IF YOU DON'T STAND FOR SOMETHING
THEN YOU WILL FALL FOR ANYTHING
--UNKNOWN--
The average American citizen thinks that we live in a democracy and that we as a nation stand for democratic values. The average American citizen is terrably misinformed. The United States is first and formost a republic and our central value is to safegaurd the republic from enemies domestic and foreign.
This causes one small problem; when we see our government's policies totally ignoring democratic values here at home and abroad to protect the republic we are baffled and feel that the government doesn't represent us. When there aren't any major repercussions at home from the government's actions or lack there of, even we who recognized the incongruency between the needs of the democracy and those of the republic, we are to complacent to question the government very far and when there are reprecussions we allow ourselve to be distracted enough that we don't follow up on the govenment policy that got us in that possition in the first point. . A point in case is the current stance the United States has taken in regards to the recent election in Peru. It seems obvious that the election was at least poorly executed but more likely high jacked by the sitting president and that chances are his government is now ilegitimate. But has our government called for sanctions and put the full weight behind a call for new elections. No, we haven't. Instead after issuing a early denoucement of the new govenment we looked at the perceived needs of the republic and decided to back down. The desire to continue the "War on drugs" here at home superseded the needs of the citizens of Peru. If you look at where our nation stands on the issues concerning foreign govenrments around the world you will find that 99.99% of the time the needs of the republic supersedes the needs of the demogracy. You will also notice that when the govenment changes hands between the
democratiic and republican parties that both parties work toward the needs of the republic as they percieve them but in niether case do they let the nations needs as a democracy take precedence over what they perceive are the needs of the republic.