This is technically incorrect, though. Left Wing is ALL Government (100% Power), while Right Wing is NO Government (0% Power). No Government means Anarchy and All Government is Communism, Oligarchy, Plutocracy and Fascism. Those who claimed Nazism and Fascism are to the far Right never defined their terms. They are 100% Government and thus belong to the far Left.
The Middle of the spectrum would be a limited government which protects the rights of the people. That's where the United States is (or should be) - Constitutional Moderates.
So what about Democracy? That must be somewhere in the Middle, right? Actually, it's not.
Most Americans today think that America is a Democracy, but it isn't (or at least not meant to be). It was NEVER even meant to be - for good reasons! America is supposed to be a Republic and not a Democracy. The difference between the two is vast as we shall see.
Here are the 5 basic forms of government in list form, plus a lesser known form of political system, Meritocracy:
Monarchy or Dictatorship, ruled by one
Oligarchy, ruled by a few
Anarchy, ruled by no one
Democracy, ruled by a majority
Republic, ruled by law
Meritocracy
These systems can now be narrowed down to even fewer:
1. Monarchy or Dictatorship
This system is supposedly run by one Monarch or Dictator, but Monarchy doesn't really exist in it's real definition, which is 'Rule By One'. In a Monarchy or Dictatorship, the society is ruled by a group or people, who have put one person in front to be the Ruler. In reality this person is ruling together with the group behind him. A King has his Council of Nobles or Earls and a Dictator has his Bureaucrats or Commissars. So Monarchy and Dictatorship as defined don't truly exist, so let's eliminate this political system from our list.
2. Oligarchy
Government ruled by a group. This is the most common form of government in history, and even today. Most governments in the world are ruled by a powerful few, a Power Elite. Therefore, Oligarchy remains on our list.
3. Anarchy
At the other end of the spectrum we find Anarchy, which is 'Without Government'. People supporting Anarchy are often those who have looked through history and found that most crimes have been committed by Government, and therefore Government must be bad and should be hammered out of existence and 'No Government' may be a good idea. But it doesn't work in practice, because like the old Greeks said: "Without law there can be no freedom". Our Founding Fathers, who were very educated in ancient history and politics, knew pretty well about the details of the Roman and Greek cultures, and as a matter of fact, they took the best out of the two when they formed the Constitution and the American Government. They knew that Government in a limited form is necessary for people to be free.
In a state of Anarchy, however, everybody has to protect their houses, cars and properties with their lives all the time, because there are no rules and there are no laws, except the 'law of the jungle'. Everybody must be armed to be able to protect themselves and their families and friends - not against the Government (because it doesn't exist) but against their neighbor and people on the street. Anarchy becomes chaos, becomes criminality and murder and the destruction of the civilized world, if allowed to go on.
Some kind of law enforcement needs to be in place to prevent Anarchy from happening. Anarchy is not freedom, but ultimate terror. In the civilized world, people have always hired some kind of guardian or police force to protect their rights and when done so they can be more relaxed, leave their property and knowing that it will still be there for them when they return (most of the time). And if someone has taken possession of it while you were gone, the law kicks in and the intruder will be forced to leave the property or else suffer the consequences of the law.
The proper amount of government makes everyone freer!
Some people want Anarchy, not for the reason of 'No Government', but simply because they don't like what they have at the moment. They use Anarchy as a tool for a Revolutionary Change. Anarchy is pretty much the vacuum between two political powers. They want to break down the existing government with riots, killing, looting and terrorism, creating confusion and horror. Unfortunately, people who have to live through such chaos often go to those who they think can put an end to it, and the people who are the best ones to put an end to the chaos are often the same people who started it in the first place.
The Anarchists who created the problem now create a government run by them, and we have a new oligarchy, where they have total power. This happened in Russian when Lenin took total power; it happened in Germany when Hitler took over and it happened in Cuba when Fidel Castro came to power. It's happened over and over again throughout history.
Today we call it "PROBLEM - REACTION - SOLUTION". Someone creates the chaos (Anarchy), the masses reacts and want something done about it, and the same people who created the chaos comes up with the solution - they put THEMSELVES in power.
Anarchy is an unstable type of government, merely a transition between two political powers, so therefore it does not exist as a political system we can maintain. So we can cross Anarchy off the list as well.
4. Democracy
The word democracy means that the power is with the people - the people rules, majority rule. This sounds like a good system, but imagine if the majority is manipulated to think it's okay to take away your home, your kids, your possessions or even your freedoms? There must be a limit. If more than 50% in a Democracy are persuaded to believe something, they rule! This is the danger of Democracy.
5. Republic
Republic comes from two Latin words, Res which means Thing and Publica, which means The Public = THE LAW.
A true Republic is one where Government is limited by law, leaving the people alone.
