https://www.deseret.com/opinion/2020/7/ ... revolutionWere the Founding Fathers heroes, or as some claim, villains? Ted Stewart, a federal judge, put this question in its proper light:
“Today, it is common to criticize the founders of America. Judging them by today’s standards of equality and justice they do fail. Some owned slaves, none fought to give women equal rights. Most were wealthy white men. …
“But there is just one problem with judging them by today’s standards and it is this: but for those imperfect founders and the sacrifices that they made and the instruments of government which they created, there would be no current, enlightened standards of equality and justice by which to judge them.”
Judge Stewart is so right. The reason the critics can freely criticize, protest, vote for change, run for office and exercise freedom of religion or irreligion as they choose is for one reason and one reason only, because the Founding Fathers made it so. America is the greatest democracy the world has ever known. Do the critics believe these liberties came about by chance or that they were spawned by evil men? If so, how do they reconcile such a position with the unerring logic of the Savior: “Ye shall know them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:16).
America is the greatest democracy the world has ever known? Really? I'm not sure the surviving indigenous populations of America would agree with him. Nor, I suspect, would many poor and black Americans.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ar ... cy/550931/The subversion of the people’s preferences in our supposedly democratic system was explored in a 2014 study by the political scientists Martin Gilens of Princeton and Benjamin I. Page of Northwestern. Four broad theories have long sought to answer a fundamental question about our government: Who rules? One theory, the one we teach our children in civics classes, holds that the views of average people are decisive. Another theory suggests that mass-based interest groups such as the AARP have the power. A third theory predicts that business groups such as the Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of America and the National Beer Wholesalers Association carry the day. A fourth theory holds that policy reflects the views of the economic elite.
Gilens and Page tested those theories by tracking how well the preferences of various groups predicted the way that Congress and the executive branch would act on 1,779 policy issues over a span of two decades. The results were shocking. Economic elites and narrow interest groups were very influential: They succeeded in getting their favored policies adopted about half of the time, and in stopping legislation to which they were opposed nearly all of the time. Mass-based interest groups, meanwhile, had little effect on public policy. As for the views of ordinary citizens, they had virtually no independent effect at all. “When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy,” Gilens and Page wrote.
How can Callister claim a country occupied by invaders at the expense of indigenous populations where the current population has practically zero influence on public policy is "the greatest democracy the world has ever seen"?The United States was founded as a republic, not a democracy. As Alexander Hamilton and James Madison made clear in the Federalist Papers, the essence of this republic would consist—their emphasis—“IN THE TOTAL EXCLUSION OF THE PEOPLE, IN THEIR COLLECTIVE CAPACITY, from any share” in the government. Instead, popular views would be translated into public policy through the election of representatives “whose wisdom may,” in Madison’s words, “best discern the true interest of their country.” That this radically curtailed the degree to which the people could directly influence the government was no accident.
Back to Callister
It's more likely to have been raw greed driving them on. And what about the God-given rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness of the Native Americans? Tad conveniently doesn't go back that far, because he would serve to undermine the point he's trying to make.From a worldly perspective, a revolutionary war on the part of the colonists was nothing less than a suicidal mission. It was a modern-day version of David with his slingshot against the mighty Goliath with his colossal sword and shield.
But something within drove the Founding Fathers onward — an inner vision, nay, even more, a divine assurance, that in spite of overwhelming odds, in spite of seemingly certain destruction, providence would be with them in this quest for their God-given rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Donald Trump, democratically elected leader of the greatest democracy the world has ever seen...don't make me laugh.
Whoa. I had no idea.