"We Must DEFEND Democracy!"… Or Do We? | Ep 297

Summary
In this conversation, Clayton Cuteri explores the concept of democracy versus a constitutional republic, emphasizing the historical failures of democracies and the importance of understanding the true nature of American governance. He discusses the implications of populism, the illusion of choice within political parties, and the need for new political movements that prioritize the common man. Through historical examples, he illustrates how democracies can devolve into tyranny and calls for a shift in political engagement to create a more representative system.

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Timecodes:
00:00 - Exploring the Concept of Democracy
01:42 - Understanding Constitutional Republic vs. Democracy
06:04 - Historical Lessons on Democracy and Tyranny
12:09 - The Rise and Fall of Democracies
17:28 - The Illusion of Choice in Political Parties
20:49 - A Call for New Political Movements


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• 10:58 (Cont.) "We Must DEFEND Democracy!"… Or Do We? | Ep 297

Transcript

0:21

exploring spiritual journeys to find answers in uncertainty. What is up, conscious monkeys. Welcome back to another episode of traveling to consciousness. As always, I'm your host, Clanky Terry. And in today's podcast, we're going to talk about defending democracy because if there's one thing that Americans should do, it's to defend democracy because whatever we do, we have to defend it. Whether it's overseas. Whether it's in our own homeland, we have to defend democracy. Remember that, guys, that we have to defend democracy. But you want to know something that's extremely, extremely ironic about the whole term defending democracy is that America is not a democracy. Our government is not a democracy. It's not in the slightest. Now we do vote, whoever gets the majority wins, but that's not how our governing body rules. And that's a very important distinction. I'm going to tell you why we don't want to live in a democracy and how every single democracy that has ever existed in the history of the world has ended in tyranny. So we do not want a democracy. But so then the question is, if we don't live in a democracy, because we don't, so anyone who's telling you that we are, you should very much question their intentions. So if we don't live in a democracy, then what is it that we live in? What is it that our founding Constitution is what is it? What are we? So the term is a constitutional Republic. Do notice how I gave you that little suggestion earlier? But let's start off by defining them, right? Because let's make sure we're on the same exact page about what we're talking about. So democracy is the rule of the majority. So in a pure majority, If we were a pure democracy, that means that when decisions are made, we would have a vote and you just need 50 % plus one vote. And that would be the decision. That would be the deciding factor for whatever it is, whether it's your president, whether it's your, your terms in office, whether it's how we're spending our money. But we're not. And again, it's a good thing. Because I guess you could also break it down that we're technically a representative constitutional republic. We're not going to get too deep into that. But the point is, is that at the highest level, let's say our president is not elected by a democracy and it's a good thing. Trust me when I say it's a good thing. We'll get into why that's actually a very good thing in a second here. But what you have to understand about democracy is just 50 % plus one. Now, what we live in, a constitutional republic, is whenever government is where the officials are elected by citizens to lead them. as dictated by the constitution. So right, we all know the constitution. Well, we at least know that there's a constitution exists. So we have a constitution. And what we know is, is that through that constitution, it gives the government powers. Of course they report to the people, but obviously that doesn't happen because for example, if we truly lived in a democracy, That means that we would not be spending trillions of dollars in foreign countries because 80 % of the populace does not want that. So that's actually a very good indicator that we do not live in a democracy. So number one is that we have to understand that a constitutional republic is that we elect people, the citizens elect people to direct our countries, to direct the way we want to be led by the constitution. So for a country to be considered a constitutional republic, Number one, it has to have a constitution that limits the government's power. Okay, check. And number two, citizens choose their own head of states and other government officials, which we do, which you're going to be doing soon. If you haven't already, you're going to be doing it. Well, I guess technically tomorrow, if you're listening to this on Monday. So I find it very important to understand just these basic facts that. People are democratically elected, but we do not live in a democracy. And it's very important to understand this. And I question why leaders would lead us astray from this knowledge. I have my own opinions, my own theories, if you will. But I'll let you decide on your own as to why people would knowingly or unknowingly, maybe they don't know, maybe it's pure ignorance. But if you have pure ignorance, In the most basic knowledge of how our government operates, mean, in my opinion, that should automatically disqualify you from running as a candidate for anything, let alone president of the United States. So I mentioned earlier, and we should probably jump into this, is like, why don't we want a democracy, right? I think on paper it makes sense, right? On paper, if you just like very blankly think about it, you don't put any thought into it. Yeah, 50 % plus one, like that's how we should decide things. You know, if you're with your family, let's say, let's say you have an odd number of people and you say 50 % plus one, in those situations, it can make sense. But whenever it comes to a large number of people, it does not work. And I'm going to tell you why. Let give you examples first. Let's go back to fifth century BC. So where we're at now is ancient Athens. Athens is very often considered the birthplace of democracy. Now, of course, it was essentially just free men who were citizens, had the right to vote on legislative and executive decisions. So it wasn't perfect in those regards. But the fact in our main is that whoever could vote It was 50 % plus one and it worked for a little bit. However, in times of crisis is when democracy fails. The Athenian democracy