HK,
I struggled to read this thread. Don't get me wrong but I agree with ConSigCor. I get the feeling that he has been battling darkness for far longer than me.

If I've been drinking the coolaid, I've been drinking it while living outside NY, Detroit and Los Angeles over more than 50 years. AND, I've traveled to/worked in roughly 50 countries over my lifetime. I just don't like Grape coolaid.

A democratic republic to my mind protects liberties better than a democracy. For instance, without an electorial congress, a politial group could work to control the largest states and inact laws whereby the rest of the states would have little or no say. A simple but effective check against tyranny. By the way, the founding fathers made this case.

Our educational system seems to have dumbed down our citizenry over the past 40-50 years. If nothing else, it has been teaching us collectiveism is better than individualism.

I see thing as what was normal on social issues when I was a kid, is now abnormal in the "unbiased" press and in the schools. Conspiracy?