Sorry it’s been so long since I’ve edited this…
http://wedeclare.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/the-united-states-constitution.pdf
Over the years I’ve increasingly thought it interesting that the first two of the Ten Commandments, in essence, warn against idolatry.
Sure, murder is bad; but that’s way down at number six; before adultery, stealing, lying and coveting.
From a context of politics, anyway, the first two commandments, something like “In God We Trust,” warn against making abstractions (OK, other than God, if you’re an atheist) real. I’ve come to think of this as, well, brilliant.
Yes, the way the commandments are ordered from first establishing proper relationships, to concomitant proper behavior, is eminently logical, proper and wise.
But I’m not writing this about wisdom, logic, morality or even sanity; I’m writing about politics. That abstraction, is, as you should know by now, the opposite of all that is good and wholesome. The secular corollary of In God We Trust is, after all, In Politics We Do Not.
So let’s get something straight – there are no such “things” as politics, political parties, nations, “Us” or “Them.” You can’t punch a corporation or tickle a union. You can’t feed an economy to starve a recession because they are abstractions. They exist, really, only in our collective, inherently tribal…and idolatrous, minds.
In real life, human society consists of individual humans and our individual actions.
We may try to delegate away our own part in decisions and actions by claiming some office or duty to a corporation, a government, a racial/societal class, or an army. But in ultimately accountable fact, we, as individuals, choose and act as individuals.
This is the basis of “Austrian School” praxeology, or action axiom, besides being an important message of the Ten Commandments.
Properly understood, this concept of individual choice and rejection of idolatry (assigning judgment and action to abstractions, and/or pledging obedience to abstractions) fully dismisses as absurd such following rationalizations:
We all must sacrifice some of our own comforts to save the economy.
It’d be better if our President was (gay, Hispanic, atheist, a woman or whatever)
Corporations are bad while unions are good; or visa versa.
It took us a long time to screw up this bad; it’ll take us a long time to do better.
It’s a cruel, complicated world; we need cruel and complicated laws.
Those other guys are scary and violent; we need more missiles and soldiers and wars.
Sadly, most of us surrender to abstraction. We solemnly pledge to obey a flag, while complaining that the politics we’ve voted for over and over again, sucks. We know our chosen political tribe is messed up, but insist it’d be madness to vote for any alternative. We suspect our “nation” abstraction won’t be around much longer; but curiously, can’t even describe what that nation really is or how it works (Social Security? Cops in riot gear? Single-class basketball?). Some of us even advocate a “revolution” to overthrow a government that, doggone it, we freely chose ourselves.
Even ideology can be an idol. One of the oddest things, to me as a candidate (another abstraction, BTW), is how voters will ask me how my ideology differs from the other candidates when we should know by now that ideology has nothing to do with our current form of cronyism. Lobbyists, powerbrokers and bankster/moneychangers rule; ideology has nothing to do with it. That’s what we’ve chosen.
Our abstractions are so deeply ingrained and heartfelt that it’s in fact difficult to communicate without invoking these abstractions…especially in politics…whatever that is.
We could always choose better. But we very, very rarely do.
So, through all recorded history, humanity’s default state has been oppression, slavery, genocide and war. It’s only very rarely that humans choose to live in peace, prosperity and that most rare and precious abstraction of all, freedom.
Yes, incremental decay seems historically inevitable. Rapid collapse happens very frequently. But real improvement in societal terms, when it happens at all (can count on the fingers of one hand) much more frequently happens fast; by radical epiphany and action. A single generation, a single war, a single election, can change everything politically important.
All I can do as a candidate is offer a choice that’s different, and I think better, than what we’ve chosen so far. I’m offering fewer abstractions; a real and dramatic reduction in our reliance on collective abstracted actions that, it so happens, rely on violating much of the other Ten Commandments. Because without abstractions, you know, taxation is theft and war is murder. And those are not good things at all.
I understand. I keep hoping too.
But instead of hoping that <a particular Democrat/Republican du jour> will save us all (yeah, yeah, THIS election is the most important ever and we CAN’T let the other guys win this time! …Just like every election), I keep hoping that voters will wake up to their power, and accountability.
I’ve seen the inside of that two-headed monster we call “the two party system;” let me tell you how it works.
