This is a bare bones version of the plan to save America. The unique and innovative perspective presented in this plan is based on the insight that the forms of government have a symbiotic relationship, for good or for ill, with the hearts and minds of the people. We have to deal here in sweeping generalizations simply because the whole plan, when taken in detail, fills a book. The book is titled, “
Available on Amazon and Kindle. Throughout this plan, to read the concepts in greater detail without having to buy a book or pay a fee, the reader will be referred to this blog site lifeinafascistcountry.blogspot.com., and then to specific blog entries by title and date posted. Go to the post “Fascism Defined,” 4-24-2013,
To get to it. Most of the Founders of this nation agreed that
our system of government will only work if the people are moral. Only a moral people will be able to sustain a
free and self governing society. The
other side of that coin is also vitally important, (even though no one seems to
notice it these days) and constitutes the basis of this plan. It is equally true that only a people which
is free and self governing, exercising the powers of self government in their
own communities, will realize the reasons to be moral. This is the great, and almost completely
forgotten, blessing of liberty.
When the common person, as an
individual in a community, has to honestly wrestle with the real world
challenges which confront all communities, they will come to recognize how
destructive immoral behavior is, and how beneficial moral behavior is. Sure, some will at first try to just
cynically change the behavior of others, but most will come to see that their
personal behavior must change first, and hence seek to become the very kind of
person who can maintain our system of liberty.
The system of Local Community
Moral Self Government (LCMSG) that the Constitution both defines and enables is
a structure of government which, when up and running, symbiotically establishes
a positive synergy between the hearts and minds of the people and their
government. That is the great blessing
and source of strength of American culture as founded. The systematic dismantling of that structure
is what has gone wrong with our nation.
Re-founding that same structure, while making sure to be sincere, this
time, about the “for all” part of “liberty and justice for all” is how to put
our nation back together. But of course, it won't be that simple or easy. Examining the three major steps taken to dismantle
our republic will show us what must be done to re-found it.
The first major salvo against our
republic, against LCMSG, was the May 10, 1886 Supreme court ruling Santa Clara
County v Southern Pacific Railroad (118 US 394) which was used to establish the
principle of corporate personhood. This
largely usurped the powers of economic self determination from the states and
localities in that it, by portraying corporations as persons deserving equal
rights under the 14th Amendment, rendered unconstitutional almost
all state and local corporate regulation.
To learn more, go to blogpost:
“End Corporate Personhood to Revive Conservatism” 5-10-2020
https://lifeinafascistcountry.blogspot.com/2020/05/end-corporate-personhood-to-revive.html
After this 1886 ruling,
interstate monopolies became powerful, and most importantly, because the court
would no longer allow the communities and states to regulate corporations, the
people started to feel that local and state governments were no longer
competent to solve many problems. So
they started to accept federal control in business, medicine, and other areas. The IRS, Federal Reserve, the FDA and other
problematic federal policies were born out of that mindset.
The second major attack on our
republic, on that precious culture generated by LCMSG, came about under the
administration of Franklin Roosevelt. By
1933, federal regulation of corporations had failed so badly, resulting in the
Great Depression, that FDR was able to usurp almost all the powers of social
governance, such as welfare and minute regulation of economic activity, from
the states and localities and into federal control. In essence FDR repealed the 10th
Amendment, taking the federal government out from under the limits put on it by
the Constitution. This greatly reduced
the need, felt in the hearts of the people, to maintain their own healthy
communities in order to meet their social needs.
To learn more, go to the
blogpost: “FDR Was a Fascist” 5-24-2022.
https://lifeinafascistcountry.blogspot.com/2022/05/fdr-was-fascist.html
After that , more and more power,
both political and financial, was consolidated in fewer and fewer hands until
it got to the point where President Eisenhower warned in his departing address
of a growing military-industrial complex coming to dominate our nation.
During that war and post war period the third major salvo against our republic, against LCMSG, was launched when the Supreme court ruled, in 1947 Everson v Board of Education (330 US 1) that the entire 1st Amendment was to henceforth be applied to the states. This was a totally wrongheaded blunder, and has led to the complete moral breakdown of our nation. This is undoubtedly the most controversial aspect of this plan to re-found our republic, to re-establish LCMSG, so rather than try to convince folks here, go to the blogpost: “Our 1st Amendment has Been Stolen” 7-28-2023.
https://lifeinafascistcountry.blogspot.com/2023/07/our-1st-amendment-has-been-stolen.html
That post starts the explanation, and does
have a live link to a complete explanation on another blogpost: “How the First
Amendment Was Turned Precisely on Its Head” 5-22-2023.
https://lifeinafascistcountry.blogspot.com/2023/05/how-first-amendment-was-turned.html
Moving on, and assuming the
reader at least somewhat agrees with this plan so far, we can now see how these
three major usurpations, and some of the minor changes that came with them,
have almost completely destroyed LCMSG.
