Why Democracy is The Most Effective, by Cal Reeves

            Many governments today are democratic for a number of reasons, the help keep things in the best interest of the people of the country, it helps elect leaders, and it gives every person the chance to be heard. Democracies have been around for thousands of years mainly, because they work. They have tended to outlast most dictatorships and communist states. Many democracies have lasted over hundreds of years. For instance ours has lasted about 220 years. Some of the older ones like Greece where started by a guy by the name of Cleisthenes, who is noted for starting the democratic footing in Greece around 500 BC and lasted for over two centuries.

Dictatorships and Communist states just cannot compete with democracies or capitalist states on most levels. The democracies tend to be more equipped in the means of a military and self defense, they are also more generally funded because they stronger capitalist economies.

The reason why is because democracies tend to be more closely related with capitalist economies rather than socialist economies, which history has shown outlast and function more smoothly that socialist economies. Capitalist economies focus on privately owned goods and services, which are produced for profit in a market economy, rather than the socialist standpoint where the means of production is more of a co-op for the state, and most of the income goes back to the government rather than the people in most cases. If a country can afford to have a capitalist economy, because they have a large number of recourses and exports, they would be crazy not to go with this system. Plus with a democratic government on top of that the people and the congress can vote on what happens with the money.

Another great reason to be democratic is because everyone can be heard. People in these systems can have the freedom to vote for legislative, and executive power. So we the people pick who we want to represent us, and they can keep there best interests in the interests of the people. Also if we do not like an elected official then we can just remove them from their seat and a vice president or whoever is next in line can take there place. This also helps because we can also influence what laws we have abide by. If we want to pass a law we can vote on it, we can lobby during legislation, we can march on Washington to get the attention of our government officials to get them to vote a choose certain bills and laws. We can choose where we want our funding and money to be generated and focused on. We can decide if we want to invest in agriculture, education, defense, or certain industries. If certain industries in our country are not doing, our congress can decide if it’s right financially to bail this industry out.

Another reason why Democracies rain supreme is because it allows the government to not get that involved in the peoples day to day lives. Some say the government that governs the best is the one that governs the least. I believe there is a lot of truth to this because history has shown that governments that have many regulations tend to have more innocent deaths, protest, and rebellion. Then at which point the government is more likely to collapse. The way Dictatorships operate is, they have to put fear into the people to get the to obey the government and higher command, otherwise who wants to listen to everything one leader tells you to do? A majority of people I would say do not. The ways they put this fear into people is by large rallies, and killing innocent people, has history has showed. If there is a hell, I can picture Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin at the very bottom because of all of the innocent people they killed. I am sure they are still fighting with each other to. That’s beyond the point, but they are not the only ones. I believe that dictatorships are outdated and do not work because usually the wrong person somehow get elected to power and then the whole system will eventually fall.

I believe the perfect world would be one large democracy where there is no fighting and everyone as a say in exactly what happens. This will probably never happen in my lifetime but it is a very nice thought.

           

Works Cited

Picture is from www.samaracanda.com

Importance of Timing, by Stacia Berg

            Timing. It can be perfect, or completely wrong. It can create the ideal moment, or it can ruin entire plans.  This counts for pretty much anything: storms, relationships, even the development of a democracy.

            It seems like a simple fact that the outcomes of pretty much any event have something to do with timing.  If Lee Harvey Oswald had shot his gun just a few seconds later, President Kennedy may not have died.  If the allied powers had ended their appeasement policy toward Germany sooner, maybe the war would not have ended so soon.  There is a lot of what ifs involved when speaking of timing, but what about when talking about developing democracy?

            Barrington Moore believes that in order to create a democracy from another form of government, there needs to be certain precursors.  First, the old, feudalistic order needs to be done away with.  This will help the next step immensely: industrialization.  Industrialization is important in establishing the potential for democracy, because it provides grounds for free markets and for people to develop a political and economical foothold in the government.  But what would happen if industrialization happened without destroying the feudal society?  Could the two coexist and still progress to a democracy?  I think it would be much more difficult to industrialize when most people were working in the country, under lords, with little to no power to change their situation.  It would make the people unable to migrate to the cities (a trend of industrialization) and work in factories and large-scale jobs. 

            There are three parts of transforming to a democracy.  First, there’s social transformation, which is much of what I was just talking about.  The society usually shifts from a feudal, agricultural society to an urban, industrialized one.  Next comes the political transformation.  In this case, the government is turned in the direction of democracy, whether by a coup, an elected change of party, or a change within the current regime.  The third part is cultural transformation: developing a national identity, desire for participation in the new government, and working for the success of a new democracy.