started to face mob rule. So the decisions that were being driven were essentially by just populist leaders. And so in order to become a populist, you would have to create an emotional, a very intense emotional, you know, idea or rhetoric instead of using rational governance and instead of thinking through the policies, thinking through the decisions. And then this got exacerbated in a time of crisis. Because they had the, and I'm going to butcher this, so I apologize. They had the Pale-Po-Ponesian War, Pale-O-Ponesian War. Actually, I might have said that correctly, the Pale-O-Ponesian War. And at that, Athens just started making hasty decisions. They were executing their military generals, they were exiling key leaders, and it severely undermined their stability as a country. And this is all because they only had emotional leaders. Now, emotion is important. If you know anything about this podcast, things that we've talked about emotion is definitely important. But whenever that's the only factor that creates a leader, it's a recipe for disaster. Because if you're not rational, if you don't have experience, if you don't understand how to govern a military, if you don't understand how to govern people, if you don't understand business, if you don't understand like these core fundamental things, all you know is how to rile people up. and that's the person at the top of the food chain at the top of your ladder representing you. You're in for, well, you're in for a tyrant. because the Athenian democracy ultimately collapsed under this strain of war. And when that collapse happened, it turned into a tyrannical government. And they called this the 30 tyrants. And it became this oligarchic regime that would restrict the freedoms of their citizens and led to widespread repression. Now, because, and this is the most important thing, because this is where and why we need to recognize that we're in a constitutional republic, is that without institutional checks on these tyrants, the democratic process devolved into this impulsive decision-making. It just demonstrated the potential for this majority rule to be easily swayed by these populist demagogues, if you will. So we have to understand that. That's the first piece of the puzzle. The next time this was tried, was about 500 BC when we created the Romans. Now, originally, Rome was initially actually a republic, and it had representative governance where they elected senators and consuls. They held power to prevent any one individual from dominating. But then they had their own little decay. So as Rome expanded, its Republican system became strained. You couldn't make decisions quick enough. They had political factions such as populars and optimates. like it would be people who were like champions of the common people. So people who represented the common man. And then you had supporters of like their stock recies. So like the the elites today. So you would have people who were just before the common man and then the people for the elites, which again, if you listened to my, the biggest war we need to worry about here, it's exactly that one. So it's, it's interesting to see that they were divided there too. And because of this, it led to violent clashes. It became very violent. And yeah, and so this this ultimately led into a tyranny as well with Caesar because it you know, he essentially created a power vacuum if you will and whenever he was killed it It gave automatic rule to the Emperor's which began kind of with Augustus and it really left the entire thing in chaos and Caesar did not It seemed like he did very good. He was a very intelligent man, but I think there seems to be a lack of forward thinking once getting that position. It's kind of a long thing. I don't really know. I'm also maybe not as knowledgeable as I should be for diving into something like that. And now maybe you could argue that this is the back of the day. This was 500 BC. We've changed. We're different. No, no, no, no, no, no. Because in the late 20th century, early 21st century, we have Venezuela. Now, in the late 20th century, Venezuela was actually a relatively stable democracy and it had a very high standard of living. And again, if we look at the number of people in Venezuela, far smaller than America, far smaller than any of these other countries, governments. So maybe it works a little bit, but that was all the way up until Hugo Chavez. In 1998, Hugo Chavez was elected. He rose to power on the platform of reform, promising to help the poor redistribution of wealth. And he used democratic tools to consolidate his power. He started amending their constitution, extending term limits, controlling the judiciary, judiciary, judiciary, judiciary, judiciary. I should probably learn how to judiciary, judiciary. Wow. I should probably learn how to pronounce that correctly. And he would just like curtail these freedoms. you know, of his political opponents. He would jail them, he would throw them, throw them out. And so he became, you know, through populist rule, he became in charge. And then this kind of started that whole shift, if you will, because after his death, his successor Maduro continued on with his trend. And if you know anything today, Venezuela is in a severe state of economic crisis. We have mass protests. have authoritarian rule. Pretty much everyone's a trillionaire in Venezuela and none of them can eat. That's how out of control their money printing is and everything. So again, democratic processes are used to exploit and consolidate power. And then whenever you have a populist leader get in there and they use democracy in itself, it erodes away the institutional checks and freedoms of these institutions. It's a big problem. It's a very big problem. Very big problem. And if you kind of caught the theme there, maybe you kind of heard the little theme in there. Maybe you heard the little theme in there. I don't know if you heard it at the end there. But there's a very important part about this whole idea of democracy. And I'll give you, I'll give you a quote, a pretty famous quote that no one's really sure who said it, but a democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for lunch. A Republic is a well armed land contesting the vote. What this highlights is, is that in a democracy, the majority are always correct. They will always win. So if you care about minorities, if you care about the little man, if you care about them at all, you should never, ever advocate for democracy because the minorities will always lose. Now, the way that minority is used culturally tends to be towards skin color, ethnicity, and the likes, right? I'm speaking ideologically. Of