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“In Europe there are few associations which do not affect to represent the majority, or which do not believe that they represent it. This conviction or this pretension tends to augment their force amazingly and contributes no less to legalize their measures. Violence may seem to be excusable in defense of the cause of oppressed right. Thus it is, in the vast complication of human laws, that extreme liberty sometimes corrects the abuses of liberty, and that extreme democracy obviates the dangers of democracy. In Europe associations consider themselves, in some degree, as the legislative and executive council of the people, who are unable to speak for themselves; moved by this belief, they act and they command. In America, where they represent in the eyes of all only a minority of the nation, they argue and petition.”
“The means that associations in Europe employ are in accordance with the end which they propose to obtain. As the principal aim of these bodies is to act and not to debate, to fight rather than to convince, they are naturally led to adopt an organization which is not civic and peaceable, but partakes of the habits and maxims of military life. They also centralize the direction of their forces as much as possible and entrust the power of the whole party to a small number of leaders.”
“The members of these associations respond to a watchword, like soldiers on duty; they profess the doctrine of passive obedience; say, rather, that in uniting together they at once abjure the exercise of their own judgment and free will; and the tyrannical control that these societies exercise is often far more insupportable than the authority possessed over society by the government which they attack. Their moral force is much diminished by these proceedings, and they lose the sacred character which always attaches to a struggle of the oppressed against their oppressors. He who in given cases consents to obey his fellows with servility and who submits his will and even his thoughts to their control, how can he pretend that he wishes to be free?”
“The Americans have also established a government in their associations, but it is invariably borrowed from the forms of the civil administration. The independence of each individual is recognized; as in society, all the members advance at the same time towards the same end, but they are not all obliged to follow the same track. No one abjures the exercise of his reason and free will, but everyone exerts that reason and will to promote a common undertaking.”
- Alexis de Toqueville, “Democracy in America”


The crisis that has roiled eUSA politics over the past weeks and months continues unabated and has risen to levels unimagined previously. Not just one, but two of the five largest parties fell this week under the control of powerful cabal, conspiracy and plot, with little or no warning and fanfare. The lesser of these parties has reportedly come under the dominion of foreign influence, and is being rapidly anathemized by the political and financial elite – but the far greater threat lies in the demise of the largest party, whose name and logo are eradicated from the game, replaced by a group whose leadership and rhetoric are sworn enemies of democracy and freedom. The ravings of their leaders evoke the full panoply of totalitarian revolution, of torchlight parades and mass rallies, of secret societies and death squads, with hatred and corruption for all. And in the meantime, the eUSA government threatens the right of franchise itself by imposing a nullification rule on the election of “blockers”

http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/federal-election-coordination-anti-take-over-program-1302956/1/20

Now, I have to admit it: I don’t like the idea of blocking candidates at all. If you look at the raw numbers, with most of the major five parties having several hundred members, there is little or no reason why they cannot run an actual candidate from their party – or a minor party – in each and every state. Yes, the vote counts are ridiculously low, yes, a few mobile voters can and do swing an election. But the idea that people should run who do wish to get elected, and that someone who runs for office is sworn not to serve if elected is hateful to the very idea of democracy and free and fair elections.

A few weeks ago, we wondered what impact Woxan’s election might have on the course of eUSA politics. Now we know. Simply put, that man’s coming to power has coarsened the body politic and laid it open to the juvenile, the demented, and the irrational. To repeat my favorite quote from Dean Swift,

“When such a tempest shook the land,
How could unguarded virtue stand ?”

How, indeed ? And yet, among the great and prominent in eUSA politics, who of them has risen up to combat these evils ? Who stands with de Toqueville and speaks out on behalf on democracy in eAmerica ? Who of them mimes Demosthenes, and defends liberty in eAmerica ? Who of them echoes the words of Edmund Burke in defense of liberty, offering such sentiments as these:

“I confess I shall assent to it with great reluctance, and only on the compulsion of the clearest and firmest proofs; because their account resolves itself into this short, but discouraging proposition, “That we have a very good Ministry, but that we are a very bad people”; that we set ourselves to bite the hand that feeds us; that with a malignant insanity we oppose the measures, and ungratefully vilify the persons, of those whose sole object is our own peace and prosperity. If a few puny libellers, acting under a knot of factious politicians, without virtue, parts, or character, (such they are constantly represented by these gentlemen,) are sufficient to excite this disturbance, very perverse must be the disposition of that people, amongst whom such a disturbance can be excited by such means. It is besides no small aggravation of the public misfortune, that the disease, on this hypothesis, appears to be without remedy. If the wealth of the nation be the cause of its turbulence, I imagine it is not proposed to introduce poverty, as a constable to keep the peace. If our dominions abroad are the roots which feed all this rank luxuriance of sedition, it is not intended to cut them off in order to famish the fruit. If our liberty has enfeebled the executive power, there is no design, I hope, to call in the aid of despotism, to fill up the deficiencies of law. “
From “Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents”, 1770

An immature and morally retarded nation seeks glory from military might and imperial conquest. But history is littered with the skeletons of lost victories and dead would-be world rulers. The crazy person imagines himself to be exempt from this fact – sic transit Gloria mundi (All glory in this world is fleeting). The stupid person presses onward as if there were no difference. Neither the Crazy nor the Stupid are fit to rule. Neither are an acceptable option.

Samuel Seabury