LilMsLadyPoet15 Dec 2005

I know, Alchemy, but as I have a feeling you know, American democracy has moved far from it's original idealistic beginings. We move closer to socialism, growing in apathy and contempt for the corruption that eats away at its wholesome core, and watch as freedoms are whittled away chip by chip. When money buys power and presidents, when people buy into the belief that intellegence belongs to the wealthy, and when people no longer feel they have control of their own destinies, then Democracy, as powerful as we know it capable of being, will fail to be what it should be. So much of what people say, in order to explain Democracy, actually implies or states a mandate that one man owes another a hand out in order to raise the whole (collective). Democracy was founded on the thought that every man should have the absolute right to his own property, earned through his own effort and labor. If a man is ordered to give away (mandated by law) any of his property to another man, because the other man does not have it, then the man that succeeds is punished for succeeding, and the man that fails is rewarded for his failure. It is a brute government of thugs that takes from a man what is rightfully his and gives it to a man that has not worked for it. I do understand the sense of community that is spoken of and how that helps build democracy. But when that sense of community is spoken of in words that imply an absolute responsibilty for your neighbor, and language that mandates each man must think of and live in such a way that supports the individuals and collective of his community, first and before himself -then it smacks of going down a slippery road, to me.