Things don’t just happen from the top-down as you may imagine. It really starts in your neighborhood, where the Precinct Committeeman works hard to drum up votes on the understanding that status quo politicians “dance with the one that brung ya.” That means that if your guy wins, your teenager gets a nice summer job on the Highway Department. If your work gets noticed by somebody higher up, maybe your business gets a fat new contract with the State of Indiana. Maybe you’ll even land a job as a DC fat cat yourself.
What, you think it’s only on DC’s K-Street that corruption happens?
No, it starts right at the bottom and works up. Waaay down at the bottom. I’ll get back to that later.
Anyway, the whole of our Great Golden Calf “two party system” is based upon corruption. Special Deals for Special People, and only a very few of us can be special. It is a system that’s based upon selling out. It’s theft from the many for the benefit of a few. It’s fearmongering and doomsaying to make you so scared and angry and …dependent, that you’ll keep voting for the ones who always find new ways to divide one person against another for money, power, education, infrastructure, bombs (etc., etc., et cetera…) - black v white, gay v straight, man v woman, whatever against whoever…(etc., etc., et cetera…)
That is the Two Party System; and you’re getting it good and hard. From the bottom, up.
And while I’m talking about who’s sold out, let’s cut to the real heart of the matter. Who, really, has sold out more than any lobbyist, politician, minion, union thug or shyster tycoon?
Well, what’s Social Security? What’s Medicare?
Sure, the banksters get their bailouts. Unions and corporations get special rights, privileges and tax breaks that you pay for. Taxpayers subsidize illegal aliens, abortions in China, wars and rumors of war all over the globe…but there’s a hook in taxpayers that makes all that OK, right? They have a big, fat hook in us all that we just can’t/won’t/shouldn’t/mustn’t pull free.
If you’ve studied the numbers, history and prognosis at all, you know who I think has fundamentally, thoroughly, smugly and defensively sold out.
So tell me; what will you do when that promise of OPM (Other People’s Money) is finally pulled away? What will you do when that game is over, and all that is left is the most powerful, heavily armed, secretive and maybe even most corrupt government of all time?
You won’t vote anymore. That game will be over too.
You’ll still be able to choose how you’d like to live your life. All people always choose that. But your choices will be a lot harder than they are now.
Yes, I know how this is likely to turn out.
Voters will, as always, vote for the same power structures they have chosen all their lives and look for somebody else to blame for it. They’ll grumble and complain and whine, or just stay home saying “it’s too late,” or “my vote won’t matter.”
That will be their choice. They will choose to let the corruption and stupid default human weakness drain away our collective peace, prosperity, security and freedom.
And that will be, once again, an inexcusably stupid choice.
OK, I can’t claim to be better than any other flawed human being. Even if I were elected to the US Senate and started working toward constitutional rule of law, I personally wouldn’t fix anything. It would still be voters who’d accomplish what can be accomplished. I’d be only a medium of voters’ new choice, a new direction. I’d represent a (finally) different Will Of The People; a directive that the marble pedestals of entrenched political power must at last be smashed. I’d represent a communal, statewide decision to replace lawlessness and endless violence with law, order, liberty and justice for all. …For all (not just a few).
So far, you know, your Two Party votes have said, only, “attaboy…keep doin’ it to us just as you’ve always done it.”
Can we at least discuss this?
Please, if you can get a group of people together, invite me to chat with you about this. Ask your media to cover all the choices on the ballot (not just two). Try to sponsor a candidate forum or debate (don’t take a flat NO for an answer…candidates should show up for job interviews!).
I already said that people always have a choice in how they’d like to live. That is absolutely true. But don’t fool yourself about the situation we’re in today.
Today, your choices are easily made.
But read a history book to see just how precious and rare that is.
Don’t blow it again.
I had to kill a rooster about an hour ago. He’d been attacking people, including me. We all agreed that, while he was a prize-winning-beautiful bird, we had too many roosters and this taloned terrorist had to go. So I finished my workday, and put on some gloves and safety glasses. My youngest son Hark locked the dogs inside to avoid undue excitement (you don’t want your dogs to develop a taste for your chickens), and he also put on gloves and safety glasses.
Yeah, the rooster was mean and could jump high. His spurs are sharp and his beak drew blood too. A few weeks ago, Hark accidentally blinded the rooster’s right eye while fighting him off, but that only made the rooster even more fearful and aggressive.
