How to PROTECT DEMOCRACY

By Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan | Last updated: Mar 4, 2019 - 11:52:13 PM

[Editor’s note: The following edited text is excerpted from an Oct. 9, 2002 speech by Minister Louis Farrakhan to the City Council of Detroit, Michigan. To order this message in its entirety visit store.finalcall.com or call 1-866-602-1230, ext. 200.]

In The Name of Allah, The Beneficent, The Merciful.

What does democracy mean? The Founding Fathers of this country lived in Europe and they saw the error of government that they experienced. They wanted to frame a Constitution that would guard this nation against those things that they suffered in Europe. They did a pretty good job in what they wrote. In a democracy, where people have the right to choose their leaders, people lead with the consent of the governed. That means they (leaders) are not the masters; they are our servants.

Since we, the people, are the masters and those in government are our servants, how, then, do you take the nation from the people and put it in the hands of the so-called servant where the so-called servant becomes the master and the people become the slaves of the few rather than the masters of the few?

The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan

I don’t know about your house, but I grew up in a loving dictatorship. I never told my mother what I wanted for dinner. She told me where to sleep and what to sleep in. She prepared my garments for the next day. I had not the right of choice. She chose for me. There was no such thing as shopping for Christmas or Easter where I would choose my clothes. I would never have been able to walk with my jeans down on my backside and my underwear showing. I would never have been able to tell my mother to pay $150 for a pair of sneakers. My mother had a style for me; but she said that when I am old enough to bring some money in, then I could decide what I would wear.

What was she doing? She was putting in me a sense of values so that when I was old enough to make choices on my own, I would make the right choices. All we are in life is the result of what we choose and the consequences or rewards of our choices.

Democracy, which is the highest form of government that we know at this time, presupposes an enlightened electorate where you, the electors of those whom you will elect, have knowledge of what is in your best interest. Democracy presupposes that you are so enlightened, so intelligent, that you do not choose a candidate because he or she has a slick ad on television. The question for the candidate becomes, what do you propose that fits what I believe is good for my neighborhood, my ward, my city, my state, my nation?

But, how can democracy be saved when the electorate is being absolutely dumbed down—dumbing down the children, dumbing down the electorate? Corporate America is taking over newspapers, radio and television and managing what you see and what you hear. Corporate America is controlling how you think. The human masses have become like sheep—easily led in the wrong direction.

Why am I saying this? It is because the country is being taken from the people. The country is owned lock, stock and barrel by a few, to the detriment of the many. That’s why there is such a thing as campaign finance reform; it is because corporate America spends billions of dollars buying the votes of those who have been elected to serve the people.

A nation for all

You don’t know what (then newly- elected Black Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick) is going to face; and maybe he doesn’t know either. Once you sit in these seats, you see from a different perspective. We may come to these seats innocent and with a desire to serve. Then we run into the forces that we didn’t even know existed. Those forces try to shape us so that we will vote the way that is better for them, even if it is detrimental to the politician’s own constituents. If we want America to survive, we have to take back the government and make it a government of the people, by the people and for the people.

Look at the people that make up this nation. There is not another nation on the earth like this one. If you go to China, you would expect everybody in government to be Chinese. Go to India, everybody is Indian. Go to Japan, everybody is Japanese. But the whole world lives inside America.

Since the whole world lives here, all of us have helped to make America the number one superpower and the greatest economic and military power on earth. Therefore, American domestic policy should reflect the people that made her great; and American foreign policy should reflect her respect for all the peoples of the earth that helped to make America great.

The masses of the people know nothing about America’s foreign policy. The masses of the people only know that we elect our representatives in government. But there is a secret kind of government that works quietly and very effectively formulating how America will deal with the nations of the earth in our name. Do you want to know why people hate America; why people would be so blinded by their hatred that they would commandeer an airplane, driving it into the World Trade Center towers knowing that they would die and the innocent people on that plane would die and the innocent people in the World Trade Center would die? What kind of hatred so blinds a human being?

It’s not that they hate our freedom. Everybody wants to be free. What they hate are policies that the American people know nothing about that rob the peoples of the earth of their wealth, or their wealth is exploited to make life better for us in America at the expense of people over there. This is unjust.

President Bush (was) desirous of a preemptive strike on Iraq because he said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and the Iraqi hatred for us is such that they will turn these weapons loose on us. But, there were American news people in Baghdad right testing the mood of the people. Nobody was harming them. I went to the Middle East and talked to many Arab and Muslim heads of state. They all told me—even those that have agreements with America and Israel—that they didn’t want America to do this to Iraq. I asked them to speak with one voice and to say to the President of the United States, we do not wish for you to do this. One by one, they began to speak to our President, saying “no” to war.

A defiant America

But President Bush and his advisors seemed to be saying “no” to them. I warned the President in a letter that I wrote in December 2001, that if he continued his course of action, then he would lose the coalition in his war on terror. I said that his allies would turn against him. Europe now was saying, no, America, don’t do this. Turkey, which is a friend of America, said, I’m your friend, but, President Bush, don’t do this. Kuwait did not say yes to this; neither had Saudi Arabia; neither had the Emirates. All of the Arabs spoke at the Arab League with one voice and said no.

I think the president was on a wrong course. I really don’t think he considered what he was about to do. A preemptive strike on the assumption that there is a threat in Iraq would unleash the dogs of war all over the planet. America would have no more moral authority to say to Pakistan or India (nuclear powers with a tense common border) not to launch a preemptive strike.

China says Taiwan is hers, but Taiwan and America have a defense pact. If America made a preemptive strike on Iraq, what about China? President Bush said he wants a regime change in Iraq, but he had already named Iran and North Korea as a part of an “axis of evil”. What are they thinking now? If America made a preemptive strike on Iraq, do you think they won’t think they are next? What are they to do? Are they not now to seek weapons of mass destruction, too? This government has gone mad. When you allow insane people to lead you and you say nothing and do nothing, then you deserve the results of their insanity.

The president was defying the people. Let the people know the truth and then let the people have a referendum to determine if America should go to war. I’m asking the American people—White, Black and Brown; Muslim, Christian, Jew, Agnostic, Buddhist and Hindu, whatever comprises the electorate in America—to rise and not let madness destroy a great nation.

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