Since it was removed from the No Lib Board the following is being reposted for no particular reason other than to open debate for those who might have some interest in history:
Items in bold are the words of thepennyking and are original:
Lest we not deceive ourselves into thinking that in this modern day and age we live in an ideal republic, for it can be agreed by the simple majority that the sovereignty of the individual has been usurped by the castrators of liberty.
I would beg to differ with Ganoposki on the origins of the Republic as well as the meaning of the 'fasces'.
THE FASCES An Icon representing the Strength and Power of Ancient Rome
The FASCES was a cylindrical bundle of elm or birch rods bound together by red bands, from which an ax head projected; and which was borne by Lictors (attendants and body guards) before a Consul or high Magistrate, as a symbol of their authority.
Stephen Phenow, Editor of the Strategikon, provides the following: "The Fasces was adopted from the Etruscans. It symbolized the power of life or death that a Roman Magistrate had over the Roman citizen; who could be scourged by the birch rods, representing physical punishment for transgressions; or be beheaded by the axe for serious crimes."
Rather it appears that the birth of the Republic is a coalescing of the Iriquois political philosophy and that of ancient Roman and Greek traditional forms of government.
In fact, "In April of 1792, Philip M. Freneau's National Gazette in New York corrected a report that President George Washington was negotiating with Iroquois leaders that were "princes" saying that in reality the Iroquois "were republicans, rather than aristocrats or monarchy men."
Every king hath his council, and that consists of all the old and wise men of his nation. . . . [N]othing is under- taken, be it war, peace, the selling of land or traffick, without advising with them; and which is more, with the young men also. . . . The kings . . . move by the breath of their people. It is the Indian custom to deliberate. . . . I have never seen more natural sagacity.
--William Penn to the Society of Free Traders, 16 August 1683[1]
"Coming from societies based on hierarchy, early European explorers and settlers came to America seeking kings and queens and princes. What they sought they believed they had found, for a time. Quickly, they began to sense a difference: the people they were calling "kings" had few trappings that distinguished them from the people they "ruled," in most native societies. They only rarely sat at the top of a class hierarchy with the pomp of European rulers. More importantly, Indian "kings" usually did not rule. Rather, they led, by mechanisms of consensus and public opinion that Europeans often found admirable."
Money is like an iron ring we've put through our noses. We've forgotten that we designed it, and it's now leading us around. I think it's time to figure out where we want to go -- in my opinion toward sustainability and community -- and then design a money system that gets us there.
The origin of the word "community" comes from the Latin munus, which means the gift, and cum, which means together, among each other. So community literally means to give among each other. Therefore I define my community as a group of people who welcome and honor my gifts, and from whom I can reasonably expect to receive gifts in return. --Bernard Lietaer in Beyond Greed & Scarcity
"Money is created when banks lend it into existence. When a bank provides you with a $100,000 mortgage, it creates only the principal, which you spend and which then circulates in the economy. The bank expects you to pay back $200,000 over the next 20 years, but it doesn't create the second $100,000 -- the interest. Instead, the bank sends you out into the tough world to battle against everybody else to bring back the second $100,000.
Thus I would say that capitalism, its original true intent being to create capital, has been perverted into something I would rather call Bankerism or better yet usurpism.
Monarchies can come to an end in several ways. There may be a revolution in which the monarchy is overthrown; or, as in Italy, there may be a referendum in which the electorate decides to form a republic.
In some cases, as with England and Spain, the monarchy has been overthrown and then restored. Countries may regard themselves as monarchies without a named monarch, as Spain did in 1947-1975.
The vision of Kalergi has come to fruition in the 21st century as a result of the economic and political upheavals of our time in the form of the currently expanding European Union:
"In 1922, Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi launched the Pan European Union, at a founding convention in Vienna, attended by more than 6,000 delegates. Railing against the "Bolshevist menace" in Russia, the Venetian Count called for the dissolution of all the nation-states of Western Europe and the erection of a single, European feudal state, modeled on the Roman and Napoleonic empires. "There are Europeans," Coudenhove-Kalergi warned, who are "naïve enough to believe that the opposition between the Soviet Union and Europe can be bridged by the inclusion of the Soviet Union in the United States of Europe. These Europeans need only to glance at the map to persuade themselves that the Soviet Union in its immensity can, with the help of the [Communist] Third International, very quickly prevail over little Europe. To receive this Trojan horse into the European union would lead to perpetual civil war and the extermination of European culture. So long, therefore, as there is any will to survive subsisting in Europe, the idea of linking the Soviet Union with Pan Europe must be rejected. It would be nothing less than the suicide of Europe."
Despite coexistence with reigning monarchies, Europe now seems to be heading into the next phase of global domination and will eventually challenge the United States both as a super power economically and politically.
"A king desires to be the guardian of his people, that those who have property may be secure in the possession of it, and that the people in general meet with no injury; but a tyrant, as has been often said, has no regard to the common good, except for his own advantage; his only object is pleasure, but a king's is virtue: what a tyrant therefore is ambitious of engrossing is wealth, but a king rather honour. The guards too of a king are citizens, a tyrant's foreigners."
Kingdoms are seldom destroyed by any outward attack; for which reason they are generally very stable; but they have many causes of subversion within; of which two are the principal; one is when those who are in power [1313a] excite a sedition, the other when they endeavour to establish a tyranny by assuming greater power than the law gives them. A kingdom, indeed, is not what we ever see erected in our times, but rather monarchies and tyrannies; for a kingly government is one that is voluntarily submitted to, and its supreme power admitted upon great occasions: but where many are equal, and there are none in any respect so much better than another as to be qualified for the greatness and dignity of government over them, then these equals will not willingly submit to be commanded; but if any one assumes the government, either by force or fraud, this is a tyranny. To what we have already said we shall add, the causes of revolutions in an hereditary kingdom. One of these is, that many of those who enjoy it are naturally proper objects of contempt only: another is, that they are insolent while their power is not despotic; but they possess kingly honours only. Such a state is soon destroyed; for a king exists but while the people are willing to obey, as their submission to him is voluntary, but to a tyrant involuntary. These and such-like are the causes of the destruction of monarchies.
I do not advocate either failed communism or fascist philosophies for they fall under the category of tyranny, but to incorrectly perceive that we live today in a modern republic is to blink a blind eye to the reality in which we must struggle to eke out our existences.
May the infinite infinitor of infinities save our republic as it so will in the present and forever into the future.
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