Skip to main content

Reminder of the Types of Governments

What type of government are we heading toward? Niccolo Machiavelli wrote that there are three kinds of governments: Principality, Aristocracy, and Democracy. He said those who organize a government must turn to one of these based on what seems most appropriate to them and their mission. Others have the opinion that there are six types of government, three of which are bad and three are good in themselves. Although they are so easily corrupted that they too can become pernicious. Those types that are good are Principality, Aristocracy, and Democracy, but the bad ones are derived from the good ones. Each of the bad types are similar to the good types and because of this one type can easily slip from one into the other. A Principality can easily become a Tyranny, an Aristocracy can become an Oligarchy with ease, and a Democracy can turn into Anarchy with no difficulty. If the founders of a republic establishes one of these three types of governments, it will be established for only a short time because no remedy has ever been found to be capable of preventing one type from sliding into its contrary type because of the similarities that exist between the two—in this case between the virtue and the vice. The best one so far was established by Lycurgus, who established his laws for Sparta, which lasted for eight hundred years.  In the 1830s, Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville turned the U.S. and came to the conclusion our sense of Democracy was a big and great idea, it would not last for people are people and they would find a way to destroy this concept. Trump and the Republicans are provin ghim correct. The U.S. are very new in comparison to other countries and we are in the process of slipping toward an anarchy or worse. Lycurgus had a little of all three of the good types of government to watch over each other. I have written about this topic before, but in these times, with a corrupt president and Republican party in place, I think we visit this again. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Time for an Offense

There are three phases of a general strike and unions must plan for one. Those three phases are: 1. general strike in an industry 2. general strike in a community 3. general national strike We need to move away from being on the defensive and move toward a good offensive. The American Federal of Labor (AFL) could not have held a general strike if it wanted to because they had thousands of different contracts that expired at different times of the year. This was done deliberately so that there is no consolidation of power for a general strike. Also, nowadays, there is no law agency that will support labor, except the National Labor Relations Board (NLBR), which has been under attack and in decline for years. This leaves the burden of change up to unions, and unless unions work together, little will change. We essentially have a combination of job trusts, which are not as strong as contracts, and the courts can break easily because the NLBR will be further weakened and essentially elim...

If Gompers Could Do It, We Can Do It

Labor must vote for the person who will support and vote for labor’s best interests. And in turn, labor members have to support those who are running for office who support labor unions and vote down ballots. Voting down ballot gives the person at the top more power to do what’s best for us. This includes elections for city, county and state positions, as well. If you think a four day work week is wishful thinking, remember workers had to fight for an eight-hour work day and a five-day work week. We, labor members and supporters, need to find people who can fight and win. We need to clean the Congress and Senate of the old Democratic guard who have voted repeatedly to hold the working class back while enriching themselves. This would rebuild solidarity in a magnitude greater than anything either party has seen or offered in the last fifty years. If we can bring about the change in the ruling class we can improve all of our lives. This would be the start of the end of the tyranny of the...

Shock Troops

Gerrymandering is the only legal form of voter theft. Workers, our long range plans should involve 1. crushing Citizens United; and 2. getting rid of the Electoral College. We have been trying to get rid of the electoral college since 1876, and we are still waiting for the revolt. Our unions need to start training some members to be our shock troops and if all unions would do this and work with our local Labor Councils, it would be a good start. Our members need to know our labor laws, local laws, and learn how to protest in the streets if necessary. The antiunion people like Trump, Musk and his billionaire friends work together to crush the working people and convince workers they’re doing them a favor and then use them as shock troops against unions and their workers. All union and nonunion working people must come together and work together to protect what we have now. Labor Councils have retired union members and they could work together to prepare to bring the movement forward....