course you can look at it in that lens if you want. I would advise you don't just because again this comes back to the war that we have within society. There's wars that they create mentally between skin gender sex data data data. But the point remains is that if you're in the minority you don't have a say. Your voice does not matter. So we form a republic so that you can make a well armed lamb, you can arm the lamb to fight against those two wolves on what's happening, eating for dinner or for lunch. And the founding fathers, the framers of our constitution knew this. They knew that democracy was a bad idea. A pure democracy always ends in tyranny. And quite frankly, I mean, look at our constitutional republic. It's it's not it's not being representative. We're not being represented. And again, I told you at the beginning of this, it's just, it's the number that always sticks out to me. 80 % of Americans are against funding foreign wars. And yet that's like the top priority of our government. So you could very much argue that we have found ourselves in a place of our own thing being deteriorated. But here's the thing is that if you think that we're in a democracy, then you don't understand how we can make changes moving forward. Because I told you about all the democracies that fail. So my point is... There are definitely still issues within our government system. Definitely. There are certainly still issues. The main one being the fact that we are living under this illusion that you have to vote Republican or Democrat and as if they don't know better, as if they aren't the best phrase I ever heard of two wings of the same bird because that's exactly what they are. It's crazy, it's crazy to me. So in order to save our constitutional republic, you have to vote for someone other than these two parties. And that's the hardest thing for people to hear. Because so many people will sit here and say, well, you you waste your vote if you don't vote for a Republican or Democrat. It's like you're wasting your vote if you vote for Democrat or Republican. Let me prove my point. 2012, Obama's in office. Barack Obama wins the presidency. Entire Congress is Democrats. The entire Congress is Democrats. What happens? Did we change anything? He ran on the platform of change. What changed? Things got worse, that's for sure. But nothing changes in a positive way. Next up, 2016 we have... Good old Donald Trump, Republican. And Congress, Republican. Okay, cool. We'll get changed the other direction. Nope, nothing changed. These two parties are in bed with each other because they are the elites. They are the ruling class. So the more that we vote for them and the more that the common man will suffer and continue to suffer and that's fine. Maybe the common man hasn't suffered enough. Maybe that's why people keep voting for them. Maybe they're still in that illusion, but we have to break that illusion. You have to break that illusion and it starts with you. It starts with you listening to this a very powerful way that you can break that illusion. is tomorrow or whenever you're going to vote is vote for the if myself if you live within the 17th district of PA right in Clayton Alexander Q Terry if you live outside of it or even if you live inside of it for president right in Rachel Fiore Fi ORI now I'm not saying we're going to win these I'm not saying that at all but it's about the energy and this is where spirituality can come We have to start making that path. We have to start opening up the pathway for a new party to emerge. One that cares about the people, one that sees the issues that are truly facing American citizens. And quite frankly, these same exact things are happening all over the world. So let's not kid ourselves that it's only in America, but we have to start somewhere. So we're to start with America. We're going to create a path and maybe it will seem futile. Maybe this election, seems futile, but you're, you have to start it because we create this butterfly effect where we create this ripple effect. Or maybe it's just one vote. Maybe it's two votes to this time. Next time in four years. Maybe it's 2000, but we have to start somewhere and think about it in the future. When American Congress party becomes the one of the biggest political parties, you can sit there and say, I voted for them in the first election cycle that they ran a candidate. Do you wanna say that? There's not gonna be many people who will be able to say that. Very few, very, very, very few. I know I will. I already did my mail in ballots, which I'm not going to argue for. I think they're probably not the best idea, but I know at least I can say it. Will you be able to say it? So in the meantime, I think it's very important to just pay attention to these things, understand what's going on, understand the way we're living, understand what's happening in the world. Because if we just turn a blind eye and we've let everything go in this direction, it's going to end in shambles. You're not going to be happy. And we're going to have to fight even harder to get out of it. But I don't know. I've studied history and maybe we have to go to a worse place. I hate to say it, but maybe we do. It's a very depressing thing to say. And I don't want to think that that's the case. I really don't. But if you study history, things just have to get so bad that that's when you open your eyes and realize that the people that have been put in charge to lead you. never cared about you in the first place. And we need leaders who care about the common man. And none of them do. You know, and maybe I'm biased in this regard. Maybe I'm biased in this regard, but I pay attention to how often they say with the phrase world peace. I mean, I feel like I'm talking about it all the time. I don't know if that's a fair judgment. Maybe it's not even a fair judgment call. I don't know. But to me, it feels like that's not anyone's mission. Maybe sometimes you hear it like, you know, in an election cycle, I hear maybe people say it three or four times. Like if that that's a lot I say, I feel like I say it three or four times every other podcast. But my point is, is that we have to put the American people first. We have to put the common man first. We have to give the knowledge to the common man so that we can rise up. We can take on the elites and we can all truly become liberated and free. We have to put our eye towards true freedom, real freedom, economic freedom, and mental freedom. And we can do it. I see it. In my lifetime, we'll make it happen. And if for some reason you don't believe me, then let's have a talk about it whenever we see each other in the sixth dimension. you