Miscellany 13: The Hypocrisy of Democracy

Copyright © 2006 Joseph George Caldwell.  All rights reserved.  Posted at Internet website http://www.foundationwebsite.org.  May be copied or reposted for non-commercial use, with attribution to author and website.  (18 February 2006)

Contents

Miscellany 13: The Hypocrisy of Democracy. 1

Miscellany: Commentary on Recent Events and Reading. 1

The Hypocrisy of Democracy. 1

Miscellany: Commentary on Recent Events and Reading

The Hypocrisy of Democracy

President George Bush of the United States is continually promoting democracy as a form of government for other countries and cultures around the world.  Bringing democracy to the Iraqis was, for example, one of the objectives he cited for the current war in Iraq.  On several occasions I have written that democracy is not a reasonable form of government for anything that really matters.  I am not alone in this point of view – Plato wrote of the serious flaws in democracy over two thousand years ago, and the US Founding Fathers were very concerned that the US not be established as a democracy, but as a republic.

President Bush and his Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice, recently (early February, 2006) had to do some serious “backpedaling,” when the outcome of the democratic election in Palestine was not as they had desired or expected.  As things turned out, the Hamas political faction won the election.  The embarrassing aspect of this win is, of course, that Hamas is violently opposed to Israel, which Bush strongly supports, even to the extent of denying Israel’s right to exist as a sovereign nation.  Bush and Rice quickly announced that no government has the right to deny the right of another to exist.  In view of our civilian bombing of Germany, Japan, and Italy in the Second World War after the war was won, this is a rather unusual position, but, be that as it may, this situation simply underscores the foolishness of relying on democracy as the basis for national government.  As I have observed before, it is a good form of government only for things that don’t matter (e.g., social clubs), or where a people are very homogeneous with respect to things that really matter, such as race, religion, language, and culture (so that their differences in opinion are not very significant).

The election of Hamas is but one of a series of instances where the use of democracy as the basis for selecting a government failed to produce the outcome desired by the real powers.  Examples from recent history include the cases of Fiji and Algeria.  Here follow some paragraphs taken from the US Department of State’s Background Notes for those countries (available from http://www.state.gov , under “Travel”).

The Fiji Islanders Exercise their “Right of Primacy”

Melanesian and Polynesian peoples settled the Fijian islands some 3,500 years ago. European traders and missionaries arrived in the first half of the 19th century, and the resulting disruption led to increasingly serious wars among the native Fijian confederacies. One Ratu (chief), Cakobau, gained limited control over the western islands by the 1850s, but the continuing unrest led him and a convention of chiefs to cede Fiji unconditionally to the British in 1874.

The pattern of colonialism in Fiji during the following century was similar to that in many other British possessions: the pacification of the countryside, the spread of plantation agriculture, and the introduction of Indian indentured labor. Many traditional institutions, including the system of communal land ownership, were maintained.

Fiji soldiers fought alongside the Allies in the Second World War, gaining a fine reputation in the tough Solomon Islands campaign. The United States and other Allied countries maintained military installations in Fiji during the war, but Fiji itself never came under attack.

In April 1970, a constitutional conference in London agreed that Fiji should become a fully sovereign and independent nation within the Commonwealth. Fiji became independent on October 10, 1970. Post-independence politics came to be dominated by the Alliance Party of Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara. The Indian-led opposition won a majority of House seats in 1977, but failed to form a government out of concern that indigenous Fijians would not accept Indo-Fijian leadership. In April 1987, a coalition led by Dr. Timoci Bavadra, an ethnic Fijian supported by the Indo-Fijian community, won the general election and formed Fiji's first majority Indian government, with Dr. Bavadra serving as Prime Minister. Less than a month later, Dr. Bavadra was forcibly removed from power during a military coup led by Lt. Col. Sitiveni Rabuka on May 14, 1987.

After a period of deadlocked negotiations, Rabuka staged a second coup on September 25, 1987. The military government revoked the constitution and declared Fiji a republic on October 10. This action, coupled with protests by the Government of India, led to Fiji's expulsion from the Commonwealth of Nations and official nonrecognition of the Rabuka regime from foreign governments, including Australia and New Zealand. On December 6, Rabuka resigned as head of state and Governor General Ratu Sir Penaia Ganilau was appointed the first President of the Fijian Republic. Mara was reappointed Prime Minister, and Rabuka became Minister of Home Affairs.

