Bush Fails History...Jefferson Predicted Iraq

[Q]

Published on Wednesday, April 21, 2004 by CommonDreams.org

Bush Fails History...Jefferson Predicted Iraq

by Thom Hartmann

 
Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon thought they could bomb Vietnam into accepting democracy. George W. Bush thinks he can do it with Iraq.

But the first American president to consider how best to grow democracies - Thomas Jefferson - had some very different thoughts on the issue. LBJ and Bush would have done well to listen to his thoughtful words in a letter he wrote on February 14, 1815, to his old friend in France, the Marquis de Lafayette.

Discussing the French Revolution, the Terror that followed, and the reign of Napoleon, Jefferson noted that building democracy is an organic process: The democracy movement in the colonies had been fermenting for a century prior to Jefferson's birth.

"A full measure of liberty is not now perhaps to be expected by your nation," Jefferson wrote, about the democracy movement within France, "nor am I confident they are prepared to preserve it. More than a generation will be requisite, under the administration of reasonable laws favoring the progress of knowledge in the general mass of the people, and their habituation to an independent security of person and property, before they will be capable of estimating the value of freedom, and the necessity of a sacred adherence to the principles on which it rests for preservation."

He added that it's nearly impossible to force democracy on a people, and the consequences of trying could be disastrous. "Instead of that liberty which takes root and growth in the progress of reason, if recovered by mere force or accident, it becomes, with an unprepared people, a tyranny still, of the many, the few, or the one." --- http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0421-14.htm

[ewagner]

1. Thanks for the post....

A consistant rant of mine is how totally unaware, or perhaps indifferent, to the lessons of history the Bush* administration appears to be.

The Jeffersonian comments should be taken to heart. It's not so much that our founding fathers, and Jefferson in particular, were actaully geniuses, but that they had very fresh memories of European history upon which they could make valid observations. The Bushies are blind to history and the lesson it teaches.

[Catt03]

2. How would Bush know this?

he doesn't read. He just governs by gut instinct and body language.

[9215]

3. This may be why democracy did not take hold in Germany and

Hitler was allowed to come to power so easily. Germany did not have a culture steeped in democracy.

In the US we now have a threat to democracy for similar reasons. Not that the US hasn't been steeped in the principles of democracy only that democracy has lain fallow for so many years and the public complacent.

[teryang]

4. Machiavelli and Strauss are all they need

...to know. Lies, machinations, war and dictatorship. That is all government requires for the few to rule the many.

[gottaB]

6. If those bozos actually read Machiavelli

They'd neither take advice from exiles nor rely upon guns for hire. No, this crowd requires a new terminology to describe its relationship to the written word.

I propose "strong unreading." Example: A strong unreading of Machievelli suggests that invading Iraq will make us rich and powerful. Ha ha ha.

[teryang]

7. Machiavelli strongly believed in creating

...enemies and wars abroad to prop up regimes with weak legitimacy. He was also a big believer in the institution of wartime dictatorship.

[Supormom]

5. I am reading "Unequal Protection" by Thom Hartmann now

I would strongly recommend this book if you haven't read it yet.

[Q]

8. Kicker...

...good morning!

[PfcHammer]

9. speaking of TJ, i'm thinking Kindasleezy is Bush's Sally Hemmings n/t

[bigtree]

10. Lincoln predicted Bush

At Edwardsville, Illinois, on September 11, 1858, President Abraham Lincoln said, "What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence is not our frowning battlements, our bristling seacoast, the guns of our war steamers, or the strength of our gallant and disciplined army. These are not the reliance against the resumption of tyranny in our fair land. All of them may be turned against our liberties without making us stronger or weaker for the struggle."

"Our reliance is in the love of liberty, which God has planted in our bosoms. Our defense is the preservation of the spirit, which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands everywhere." Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism at your down doors."

"Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage," Lincoln warned, and you prepare your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of others, you have lost the genius of your own independence and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you."

Me Book

[DeepModem Mom]

11. Lincoln again, on Presidential power to "make war at pleasure" --

shockingelk posted this a few days ago:

Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose, and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after having given him so much as you propose. If to-day he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, "I see no probability of the British invading us;" but he will say to you, "Be silent: I see it, if you don't."
- Abraham Lincoln
Letter to William H. Herndon, February 15, 1848

[bigtree]

12. chills

[jackstraw45]

13. What does it matter? Thomas Jefferson is dead.

Didn't you hear Bush? History doesn't matter because he'll be dead.

:grr: