A Real Free Speech Platform

 

So Facebook and X inform us that they have seen the light and will now be the free speech platforms they always pretended to be. No, no they will not. Don't fall for it Charlie Brown, don't believe Lucy when she says she won't pull the football away at the last second. The billionaires of social media say, “Trust us this time, because now we are sincere.”

How many times are we going to fall for this lie, because FB and X and all the others will never abandon their business priorities, which are to make money. That means data collection, profiling and shadow banning, at least to some degree, will never end. Those non free speech aspects are baked into those social media cakes. What's more, even if some benevolent billionaire did appear on the scene, sincerely trying to give us the means to overthrow their own oligarchy,(like that is really going to happen) what ever they give us would not be, could not ever be, the free marketplace of ideas that we so desperately need.

There are two reasons social media can never fill that role, regardless of the good intentions of some oligarch. For one thing, even if the social media platform is exempt from liability, there are still libel and slander laws that can and will be applied to individuals using the platform. Those kinds of laws will prevent the platform from ever becoming a truly free marketplace of ideas. Simply saying that some major corporation is ripping everyone off, or proposing an idea that might threaten billions of their dollars, would likely trigger a lawsuit. Given the bias in our courts toward those who can pay the fanciest lawyers, the original poster would probably lose in court, even if telling the truth. Thus many good ideas and legitimate complaints will never really be heard. Without some kind of exemption from such corporate lawfare, any “free speech” platform is a charade at best.

What's more, social media is more a popularity contest than a forum for discussing truth. Influencers are paid for generating engagement, so they are reluctant to boost some bright new voice which might woo away followers. Furthermore, social media provides no credible way of ascertaining what the general public really feels and thinks about an idea, rather it merely shows us how adept some folks are at playing the engagement game.

Nonetheless, our self governing republic is still vitally in need of said free marketplace of idea, We haven't had one for more than a hundred years, and as was noted in the 1920's, if we don't have a free marketplace of ideas, especially in the electronic media, it puts our entire way of life in jeopardy. We are more than a century down that path and our way of life IS in serious jeopardy. The decay is so far advanced that most folks don't even know what a truly free marketplace of ideas might look like. Thus, we eagerly embrace the weak counterfeits offered by our rulers.

There is a much better alternative, one we can adapt from the Ancient Greeks, and which has historically proven to greatly benefit society, being, in fact, the catalyst of an actual Golden Age. We can, by using our powers as citizens, establish a truly free public forum, ala Pericles, which will be unfettered by libel laws, and which will provide us a valid way of discerning the mind of the citizenry. It is called the Open Media. We can and should establish it by way of a constitutional amendment.

The Open Media Amendment

is a proposal to establish, via constitutional amendment, a national public forum on electronic media; The Open Media. No laws will be enacted on this forum, and no one will be elected to any office. The only purpose of this true public forum is that the voice of every person can be heard, and that the public gets to decide who gets more opportunities to be heard.

Two aspects of The Open Media ensure that it will be a true public forum. First of all, everyone will have an equal opportunity to participate (be heard and seen) on an unedited, uncontrolled live webstream forum. Second, everyone who is a part of the audience in that area gets to vote on the participants, and those participants who receive a majority vote get another opportunity to appear on the local forum.

The national forum structure will resemble the structure of some mythical national high school basketball tournament. Local forums would have winners and losers. The losers go back in line to await another turn while the winners get another chance on the live forum, with another vote each time. The one getting the most votes locally goes on to the state forum.

On the state forum the same rules hold. Winners get another chance, losers don't, and the one receiving the most votes goes to the national forum.

The national forum is where this could get truly revolutionary. Live, unedited and uncontrolled citizens, having already won the approval of millions of people in their home states, addressing the entire nation, with the people as a whole freely deciding who gets more time on the forum. Abusive oligarchs, corrupt politicians and many stripes of evil doers will tremble when this gets going.

That's the basic concept.

Obviously, it has to be established by ratifying a new amendment to our Constitution.

That would first of all be the way to pay for it, which would not have to be exorbitant. Web sites for each locale with boilerplate software with which to administer the forums. The real cost would be the servers, but that would still be minimal in this age of exploding information capabilities.

The other reason The Open Media must be established by constitutional amendment is to provide an exemption, for those speaking on the forum, from libel and slander laws. This would be much like the exemptions members of congress have when they are speaking on the floor of the legislature. Such exemptions will ensure that the discussion is completely free, and therefore truth seeking. In this way we can prevent the wealthy from using lawfare to silence our voices.

In the end this is absolutely the best way we could use our information technology. Ironically, even though folks might have to get dragged to it initially, overcoming their long nurtured apathy, the national forum will likely become the most popular show in history. Think of it. Kind of like American Idol and similar shows, only with serious political and cultural issues. The idea is really quite simple:

===============

Amplify the free voice of the American people, and let the

free mind of the American people decide whose voice is further amplified.

This kind of ordered liberty is in the finest American tradition, and will do more than just provide a way to hear every voice. Since we would finally have a credible means of discerning what the citizenry actually thinks, (giving the public a real hand in forming public opinion) it could become an objective cultural touchstone which could then enable us to find our way back to some form of national consensus. Then we would no longer be subject to our present debilitating national cacophony of confusion.

There are many details to be worked out and obvious objections to be overcome with this proposal, most of which are addressed in this much longer blog article.

https://lifeinafascistcountry.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-open-media-amendment.html

The best way to proceed in organizing this movement, in the opinion of one who does not know how to organize a drinking contest at a frat party, is to respond by commenting on this blog, or the linked blog, or send an email to

ComradeAmerica2@yahoo.com

please include an email or other contact information

Any suggestions for further organization will be welcomed and considered

Enslaving America

 

American society is increasingly coming under the domination of a foreign power, to be named shortly, which is using a complex yet subtle scheme to colonize and eventually enslave us. This innovative, complex scheme has one glaring weakness, which should give us hope, in that this scheme requires the unwitting cooperation of the American people in their own demise. Let's take a close look at what's going on because the media, which should protect us by providing this analysis, has long since abandoned their role as watchdogs for we the people.

First, let's look at the historical schemes that have been used to enslave and colonize other nations. The most well known of these old schemes was the trans Atlantic slave trade triangle of the 16^th through 19^th centuries.

That triangle of trade started with acquiring slaves in Africa, buying them from the local rulers for rum and guns. Those slaves were transported to slave markets in the New World, usually in the West Indies. The owners of those ships, now empty of slaves, would use their profits from selling slaves to purchase sugar, which had been produced by slaves on the sugar plantations in the islands. The ships would then go to New England and sell the sugar for another profit. The owners would then use some of their profits to purchase rum (made in New England from the sugar) and guns. Then the ships would sail back to Africa's Slave Coast and trade for another shipload of slaves., That was the trans Atlantic slave trade scheme in a nutshell.

In similar fashion, many nations had colonization schemes, schemes which survived the end of formal colonization and became the basis of Neo-colonialism. These schemes involved the colonized nation sending raw materials (cotton, minerals from mines, grains, etc) back to the home country, and then the home country selling finished goods back to the colonized nation. In the time of formal colonies, the mother country appointed a viceroy, or governor (with an armed force at their command) to keep the laws favoring the mother country in place and enforced.

In our Neo-colonial times, the mother countries allow nominal independence, but through force of arms ensure there is always a cooperative ruler in place who keeps the Neo-colonial scheme operating efficiently. These schemes are still operating profitably worldwide, with China being added to the list of colonizer nations, especially with its use of debt trap loans to developing nations.

Speaking of China, that is the foreign power which has set up the sophisticated scheme to colonize and ultimately enslave America. Their scheme involves some of that tried and true Neo-colonial stuff, with them selling us finished goods in exchange for our raw materials, but it goes way beyond that simple arrangement. First of all, that aspect of the scheme works only because they have gotten (bribed?) many of our officials to not enforce the trade agreements we made with China, such as allowing our companies access to their markets in the same way we allow their companies to access our markets. The CCP (Chinese Communist Party) simply makes it impossible for most American companies to trade there, and those that are allowed to can do so only after surrendering technological secrets to the CCP. So they sell us finished goods, and we sell them raw materials and trade secrets. This is colonizing in action, but it gets worse.

That basic Neo-colonial setup has an added layer. Once those Chinese businessmen have all those profits, they like to store their wealth in what is considered the safest place on Earth, the highly inflated American housing market. That's right, they use their ill gotten gains to buy houses and lands in America.

Disregarding the security concerns of this trend, consider how well this use of profits serves their long term economic interests. With some very expensive houses in their hands, they lobby, through paid agents, to secure that wealth by preventing the building of low cost housing. They lobby zoning boards (with wealthy and middle class Americans fighting along side them), always emphasizing the importance of maintaining high property values.

Thus, just like the cooperative rulers of Neo-colonial states, or the rulers of slave trading African nations, many middle class Americans unwittingly betray their people's best interests by working to ensure property values stay excessively high. That is how we are participating in our own colonization, because it is those excessively high property values, resulting in ridiculously high rent and mortgage payments that is making it impossible for American workers to live on a wage that is competitive with Chinese workers.

Chinese companies continue to get the manufacturing jobs, ensuring they get the profits and the wealth. They then recycle that wealth back to America in a way that ensures America will never be able to compete with them in manufacturing. That is the part that resembles, and in fact improves on, the traditional Neo-colonial mercantilism of the past century

But it gets much worse, because our national degradation and eventual enslavement is the ultimate goal. Consider how the ridiculously high cost of housing effects our culture beyond the fact that it renders us noncompetitive in the international manufacturing economy. Young people are finding it almost impossible to ever own a house in many parts of the nation. In California and other states, if you are middle class and don't inherit a house, you have no chance of ever buying one, of ever getting out from under excessive rent.

Because of the resulting economic strain, many exceptional young people, seeking to eventually become responsible parents, put off both marriage and conceiving children until much later in life than nature intended. Typically, the elite among modern women and men want to get high dollar careers going first. Then that first child is scheduled for the late twenties to early thirties. Scheduled !?!!

That delayed and sublimated drive to reproduce often leads to promiscuous premarital sexual activity, and that commonly results in developing deviant sexual appetites,(not to mention legitimizing abortion). This twisting of the reproductive drive into deviant sexual lifestyles results in an ugly symbiosis with socialism. Those given over to various expressions of sexual deviance will likely never produce healthy families and thus they will become supporters of big government socialism. That is because government, not family, will become the financial pillar they depend on as they grow older.

A similar decline into sexual deviance and moral depravity seems to afflict many of the less exceptional young people, those who might, in other times, have lived on low wage jobs. Those jobs are not, these days, widely available due to offshoring of jobs and large scale illegal immigration. These are the fellow Americans we see living homeless on our streets, often given over to levels of degradation never before witnessed. Sadly, they sometimes seem like true zombies.

Worse, so many of the “good” people don't see them as deserving of any sympathy or support, but rather consider them just another example of how contemptible we Americans have become. Such degraded people also become both dependents and supporters of big socialism. The looming possibility of enslavement should be obvious in this scenario. Certainly, many, if not all, socialist nations have shown a willingness to engage in slave labor and thereby punish those they deem “social parasites.”

Meanwhile, Boomers, and many others, have blindly prioritized the monetary value of their property over the well being of fellow humans. They seem loath to do anything which might revive the empty life possibilities of the young. Neither do they do anything to revive the eroding work ethic in our populace. Mostly they just complain about that.

For their part, many of the young have come to see the American dream as a cynical joke they will never share, and to quietly contemplate geriatricide (new word- means killing the elderly) when the time comes after the economy has gone bad. The sentiment to allow the elderly to simply die of neglect when resources get scarce is going to be hard to resist given the indifference the elderly have shown to the plight of the young.

Thus our greed, our blinding obsession with property values, has caused us to allow our industrial base to collapse, our birth rates to decline past sustainability, huge numbers of our populace to suffer intense degradation, our generations to become hate filled toward each other, and millions of us to be attracted to the dubious charms of big socialism. We have thus become ripe for conquest and enslavement.

Greed, the main driving cause of our moral and social decline (there are other lesser causes, such as lust, debauchery, substance abuse, turning from the Gospel, etc) remains ignored by us and weaponized against us by the greatest enemy we have ever faced. We can easily beat the Mandarin class of China, the CCP, at this game, but it will require a change of heart on the part of our national winners, those who have achieved the so called American dream. It would require them to care more about living breathing Americans than they do about their 401-k's, their stock portfolios and especially the value of their real estate holdings.

The odds against that change of heart actually happening are akin to the odds against a camel passing through the eye of a needle. Maybe what we really need is some good old fashioned teaching, preaching and prayer about this. Sincerely turning to the whole Gospel, not just the comfortable parts. Good luck with that though, with so many Elmer Gantry clones in the pulpits of our churches.

Finally then, the bottom line hope and prayer must be that the church in America will once again become the representation of Jesus Christ on this Earth, and fervently seek a just and righteous society. It will probably take a major crisis to get to that point, akin to the kind faced by Israel in the time of Nehemiah 5:1-13. Read it to understand. That is indeed a slim hope, but it is still hope.

May God save America. Please.

Breaking the Sound of Silence

 

“The Sounds of Silence” is a haunting song by Paul Simon, one of America's premiere songwriters. Sadly, it has proven to be prophetic because in modern America, the sounds of silence have become deafening, with almost no coherent discussions about anything. While the causes of this widespread failure in communication are many, varied and largely unidentified, one cause can be identified, and remedied. Much of the chronic dysfunction around how we discuss corporate policy grew out of the legal doctrine of corporate personhood, which should give us hope because that doctrine can be reversed and corporate personhood ended.

In a recent interview with Tucker Carlson, Sean O'Brien, President of the Teamsters Union opened up about his basic strategy for dealing with hostile business owners. He said that he uses strikes to bring them down to where they will engage in an honest conversation about their business; how it depends on workers, and how the workers must have a decent life, touching on issues like wages, working conditions and benefits, such as health insurance and pensions.

The strike is a way to force the owners to have that healthy conversation, and once they do, the company emerges stronger, with higher productivity and steady profits. That kind of union action is not intended to break the company, but rather to put it on a healthier basis, which starts with a good conversation.

Along the same lines, Erin Brockovitch, she of movie and lawsuits against corporations fame, was once heard in an interview stating that she knew some corporate executives who agreed with her concern about the environment, but that in the boardroom they never voice those concerns because in that room their only role is to increase shareholder value. Another example of the sounds of silence.

The way these instances relate to corporate personhood is that, as O'Brien states, businesses will enter into productive conversations only when their profits are threatened. What's more, it would only be when the very existence of a corporation might be threatened, by revoking their charter, that the wider community issues, such as environmental harm and cultural destruction will gain a hearing in corporate boardrooms.

To understand why revoking corporate personhood could be so important, we must step back and examine why our society chose to allow incorporation to begin with. The easiest way explain it is to focus on what is known as LLC, or Limited Liability Corporations. Say, for instance, someone in 1850 wanted to build a railroad. This is a good thing for society, as it enables people and goods to move more rapidly, across greater distances and at less cost than by using horse based transportation. However, the liability that might attach to a railroad, such as if a train would derail in an urban area with great loss of both life and property, caused folks with a lot of money to balk. The kind of folks who could finance a railroad and gain those benefits for society tended to shy away from such investments because a single accident could cost them their entire fortunes.

Enter the LLC. With a Limited Liability Corporation, the investors are liable only for the amount they have invested, not for their entire personal fortunes. This makes it to where some of those rich folks will invest in the railroad, and consequently it gets built. Sure, they make a lot of money, but the entire society benefits, so some legitimate profit is not denied or resented. That is why we as a nation chose to allow incorporation.

Back before 1886, the states had some very creative ways of regulating corporations. Some states required open books, so the legislature could keep tabs on what they were doing. In some states one person was not allowed to sit on the board of more than one corporation. Corporations could not stray from their chartered purpose. Corporations could not own shares in other corporations, and in many states, corporations were not allowed to lobby the state legislature or contribute money to political causes. These and other creative regulations, along with the ever looming threat that outraging public opinion might provoke the political response of de-chartering any particular corporation, worked to reduce corporate greed and attenuate corporate abuse.

All that would be needed to go back to that healthier mode of corporate existence would be to revoke the doctrine of corporate personhood. Since it was established by a simple court based proclamation in 1886, and not something like a constitutional amendment, we could revoke corporate personhood by passing a law through congress and getting a presidential signature. Admittedly, it might be a little more complex than that, since we have entered in to so many international trade agreements, but if we decide to make this change, we can get it done relatively quickly..

Many so called conservatives will object that we can’t have the government intervening in the free market like that. Puhleez! That is the kind of incoherent babble that has brought this republic to the brink of collapse. The simple irrefutable fact is that allowing businesses to incorporate is an example of government intervening in the free market to begin with. With corporate personhood in place, the government helps to create these beings, these artificial beasts, and then just lets them loose on the landscape with virtually no state regulation, to maraud and exploit the people and the earth.