The new government drafted a new Constitution that went into force in July 1990. Under its terms, majorities were reserved for ethnic Fijians in both houses of the legislature. Previously, in 1989, the government had released statistical information showing that for the first time since 1946, ethnic Fijians were a majority of the population. More than 12,000 Indo-Fijians and other minorities had left the country in the 2 years following the 1987 coups. After resigning from the military, Rabuka became prime minister under the new constitution in 1993.

Tensions simmered in 1995-96 over the renewal of land leases and political maneuvering surrounding the mandated 7-year review of the 1990 constitution. The Constitutional Review Commission produced a draft constitution that expanded the size of the legislature, lowered the proportion of seats reserved by ethnic group, and reserved the presidency for ethnic Fijians, but opened the position of prime minister to all races. Prime Minister Rabuka and President Mara supported the proposal, while the nationalist indigenous Fijian parties opposed it. The reformed constitution was approved in July 1997. Fiji was readmitted to the Commonwealth in October.

The first legislative elections held under the new constitution took place in May 1999. Rabuka's coalition was defeated by the Fiji Labor Party, which formed a coalition, led by Mahendra Chaudhry, with two small Fijian parties. Chaudhry became Fiji's first Indo-Fijian prime minister. One year later, in May 2000, Chaudhry and most other members of parliament were taken hostage in the House of Representatives by gunmen led by ethnic Fijian nationalist George Speight. The standoff dragged on for 8 weeks--during which time Chaudhry was removed from office by the then-president due to his incapacitation. The Republic of Fiji military forces then seized power and brokered a negotiated end to the situation. Speight was later arrested when he violated its terms. In February 2002, Speight was convicted of treason and is currently serving a life sentence.

Former banker Laisenia Qarase was named interim prime minister and head of the interim civilian administration by the military and Great Council of Chiefs in July. The Supreme Court reaffirmed the validity of the Constitution and ordered the Chaudhry government returned to power in March 2001, after which the President dissolved the Parliament elected in 2000 and appointed Qarase head of a caretaker government until elections could be held in August. Qarase's newly formed Soqosoqo Duavata ni Lewenivanua (SDL) party won the elections. The SDL declined to include the largely Indo-Fijian Fiji Labor Party (FLP) in the Cabinet on a legal technicality. The 1997 Constitution states that any party receiving 10% or more of the seats in Parliament must be given an opportunity to be represented in the Cabinet in proportion to its numbers in the House of Representatives. In 2004, the Supreme Court affirmed the constitutional provision and instructed the Prime Minister to offer cabinet seats to the FLP. Subsequent negotiations between the two sides regarding the cabinet portfolios proved unsuccessful until November 26, 2004, when Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase, of the ruling SDL party, and Mahendra Chaudhry, of the opposition FLP, agreed not to pursue further the dispute over the composition of the cabinet.

[End of Background Notes excerpt on Fiji.]

The Algerian Army Takes Over

Since the 5th century B.C., the native peoples of northern Africa (identified by the Romans as "Berbers") were pushed back from the coast by successive waves of Phoenician, Roman, Vandal, Byzantine, Arab, Turkish, and, finally, French invaders. The greatest cultural impact came from the Arab invasions of the 8th and 11th centuries A.D., which brought Islam and the Arabic language. The effects of the most recent (French) occupation – French language and European-inspired socialism – are still pervasive.

North African boundaries have shifted during various stages of the conquests. Algeria's modern borders were created by the French, whose colonization began in 1830. To benefit French colonists, most of whom were farmers and businessmen, northern Algeria was eventually organized into overseas departments of France, with representatives in the French National Assembly. France controlled the entire country, but the traditional Muslim population in the rural areas remained separated from the modern economic infrastructure of the European community.

Algerians began their uprising on November 1, 1954, to gain rights denied them under French rule. The revolution, launched by a small group of nationalists who called themselves the National Liberation Front (FLN), was a guerrilla war in which both sides targeted civilians and otherwise used brutal tactics. Eventually, protracted negotiations led to a cease-fire signed by France and the FLN on March 18, 1962, at Evian, France. The Evian Accords also provided for continuing economic, financial, technical, and cultural relations, along with interim administrative arrangements until a referendum on self-determination could be held. Over 1 million French citizens living in Algeria at the time, called the pieds-noirs, left Algeria for France.

