Hi. My name is Comrade America. America because I love this country: glorious triumphs, failures, warts, and all. Comrade because I passionately share one goal with the Marxists, which is that the progress of the industrial revolution should benefit all.
Let me back up a minute, and explain about Karl Marx. Born in 1818, he came of age in Germany and England around 1840, when the Industrial Revolution was at its ugliest. Families were torn apart by greedy industrialists lusting for power.
Marx's insight is that it was the coming of technology, not just great efforts by a few individuals, that has enabled humanity to gain such power. Instead of allowing the few to use technology to ruin the lives of so many, he reasoned we should find a way to use these wonderful machines to better the lives of all. This is true. We should ensure the blessings and bounty of the machine age accrues to all.
I immediately part company with Marx because he mistakenly concludes that the problem is capitalism. He says we should end free markets and have the state control the machines.
The problem is not capitalism, but rather it is elitism. Marxism doesn't solve that problem, it merely puts us under an elitist communist thumb. Elitism, thinking a small enlightened group should rule over the rest of us, has been a problem with all human societies and it is still a problem for us today. America's elitism is elitist capitalism, and it dominates our society. We are certainly not the petite capitalist society of small shopkeepers and farmers that the founders intended.
Since elitism is the heart of the problem, we should focus on ending it. In fact the system of government that had best rolled back the worst aspects of elitism was the United States of America; that is when we were complying with the Constitution as written. That is the form of government with which we might actually get a more equitable economy. That is why I say we should revive our republic, refound it actually, on the same solid foundation we used the first time.
Some will object to returning to what they call a failed system. However, the great stains on our national history (they are many and they are great) were not a failure of our system, but rather a failure of we, the people, to extend the privileges of liberty and equality to all the human beings living in our nation. That is the one mistake we don't want to repeat as we refound our nation.
A refounding it will be too. Our Constitution defines and empowers a system of Local Community Moral Self Government. The acronym is LCMSG and the book “Re-conceiving American Liberty, How and Why to Put our Nation Back Together” now available on Amazon and Kindle, explains it in depth. Two vital points from the book.
First of all when, not if, but when we return almost all the powers of self government to ourselves in our communities and localities, we must use that newly gained power in the right way, or we won't have it long. That right use of freedom is to forcefully insist that each of our local economies ensures that anyone who will make a decent contribution can build a decent, dignified and full life.
Don't whine about some libertarian pure free market. Such a thing has never existed. Not in the past, not in the future, and not now. All societies exercise some controls on the economy. These days most of the economic controlling is done in DC and New York, and the intent is to make sure the top one tenth of one percent continues to get obscenely wealthy.
We could have a better set of priorities, and more to the point, when we do get our liberty back, having that better set of priorities is the only way we will keep that liberty. If we allow our germinal local freedom (LCMSG) to quickly become corrupt and oppressive, we will lose it forever. But if we do take the plight of the poor into consideration when we decide how we will regulate corporations, develop commerce, regulate housing, and use all the other local powers we will fall heir to, then our republic might survive another two hundred years. This irrefutable truth, which many will try to dodge, is why I will continue to carry the Comrade America banner. It is absolutely imperative that we use our newly regained liberty to establish economic fairness (equal opportunity but not necessarily equal outcomes) for all or we will certainly fall.
The second point to make about LCMSG is that once we actually have the small local republics set up and operating we will discover anew the greatest blessing of liberty. This greatest blessing is that once people actually wield political power in their own localities, (with the localities small enough that individuals feel that they can affect local policies) then a positive synergy is set in motion in the hearts and minds of the people. In short, LCMSG tends to engender civic virtue in the people. It is only when people have real powers of self government, and exercise those powers within communities that must meet the natural challenges all societies must overcome that the synergy grows. Then the normal person starts to appreciate the challenges of governance and why to be moral. That is why small republics have long been noted for having citizens with strong republican virtues.
The genius of the American system of government is that we set up, with elegant checks and balances, a system of LCMSG designed to generate those republican virtues. At the same time, the federal government is to defend these small republics from foreign attack, and to prevent them from trying to conquer each other. But the overriding blessing remains the kind of people this system produces. That kind of people, with a heart for reform and forever raising our social consciousness, is a people equipped to handle any problem. It is the people we used to be. That is why we must put our nation back together.
A couple thoughts to throw out there in parting.
I think the reason the secular left continues to win the cultural wars, especially the hearts and minds of the young, is they offer a vision of the future; their so called workers paradise. It isn't attractive to me, and I think it is bogus to begin with because the rulers on the left have no intention of ever delivering on their vision. Nonetheless, it is a vision so it has its uses. A lot of left wing followers believe in it and are willing to sacrifice to achieve it.
The reason the left is winning on this score is because those on the right don't present any future vision at all. Without a vision the people perish. All they say is let's go back to some earlier version of America, but don't say much about the long term future, or how we Americans will affect the world if we are once again free. All the Christians say is pie in the sky by and by when you die. Not the stuff of a political agenda, hence not a political vision..
To fill this gap in the conservative wall, Comrade America presents this vision of LCMSG. We can not only renew and unite our nation, but by having our house in order we can inspire other nations to follow a similar path. We could bring about true and stable world wide peace.
Further, with that peaceful international order of free peoples, we might find the will to actually have a rational sharing of the land: Land Reform. By thus ensuring every person has a fair share of the planet we would effectively take land off the commodity market and enhance the long term bond between human beings and the planet.
Then, with LCMSG still up and running, and relying on that liberty engendered heart for reform and rising social consciousness, we can conceive of a world where we learn to live and garden this planet together. In this way we can use our political process to arrive at a day when we live in peace and unity with each other, and with the animals and plants. That is Comrade America's long term vision and I bring it up not as a short term goal, (so don't rip off your clothes and start trying to live on nothing but apples) but as a long term vision that meshes perfectly with our inherited American consciousness of self government. It is, moreover, a good counter to the equally distant and and far less likely Marxist vision of a worker's paradise. Where else do we want humanity to end up?
Finally, we must agree on a short term goal that will facilitate our medium and long term goals. There are so many issues facing our nation that it seems impossible to know where to begin, or how to proceed in reviving our republic. The first stage (the thing you can get involved with today) in this multi-stage revival of our republic is to establish a true public forum. I call it The Open Media. It is intended to amplify the free voice of the American people and empower the free mind of the American people to guide the discussion. This one change could enable us to solve all our other problems.
Lot more to say on this, but no room. Email comradeamerica2@yahoo.com to learn more.
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