Wednesday, April 23, 2014

US Military Cited as Proof That Socialism Can be a Paradise

Added 6/1/14 - I corrected "regimental" to "regimented" in the opening statement. I need to slow down on my spell check choices.
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This article should leave no one in doubt; the Left seeks to create a regimented structure for each and every one of us - right down to the most basic of details.

When one chooses or is conscripted into the military, he must surrender a whole lot of what he once took for granted. In the vast majority of cases (with the ultimate decisions always being those of his superiors) the following will now be decided for him:

-Where he lives (both in location and type of housing)
-The instruction that he will receive
-the choice of coworkers and roommates
-The job that he will be assigned
-When and how he will exercise
-When and what he will eat
-What personal articles he may posses (including reading material in some cases )
-The degree of his freedom of association (a crucial aspect of a free society is the Liberty to join or be associated with virtually any organization)
-The degree to which he is free to exercise both his freedom of conscience and religion
-When (and for how long) and where he is allowed to go on his own
-When and for how long he can sleep
-When he will be subjected to searches of his person or quarters
-The type and amount of medical treatment that he will receive
-If and when he will be allowed the privilege of having a personal vehicle
-When and if he may attend even family funerals (those in training schools will often be denied leave for the death of a grandparent unless that individual was the legal guardian of the member)
-There of course is more 

All of this is of course for a purpose; the military must by its very nature be organized and managed in a certain manner.It also is by its nature only applicable to a small subset of a society.  Now see this world being held up as an example of how Socialism can create a paradise - presumably for all of us.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/21/troops-of-the-uniform-unite-the-military-is-a-socialist-paradise.html

"It may come as an unwelcome surprise to conservatives, but America’s military has one of the only working models of collective living and social welfare the country has ever known.

Every day before dawn, brave men and women of different races and backgrounds rise as one, united by a common cause. They march together in formation, kept in step by their voices joined in song. These workers leave their communal housing arrangements and go toil together “in the field.” While they are out doing their day’s labor, their young are cared for in subsidized childcare programs. If they hurt themselves on the job, they can count on universal health care. Right under your nose, on the fenced-in bases you drive past on your way to work or see on the TV news, a successful experiment in collectivization has been going on for years.....................


The U.S. military is a socialist paradise. Imagine a testing ground where every signature liberal program of the past century has been applied, from racial integration to single-payer health care—then add personal honor, strict hierarchy, and more guns. Like all socialist paradises, the military has been responsible for its share of bloodshed, but it has developed one of the only working models of collective living and social welfare that this country has ever known.........

So what’s life like for those in uniform living in the socialist paradise?

The military is an enormous jobs program. [Which uses rather than creates wealth]  There are more than 2 million active duty and reserve members of the armed forces spread out between bases in more than 150 countries. As with any employer of that size, you’ll get a range of answers about working conditions depending on who you ask and how much they got screwed by the bureaucracy, let down by their leaders, or punished by circumstance.

................... It’s the commonness of the life, actually, that makes it unique. From Fort Bragg to Camp Pendleton, there is a shared experience on a scale that exists almost nowhere else in America.

Millions of people on military bases live in communal arrangements. They participate in centrally run programs that govern the most basic and fundamental aspects of their lives, from their housing and children’s educations to where and how they shop for food.


Service members and their families live for free on base. People living off base are given a stipend to cover their housing costs. They shop in commissaries and post exchanges where prices for food and basic goods are considerably lower than at civilian stores. Troops and their families count on high-quality education and responsive universal health care. They expect to be safe at home, as bases, on average, have less violence than American cities of comparable size. And residents enjoy a wide range of amenities—not just restaurants and movie theaters but fishing ponds, camp sites, and golf courses built for their use............

On social issues, the military has consistently been ahead of the country at large. President Truman ordered the armed forces desegregated in 1948, shamefully late but two decades before the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And since the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in 2010, gay service members have been getting married and collecting the same benefits as their straight peers, while the issue still works its way through the states......................."
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-Previous related posts:


Left Conflates Freight and Passenger Trains

There is a lot to digest as far as the messages that they want us to accept.

Note that the Washington Post, unlike the Washington Times, is a hyper-Left paper.

In the first article, you'll see that firstly a strong case is made for moving much of our freight by rail rather than semi-trailers (often called tractor-trailers in the US). This of course is not new revelation - the energy required to transport an equal amount of freight in a truck is far greater than on a train.