In a process that began around 1886, the people, in their communities,
have lost the powers of economic, social and moral self government. These are almost all the real powers of self
government. The moral decline, the demoralization, this has engendered, and
which should concern us all, is not the result of laziness or stupidity on the
part of the people, but has instead been driven by some few flawed court
rulings (or non rulings). The hopeful
product of this analysis is that by reversing these flawed policies, we can
restore that positive synergy, that heart wisdom in the people about why to be
moral, that grows organically from a governmental architecture of LCMSG.
Before another word is written,
we must focus on that word “moral.” To
the disappointment of many Christian, and other religious leaders, in this
context it does not necessarily mean Biblical morality. What it does mean in this plan is that what
ever community a person would find themselves in, in a nation with LCMSG up and
running, the people of that community would come to be filled with what has
been termed “republican virtues” or what has also been called, “community
spirit.” That is, they would come to
embrace their community and its values, and work wholeheartedly to make their
chosen community work well.
With LCMSG there would be a wild
variety of community styles, from deeply religious and traditional, to
extremely modern and experimental.
Communities could enshrine whatever values free individuals, and those
they chose to gather with in communities of agreement, would choose (Within the
limits the Constitution does express in writing). We would all always be free, as individuals,
to choose whichever community we want to live in.
As an example of how this could
work, consider how San Francisco might look.
While we would no longer have the federal government mandating any moral
issues, Babylon by the Bay could, and probably would, still choose to embrace
all the LGBTQ agenda. There would, however, also no longer be federal monies to
pay for the negative outcomes of folks embracing what others think of as
immoral and unhealthy lifestyles. So
while they could still go their own way on this, the fact that they would have
to pay for those negative outcomes out of their own local pockets would
probably cause them to modify their stance.
What's more, the local citizens, who will always have a hand in forming
governmental policies, would sincerely work to follow whatever guidelines they
agreed on. They would tend to become
fervently moral, at least by their own definitions of moral.
To allay the fears of those who
would choose more traditional morality we must realize that they also would be
free to live in, and raise their children in, a community, a social environment
with which they agree and therefore wholeheartedly try to make work.
As we grow, if we can make these
reforms, we would be living in a nation with people strongly trying to make
their own communities better places to live.
What's more, because of that wonderful system of checks and balances
under the Constitution as written, these wildly diverse communities would not
be likely to come into violent conflict with communities which have very
different values. To further allay the
fears of Christian, and other religious traditions (Muslim, Hindu, Confucian,
Pagan, Native American, Secular Humanism, Atheism, etc, (We must consider America as it is, and what
it will become, not what it used to be)) we must realize that in the end, the real
competition between all the various systems of belief around which communities
might form will be to determine which belief system produces the most peaceful,
prosperous, and meaningful lives for its people. That competition could greatly benefit the common
people, and it is a competition I believe Christianity will win. What's more, and most importantly, individuals would always be free to choose another location in which to live, causing all the local governments to somewhat temper their excesses, knowing that empowering some kind of local oppression would not encourage long term community sustainability. Let's get to that point and let the best
belief system win.
So how do we make these reforms,
how do we re-found our republic and restore to ourselves that system of Local
Community Moral Self Government? It is
actually fairly simple, in theory.
The first and easiest reform
would be to restore the 1st Amendment to its proper use, which is as
a prohibition on the federal congress; it is merely a list of subjects they are
not allowed to make laws about. This
radical change would shake things up, but the people would quickly fill the
vacuum left when the federal government gets out of the business of moral
governance. We could easily affect this
change, but only if we really want to.
The second major reform would be
to remove the concept of corporate personhood from the courts. This one would be a little messier, because
we would first have to extricate ourselves, as a nation, from a slew of international
agreements which prevent any American branch of government from regulating
corporations. Additionally, once we
would regain national sovereignty over corporations, we would still want to
handle the transfer of such powers back to the states and localities with care,
because we would want to keep the markets as stable as we can to continue to
encourage investment. We definitely want
to do this though because at the end we would have a much healthier economy,
one with which we could more effectively pursue one of the original goals of
our government, that of promoting the general welfare.