In the book, “The Gangs of America”, (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, San Francisco, 2003) Ted Nace writes,

“”Sociologists call the 1897-1903 period ‘the corporate revolution’. But we have seen the real corporate revolution took place over a longer period, roughly from 1850 -1900. During this revolution, larger corporations did not merely come to dominate the American economy. More significantly, the legal structure defining the corporation as an institution was fundamentally altered. A century earlier, the framers of the American system of government had attempted to devise a ‘containment vessel’ for corporate power: the state issued charter. Now that system was completely disassembled and replaced with another whose goals were the exact opposite- as though the steel bars that had formed a cage were melted down, recycled, and used to create a suit of protective armor instead. Rather than protect democracy from corporate power, the legal system increasingly shielded corporations from legislative power.”

By revoking corporate personhood, we would metaphorically be melting the metal from that shield down, and recycling it, to once again build an effective containment vessel for that beneficial corporate power. To go back to the previous metaphor, after the government aided in the creation of these beasts, instead of allowing them to run wild over the landscape, ending corporate personhood would ensure they would be put on a strong short leash, and the handle of that leash would be put in the control of our communities.

The political philosophy behind revoking corporate personhood is simple, valid, and hard to argue against. In the first place, incorporation is a privilege granted by the community, through the power of government, to groups or individuals because they run or propose enterprises which will benefit the community. If the people of the community come to see that the enterprise is not benefiting the community, they have every right to revoke the privilege that they granted. They can demand that the legislature either enact new regulations of that enterprise, or revoke its charter.

With the advent of corporate personhood, wrongly declared in an 1886 Supreme Court case, Santa Clara County v Southern Pacific Railroad (118 US 394), virtually all state and local regulation of corporations came to be seen as unconstitutional. This was because when corporations were declared to be persons, they came under the 14^th Amendment's provision that all persons must receive equal treatment under the law. For instance, you couldn't ban corporations from lobbying congress unless you banned all persons from lobbying congress. Other similar state regulations suddenly became unconstitutional. In short, the amendment which was ratified to ensure that recently freed slaves would receive equal legal treatment was used instead, (while mostly ignoring the plight of Black people) to ensure that corporations could operate with impunity.

In a post corporate personhood nation, corporate abuses, such as greed and profiteering, paying too low of wages and charging too high of prices, environmental and social abuse, monopolistic practices, and the like could be met with strong community responses, We could match those creative corporate policies of exploitation with creative regulatory plans of our own, and this time we wouldn’t have to play the game of “Big Brother May I“ with the federal courts to get their permission (usually denied) to do so. The creativity of the corporations could be matched and checkmated by the human creativity in our communities. This would put the relationship of corporations to communities back on a more even keel, a healthier basis.

What’s more, the power states would have to de-charter corporations that had outraged public opinion would also function in a soft power mode. Once such de-chartering had happened once or twice, both the public and the corporate owners would take notice. Decision makers in the corporations would know that there was a line that must not be crossed, but no one would know precisely where that line was drawn. The happy result would be to motivate the corporations to be much more self policing when it came to possibly abusive schemes.

To engage another analogy, consider the tables where these issues are negotiated. In our current mode, with corporate personhood protecting corporations against public influence, the table usually has just two sides, and two seats. It is management v workers, or corporation v government, or environmentalist v corporation and/ or government. In all those instances, if the conversation happens at all, it is a very narrow and limited discussion, usually centered almost entirely on money.

In a post corporate personhood nation, the table is much larger, and it is round. We come to this negotiating table not as management, or worker, or environmentalist, or parent, or consumer. Instead we come as equal, and equally concerned, citizens, and the conversation is about how we can charter some new corporation, harness some new technology or regulate an ongoing enterprise in a way that fits in with and enhances the entire community. What's more, in that mode there doesn't have to be a strike, or boycott, or lawsuit to initiate the conversation. Since any corporate charter could be revoked at the will of the community, the conversation would be never ending.

In the Tucker Carlson interview, Mr. O'Brien lamented the lack of affordable housing. Areas of Boston that previously housed union workers are now out of the financial reach of most workers. At that round table of community regulated corporations, the subject of worker housing would always be on the table, especially if it involved any corporate housing developments. In other words, at that round table, every aspect of current and future community well being would be on the table. That is the kind of thinking that we used to have, that we should have, and that we can have again.

By ending corporate personhood we can once again have those holistic, whole community focused conversations. At long last we, in our communities, could once again find our voice and the sounds of silence can be broken.

Resist Tyranny: abolish Fed Ed

 

The Federal Department of Education is deeply un-American and must be abolished. Federal control of education is inherently tyrannical because any central government has a vested interest in keeping the populace ignorant. We know this deep in our bones, which is why the semi regular triumph of conservative politicians is always accompanied by a solemn promise to abolish the Department of Education. With equal regularity, just like Charlie Brown, Lucy, and the football, the first policy of the incoming administration is that actually abolishing it was never really going to happen.

Not this time. 2024 is not going to be like 2016, or 1980, or any of the other times Republicans promised to end federal education and didn't. This is the perfect issue, and it has come, this time, at the perfect time. This time around, due to the Covid experience, the nation is much more wary of encroaching tyranny and preventing tyranny is why abolishing the Department of Education is such a timely idea.

Education is clearly, after the military, the most important lever a wanna be tyrant has to control. Central government having control of education is the one essential ingredient needed to maintain a long term tyranny. They must be able to teach the young their lies. That's why it is so disturbing that Republicans have been curiously unfaithful about this one promise, and the party as a whole has, once again curiously, not called them to account for this unfaithfulness.

Whether it is Democrats or Republicans, it seems that all federal officials continue to stubbornly insist that this one ingredient, the one ingredient essential to the erection of any potential federal tyranny, remains available in the federal pantry. This certainly does not prove that some kind of tyrannical structure is already in place but it leaves that possibility open. It does seem rather foolish to just hang around in this particular political situation, flirting with despotism. What are we doing, just waiting for the right “One” to come along, pick up that tool of tyranny and use it ?

