Quote:State v. City of Tampa, 48 So. 2d 78 (1950) "Different species of democracy have existed for more than 2,000 years, but democracy as we know it has never existed among the unchurched. A people unschooled about the sovereignty of God, the ten commandments and the ethics of Jesus, could never have evolved the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. There is not one solitary fundamental principle of our democratic policy that did not stem directly from the basic moral concepts as embodied in the Decalog and the ethics of Jesus . . . No one knew this better than the Founding Fathers."
Wow. Talk about a bottomless pit of bullshit. One imagines that these fools never heard of Athens? The Greeks had participatory democracy centuries before the imaginary jesus was concocted.
Of course, we need not go back quite that far.
http://www.aren.org/prison/documents/Asa...ocracy.pdf
Quote:Like the British parliament, with its House of Lords and House of Commons, the US Congress was made
up of the House of Representatives and the Senate. But ultimately, the idea of a dual parliament came from
a blending of the customs of the Vikings, Nor-mans, and Anglo-Saxons. In fact, the world's first parliament
was held by Scandinavian settlers in Iceland in 930 AD. Nowhere was the Norse love of freedom better
expressed than in this rugged frontierland led neither by kings nor really any government at all, save for a
yearly gathering called the "Althing," at which laws were made, legal cases were heard, and business was
transacted.
However, the Norse influence on governance is felt in other rights that Americans hold dear, such as the
right to trial by jury. In Njal's Saga, one of the most detailed accounts of Scandinavian life, there are several
accounts of trial by jury dating from about 1000 AD, such as:
The Althing continued... Geir the Priest called upon Gunnar to hear his oath. Then he …led evidence
that notice of the charges had been given in the presence of nine neighbors, whom he now called upon to
take their places as jury
Though an Icelandic jury functioned more like a grand jury (i.e. determining if there was a case and if
complaint had been made according to the proper forms), the court only had the power to declare someone
an outlaw. Thus, we see it here being used solely as a practical way to administer justice.
The Vikings introduced these customs to England through treaties such as the Peace of Wedmore, which
was made between Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian rulers in 878 AD, which stated:
if a king's thegn (noble) be accused of manslaying, if he dare clear himself.. let him do that with 12
king's thegns. If any one accuse that man who is of less degree than the king's thegn, let him clear himself
with 11 of his equals and with one king's thegn.