The referendum was held in Algeria on July 1, 1962, and France declared Algeria independent on July 3. In September 1962 Ahmed Ben Bella was formally elected president. On September 8, 1963, a Constitution was adopted by referendum. On June 19, 1965, President Ben Bella was replaced in a non-violent coup by a Council of the Revolution headed by Minister of Defense Col. Houari Boumediene. Ben Bella was first imprisoned and then exiled. Boumediene, as President of the Council of the Revolution, led the country as Head of State until he was formally elected on December 10, 1976. Boumediene is credited with building "modern Algeria." He died on December 27, 1978.

Following nomination by an FLN Party Congress, Col. Chadli Bendjedid was elected president in 1979 and re-elected in 1984 and 1988. A new constitution was adopted in 1989 that allowed the formation of political parties other than the FLN. It also removed the armed forces, which had run the government since the days of Boumediene, from a designated role in the operation of the government. Among the scores of parties that sprang up under the new constitution, the militant Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) was the most successful, winning more than 50% of all votes cast in municipal elections in June 1990 as well as in the first stage of national legislative elections held in December 1991.

Faced with the real possibility of a sweeping FIS victory, the National People's Assembly was dissolved by presidential decree on January 4, 1992, and on January 11, under pressure from the military leadership, President Chadli Bendjedid resigned. On January 14, a five-member High Council of State was appointed by the High Council of Security to act as a collegiate presidency and immediately canceled the second round of elections. This action, coupled with political uncertainty and economic turmoil, led to a violent reaction by Islamists. A campaign of terror in the country, including assassinations, bombings, and massacres, commenced. On January 16, Mohamed Boudiaf, a hero of the Liberation War, returned after 28 years of exile to serve as Algeria's fourth president. Facing sporadic outbreaks of violence and terrorism, the security forces took control of the FIS offices in early February, and the High Council of State declared a state of emergency. In March, following a court decision, the FIS Party was formally dissolved, and a series of arrests and trials of FIS members occurred resulting in more than 50,000 members being jailed. Algeria became caught in a cycle of violence, which became increasingly random and indiscriminate. On June 29, 1992, President Boudiaf was assassinated in Annaba in front of TV cameras by Army Lt. Lembarek Boumarafi, who allegedly confessed to carrying out the killing on behalf of the Islamists.

Despite efforts to restore the political process, violence and terrorism characterized the Algeria landscape during the 1990s. In 1994, Liamine Zeroual, former Minister of Defense, was appointed Head of State by the High Council of State for a three-year term. During this period, the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) launched terrorist campaigns against government figures and institutions to protest the banning of the Islamist parties. A breakaway GIA group – the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) – also undertook terrorist activity in the country. Government officials estimate that more than 100,000 Algerians died during this period.

Zeroual called for presidential elections in 1995, though some parties objected to holding elections that excluded the FIS. Zeroual was elected president with 75% of the vote. By 1997, in an attempt to bring political stability to the nation, the Rassemblement National Democratique (RND) party was formed by a progressive group of FLN members. In September 1998, President Liamine Zeroual announced that he would step down in February 1999, 21 months before the end of his term, and that presidential elections would be held.

Algerians went to the polls in April 1999, following a campaign in which seven candidates qualified for election. On the eve of the election, all candidates except Abdelaziz Bouteflika pulled out amid charges of widespread electoral fraud. Bouteflika, the candidate who appeared to enjoy the backing of the military, as well as the FLN and the RND party regulars, won with an official vote count of 70% of all votes cast. He was inaugurated on April 27, 1999 for a 5-year term.

President Bouteflika's agenda focused initially on restoring security and stability to the country. Following his inauguration, he proposed an official amnesty for those who fought against the government during the 1990s unless they had engaged in "blood crimes," such as rape or murder. This "Civil Concord" policy was widely approved in a nationwide referendum in September 2000. Government officials estimate that 80% of those fighting the regime during the 1990s have accepted the civil concord offer and have attempted to reintegrate into Algerian society. Bouteflika also launched national commissions to study education and judicial reform, as well as restructuring of the state bureaucracy.

In 2001, Berber activists in the Kabylie region of the country, reacting to the death of a youth in gendarme custody, unleashed a resistance campaign against what they saw as government repression. Strikes and demonstrations in the Kabylie region were commonplace as a result, and some spread to the capital. Chief among Berber demands was recognition of Tamazight (Berber) as an official language, official recognition and financial compensation for the deaths of Kabylies killed in demonstrations, an economic development plan for the area and greater control over their own regional affairs. In October 2001, the Tamazight language was recognized as a national language, but the issue remains contentious as Tamazight has not been elevated to an official language.

