Understanding Democracy – Prohibition on State Sponsored Ideology

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Remarkable as the new U.S. system of democracy was at the time of Independence, U.S. society at that time had not progressed beyond some of the most unethical features of ancient Athens. Slavery was widespread, women were excluded from political participation, and a genocidal war was being waged against the Native American population. Despite its undoubted advances, what the new American democracy clearly did not do was to guarantee equality of citizenship to all.  Continue reading →

Understanding Democracy – The Importance of the Constitution

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According to the historian Roger Osborne, the American Revolution was the most decisive event in the history of democracy. Within the first seventy years of the new United States of America’s existence, every white adult male had the right to vote in state and federal elections, almost every important public official was elected, a series of national and state institutions had been set up to protect citizens from the power of the state and from the tyranny of the majority, political parties had been established that relinquished power peacefully after elections, and a culture of mass participation in politics had emerged.    Continue reading →

Love and Hate in the World’s Religions

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Heracles, son of Zeus, is one of the great heroes of ancient Greek mythology. His most famous feat was to slay the fearsome Hydra, a multi-headed creature whose breath could kill instantly. Even the Hydra’s smell was said to be so poisonous that anyone who approached it died in agony. In his effort to kill the Hydra, Heracles smashed at its heads with his club. However, no sooner had one head been destroyed than two more grew in its place, an expression of the hopelessness of his struggle. Realising that he could never defeat the Hydra alone, Heracles called for help to his charioteer Iolaus, who burned the stump of each head as soon as it was struck off to prevent others growing in its place. In this way Heracles was able to finally cut off all the heads, including the final immortal head, of the Hydra.    Continue reading →

Understanding Democracy – The Rule of Law

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Of all the pillars in our modern system of democracy, none has had as great an impact as the development of the rule of law. The rule of law reduces violence, provide a means of holding leaders to account, forces a degree of rationality into political decision making, and offers protection for citizens against the arbitrary actions of their rulers.   Continue reading →

Democracy as a Defence against Tyranny

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The foundations of our modern system of democracy were first put in place in ancient Athens. Athenian society was never fully democratic in the way that we would understand a democratic society today. Slavery remained widespread, women were never allowed to participate in political affairs, and the elite who were eligible to take part in the democratic decision-making processes of the state never made up more than ten percent of the entire population. Despite these shortcomings, the Athenians established some of the fundamental principles of democratic government.   Continue reading →

De-civilisation – Stalin in Eastern Europe

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As World War Two ended, Stalin’s occupation of eastern Europe provided him with the opportunity to impose his pathological vision upon eight separate European countries, each with a vastly different cultural, economic and political system. In doing so, he followed a clear blueprint for systematically dismantling the defences that each country had built to protect against tyranny. He began by undermining the rule of law.  Continue reading →

The Soviet Gulag – Stalin’s Slave Camps

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This… was not written ‘so that it will not happen again’, as the cliché would have it. This… was written because it almost certainly will happen again.

Anne Applebaum, Author of Gulag: A History

The Gulag is the most poignant expression of the psychopathic nature of Stalin’s regime. In 1922, just five years after the Bolsheviks had seized power, there were already eighty-four camps dotted across Russia. Faced with the vast numbers of prisoners they had arrested in the first decade of Soviet communism, the Politburo passed a resolution in 1929 officially establishing a network of corrective labour camps for ‘the colonisation of [remote] regions and the exploitation of their natural wealth through the work of prisoners[1].’      Continue reading →