago

   For instance:
   "Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu. (January 18 1689 – February 10 1755), Generally referred to as simply Montesquieu: a French judge, man of letters, historian, and political philosopher.
   
   He is the principal source of the theory of separation of powers, which is implemented in many constitutions throughout the world. He is also known for doing more than any other author to secure the place of the word despotism in the political lexicon. His anonymously published The Spirit of Law (1748), which was received well in both Great Britain and the American colonies, influenced the Founding Fathers of the United States in drafting the U.S. Constitution."
   
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montesquieu

   replyreport
3. 81

   Kathryn L Hillposted 14 months ago

   For Instance: "David Hume was a Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, historian, economist, librarian, and essayist, who is best known today for his highly influential system of philosophical empiricism, skepticism, and naturalism. Beginning with A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–40), Hume strove to create a naturalistic science of man that examined the psychological basis of human nature. Hume followed John Locke in rejecting the existence of innate ideas, concluding that all human knowledge derives solely from experience. This places him with Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and George Berkeley as an empiricist.
   Hume argued that inductive reasoning and belief in causality cannot be justified rationally; instead, they result from custom and mental habit. We never actually perceive that one event causes another but only experience the "constant conjunction" of events. This problem of induction means that to draw any causal inferences from past experience, it is necessary to presuppose that the future will resemble the past, a metaphysical presupposition which cannot itself be grounded in prior experience."
   
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hume

   replyreport
4. 81

   Kathryn L Hillposted 14 months ago

   Interesting to note that: "two most prominent cabinet appointees were Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) and Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804), two men who disagreed strongly on the role of the federal government. Hamilton favored a strong central government and was part of the Federalist Party, while Jefferson favored stronger states’ rights as part of the Democratic-Republican Party, the forerunner to the Democratic Party. Washington believed that divergent views were critical for the health of the new government, but he was distressed at what he saw as an emerging partisanship."
   https://www.history.com/topics/us-presi … washington

   replyreport
5. 81

   Kathryn L Hillposted 14 months ago

   Benjamin Franklin:
   "A nation of well informed men (people) who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the region of ignorance that tyranny begins.

   replyreport
6. 81

   Kathryn L Hillposted 14 months ago

   Excerpt from WASHINGTON’S FAREWELL ADDRESS:
   
   "Towards the preservation of your government and the permanency of your present happy state, it is requisite not only that you steadily discountenance (refuse to approve of) irregular oppositions to its acknowledged authority but also that you resist with care the spirit of innovation (change) upon its principles, however specious (superficially plausible, but actually wrong) the pretexts.
   
   One method of assault may be to effect in the forms of the Constitution alterations which will impair the energy of the system and thus to undermine (lessen the effectiveness of) what cannot be directly overthrown.
   
   In all the changes to which you may be invited, remember that time and habit are at least as necessary to fix the true character of governments as of other human institutions, that experience is the surest standard by which to test the real tendency of the existing constitution of a country, that facility in changes upon the credit of mere hypotheses and opinion exposes to perpetual change from the endless variety of hypotheses (suppositions or proposed explanations as starting points for further investigation) and opinion;
   
   and remember, especially, that for the efficient management of your common interests in a country so extensive as ours, a government of as much vigor as is consistent with the perfect security of liberty is indispensable (essential); liberty itself will find in such a government, with powers properly distributed and adjusted, its surest guardian.
   
   It is indeed little else than a name, where the government is too feeble to withstand the enterprises (projects) of faction, to confine each member of the society within the limits prescribed by the laws, and to maintain all in the secure and tranquil enjoyment of the rights of person and property.
   
   
   https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO … sdoc21.pdf

   replyreport