One important point must be included at this juncture. The system of Local Community Moral Self Government which the founders gave us will give us a real chance to build ourselves into the kind of society we all want, with decent living for all, health care, peace, prosperity, justice and a secure future. On the other hand, staying with the elitist governmental structure we have been reduced to,(or most likely it will get even more elitist) will never accomplish that, because the elitists have too many reasons to never deliver on their lofty promises. To read about why elitism is so dysfunctional and so inevitably tyrannical, read the blog post
"Elitism and Tyranny" 2-22-24
https://lifeinafascistcountry.blogspot.com/2023/07/elitism.html
The third reform would not be as
delicate as the second, but would take a longer time. The best course of action, which essentially
would be restoring the 10th Amendment, would be a year to year
continuing resolution in Congress. It
would list all the programs and laws in the federal government which do not
have clear constitutional warrant to exist.
This is a huge list, since we don't even have any clear mandate for
things like national parks or forests, for federal involvement with medical
issues, or welfare, or education, or drug prohibition, or on and on. On a yearly basis we must demand that
congress wrestle with the items on the list.
Either identify where there is a constitutional delegation of that power
to the federal government, devolve that power back to the states, or create a
legitimate federal power in that area by ratifying a new amendment to delegate
it properly. After possibly a years long
(if not decades long) effort in this, we could hand to our descendants a
government which actually complies with the constitution as written and
amended. That would be a tremendous gift
to future Americans.
So that is the basic plan for how
to re-found our broken republic. It
should work, but let's face it, it can't work because we, the people have no
way to influence our runaway government to do anything along these lines. What's worse, because we truly are in a
fascistic system, the powers that be will be able to prevent us from even
talking about it among ourselves. So in
generating an actual feasible plan for re-founding our nation, it has been
necessary to take one step back and realize that there was another major aspect
of the original American republic which has been taken from us, which is that
we do not have a free marketplace of ideas in the press, or as it is called
today, the mass and social media.
This problem was not anticipated
by the founders, because they did not see, indeed they could not have seen, how
changes in information technology have enabled the wealthy to effectively gain
almost complete control of the means of communication and prevent a free
marketplace of ideas from existing.
Happily, the nature of our high tech communications capability empowers we, the people, to overcome this obstacle to our liberation. By creatively, and purposely using the media to our benefit, we can establish that proverbial free marketplace of ideas for ourselves. The way we can do this is to establish a true public forum on a national basis. This idea is presented in the blogpost:
“You Say You Want a Revolution” 7-28-2023,
https://lifeinafascistcountry.blogspot.com/2023/07/you-say-you-want-revolution.html
which also has a live link to a much more detailed explanation in the blogpost:
“The Open Media Amendment” 4-17-2023.
https://lifeinafascistcountry.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-open-media-amendment.html
Basically, establishing a true
public forum, ratifying the Open Media Amendment, will put us in the position
akin to someone finding a magic lantern with a genie granting two wishes. Anyone with any sense, while they might use
that first wish for any old thing, will wisely use the second wish to ask for
two more wishes. Opening the media in
this way, rallying ourselves to make this one critical change, would give us
the realistic ability to get an unending string of wishes, to make all the
other changes needed to re-found our republic.
So then that is the plan. Get ourselves together on this one issue,
(people of all stripes have expressed enthusiasm for it) which is opening the
media, establishing a true public forum, restoring to ourselves a free
marketplace of ideas. While the powers
that be will oppose it, almost all the people will favor it, because most all
of us really do believe we have the truth, and that if we could present our
ideas in a free but ordered dialogue, the truth of our beliefs will persuade
others to our cause. So this one big change is one we could probably coalesce
around and thereby force the powers that be to accept.
With the Open Media Amendment
ratified, and a free public forum operating, we can take on all the other
issues of restoring LCMSG, one at a time or even faster than that, and in the
end we might actually restore to ourselves and our progeny the liberty that
generations of Americans have struggled and fought for. The first step is recognizing what has been taken from us. The second step is to re-envision the kind of nation we were always intended to be, how much more effectively that form of government would allow us to deal with our problems, and most importantly, how returning to that form of government, LCMSG, would cause us to become a more involved, politically aroused, and however one might define it, a more moral people. That is the great blessing of liberty that might not be felt in its absence, but will be obvious and serve us powerfully when we once again possess it.
Thanks for reading this. The first concrete step you can take to advance this plan is to send an email to comradeamerica2@yahoo.com, include "Open Media" in the subject line to get
on the list as we organize to launch the Open Media Amendment. This list will be used to coordinate discussion and to, in course of time as the support warrants, launch a web site and convene some form of convention to hammer out the actual wording of an amendment, to then launch the drive to ratify it
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