This is just Civics 101 people. Of course the central government, especially if it is corrupt, has a vested interest in dumbing down the people. Don't let the feds control education! If they do, the people are easily oppressed. The Founders would, literally, get sick to their stomachs if they learned we have allowed a federal department of education to even exist ! They tried to ensure the distant, unaccountable central government would never get its' filthy hands on any part of public education. All the feds are supposed to do is encourage education from afar.

Our system of government is very complex, so we citizens must be educated to know how to run it well. Since around the time of the creation of the Department of Education in 1979, civics education has declined to near zero, while civil engagement and general civility have faded from the public square. Our educational standing in comparison with the rest of the world has steadily gone down in this time period. It seems as though we have been getting dumbed down, maybe on purpose, ever since the federal government started having some control over K-12 public education..

Our educational system has been crumbling around us while we are spending two to three times as much, per pupil, as other developed nations. The federal economic assistance to education comes to about a tenth of most local education budgets. Losing that tenth would leave most places still spending more per pupil than other nations who get better results. Without those attached federal mandates, innovation would undoubtedly blossom while outcomes and results improve.

Let's get real here. In this time of quantum and exponential growth in information technology, how can education, which is essentially just the imparting of information, be such a big, expensive problem?

Looking at it objectively, it appears the high cost of big education, with all the attendant specialized supervisory staff, is due to the fact that it costs a lot more to indoctrinate children than it does to educate them. Especially, as might be true in some cases, when you are indoctrinating them against the values of their parents, while they are still living in their parent's homes. That caliber of indoctrination probably does take a lot of funding.

Much of the resistance to devolving the powers of education back to the states resembles the alarmist warnings against home schooling decades ago. “Without government control, parents will mis-educate their own children,” we were warned.

Those fears proved to be baseless and overblown. We will find that returning control of education to local communities and the families who compose them will likewise not be the horror show the big education types are warning of. In fact, we can realistically expect our educational outcomes to improve from day one after making this change.

We should probably investigate some of the indoctrination that has gone on, it have been criminal. However, before going too far down that path, we should first obviate any such potentially tyrannical agenda by simply abolishing the Federal Department of Education. That is the one proven, historical way to ensure that no tyrant can gain control over the education of the children.

What's more, Civics 101 again, that local level, with parents in charge of education, is the one level of government that has a long term vested interest in teaching the children to be strong, self governing citizens. Imagine what we could do these days, even in localities with limited resources, if we creatively used high tech to teach those traditional American values to our children.

Finally, abolishing the Department of Education is the perfect issue at this time because it can lead the way for a whole raft of other issues which are ripe for federal devolvement. Successfully navigating the devolving of education back to local control will demonstrate that a more general devolving of powers from the federal government, back to states and locals, is both feasible and attainable in a regular, orderly manner.

We can confidently anticipate that once local communities gain control of education, results will improve and costs will go down. It is just in the nature of the technology once set loose from artificial restraints.

With the success of localizing education, the cultural diversity of our nation will likely assert itself, and with that rise in local identity a vibrant consciousness of self government might arise, encouraging even closer compliance with constitutional strictures and then even more awareness of the duties and powers of citizenship. Wash, rinse, repeat. A positive upward spiral of synergy, of liberty, might consequently be re-ignited.

So we call on our conservative leaders, especially President-Elect Donald Trump. It is time to keep this long denied promise.

Abolish the Department of Education.

Confirm RFK Jr. to HHS

The nomination of Robert Kennedy Jr to the office of Secretary of Health and Human Services could help move this nation in a very good direction when it comes to health, not to mention it proves we were well advised to elect Donald Trump President. Keeping his word on MAHA is a very big deal.

Robert Kennedy Jr. simply seems to be the most informed and seemingly well intention-ed advocate for the vigorous health of the America people on the current national stage. Some try to slur him about vaccines, but their accusations ring hollow. When you listen to his expansive erudition on the subject you realize that slur, even if slightly true, is at worst a tiny wavelet compared to the veritable tsunami of knowledge and dare we say it, wisdom, he brings to the discussion about our national crisis of chronic disease. With his proven record as an activist lawyer, we can expect him to be as good as his word, and sincerely work to improve our national health.

While Big Pharma, Big Money, and just about Big everything will surely resist him, and be aided (after his confirmation) in their resistance by the most sluggish, sly, corrupt and disobedient bureaucracy in the history of failing empires, it won't really matter. Once in office Secretary Kennedy will probably prevail, since he will, at long last, have the weapons at hand with which to slay some real dragons, and he seems to have a good idea of how to go about it.

When Secretary Kennedy announces some obviously beneficial policies (as I think, hope and expect he will) more than the 51% of the people who voted for MAGA, (it will become more like 75%) will begin to clamor for rapid implementation of the new rules. Many, especially those who are already clients, will appreciate and know how to make use of the Secretary's latest edicts.  All of which is to say that even though once in office Secretary Kennedy will still face fierce and formidable bureaucratic opposition, it could realistically be overcome because the bureaucracy will face pressure from both above and below.

Probably the central malfunction in our system of government for the last seven or so decades is that we have gotten trapped between two permanently competing but completely moribund political coalitions. Our vaunted two party national divide. Some coordinated political moves by Donald Trump and Robert Kennedy Jr. combined to break that trap by reintroducing true coalition politics to our electoral process. This new/old way of doing politics will tend to give more power to smaller voices, and put a premium on debate and persuasion. So Kennedy's 2024 campaign has already resulted in an improved American political dynamic.