Following this, we find the bait-and-switch; the reader is then edged into the not-so-shrouded message. We are told that new and better ways of doing things are easier to accomplish with governmental coordination with the rail industry because there are bigger (and far fewer) rail companies than there are trucking outfits. To add to that point, the reader is reminded of the apparently anarchic existence of thousands of owner-operators who may own only one or two trucks. The message is clear - lots of small companies are bad and few, but much larger, businesses are good.

The blaster comes at the end. The Conservative columnist George Will, who rightfully exposed the Left's fixation with moving people via trains rather than the evil personally-owned car (these are only for the ones who can pay exorbitant carbon credits), is labeled as "wrong". What the writer of the Post did, though, was get the reader thinking along the lines of moving freight in the hopes that he will conflate materiel with people. We are expected to accept that there is no appreciable difference with moving coal, TV's, or lumber than there is with human beings.

The Left's plan with promoting (with massive amounts of borrowed money) is to set up passenger corridors (only hinted at even by George Will) so that Americans can eventually be herded into cities and other densely-populated regions. The family car - the prime example of the Leftist-derided Consumer Society, is in the crosshairs of the Socialists. They want the regular people to acquiesce to lives of very limited mobility, (see links on Agenda 21* at the bottom of this post) and where they can be under full control.  Imagine the day when most of us can only travel by rail - a system that will be staffed by TSA agents demanding ID's and giving us rubdowns euphemistically referred to as patdowns.

-Your papers, please.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/lets-make-an-effort-to-move-more-freight-by-rail-and-less-by-road-trains-are-more-efficient/2014/03/03/d1947278-9d90-11e3-9ba6-800d1192d08b_story.html

"Last month, President Obama announced an initiative to improve the fuel efficiency of trucks. That’s a lofty goal, but here’s an even better idea: Let’s make an effort to move more freight by rail and less by road. Trains are far more energy-efficient than trucks — and they always will be.

Trains have a significant friction advantage over trucks. The degree of “stickiness” between two surfaces is expressed mathematically as the coefficient of friction. For a steel wheel rolling over a steel rail, its value is approximately 0.001. For a rubber tire rolling over pavement, the coefficient is between 0.006 and 0.010, or roughly an order of magnitude greater. Some friction is good — it stops the vehicle when a person runs out in front of it. But too much friction means less energy driving the vehicle forward..............

Industry consolidation also speeds implementation of new technologies. There are dozens of large trucking companies in the United States, in addition to thousands of independent truckers, which makes it difficult to broadly implement good ideas quickly. (That’s one reason President Obama is getting involved.) By contrast, a small number of companies dominate American rail freight, giving them the power and motivation to improve efficiency...........
Columnist George Will once called the preoccupation with trains a “disorder” that “illuminates the progressive mind.” He’s wrong. Recognizing a 30-year trend, accepting simple physics and caring for the environment isn’t a sickness — it’s a cure.


George Will's piece:


"Generations hence, when the river of time has worn this presidency’s importance to a small, smooth pebble in the stream of history, people will still marvel that its defining trait was a mania for high-speed rail projects. This disorder illuminates the progressive mind.

Remarkably widespread derision has greeted the Obama administration’s damn-the-arithmetic-full-speed-ahead proposal to spend $53 billion more (after the $8 billion in stimulus money and $2.4 billion in enticements to 23 states) in the next six years pursuant to the president’s loopy goal of giving “80 percent of Americans access to high-speed rail.” “Access” and “high-speed” to be defined later.....................................

So why is America’s “win the future” administration so fixated on railroads, a technology that was the future two centuries ago? Because progressivism’s aim is the modification of (other people’s) behavior.

Forever seeking Archimedean levers for prying the world in directions they prefer, progressives say they embrace high-speed rail for many reasons—to improve the climate, increase competitiveness, enhance national security,reduce congestion, and rationalize land use. The length of the list of reasons, and the flimsiness of each, points to this conclusion: the real reason for progressives’ passion for trains is their goal of diminishing Americans’ individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism.

To progressives, the best thing about railroads is that people riding them are not in automobiles, which are subversive of the deference on which progressivism depends
. Automobiles go hither and yon, wherever and whenever the driver desires, without timetables. Automobiles encourage people to think they—unsupervised, untutored, and unscripted—are masters of their fates. The automobile encourages people in delusions of adequacy, which make them resistant to government by experts who know what choices people should make.

Time was, the progressive cry was “Workers of the world unite!” or “Power to the people!” Now it is less resonant: “All aboard!”







