Our Founding Fathers initially rejected democracy

Thanks, Cindy Ryman, for your timely letter on Jan. 18, reminding our citizens to “Fly the Flag.”  We’re most proud to have our office flag flying at 30 feet. Your use of the words “our democracy” is universal, yet the words “our republic” is seldom to be found. The word “democracy” is not found in our nation’s Constitution of 4,500 words, containing the last amendment of 1992.

Few will remember that democracy was overwhelmingly rejected by our Founding Fathers during preliminary debates on the forms of government our new nation might pursue. The word “democracy” is found on less than 50 of the 1,400 pages of a collection of the founder’s political writings from 1760 through 1850. They believed a republican form of government with a stable constitution would guarantee the citizens “unalienable rights.”

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Fisher Ames, a congressman to our nation’s First Federal Congress of 1789, in one sentence, clearly says it all: “The … political wisdom in framing the Constitution was to guard against licentiousness, that inbred malady of democracies.” The founders believed that the evolution of a voter’s desire for an ever-increasing benefit from their government would overburden government well beyond what it could or should provide.

Our republic has been reasonably stable over the past 250 years; however, our ever-increasing reliance on “democracy” and less on “self-
reliance” will continue the melting away of our republic. Cindy, again, thanks for your reminder of democracy and the flag, it allowed me to bring up a bit of history and ask that we all pray to calm our nation’s turmoil and end the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Floyd Diemoz

Glenwood Springs

Republican administration once again leaves a mess to a Democrat  

As a liberal, independent businessman, I once again see that a Republican administration is passing on a shattered economy rife with societal and social unrest to a Democrat.

In 1994 it was George H.W. Bush with his little Kuwait war and protests, passed on to Bill Clinton, who presided over seven years of mostly balanced budgets, peace and prosperity.

Vice President Al Gore’s loss to George W. Bush in 2000 set the U.S. up for 9/11, after which Bush randomly fired missiles at Taliban sites in Afghanistan for a year, bringing the Dick Cheney-Donald Rumsfeld formula for perpetual warfare into fruition.

Bush handed off massive debt, Iraq War unrest and banking practices that had caused housing values to plummet for the first time ever to Barack Obama.

Obama and Biden quickly initiated FEC banking curbs on mortgage bundling, funded over $1 trillion to infrastructure improvements and instituted a radical departure toward national health insurance. They kept a lid on the Right’s favorite wars while slowly building the economy and environmental regulations back to a strong, healthy confidence. Relative calm was maintained despite seething, racial undertones on the right.

Trump squeaked out a victory in the Electoral College, taking credit for the country’s strong economy and social calm. And then by repeatedly demeaning people and kicking ant pile after ant pile, he freed our most debasing instincts. He turned the U.S. into a howling basin of social unrest and mind-blowing federal budget deficits, despite no foreign wars (except what is left of Bush’s). He now holds the U.S. on the brink of civil war with a planet in the grips of a pandemic and a climate on the point of no return for habitability as he hands the country over to smiling Joe Biden. I suppose the conservative talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh will be busy for a while longer.

John Hoffmann

Carbondale

The campaign is over, Boebert should get to work

Our freshly elected U.S. representative, Lauren Boebert, is making quite an impression in Washington, D.C. She’s been in office for two weeks, and she has already been accused of tweeting to the terrorists while locked down for protection from those same terrorists — her “constituents,” as she referred to them — spoke and voted against certifying the Electoral College votes, called “bull crap” on impeaching the president while speaking on the House floor and refusing to go through the metal detector to get into the House chambers, then not allowing her purse to be searched for weapons, which are not permitted on the House floor. 

She also made false and inflammatory statements regarding a fellow representative that she later withdrew and apologized for. She’s received recognition on national news media (fake news), as well as late night comedy shows. She is being sued for blocking people from her Twitter account because they don’t agree or are critical of her, which is illegal because she is an elected official and is using the account in an official capacity. She has taken time to make a really swell campaign video walking down the street packing her Glock because this is her right as an American.

All of this in two weeks. I’m so proud of her.

Let’s see what she can do in the next two weeks. It would be nice if it was something to positively benefit the people in the 3rd Congressional District, or at least articulate a plan and any ideas she might have to help her constituents who sent her there in the first place.

The campaign is over, get to work.  

Stanley Trulock

Glenwood Springs