PizzaSnake wrote: ↑Sat Dec 24, 2022 12:20 pm
MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Sat Dec 24, 2022 11:50 am
Brooklyn wrote: ↑Sat Dec 24, 2022 11:43 am
MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Sat Dec 24, 2022 11:40 am
yup, "some people"..."jeepers"...
What are you saying, that the Founders would approve of financing such foreign entanglements??
The "Founders" would have had great difficulty of even imagining the world in which we live, and from which America has so prospered. Pretty sure they were quite thankful for the assistance of the French, though.
Have to be able to imagine this interconnected world and why it's so important that it continue to evolve towards freedom and democracy, principles our Founders espoused as not being unique to America, but rather as inalienable rights...but some things are more simple: a bully is trying to subdue though any means, any atrocity, a country it claims to have the right to do so to.
We have the capacity to stop that bully and to maintain an international rule of law that enables this interconnected world to continue to evolve along the principles our Founders certainly did articulate.
Exactly. Okay, not exactly my sentiments, but close.
Read this?
“The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution” — B. Bailyn
“The modernization of American Politics and government during and after the Revolution took the form of a sudden, radical realization of the program that had first been fully set forth by the opposition intelligentsia ... in the reign of George the First. Where the English opposition, forcing its way against a complacent social and political order, had only striven and dreamed, Americans driven by the same aspirations but living in a society in many ways modern, and now released politically, could suddenly act. Where the French opposition had vainly agitated for partial reforms ... American leaders moved swiftly and with little social disruption to implement systematically the outermost possibilities of the whole range of radically libertarian ideas. In the process they ... infused into American political culture ... the major themes of eighteenth-century radical libertarianism brought to realization here.
The first is the belief that power is evil, a necessity perhaps but an evil necessity; that it is infinitely corrupting; and that it must be controlled, limited, restricted in every way compatible with a minimum of civil order. Written constitutions; the separation of powers; bill of rights; limitations on executives, on legislatures, and courts; restrictions on the right to coerce and wage war—all express the profound distrust of power that lies at the ideological heart of the American Revolution and that has remained with us as a permanent legacy ever after.”
This piece emphasizes the distrust of power, as inherently evil, albeit necessary.
It's a construct of limiting, restraining government, by various means... so as to enable individuals to be free as much as possible to pursue their dreams.
Important themes and a pretty good starting point for how I see our system and why it's a general model for any society to emulate, at least in core principles, though clearly not all do. The first part is the basis of why as a 'conservative', I think it's important to preserve the institutions and practices that do restrain and limit the exercise of power. The second aspect is more the basis of why as a 'libertarian' with 'liberal' impulses on various social issues I see importance to that restraint of government power.
And as a nation, operating in a complex world, I think it's pretty darn clear that we benefit when more of the world embraces these sorts of principles as well...though, we also face a reality in which some nations, some societies, have not organized themselves to avoid the corruption, the evil concentration and use of power to selfish ends, individual freedoms be damned.