Our Government's Future

Lose your democracy and you will lose your rights to have guns, free speech or even the right to assemble in a group. Most people are not paying attention to how precarious a situation our country is in right now thanks to the GOP, corporations using Donald Trump’s insatiable greed and disregard for the principles this country was founded upon. The U.S. has outlived our democracy by a long time. From the writings of Niccolo Machiavelli in the Prince, Machiavelli writes there are three types of government: principality, aristocracy and democracy. However, there are actually six types of government because principality can easily become tyranny; aristocracy can become an oligarchy with ease; and a democracy can turn into an anarchy with little effort. This is where we find ourselves today—on the edge. We’ve seen it Washington, D.C., recently when they wanted to kill our elected Congressional members and even Vice President Pence. So, what kind of government would these insurrectionists want? Principality or an aristocracy? Anarchy happens when neither private people or public officials are feared so each person is living as they pleased, and there are no rules of law or is it one sided. Machiavelli writes that all three types of government are disastrous because of the short-lived nature of the three good types and the malignant character of the three negative types. Lycurgus established a constitution, which used all three of the good types of governing so they could watch over each other and called the laws of Sparta. It lasted eight hundred years. Then Solon established the laws of Athens based on a pure democracy, but only lasted about forty years before it was taken over by tyranny. Rome had a mixture of only principality and aristocracy, which created became stable, the government remained mixed and it produced the perfect republic. This is a very short version of history. The U.S. is at a turning point so which way will it go? We have people in the Congress and Senate do not understand types of government let alone our country’s history. They have no idea how their votes could permanently damage our stability because they are motivated by allegiance to a narcissist and greed. Is there still a chance to keep the freedom of speech, a protected media and all the other things we’ve taken for granted that made this country the envy of the world. Do we want to keep our form of government together or govern by fear of a prince, which is only one person, but what if he dies? Fear god? This is one reason why the Prince sides with god for when he is gone, god will still be there. This amounts to a fear of the known and unknown, and there are a lot of people who would fall for this as they did for Trump. What these people don't recognize is if this form of government takes over, the government will literally take their guns away.