The Founding Fathers had a lot of opportunities. They could have set up an Oligarchy for example. In fact, some people wanted to make George Washington a king, but he realized that if this would happen, the oppression people suffered from under the reign of King George of England would just transfer over to the New World. Same reign, another name. So the Founding Fathers chose to give us the Rule of Law in a Republic instead of a Rule of a Majority in a Democracy.
Why? A good example to show the difference between Democracy and Republic is to go back to the Old Wild West.
Let's say we have lynch mob in a Democracy, chasing a gun man. When they catch him they decide by raising their hands if the gun man should be hung or not. The majority raise their hands and they hang the man in the nearest tree. Justice is done!
Then we have the same lynch mob in a Republic. The mob catches the gun man and vote for hanging him. Before they get a chance to do it, the Sheriff shows up and says, "You can't hang him. He is entitled to a fair trial". So they take the murderer into town and provide the evidence in a court of law. A jury is selected from the people; they hear the evidence and the defense, and if decided guilty per the law, the gun man may be hung.
Not even the jury decides by majority rule. Every person of the jury must be on the same page, or the man on trial goes free. This is the essence of a Republic.
Many Americans would probably be surprised when they notice that the word Democracy does not appear in the Declaration of Independence or the U.S. Constitution. Nor does it appear in either of the Constitutions of the 50 States.
In fact, the Founders did everything they could to keep us from having a Democracy, because they knew the dangers involved in such a political system.
Alexander Hamilton said:
"We are a Republican Government. Real liberty is not found in despotism or in the extremes of Democracy".
The Founding Fathers had good reasons for preventing a Democracy from forming. They knew what happened in the past, old Greece being a perfect example. The Greek Democracy soon created the wildest excesses of governments imaginable. In every case, they ended up with mob rule, Anarchy and then tyranny under an Oligarchy.
Rome, on the other hand, created a Republic with a limited government limited by law, which left people alone. By being left alone, people understood that they could produce and keep the fruits of their labor. In time Rome became wealthy and the envy of the rest of the world.
In the midst of plenty, however, the Roman people forgot what freedom entailed. They forgot that the essence of freedom is the proper limitation of government. When government power grows, people's freedom recedes. When the Roman people dropped their guards, power-hungry politicians slowly but surely started to exceed their power granted to them by the Roman Constitution. People now lost more and more of their freedoms to the government until many couldn't make ends meet. The consequence was protests, riots and anarchy and many traded freedom for security (recognize the pattern?) The whole system eventually came crashing down. It went from a Republic to a Democracy and ended up with an Oligarchy under the Caesars.
Thus, Democracy is not a stable form of government. Instead, it's the gradual transition from limited government in a Republic to the unlimited rule of an Oligarchy. We cross it off our list.
6. Meritocracy
Meritocracy is a structure where a person's talent and goals are supported.
As a teenager, I was already discouraged by the school system. I thought it filled no purpose and it didn't lead to anything constructive. I remember telling my friends at the time that it would be great if someone asked us when we were kids what we wanted to be when we grow up and then support us to become just that! Most people thought it was a great idea, but of course, we all felt powerless and I just did what I had to, so I could get out of there. I didn't know, and hadn't heard of, Meritocracy.
In my opinion, a Republic which applies Meritocracy would be the best political system I can think of. We want a limited government, both in size and limited by law, so it can leave us alone with its only duty to support and protect us.
So how would Meritocracy be applied to a society?
I think it would be a great idea to spot a person's talents and goals early in life. Sometimes you can see an indicator already in small kids; you notice what their interests are. These talents and interests should be supported by the whole society, including the school system, so we can, on a collective level, help the individual to become what he/she is best at.
If we accomplish this, we will get a society where people are happy, caring about others, and proud of themselves. I am also suspecting it will diminish crime to next to zero, because most people are doing what they like to do and can make a living out of if.
Sometimes, our goals and interests change as we grow up and grow older, and in my type of Meritocracy, this would be totally fine. You can change your direction anytime, as long as you are not doing it to be lazy or to use the system.
This is meant to be a very humanitarian society where everybody has his/her place by choice and not by force. Of course, there are always people who get sick or can't produce as much as others for a number of reasons, and these people need to be supported in a way so that they can go back to what they were doing or now want to do, if this is an option. The important thing is that no one should feel he/she isn't being supported in the best way possible.
Conclusion
Knowing this, we Americans are left with only three choices:
We can have a Republic (if we can keep it, like Benjamin Franklin added)
We'll end up with an Oligarchy, the tyranny of an Elite
We can have a Republic which practices Meritocracy.
It doesn't take a genius to see where we are today. The Republic is almost dead and we are ruled by the few, while the Government is getting bigger and more powerful by the day. We, the people, a long time ago dropped our guard and it is now a piece of cake to rule us into a full blown Dictatorship. And this does not end with the United States, it happens all over the world at approximately the same time and for the same reason, to complete the Old World Order [def] and create a One World Government under a One World Dictator. This would still fall under Oligarchy, but now with only One Global Government. This is certainly not what we want.
Sourced from http://www.illuminati-news.com/index.htm