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Pro-Hillary Dems Emply Soviet Iconography Featuring Their Choice

They no longer feel the need to candy-coat their intentions. Even if it was meant as a joke to parody what her opponents may say, the point is clear - Marxsim is to be celebrated and hiding it behind a veil of democracy is not necessary. 

Westerners have become as well-trained as circus animals and now place their hopes in the individual who has been presented to them as their savior and caretaker. 

http://www.theblaze.com/blog/2014/04/16/hillary-pac-takes-page-from-carney-family-playbook-with-communist-inspired-clinton-iconography/

"Last week, we noted that in a profile of White House Press Secretary Jay Carney’s wife, Claire Shipman, in Washingtonian MOM magazine, Soviet-era propaganda adorned the walls of the family’s home.

Today, a photo has been making the rounds, courtesy of the Ready for Hillary Super PAC’s Facebook page, of Hillary Clinton supporters standing in front of a piece of Communist-style, propaganda-esque art. The person depicted in the piece? Ms. Clinton herself......"


-From previous posts:
At one time, the fact that the City of Milwaukee had boasted (sic) a Socialist mayor was a surprise to many.

Today, it is no longer a big deal, and that is why the People must realize that we can no longer share the same nation with the enemies of Humanity. . 

Residents of the City of New York, a metropolis that has long been considered the prime example of the success of the market economy, recently elected Bill de Blasio as mayor. The new chief elected officer of NYC spent his honeymoon in Cuba and for years was an enthusiastic supporter of the Sandinistas. de Blasio ran as a Democrat, but given the fact that this party is now driven by the Left, his actual party label means nothing. One can imagine what political party, if any such entity still exists, would be a suitable home for Harry Truman or John F. Kennedy.

Residents of Seattle, not to be outdone by their East Coast urban comrades, elected Kshama Sawant - who eschews even the formality of using a traditional party label that  may cause some to let their guard down, to the city council. Sawant is a Socialist.

So gone to Hell is the Democratic Party of the United States and the individuals who cast their votes for its candidates that de Blasio could, knowing that it would not hurt his candidacy (a key point of this post), state the following when he spoke to a group of real estate developers -prior to the actual election.  

http://nypost.com/2013/11/16/de-blasio-vs-the-market/

"Business leaders in the city are scratching their heads over recent remarks by Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio.

Describing how he plans to govern once he takes office next year, the mayor-elect declared flatly that he doesn’t believe in the free-market system.......

Everything you heard about me is true. . . I am not a free-marketeer. . . I believe in the heavy hand of government,” de Blasio stated matter-of-factly during an hour-long presentation to some of the city’s biggest real-estate developers.

The meeting occurred several weeks before the election with de Blasio way ahead in the polls and New York’s business elite hoping and praying he wasn’t as much of a leftist as he said he was on the campaign trail.

Now that de Blasio’s been elected mayor with a resounding 73 percent of the vote, his comments have become a hot topic for business people trying to digest what life will be like with Comrade Bill in charge....."

Sawant too operates with the correct assumption that to speak like a Marxist is no longer even a minor hindrance to one who is seeking office. Indeed in many cases or regions in the nation, it may even help:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/11/15/its-official-a-socialist-is-now-on-the-seattle-city-council/

"......Sawant, 41, is on leave from her post as a Seattle Central Community College professor. She ran her campaign blasting income inequality and supported raising the minimum wage to $15 for all workers in the city.

I think we have shown the strongest skeptics that the Socialist label is not a bad one for a grassroots campaign to succeed,” Sawant told the Associated Press this week.

At a rally for slain teen Trayvon Martin in Seattle over the summer, Sawant linked so-called “stand your ground” laws to the capitalist system that she said was “at the root” of racism in America.

“Our task is far bigger than the repeal of a single law. We need to recognize what is at the root of racism, this hatred and fear of black people, of people of color, of poor people,” Sawant said. “The root cause of these blatantly unjust laws is the capitalist system itself … this system does not work for us. Racism is necessary for this oppressive system to exist. It prevents ordinary people from coming together of different races and turning their fire towards Wall Street, corporate politicians and the ruling elite as a whole … the bankers, the billionaires, the capitalists — they are the criminals of our society. They are amounting unimaginable wealth by exploiting the rest of us and maintaining their power by dividing us.”

We must reject this divided rule and build an independent united working class movement that will put on trial American racism, sexism, class and gender exploitation, and capitalism itself,” she said."