Even before he joined with the Trump campaign, many people on both sides regarded Kennedy as a good, but impossible to elect, second choice. Almost every one who listened to him thought he should be named to head HHS. In a lot of ways, we should think of it as though Robert Kennedy Jr. is still running, only this time for President of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Anyone who thinks he would make a good president of that department has one more chance to vote for him, and that is by writing a letter to each of your senators telling them your opinion. All it will really take, if we are being honest about our partisan paralysis, is for a lot of well meaning, health minded progressives to drop their unthinking resistance to every aspect of the incoming administration. Especially if you are dyed deep in the wool blue living in a sky blue state. Any word from you in favor of Mr. Kennedy's confirmation will carry tremendous weight.

I know for a fact that there are many health minded people in the progressive movement because I used to be among your number. Now I'm a health minded conservative. If we can get all of us health minded Americans, from all sides, supporting the Kennedy nomination, the overwhelming influence of Big Pharma might actually be overcome. We all know, and have known for decades, that Big Pharma must somehow be taken down a peg or two.

These senators are under heavy pressure from their Big Pharma and Big Food donors to reject his nomination. The only way to overcome that pressure from above is even greater pressure coming from below. Everyone, and that means every ding dang one of us, has to contact their senators.

So it has come to this, our true moment of revolution.

At this time, we the people must make our voices heard in the halls of congress. Anyone who is already convinced by having heard Mr. Kennedy speak regarding health, nutrition, and chronic disease, it is time for you, for once in your life, to send an actual letter to your senator. Both of them in fact, because all senators will vote for or against his confirmation.

For those of you who have never heard him speak to the issues, by all means find some of Robert Kennedy Jr.'s speeches online. I am confident most of you will come to agree with almost everything he says. When you do find yourself in agreement with him, then you also, for once in your life, should make your voice heard in the halls of congress. Write a senator or two.

Finally, let me further emphasize this point. Actually writing a letter (call, text, FB, email, X whatever, Make contact !!), at this time, on this one issue, is probably more important than any vote you have ever cast or will ever cast. There are some terrible and powerful forces arrayed against Mr. Kennedy, undoubtedly among the most evil forces in history, well known to the Kennedy family. This is a real chance to defeat them, possibly the first and last chance we will ever have. If what Mr. Kennedy espouses is true, and it sounds logical and feels true to me, then we absolutely must reverse the chronic decline of our nation's health if we are to survive. Happily, Robert Kennedy Jr. is just the person to get that reversal accomplished.

Getting him confirmed gives us the first real hope we have ever had that we might get out from under the thumb of Big Pharma. Kennedy's only real protection against the onslaught of evil he faces, and thus his only real prospect of confirmation, is us; our prayerful, collective, vigilant, intentional and active participation as citizens of this blessed nation.

Write a letter. Confirm RFK Jr to HHS.

How 2 Undivide U.S.

 

I woke up with a sudden realization about our dire, and worsening, national problem of division. Considering we are supposed to be the United States of America, this problem of becoming ever more divided is a serious threat to our national existence. We will fall if we can't get past our great divisions and reunite as a people.

This flash of insight came, as such flashes often do, as a result not of bad pizza, but rather from a couple of things I watched last night before going to sleep, and which fermented in my mind all night.

Today is October 17, 2024, and last night I watched Brett Baier interview Kamala Harris on Fox News. She brought up the problem of divisiveness, and rhetorically laid it all at the feet of the ugly, insulting words spoken by Donald Trump. While former President Trump does say some things that deeply offend some folks, I remember divisive words uttered by Democrat presidents and leaders long before that. For instance, in 2008 presidential candidate Barack Obama describing (in what was supposed to be a private meeting) conservative mid-westerners as “bitterly clinging to their guns and bibles.” That was divisive and insulting speech long before Trump entered politics.

After watching and digesting the interview, I slipped a DVD in to watch a movie, as is my habit many nights. Last night I watched “God's Not Dead 4, We the People.” Good movie.

One of the points this pro-home-schooling movie made was that one of the major reasons many Christian parents choose to home school is because the public schools insist that the children be taught moral relativism. That is the notion that there is not really any objective right or wrong.

I laid down with these ideas swirling around in my sleepy brain, and snapped awake this morning with a certain understanding that I had discerned the cause of our growing national division. It is not some politician hurling some vile insults. We have always had those, and never let them so divide us before. No, our great division has obviously grown out of the moral relativism which our children have been indoctrinated with lo these many years; at least thirty years by my reckoning, maybe more like fifty. This mindset divides us at the molecular level of society, causing each individual to be in it for themselves, answerable only to whatever rationalizations they concoct to justify their actions. This individualistic divisive mindset prevents almost any unifying sentiments from ever gaining traction.

This is a great crime we have allowed to be perpetrated on our young. In ancient Israel, in the various episodes when things were falling apart, one of the signs of total social collapse was that “men did that which was right in their own eyes.” In other words, they embraced moral relativism, and radical individualism, as both a cause and effect of national decline.

Our case is worse, because at least those ancient Israelis started out with objective moral standards, which they then rebelled against. Our young people seem to not even be aware there is such a thing as objective morality, (or think the concept is laughable) and are thus rendered almost incapable of the cultural unity necessary for self government. It is kind of like trying to make rice crispy squares, leaving out the marshmallow needed to hold the treat together, and wondering why, no matter how hard you press them, the individual grains won't stick together.

The one concept the young are taught as universally applicable is tolerance, amended by self esteem thinking, but that is not a glue to hold things together, rather it works as a sedative to allow us to feel okay about living in an increasingly crumbling society. If the next generations are going to sustain as a self governing republic they will have to do the hard work of finding some objective moral standard around which to adhere. They need to add some warmed marshmallows to the recipe to make the rice crispy squares edible.