            Let’s think for a moment of what would happen if the cultural and social transformations were flip-flopped.  Would it be beneficial to develop support and nationalism before changing the governmental style?  I think that it would increase the new governments chances of maintaining its power.  However, the national identity could also be developed against democracy, making it impossible to maintain it.  I think there are many ways at looking at situations like this, and it would probably work differently in each case.

            In thinking about timing, it is important to remember that not every group of people will act the same way in every situation.  Just because one country has followed the order designed by Moore and had it succeed doesn’t mean it will work the same way for a different country.  It will depend heavily on how receptive the people are to the changes that are being implemented.  The assumption that timing is everything cannot possibly encompass every country’s individual situation.  However, I think it is safe to say that paying attention to the timing of any event and what leads up to it can help us to better understand the situation.

“Big Brother” U.S. by Anonymous

            The United States has always been seen as an advocate for democracy. Since our revolution it makes sense, considering our government has worked for us for so many years. A lot of countries look up to the U.S. as a sort of “big brother” so whenever something goes wrong in the world other countries expect us to step in.

            In situations like Syria it just isn’t that easy. The U.S. just can’t step in and start forcing beliefs are people. The United States has to be careful with how we go about trying to spread our democratic beliefs. Other countries though think that it is America’s job to help some of the under-industrialized countries find their way.

            I mean what is the big deal? America has the time and power to help out other countries right? Well, not really. Shouldn’t we focus on fixing ourselves before we try and fix other countries? Right now the United States just doesn’t have the  money, but we do have the military power and the weapons.  Is it right to bomb Syria though? A lot of Americans don’t think that that’s the correct way to try and help a country. Many Americans don’t want to get involved at all, they just want Syria to handle it themselves. So just because the United States has to the weapons to attack Syria many people don’t think it’s right for the U.S. to go shove its weight around in other countries.

                The U.S. is looked upon by other countries as a strong nation that needs to back up the smaller nations that are more under-developed than we are. Sometimes a country needs to learn to solve their own problems. The U.S. can’t be jumping in whenever any country has inner turmoil. Especially when, in examples like Syria, their internal fighting has been going on for some time now, so why now would the United States want to intervene? Why wouldn’t the U.S. have stepped in earlier?

            The United States has always been looked on as a “big brother.”  The U.S. always tries to stand up for the weak and defenseless and spread democracy. Sometimes we have to think though, who is going to stand up for the United States when we need it. We need to start thinking more about our own country before we go and try to fix the world.

Why Communism is Defective, by Cal Reeves

When people hear the word “Communism,” a few things come to mind, Karl Marx, dictatorship, war, and innocent deaths. It is associated with these types of terms because these radical socialist governments usually do not work and result in horrible situations. Real communism as far as Karl Marx is concerned, is supposed to be a moneyless, classless, stateless social order, with common ownership for means of production, which in theory eventually leads to an almost modernized anarchist government. Then, everything in the country can just run and grow off of one another. For some reason he thought that dictatorship was the first stage to setting all of this into motion. Many Communist countries have not been able to get passed this first stage.

Today in our world there have been and there are a handful of communist countries. Many countries have fallen, while some still exist. China, North Korea, Cuba, and Vietnam are the most popular Communist governments today. The most famous fallen country is the USSR. Many others have also fallen in Eastern Europe for many reasons like economic crashes, starvation, and collectivism. In a most of these countries, the government plays large roles in what people do in their everyday life. Which I would say is the first reason why communist countries generally do not last. Because some say the government that governs the best, is the one that governs the least. When governments become regulative in the lives of the people, it takes away from the freedom and privacy of its people. In return, it can cause many things like distrust in the government, and rebellion. Which history has showed then can cause innocent deaths of the people. Innocent deaths are one of the many ways these governments put fear in the people to make them do what they want, and make sure they do not ask any types of questions.

Like I mentioned before they all operate under a pure dictatorship. Which generally results in the country going in the direction of the person running it. There is also no congress, parliament, or any type of voting causing the people to not have any type of say what happens in their country. If the leader wants to go to war or invade another country, then that’s just what happens. This can cause other people from different countries to have much disgust for these communist countries because their main goals are generally to invade, expand, and spread communism. This can also cause the country to generate what little money they have away from the important things like education, and jobs for its entire people, which in the end could result in a better economy, and lower death rates because people will become educated and know how to fix major problems in the country.