Algeria’s most recent presidential election took place on April 8, 2004. For the first time since independence, the presidential race was democratically contested through to the end. Besides incumbent President Bouteflika, five other candidates, including one woman, competed in the election. Opposition candidates complained of some discrepancies in the voting list; irregularities on polling day, particularly in the Kabylie; and of unfair media coverage during the campaign as Bouteflika, by virtue of his office, appeared on state-owned television daily. Bouteflika was re-elected in the first round of the election with 84.99% of the vote. Just over 58% of those Algerians eligible to vote participated in the election.

In the five years since Bouteflika was first elected, the security situation in Algeria has improved markedly. Terrorism, however, has not been totally eliminated, and terrorist incidents still occur, particularly in the provinces of Boumerdes, Tizi-Ouzou, and in the remote southern areas of the country. An estimated 40-50 Algerians are killed monthly, down from a high of 1,200 or more in the mid-1990s.

In September 2005, Algeria passed a referendum in favor of President Bouteflika’s Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation, paving the way for implementing legislation that will pardon certain individuals convicted of armed terrorist violence. The new Charter builds upon the Civil Concord and the Rahma (clemency) Law shields from prosecution anyone who laid down arms in response to those previous amnesty offers. The Charter specifically excludes from amnesty those involved in mass murders, rapes or the use of explosives in public places.

[End of Background Notes excerpt on Algeria.]

Each day, Mr. Roger Schreiber of Switzerland is kind enough to send me e-mails of articles of interest, including many from the writings of Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov (Mikhaël Aïvanhov).  Last week, he sent me an excerpt from the most recent issue of New Dawn Magazine (at Internet website http://www.newdawnmagazine.com ).  The article, by Frank Joseph, is entitled, “American’s Arcane Origins.”  Here follows a portion of the article (if you enjoy this sample of New Dawn Magazine’s content, please subscribe – see New Dawn Magazine’s website for the complete article).

America’s Arcane Origins, by Frank Joseph

Political activists of the so-called “religious Right” in the United States never tire of preaching that their country was founded as “a Christian democracy.” But they are wrong on both counts.

When Benjamin Franklin was leaving the first Continental Congress, he was asked by one of many anxious patriots waiting outside the courthouse, “What have you given us?” Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

The difference might seem trivial or even non-existent to narrow-minded persons for whom democracy and dictatorship are the only conceivable forms of government. Yet, the very word, “democracy,” does not occur once in the Bill of Rights, the US Constitution, or any state constitution. It was mentioned often by America’s Founding Fathers, but invariably as a synonym for “mob rule,” and, along with obsolescent monarchy, an evil to be avoided.

Thomas Paine, the American Revolution’s most eloquent voice, summed up his colleagues’ view of democracy when he described it in his world-famous “Rights of Man” as “a species of demagoguery, wherein clever charlatans, making promises as enticing as they are impossible to fulfill, win for themselves unwarranted power and wealth, persuading gullible people to discard their liberties for a secret tyranny masquerading as public freedom.”

Particularly in the writings of Thomas Jefferson, the historic models held up for emulation did not include Greek democracy, but the Venetian and Roman republics. The difference between these examples most important to men like Paine and Jefferson was the concept of citizenship. Anyone born in a democratic state automatically becomes a citizen with all the privileges that entails, including the right to vote. In a republic, one is not born a citizen, but may only become one when he or she reaches adulthood; can demonstrate at least a fundamental grasp of the workings of their government, and is either going to school or gainfully employed.

In modern America, all that remains of these basic requirements is a restriction against voting until one’s eighteenth year. Foreigners must, in fact, pass tests proving their basic comprehension of the Constitution before becoming US citizens, which makes them more knowledgeable, discerning voters than native-born Americans, who are supposed to receive the same kind of rigorous Constitutional education, but rarely, if ever, do. In demanding at least some qualifications for citizenship, America’s Founding Fathers believed that responsible leaders could only by chosen by a competent electorate. Today, however, such notions are shunned as “elitist” in most countries described as “democratic.”

Yet more shocking to bible-beating conservatives, if they were to learn the awful truth, is that the United States was not founded by Christians, at least of the kind they would approve. Instead, that country’s constitutional republic was conceived, fought for and built almost entirely by deists. While the majority of Americans, then as now, were at least nominally Christian, most of their leaders were not. George Washington, John Hancock, Patrick Henry, Paul Revere and virtually all of their intellectual compatriots were deists. The term is not generally familiar today, but signifies a person who believes in a universal, compassionate Intelligence that made and orders Creation, manifests its will through natural law, but requires no religious dogma to be understood, only the faculty of reason with which every human is endowed.

