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Leaflets:

Why Democracies Fail


Why Democracies Fail

A Democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of Government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that Democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy, always to be followed by a Dictatorship.

(Written by Professor Alexander Fraser Tytler, nearly two centuries ago while our thirteen original states were still colonies of Great Britain. At the time he was writing of the decline and fall of the Athenian Republic over two thousand years before.)

Official Definition

of

DEMOCRACY

Here are four (4) facsimile section reproductions taken from a 156 page book officially compiled and issued by the U. S. War Department, November 30, 1928, setting forth exact and truthful definitions of a Democracy and of a Republic, explaining the difference between both. These definitions were published by the authority of the United States Government and must be accepted as authentic in any court of proper jurisdiction.

These precise and scholarly definitions of a Democracy and a Republic were carefully considered as a proper guide for U. S. soldiers and U. S. citizens by the Chief of Staff of the United States Army. Such definitions take precedence over any "definition" that may be found in the present commercial dictionaries which have suffered periodical "modification" to please "the powers in office."

Shortly after the "bank holiday" in the thirties, hush-hush orders from the White House suddenly demanded that all copies of this book be withdrawn from the Government Printing Office and the Army posts, to be suppressed and destroyed without explanation.

This was the beginning of the complete red control of the Government from within, not from without.

(No. 1 fac simile)
TM 2000-25
1
TRAINING MANUAL
No. 2000-25
WAR DEPARTMENT,
WASHINGTON, November 30, 1928.

CITIZENSHIP

Prepared under direction of the

Chief of Staff

 This manual supersedes Manual of Citizenship Training

The use of the publication "The Constitution of the States," by Harry Atwood, is by permission and courtesy of the author.

The source of other references is shown in the bibliography.


(No. 2 fac simile)

TM 2000-25
118-120

CITIZENSHIP

Democracy:

A government of the masses.

Authority derived through mass meeting or any other form of "direct" expression.

Results in mobocracy.

Attitude toward property is comunistic-negating property rights.

Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate. whether it be based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences.

Results in demagogism license, agitation, discontent, anarchy.


(No. 3 fac simile)

TM 2000-25
120-121

             CITIZENSHIP

Republic:

Authority is derived through the election by the people of public officials best fitted to represent them.

Attitude toward property is respect for laws and individual rights, and a sensible economic procedure.

Attitude toward law is the administration of justice in accord with fixed principles and established evidence, with a strict regard to consequences.

A greater number of citizens and extent of territory may be brought within its compass.

Avoids the dangerous extreme of either tyranny or mobocracy. Results in statesmanship, liberty, reason, justice, contentment, and progress.

Is the "standard form" of government throughout the world.

A republic is a form of government under a constitution which provides for the election of (1) an executive and (2) a legislative body, who working together in a representative capacity, have all the power of appointment, all power of legislation all power to raise revenue and appropriate expenditures, and are required to create (3) a judiciary to pass upon the justice and legality of their governmental acts and to recognize (4) certain inherent individual rights.

Take away any one or more of those four elements and you are drifting into autocracy. Add one or more to those four elements and you are drifting into democracy. - Atwood

121. Superior to all others. - Autocracy declares the divine right of kings; its authority can not be questioned; its powers are arbitrarily or unjustly administered.

Democracy is the "direct" rule of the people and has been repeatedly tried without success.

Our Constitutional fathers, familiar with the strength and weakness of both autocracy and democracy, with fixed principles definitely in mind, defined a representative republican form of government. They "made a very marked distinction between a republic and a democracy * * * and said repeatedly and emphatically that they had founded a republic."


(No. 4 fac simile)
[A G. 014.33 (4-28-8).]
BY ORDER OF THE SECRETARY OF WAR:
C.P. SUMMERALL,
Major General,

Chief of Staff.

OFFICIAL:

LUTZ WAHL,

Major General,

The Adjutant General

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