Another main reason this system struggles is because the all the people have to provide for the county. Everything that they have to do is for the country. Agriculture and industry for example are two of the things that are government controlled. The people that run these companies and farms can barely afford to pay for anything because almost all of their products they have to just give to the government. Which can generally cause poverty and large famine. In the 1930’s and 40’s, many farmers in the Soviet Union died from starvation because they would farm crops then to government would come in and take what they thought was theirs, and feed there armies or export it to generate money for themselves.

           

Works Cited

www.advoidingthevoid.worldpress.com  

What is a Coup d’état? by Megan Assman

            In my Governments of the World class, we had a brief discussion about the definition of a coup d’état and were shown a few examples of it.  I do not feel that I fully understood what a coup d’état was, so I am using my second blog as a reason to do some in depth research and learn some examples of what this word really means.  I searched for an in-depth definition and I found just that in the Britannica encyclopedia which states: “coup d’état, also called Coup, the sudden, violent overthrow of an existing government by a small group. The chief prerequisite for a coup is control of all or part of the armed forces, the police, and other military elements. Unlike a revolution, which is usually achieved by large numbers of people working for basic social, economic, and political change, a coup is a change in power from the top that merely results in the abrupt replacement of leading government personnel. A coup rarely alters a nation’s fundamental social and economic policies, nor does it significantly redistribute power among competing political groups. Among the earliest modern coups were those in which Napoleon overthrew the Directory on Nov. 9, 1799 and in which Louis Napoleon dissolved the assembly of France’s Second Republic in 1851. Coups were a regular occurrence in various Latin American nations in the 19th and 20th centuries and in Africa after the countries there gained independence in the 1960s.”

            18 Brumaire refers to the coup d’état by which General Napoleon Bonaparte overthrew the French Directory, replacing it with the Consulate. In 1799, members of the Directory, a body of five directors that held executive power in France, conspired with Napoleon to take over the French government by means of a coup d’état.  It was successful, and Napoleon quickly asserted his superior intelligence and will over others. By 1802 he had full power and by 1804, he proclaimed himself Emperor Napoleon I.  This period of European history from 1799 to 1815 is generally known as the Napoleonic Age. Not only did Napoleon gain power in France, but also much of continental Europe.

The Czechoslovak coup d’état of 1948 often called the Czech coup, was an event in late February of that year in which the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia with the backing of the Soviets, assumed control over the government of Czechoslovakia and with this control ushered in over four decades of dictatorship under its rule. The coup’s significance extended far beyond the country’s boundaries, as it was a clear marker along the already full fledged Cold War. The West greeted the event with full shock and helped spur quick adoption of the Marshall Plan, the creation of a state in West Germany, vigorous measures were created to keep the Communists out of power in France and Italy, and steps toward mutual security that resulted in the establishment of NATO in a little over a year and the conclusive drawing of the Iron Curtain until the Autumn of Nations in 1989.

The Cuban Revolution was a civil war that took place in Cuba between December 2, 1956, and January 2, 1959. The guerilla forces led by Fidel Castro, fought against the government army, under Fulgencio Batista, a dictator who had got into power through a military coup in 1952.  With an armed militia of only 80 members, Fidel Castro and his brother Raul had sailed from Mexico to Cuba and landed on Las Coloradas beach, on the south coast of the island on December 2, 1956. They were defeated in the first military engagement with the government, but the surviving members penetrated the Cuban jungles of Sierra Maestra where they recruited more men, collected more weapons, and became better organized. The 80-member militia grew into thousands.  The civil war lasted three years.  Under the command of Camilo Cienfuegos, Juan Almeida Bosques, and Ernesto Guevara, they carried out surprise attacks on the government.  On December 30, 1958, Camilo Cienfuego defeated a unit of 300 men at the Battle of Yaguajay. On December 31, the very next day, three guerrilla units defeated Batista’s army again at the Battle of Santa Clara. Having heard of his defeat, Batista left the island of Cuba and went into exile to the Dominican Republic. Most of the Cuban people supported Castro’s revolution because he had promised them to bring back democracy and freedom to Cuba. However, Fidel Castro was a master of lies and aligned with the Soviet Union and the European Eastern block of communist nations, setting up a new dictatorship in Cuba, which would last many times longer than the one before it, subjecting the island extreme poverty.

 Sources

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/140445/coup-detat

http://historywarsweapons.com/

http://list25.com/25-most-violent-military-coups/