Referring to the church of his day, Paine wrote, “The Christian theory is little else than the idolatry of the ancient mythologists, accommodated to the purposes of power and revenue... My own mind is my own church.” Like his fellow deists, who made a clear distinction between church and state, he was convinced that freedom meant being able to speak one’s mind on all subjects, religious as well as political. He did not “condemn those who believe otherwise. They have the same right to their belief as I have to mine.”

Nor were the deists anti-Christian. They concluded that Christianity had at its theological core the same mystical truth found in every genuine spiritual conception; namely, the perennial philosophy of compassion for all sentient beings as the means by which the human soul develops. This recognition, however, deeply offended mainstream Christians, who insisted their brand of faith alone was correct, all others being heretical at best or demonic at worst.

As an example of the extremes these defenders of the One True Religion went to demonstrate their piety, hob-nails initialed “T.P.” were sold by the thousands to Londoners who could walk all day on the name of Thomas Paine. His treatment in the land he had done so much to free was more harsh. When he walked through the streets of his hometown in Bordentown, New Jersey, doors and window shutters were pointedly banged shut as he passed by, while cries of “Devil!” followed him everywhere.

Modern American Christian crusaders would be even more alarmed to learn that not only was their country founded by deists, but its capitol deliberately designed as a metaphor for Freemasonry. In his profoundly researched book, The Secret Architecture of our Nation’s Capital (London: Century Books, Ltd., 1999), author David Ovason offers abundant evidence to show that Washington, D.C. was built by Freemasons who incorporated their arcane, even heretical ideas in the White House, the Washington Monument, the Library of Congress, the Post Office, the Capitol Dome, the Federal Trade Commission Building, the Federal Reserve Building, even Pennsylvania Avenue itself.

But what is, or was, Freemasonry? Like any idea or organization that persists over time, Freemasonry deviated from its initial purpose until, in the end, it bore only slight, outward resemblance to its origins. By way of comparison with a group alleged without much real foundation to have been Freemasonry’s precursor, the Knights Templar was founded in the early 12th century, ostensibly for guarding pilgrim routes to Jerusalem with a few soldiers sworn to poverty and abstinence, but grew to become a virtually autonomous army richly equipped and armed, finally blossoming into an economic entity so potent it called down on itself the murderous envy of a French king.

So too, Freemasonry began in 1717 as a fraternity dedicated to humanitarian, deistic principles for Englishmen unhappy with the royal powers-that-be, and so were forced to operate with discretion. By the time early Americans were ready to part ways with the Mother Country, Freemasonry had spread to their shores and was embraced by many revolutionaries as an expression of opposition to everything British, including the Church of England. The secret order continued to grow in membership and prestige, until it was infiltrated and perverted from its high-minded ideals by Spartacus Weishaupt, a demented power-freak who wanted a respectable vehicle for subversion and insurrection. Separated by a vast ocean from the facts, even Thomas Jefferson was fooled by Weishaupt’s duplicity.

Henceforward, the “Free and Accepted Masons” were lumped together with Communists as the secretive enemies of Western Civilization, and outlawed in most European countries. Even in the United States, though they were never banned, the Freemasons were under suspicion by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for many years, and condemned by several congressmen. Thus criminalized or under suspicion, their popularity went into a long decline, until today their once numerous, now largely abandoned lodge buildings, some still bearing Masonic emblems, testify to an aging, dwindling following. It is wrong, therefore, to parallel the Freemason George Washington, for example, with the likes of Adam Weishaupt, anymore than it is to equate George Washington with George Bush.

“The very struggle for independence seems to have been directed by the Masonic brotherhood,” Ovason writes, “and, some historians insist, had even been started by them.” Indeed, the War for Independence began in a warehouse owned by a Mason, and a majority of the revolutionaries who undertook the Boston Tea Party of 1773 were Masons. The most famous American Mason was George Washington himself, although some biographers not altogether happy with Freemasonry have tried to minimalize his association with it. In fact, however, he was the first Master of the Alexandria, Virginia lodge (Number 22) from April, 1788 until December the following year.

It was this lodge number that was carried before him on a masonic standard, as Washington, leading ranks of fellow Masons all wearing their emblematic aprons, walked in procession to the founding of the American capital, in 1793. The event was commemorated in a pair of bronze panels designed in 1868. They portray him laying the cornerstone surrounded by masonic symbols, including the square and trowel. Washington was still Master Mason when inaugurated as the first President of the United States on 30 April 1789. After his death ten years later, he was laid to rest at his Mount Vernon estate in a masonic funeral, during which all save one of the pallbearers were members of his own lodge.