While daunting, the task is not impossible because previous generations have dealt with the same problem, and came up with (more like inherited) a solution agreeable to all. We used to call it the “Golden Rule,” and it was taught in all our public schools. Simply stated, it goes like this. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

While at first blush this seems similar to the tolerance and self esteem taught these days, the difference between the two mindsets is profound. Tolerance and self esteem boils down to, at best, treat other people the way they treat you. So if folks are nice, be nice back. But if they are mean, it is okay to be even meaner back so as to stop them from being mean to you next time. With that philosophy guiding them, the gang and revenge violence so common today makes sense. Social life is put on a downward sliding spiral. One can often hear the young, in person and on the internet, justifying some random act of violence with the idea that the victim should not have said that, or been there, or should have known better. Thus our social matrix comes to resemble the world of Nietzsche's will to power. Whoever prevails must be the one in the right.

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” boils down to “treat other people the way that you would want to be treated if you were them.” With this philosophy as a guide, the status of the other person, not my own desire for self indulgence, becomes the guiding thought. Social life is thereby put on an upward trending spiral. The individual tries to treat people better than they were treated. Consideration, not just tolerance, (sincere consideration of others necessarily includes tolerance) becomes foundational, and then we have a built in basis to stand up for the weak and defenseless. With this basic attitude, this social glue, instilled in the young from their earliest days, it becomes possible to freely come together in unity.

So the young have some work to do, if they want to remain a free nation going into the future. Those of us who are older need to do some changing too. I remember, more than twenty years ago now when I was painting custom T-shirts. I made one that said, “Love your neighbor as yourself: it's not just a good idea, it's the law.”

I thought it was kind of clever, riffing on an old public service announcement about the speed limit. I happily wore it around the streets of Denver. A neighbor, a nice lady, a boomer like me, objected one day, asking “whose law?” Even though she was of an older generation, and had been educated with the Golden Rule, she had come to embrace moral relativism.

My response was that it is God's law, or stating it in a secular way, it is a natural law of the universe, much like the law of gravity. It can not be repealed, and is foolish to ignore. Which is why it has been taught, in various forms, in every culture on earth until these recent generations. Only in the last few decades has any culture moved away from this teaching, and now in our culture, as we reap the divisive whirlwind we have sown, we pretend to not understand how we have become so divided as a people.

The beginning to finding a remedy to our great cultural divisions is to reject the seemingly benign but actually slyly wicked idea of moral relativism, and once again embrace the basic moral foundation all great societies have always taught. Let us determine to do unto others as we would have them do unto us. It really is as simple as that, but that then brings up one last point.

I grew up with the idea that we should always vote and work for a better society, and that one way of voting is to realize we vote every time we spend a dollar. In our day we must also realize that we cast a vote for the kind of society we want every time we share something on the internet.

I am so disappointed in my fellow Americans about this, because, hard as it is to believe, no one ever shares any of my brilliant writings. Some like my stuff, and tell me so, but still no sharing. Why not?

I figure it is because those who like my stuff are not sure others will like it, so they keep it to themselves. It is like someone at a public meeting and the speaker calls for a show of hands of those who agree. Some courageous hands might shoot up, but many others are looking around to see what their friends are doing first. They will stand for the truth, but only if they think others will stand with them. They are not sure enough of their own ability to know the truth to bravely stand alone.

So if you think it would be a good idea for us to reject the teaching of moral relativism to the young, and instead we should once again teach them the Golden Rule, simply share this blog. If not, quit pretending to care about our great national divisions.

Obama right on this

 

Former President Barack Obama held forth in his typically inspiring way a while back at the Democrat National Convention. He recalled to our hearts the truth that we are a nation founded on political ideals, not on ethnicity. This IS our heritage, and this IS what makes us the exceptional nation.

When he went further however, and asserted that this heritage is why we all must come together, right now, and give power to the central (possibly global) government to solve our problems, he went too far. This is all overtly implied by his support of the Harris/Walz agenda and it is all way off the rails of historic American political thought. Rather than allowing some self anointed set of experts to concoct “solutions” which they then impose on the public, the American alternative is for us to return to the form of government, what I term Local Community Moral Self Government, with which we previously governed ourselves. Not only would this plan enable us to preserve our political ideals, but it is probably the only way we will be able to accommodate and digest the unprecedented cultural diversity we are facing (as President Obama also mentioned) and yet do it while maintaining those precious political ideals,

The Constitution frames and empowers a system of government which gives some very few, narrowly defined powers to the federal government, and then reserves all other powers to the states, or people generally. Much of the time that resulted in most powers of government being executed at the county and or local levels. The concept is that since any government exercises some powers, the closest, and hence most accountable level of government is the safest place to invest most of those powers.

By re-establishing these powers, the powers of Local Community Moral Self government, we would return to ourselves, in our communities, the powers to regulate corporations. We would also be returning to local communities the powers and responsibilities to deal with all the infrastructure, social, and medical issues that communities might face. This alone will restore much civic mindedness.

The most pertinent, to this discussion, reason for restoring LCMSG to modern America is that this kind of community self determination, with the limits set in the Constitution, is by far the most likely way for us to absorb, digest, and assimilate all the demographic changes we face. Our system was always designed to handle this kind of thing, we just never included everyone before. It worked great for the White people who were included the first time. And it will work for us all again, if we work the system the way it was designed to be worked.

When we get it up and running, all the animosities from the old world might still smolder, but instead of violent attacks, which the federal government is rightly empowered to prevent, the competitions between every ethnicity, religion, and culture will mostly boil down to a contest to see which cultural style produces the happiest, most prosperous, and contented people. That is a competition we should all want to join in, and when we do, and as a result learn much from each other, we will find we have developed a system that can actually solve some of our perennial issues. Which the Democrat party only (perennially) promises to deal with.

The Democrats remind me (and this is a generous analogy) of a big old Buick stuck in the snow on the side of a wintry road. The driver is pressing down on the accelerator while the tires squeal up a stinking smoke, spinning an ever deeper hole in the ice. The driver shouts out that they urgently have to get over to the other side of the valley, miles away, so no time to argue about how to do it, they continue to spin their wheels and get nowhere. .