There you have it

One mayoral candidate of a city of well over 8,000,000 people, an entity that historians will note was once synonymous with the success of the free market, can state flat-out that he does not favor the market economy as a concept and add that he believes in the the chilling "heavy hand of government" - and win the election by a landslide. 

A new member of the city council of another once-great city can dive right into presenting capitalism as the source of evil in a nation that, while practicing that economic system, made more people free, well-fed housed, and clothed, as well as liberated more souls than any other nation on the history of the world. She goes on to claim that the evil capitalism has a natural outcome."Racism" (which never means anything but subjugating whites to the whims of everyone else) as the second enemy that must be taken head-on. She knows that she can speak in this manner  with no appreciable fallout for her hateful remarks.

As I have asked before in previous posts;

At what point will enough be enough for you?.

I see nothing more than two utterly different nations that are diametrically opposed to each other. They will not compromise. They will make more copies of themselves in the Halls of Academia (and with the Common Core in primary schools). They will work tirelessly to bring as many like-minded individuals from nations that have no history of our system of government; nations in which concepts that gave birth to the system that made us great is foreign.

In the Decline of the West, Oswald Spengler correctly noted that the mind of the Socialist is not motivated by compassion, but control - the fierce determination to force his will onto all"

"In spite of its foreground appearances ethical socialism is not a system of compassion, humanity, peace, and kindly care, but one of will-to-power. Any other reading of it is illusory.....The Socialist wants to organize and recast it [the world] in its form and substance, to fill it with his own spirit (emphasis his)...the Socialist commands. He would have the whole world take the shape he desires...."

The American People are at a crossroads, but they fear having to admit this to themselves. Roughly half of the minds in our nation are ruined*. The sooner that we begin to take steps to effect a divorce from the Leftist-run regions of the nation, the better. Each year that goes by while we ignore this unpleasant reality brings tens of thousands of new Leftists, and that is just the university-indoctrinated. The longer that we wait, the harder it will be to effect a break. The longer that we ignore the handwriting on the wall** that all can read clearly, the more of the nation that will have already been lost.
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..........Keep your eyes and ears open for the language of the Occupy people.The Left has increasingly relied on utilization of the word "Democracy" to justify their intentions to abolish property rights, redistribute wealth, etc. It is a sort of hypnotic game that they are employing; keep throwing out the word Democracy when discussing things that have absolutely nothing to do with that political system until the people begin to equate your agenda with it. It seems to be one of their more recent ploys. Like many of the tactics that the Left commonly uses today, this falls within the Plan B genre; having been unable to convince Americans to sign on to their regressive agenda, they redefine a political system to mean what they want society to be. The idea is to make Marxism easier to swallow if they can wrap it up in a familiar-sounding package. As I have noted previously, Plan B also includes acts of Demagoguery such as importing massive amounts of new citizens from nations that have no tradition of Democratic or Republican governments as these types are more likely to embrace totalitarianism, whether it be its hard or soft version.

I watched this happen repeatedly in the pseudo-documentary of Mr. self-loather himself, Michael More - Capitalism, a Love Story. Especially toward the end of the movie, Mr. Moore mentioned Democracy several times, but each time it was thrown out, it was done so in its Leftist-degraded form. In the movie, Moore equated a political process (Democracy) with the demands of a portion of the population for more wealth. While at times Mr. Moore seemed to be willing to discuss things that are unacceptable to all of us, such as corporate crime and bailouts, he would continually bring these back around into his agenda of capitalism being "an evil system" and the concept of the government taking over the "means of production".

Moore even featured a movie clip of FDR that was so shocking that I absolutely thought that it was faked. In the clip, FDR outlines proposed new amendments. These all fell into the Leftist picture. The most frightening one of all was the "right of every family to a home." What FDR was advocating was that, by virtue of the successful performance of the procreative act, an individual would be entitled to a home.While we breathed a sigh of relief that FDR's demise got these proposed amendments out of the way at the time, Moore speaks of our dodging of this Leftist bullet as an unfortunate event.

What was readily apparent is that Mr. Moore, like the Occupy gentleman quoted at top, has no desire to respect Democracy but would rather apply his own sick meaning to it, tell you that that is about abolishing capitalism as opposed to protecting property, and hope that you either buy into his drivel or feel timid about possibly having to defend what Democracy actually is.

Instead of utilizing the term in the manner of its actual meaning, they mean to take the state of that system when it has reached its final form of decay, when a welfare state has broken the middle classes completely, leaving only the provided-for and the wealthy, and pretend to be under the impression that this pathetic period is what Democracy is supposed to be.