Ovason observes in a companion volume (The Secret Symbols of the Dollar Bill, CA: HarperCollins, 2004) that Washington’s Masonic significance was not only expressed in the city to which he gave his name: “The portrait of George Washington, at the center of the dollar bill, is highly symbolic.” The President’s image is centrally framed by the last letter in the Greek alphabet, an Omega, for “completion”, or the Ultimate, and implying that the foremost Founding Father represented the apogee of human values. His appearance on the one-dollar bill is by no means the only non-Christian symbol found here.

Especially cogent is the illustration of a truncated pyramid surmounted by a radiant delta enclosing a single eye beneath the words Annuit Coeptis. A motto on a scroll near the base reads, Novus Ordo Seclorum. Both were derived from the great Roman writer, Virgil. In his classic epic, the Aeneid, he directs a prayer for assistance to Jupiter, king of the gods: Audacibus annue coeptis, or “Favor our daring undertaking!” Novus Ordo Seclorum, “a New Order for the ages,” was taken from one of his famous Ecologues – Magnus ab integro seclorum nascitur ordo, or, “The great series of ages is born anew.”

“The idea of a truncated pyramid was Masonic,” Ovason writes. It is certainly “pagan,” and generally understood to mean stability and virtue in the 18th century. According to President William McKinley, the twenty fifth president of the United States and himself a Mason, it also meant strength and duration. But these obvious characterizations only represent the figure’s exoteric aspect. Far less well recognized, the pyramid depicted on the one-dollar bill, unlike any in the Nile Valley, has seventy two stones. This amount is hardly circumstantial, because it has been revered by mystics as one of the most sacred of all numerals.

Since Pythagorean times, in the 7th century BCE, and millennia earlier still in ancient Egypt, 72 has represented the ways of writing and pronouncing the name of the Almighty, not the Christian or even Old Testament Yahweh, but God as represented by the Sun, as it moves through space and time. Ovason explains, “Due to the phenomenon called precession, the Sun appears to fall back against the stars. This rate of precession is one degree every seventy two years.” In other words, the dollar bill’s seventy two stones signify the deist conception of the Supreme Being as rooted in the pre-Christian, non-Biblical Ancient World.

The single-eyed triangle radiating energy above the truncated pyramid is another Egyptian image, the Utchat, or Udjat, the all-seeing eye of Ra, a sun-god and the divine king of heaven. Esoterically, the Utchat was identified with Maat, the moral law pervading all Creation. Its appearance hovering above the apex of the dollar bill pyramid not only reinforces the solar symbolism of that sacred structure, but embodies the principle of Maat America’s Founding Fathers sought to inculcate in the constitutional republic they designed.

But the esoteric, deistic, even “pagan” Freemasonry of America’s Founding Fathers is most apparent in the arcane influence that Ovason traces throughout the design and construction of the US capital. These early Americans did not weave this occult symbolism through their country’s foremost city for clubbish reasons, but because their iconological signs were the emblems of a new civilization they wanted to create in the New World.

[End of Frank Joseph excerpt.]

New Dawn Magazine writes… Frank Joseph is the editor-in-chief of Ancient American, a bi-monthly, popular science magazine describing overseas visitors to the Americas centuries before Columbus. His books Survivors of Atlantis and Destruction of Atlantis resulted from Joseph’s world travels in search of clues to the ancient past. He is a member of The Oriental Institute at the University of Illinois (USA) and Japan’s Savant Society. Joseph lives in Colfax, Wisconsin, USA.

As a final observation on the deist followings of the Founding Fathers, I will point out The Jefferson Bible: The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth (Beacon Press, Boston, 1989.  (Original title: The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth Extracted textually from the Gospels in Greek, Latin, French and English.)  A copy of this Bible is given to every member of the United States Senate, on the day of his swearing in.  The Jefferson Bible is a version of the first four books of the New Testament, in which all reference to “magic” are removed (e.g., the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection).  It presents the philosophy of Jesus, without any reference to supernatural events.  The Jefferson Bible is strong evidence of the deist perspective of Thomas Jefferson.

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FndTitle(Miscellany 13: The Hypocrisy of Democracy)

FndDescription(Miscellany 13: The Hypocrisy of Democracy)

FndKeywords(hypocricy of democracy; weakness of democracy; democracy)