The Democrats remind me of that Buick because even though their big government programs have never succeeded in solving the problems of poverty, family breakdown, homelessness, addiction, crime and violence, they continue to double down, proposing ever more of the same failed ideas. Are prices too high, impose price, and wage, and rent controls. Build more public housing crime centers. Continue to dumb down public education while increasing federal control of education.

Just like the driver of the stuck Buick, the only way they can imagine to make up for their past misuse of power is to misuse even more power. Obviously, the sound way to get the car unstuck is to first of all stop spinning the wheels. Maybe even turn it off, get out, and look the situation over. Then calmly back up out of the rut, and turn in a slightly different direction to go forward. Easy peasy.

In the political realm, the analogy would be to stop incessantly concocting new federal powers and programs to make up for previous failed federal policies. Instead, let us imagine how we can devolve the powers of government that were usurped by the federal government, and invest them (one sensible step at a time) back in the states, if not in the county and local governments.

Recovering Local Community Moral Self Government (LCMSG) will almost certainly move us toward unity, since every individual will be able to live their freest best life in the community they choose, be ensured a fair voice in that community, and also have the right to travel to other communities. That social environment is guaranteed to get the old “Melting Pot” of mutual cultural assimilation going again.

As we get our system of LCMSG going again, we will find that we have given ourselves the real power. Then we can see how we can actually achieve some of those goals, like health care for all, or a decent economic life for anyone willing to work for it. All of that and more can easily be achieved if we restore our republic, thereby restoring real power to local communities. If we can get back to that original system, and work the system the way it was designed, adding modern modifications as we decide to, we will find that we have put our government back on a short leash which we, the people, control.

Then, once the power to charter corporations is again in local community hands, we can put business, the corporate world, back on that same short leash of community accountability. Then we will find that many more of our healthy economic dreams can be realized.

Finally, with big business once again domesticated and serving the public, we can go a lot further in getting science and the entire industrial revolution on a shorter leash, ensuring that the advance of technology empowers the people generally, and is not miss-used to establish tyranny.

So then, having started with a word from Barack Obama, we come full circle to the coming election.

In this election, Americans are faced a with choice. Do we want to become just another district in a global governing coalition which is not elected, and which can exercise minute, unaccountable powers over individuals. Because that is where it honestly seems the Democrats (whoever is actually in the driver's seat over there?!) are taking us. While this over-seeing progressive force is usually benign, verging on benevolent, sometimes it can become hostile and draconian. If the system the Democrats are selling us in 2024, with its' un-elected candidate; open censorship; possible show trial atrocities in J6 hearings; coordinated, politically motivated lawfare against the prime challenger; selective enforcement of the laws; and the usual cover-ups of traditional family corruption were to accidentally become tyrannical, people would have no recourse short of armed rebellion.

The Republicans, in feeble response, are selling us a half assed rendition of old America, a hollow flag so to speak, because they are terrified of saying or doing anything which might offend the corporate sponsors. So nothing about corporate personhood, or a whole lot of other issues, is allowed for discussion. Which means that the version of America they are presenting is one which is still under corporate control. Corporatism, which I understand even Mussolini admitted is just another word for Fascism.

No THANK YOU VERY MUCH.!!?!

The republican message should be, but it isn't, that we should stop for a moment, consider how we are governing ourselves today, realize we are not using our system of government the way it was designed to be used, and realize that is what has gone so wrong. The obvious solution is the organic battle cry of all true republicans, “Restore the Republic.” Anyone who will not take up that battle cry is not, properly speaking, a republican, even though they might belong to a so called Republican party.

The reason this revival can work is that all the divergent groups that have been and are coming to America do so largely for one reason. They want to live in a nation dedicated to establishing liberty and justice for all. Sure, there are a few who come here for the wrong reasons, but the vast majority come here for the freedom.

Furthermore, and what is more, it is time for us to wake up and stop fighting the last war. In this case I am referring to the cultural wars, and warning that we must frame our ideals to appeal to the demographic of this nation at it is becoming, and not as it once was. If we want to revive our republic (I do, which makes me a republican) we are forced to do it with a much more diverse populace than we had the first time around.

The wonderful hope of this American moment is that such a re-founding of our political foundation is possible in this country precisely because, as Barack Obama says, our nation was not founded on any particular ethnic or racial basis. All can gather equally around that torch of liberty.

Another reason for sober hope is the fact that almost all of the newcomers, whether legal or illegal, really did come here looking to find freedom, often having little idea about the Constitution that liberty is built on. As folks learn for the first time, re-learn for the first time and seriously think about what Liberty entails, it is not unreasonable to expect that leaders will quickly arise in all the various American communities, old and new, who will recognize and be eager to seize the historic opportunity we all have, together, to get our system of government functioning properly again. This would greatly benefit all Americans and every community.

We can, if we are brave enough to see our way to it, be the new founders of a second American revolution. This still open window of opportunity is likely to close if Kamala Harris is elected, and especially so if the Democrats were to gain control of both the House and the Senate.

In that worst case scenario, the Democrat agenda of packing the court and eliminating the filibuster is back on the table. Combine that with the Progressive embrace of censorship, deep state politicizing of federal agencies, open borders and open voting, using government funded lawfare against political opponents, selective enforcement of laws against political violence, embracing international agreements which cede national sovereignty to an un-elected world government body, and many more depredations, and their complete control of the courts will give them control of all three branches of government. By using the powers just mentioned, whether legally or not, a potential tyrant could cling to power for decades if not centuries.

Not saying Kamala Harris is planning anything of the sort. I am saying a vote for Harris/Walz is a step toward a world where that scenario becomes more possible.