Since the inception of the LBJ-induced, Liberal-maintained, and now Obama-enforced welfare system, large blocs of the US population have effectively become part of a permanent sub-class of voters who will consistently vote for the candidate or party that promises the most financial support for little or no effort other than voting for those who are determined to keep them in bondage. Once such a standard of living becomes ingrained in the culture, the enslaved become comfortable with their fetters as long as they have to do nothing but periodically show up at the polls to cast a vote.

As this bloc grows in size, it morphs into a powerful tool for those who desire to bring everyone else under this umbrella of dysfunctional but powerful control. Since those who comprise the bloc will vote for no other candidate than their handlers, other parties too feel the need to court them. The result is a steady decline of work ethic, the migration of, as the rewards for staying out of it become perceived to outweigh the necessary efforts to do so, those of the lower and middle classes into that bloc, and the final result of what is essentially is a dreary Marxist society. If the chief executive is the same type as the current Occupant of the White House, a Fascist/Oligarchic mixture will likely be the product. With his advocating of a Civilian Security Force and his tolerance for the biggest of big businesses that are willing to cozy up to him, the latter is just as likely and possibly even more dangerous.

Since Democracy is the victim of false advertising, some clarifications of that system are in order:

http://www.oesel.ee/civics/school/defin.htm
Athenian Citizenship: The idea and practice of citizenship was first thoroughly explored by the Greeks in the 'polis' or city-state. The 'polis' was local or municipal in character as well as national. It was 'not only a unit of government: it was also a club' (Barker, 1960, p. 21). Aristotle, who included influential chapters on citizenship in Politics, thought ideally citizens needed to 'know each other's character' to best exercise their duties. In the 'polis' Aristotle (1960, p. 109) considered that 'a citizen is a man who enjoys the right of sharing in deliberative or judicial office (for any period, fixed or unfixed)'. Aristotle characterised man as a zoon politikon, or political being, which has sometimes been interpreted to mean that man is a 'political animal'. Political activity was regarded as an essential part of human behaviour and that a man's full potential and personality can not be achieved without participation in the 'polis'. Citizenship offered tangible benefits such as freedom, the security to pursue 'well-being' and the opportunity to win honour by guiding and even defending the community. Citizens who neglected their civic duties in the 'polis' by not attending assemblies, voting, serving on juries and giving military service were labelled as idions, the term from which the modern word idiot is derived. Aristotle indicated that a good citizen 'must possess the knowledge and the capacity requisite for ruling as well as being ruled' (Aristotle, 1960, p. 105). The opportunity to participate in the 'polis' did not extend to all persons. Women, children, together with resident foreigners, some labourers and slaves were not citizens and were excluded from the 'privileges of rule'. In fact Aristotle was at pains to distinguish between true citizens and those who could not justly claim the title. Aristotle was even concerned that certain working men, such as mechanics, did not have the aptitude or leisure to display true excellence in citizenship qualities. Immaturity and infirmity were two further barriers to the status of citizenship. [Italics added] By law any citizen who failed to take sides in key decisions would lose his membership in the 'polis'. Citizenship was about responsibilities which had to be met rather than about rights which could be claimed.

Now that the system is summarized, we can look at an idea of who could be a citizen and vote:

Citizens, Metics, and Slaves:

"The population of Athens was made up of three distinct groups: citizens, or men who were of Athenian birth and free-born; metics, or foreigners who lived in Athens but who had no citizenship rights, and slaves

It is estimated that in 431 B.C. there were roughly 50,000 adult male citizens, 25,000 metics, and 100,000 slaves in Athens.

Metics were non-Athenians who generally found the cosmopolitan city of Athens more appealing than their own homelands. Metics could not own property, which was crippling in Athenian society, but they could hold jobs for property owners and they did have to pay a tax."

There you have it, Democracy had nothing to do with a willy-nilly system of letting everyone vote and by extension be able collude to endorse candidates who will promise the most free stuff. 50,000 voters out of the total of 175,000 hardly constitutes the mass bloc of voters who will clamor for handouts as advanced by the Left. As Alexis de Tocqueville stated inDemocracy in America, Athenian Democracy was an aristocratic (His word) system in which those who could prove their Athenian birth (That refers to one's ancestors, not simply being born in Athens), that they owned property, and that they were not not slaves, could vote and hold office. Slavery was unfortunately a part of Athenian society, but we must not that these slaves were overwhelmingly ethnic whites. The free-born who could prove that their families were part of Athens from the early days and who owned property were considered to be responsible enough to have a say in their government. Note also that there was no voting for individual candidates.** They had a system in which candidates from the Demes (Subdivisions of the city) for the Council of 500 and other offices were selected by lot, thereby making it very hard to promise free stuff in order to garner votes.

Speaking of Toqueville, it would be a good idea to give just a taste of what American Democracy was about  in the early part of the 19th century, over two thousand years after the greatest days of Athens:

Speaking of the state of revolution and referring to how classes are affected by the spectre of such in Democracy in America Chapter XXI: Why Great Revolutions Will Become More Rare-

' Not only are the men of democracies not naturally desirous of revolutions, but they are afraid of them. All revolutions more or less threaten the tenure of property: but most of those who live in democratic countries are possessed of property- not only are they possessed of property, but the live in the condition of men who set the greatest store upon their property."

Tocqueville then briefly treats both the rich, who will likely always have financial resources left over after a revolution, and the poor, who care more for what they do not have than what they do and goes on to discuss the ensuing plight of the middle class.

"But the men who have a competency, alike removed from opulence and from penury, attach an enormous value to their possessions. As they are are still almost within the reach of poverty, they see its privations near at hand, and dread them; between poverty and themselves there is nothing but a scanty fortune, upon which they immediately fix their apprehensions and their hopes. Every day increases the interest they take in it, by the constant acres which it occasions; and they are the more attached to it by their continual exertions to increase the amount. The notion of surrendering the smallest part of it is insupportable to them, and they consider its total loss as the worst of misfortunes..........In a revolution the owners of personal property have more to fear than all others [rich and poor]; for on one hand their property is often easy to seize and on the other it may totaly disppear at any moment"


So, we have ancient Athenian Democracy, which was aristocratic, and we have American Democracy, where private property is also valued by the owner, who would fear its seizure in the event of a revolution.
So, if someone can come up with an explanation of how Mr. Moore, and of course, Mr. Graeber up top, can determine that Democracy has anything to do with governmental/popular seizures of property in any way, please let me know.

**Getting back to Athens, the following is the citation for how candidates for council and office were selected"

http://www.stoa.org/projects/demos/article_council?page=all&greekEncoding=

Selection by lot (κλήρωσις) involved bronze tablets (χαλκοῦς) (Dem. 39.10). It is not clear whether all 500 Councilors were chosen at once, in a central location, or whether they were chosen in the various demes. Demosthenesrefers to “the city selecting [Councilors — CWB] by lot” ( πόλις κληροῖ) (Dem. 39.10), which would suggest a centrally managed process. But Aristotle says this:

Read about the evidence
Aristotle (Aristot. Ath. Pol.).

“The officials elected by lot were formerly those elected from the whole tribe together with the Nine Archons and those now elected in the Temple of Theseus who used to be divided among the demes; but since the demes began to sell their offices, the latter also are elected by lot from the whole tribe, excepting members of the Council and Guards; these they entrust to the demes” (Aristot. Ath. Pol. 62.1).

This might mean that selection for the Council took place in the individual demes. It is more likely to mean that selection took place centrally, in the Theseum, the Temple ofTheseus, and that the 500 places on the Council were divided up not only into 50 for each of the ten tribes, but further within each tribe, so that each deme had a certain number of Councilors on the Council.


This site has an absolute wealth of information on Athenian society and government:

http://www.stoa.org/projects/demos/home?greekEncoding=


The above link can tell you much more than I can. For now it is enough to assert that what the Left pretends to be Democracy is not that at all. The site also has Aristotle's treatise on the various forms of Democracy.

A Democratic system must, if it is going to survive, have some restrictions on who is allowed to vote. It can be a simple property or income tax qualification ( My personal favorites), a proof that one is receiving no government assistance whatsoever, or a past military service requirement. One friend of mine held that anyone who receives any government-cut check, including public employees (He was one of those) should not be allowed to vote as his interests would be in question. A reasonable age requirement that provides for an presumption of some life or work experience is also needed.

What we do know is this - a Democracy that extends the vote to all, regardless of whether or not he or she effectively and tangibly contributes to the society (Or at least does not receive benefits for free) or can demonstrate a past record of appreciable service to it, cannot survive. After a period in which the doling out of free benefits becomes ingrained, the system gets bogged down and begins its inexorable march towards tyranny. This is the "Democracy" that is being celebrated by the Left. What they call Democracy is a system that, far from protecting the rights of citizens, slowly impoverishes and enslaves them while destroying their senses of identity and cultural vigor.






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