Linda G. Hill of Life in Progress is offering the JustJotJanuary Blog Challenge this month. I was just the Guest Host for two days and it was great fun. To all the bloggers out there, check it out! You can join at any time and you can find the rules at the above link.
You’ll meet a lot of new, very nice bloggers and stretch your writing skills!
The snow is tangible. You can touch it. It’s cold and feels somewhat crystalline. The ocean is tangible. You can touch the water. It can be either warm or cold depending on the time of the year and the ocean you choose. Snow is never warm. Which do you find most enjoyable?
The atmosphere around both the snow and sea is intangible. Around the snow, the atmosphere has to be cold, by definition, or else the snow would melt. The atmosphere around the sea may be cold or warm, just like the sea. Does the temperature of the atmosphere determine the temperature of the sea or vice-versa? The humidity tends to be low when cold snow is on the ground. Around the sea, humidity tends to be higher but not always high. Both the temperature and humidity are intangible.
Which do you enjoy? The tangibility of the snow? Or the sea? I know the answer for me!
John Adams, one of our founders feared that it could not when he said, “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” Of course, that was a long time ago and they were just in the process of building America, our great shining city on the hill.
We are not a true democracy but a representational democracy. If we were a true or pure democracy, all laws would be made by direct, popular vote. Some of our laws are made like this. Most are not with a good example being the electoral college.
Our founders actually seemed to prefer a republic to a democracy. They are identical in every aspect except one. In a democracy, power is held by the group. In a republic, power is held by every individual. Most think the United States is a mixture of the two forms of government.
The ancient Greeks, in the 4th and 5th centuries BCE, formed an amazing democracy for a time. Ancient Athens gave its citizens equal political rights regardless of descent, social standing, wealth, and other factors, though women could not be involved. The democracy devolved into an oligarchy after a defeat in war. An oligarchy is a government ruled by a small group of people, sometimes private citizens, who exert an inordinate influence on the government. Sound familiar? Athens did influence forms of government for two millennia.
Athens is just one example of a democracy devolving into a more tyrannical type of government. The Roman Empire was a republic upon which the U.S. government was partially based. It, too, ended due to a number of factors. The Roman Empire found itself in a severe financial crisis. The causes were years of war and overspending and high taxes along with inflation caused a widening gap between the rich and poor. The economy started to decline. The Roman Empire lasted much longer than the average of 200 years.
Other examples of the failure of democracies and republics exist. The characteristics of the demise all seem to be similar. Greed, power, money, and a concentration of power at the top lead to the fall of such forms of government. What about the United States of America? Is it too late for us to reverse the course of history?
What do you think?
The Write Scribe 