I think he knew what was coming, as Hark and I started across the field toward the free-ranging flock. Maybe the saddest part for me was when he ran behind his favorite hen; the one whose back he’d plucked completely bare. The cocky bully turned chicken in his final moments, and my heart sank. I almost called the whole thing off. Maybe I should have.
I don’t know.
Anyway, while my son and I both chased him down, I got the short straw as the one able to grab the rooster first. I scooped up the squawking chainsaw of beak, feathers and two-inch spurs, and swiftly broke his neck.
I suppose it was as quick a death as possible, but man, I hated doing that. It’s not as easy as it looks in movies; but worse, I took a life that was fighting for life. He wanted to live, and I killed him.
Damn.
Since moving to the farm, I’ve had to kill many animals, for many perfectly understandable reasons, but I’ve never gotten used to it. My hands shake and my spirit is heavy for a long time after strangling, shooting or twisting the life out of even the most vicious creature. If anything, it’s getting harder every time.
Do not take me for a saint. When I was very young, I had little trouble extinguishing the life of frogs, squirrels, or whatever else was on the wrong end of my shoe, slingshot, bow or gun.
But a more mature perspective has revealed to me the preciousness of life, and the horror of stealing life. I don’t kill from childish fear or flippancy. While I don’t at all begrudge hunters their sport, killing is never a sport to me. It’s just something that sometimes has to be done in the real world.
Yes, this is about politics. Damn it all, this is most definitely about politics.
What is politics, after all, but the delegation of reality to somebody else? Politics is about taking somebody else’s money for our convenience and comforts. It’s about risking somebody else’s life for our sense of security. It’s about blaming somebody else for our choices and making somebody else pay for our mistakes. Mostly, it seems these days, it’s about getting other people to do your violence for you.
Right?
Why else would we put up with it?
Anyway, the original societal design written into our state and federal constitutions is quite different from what we delude ourselves with today.
We citizens are supposed to take account for our own violence/killing…personally. We are still (the laws of the land haven’t been altered) to be citizen soldiers, trained in the use and accountability of deadly force. We are to consider what it means to look into another person’s eyes before snuffing out all his or her opportunities. We are to think long and hard before entering another person’s nation to serve some political whimsey. We are, in point of fact and fact of the point, to be responsible adults who treat others as we’d like to be treated.
It’s by no accident that we’ve laid most of the personal risks of war upon our young and ill-informed. We know the human brain’s ability to assess risk and benefit is undeveloped and fragile in today’s soldiering age-range of teens to thirty. It’s too easy to whip up the young into a Hatfield v McCoy, or Colts versus Bears tribalism. They are too brave, too fearless, too free of adult restraint, to be the antiviolent force that freedom requires.
It’s too easy for the fearful, selfish, greedy and foolish among us to direct these young bucks to do our evil for us in the name of patriotic duty.
Maybe this is a long way to come to my core point, but I didn’t want to just come out and directly state that I abhor that “…thank a soldier” mentality.
I have great respect for soldiers. I’ve seen the service to great things for people who serve. I’ve met very few rotten soldiers and plenty whom I admire. Pretty much everybody in my family forever has been in the military at some point; some for their whole careers. My dad was a decorated war pilot and POW.
But exactly who is it that ever takes away liberty? Who is able to oppress, enslave and steal on a large scale? Was it Stalin or Mao themselves who killed so many millions of their own citizens?
…Or did they have professional help?
Isn’t it obvious from even the most brief examination of humanity’s historical record that the permanent, professional standing armies that our founders warned us against are still our greatest threat?
Yes, it’s a bloody horrible thing to take a life with your own hands. We should hate it. We should avoid it as though it’s a stain upon our soul. It is a taste of hell.
But it is a far worse, insane and wicked thing to delegate our killing to others and act as though it is some hallmark of civility.
Horrible, evil things happen. Horrible, evil things must be opposed; sometimes by force. Deadly force is very rarely necessary, but it does happen that it is necessary to kill.
But shouldn’t we bring that force into the light and make it both accountable, and personal?
Yes, taking life is ugly. It is hellish horrid. We really should own up to that. We should personally weigh that evil against the comforts we claim from it.
It is a shame that’d make our founders shudder that we have turned this abhorrent thing into a career for so many, for so long.
I hate polls. I think they have no place in politics where right versus wrong should be the deciding factor in the voting booth.
But…
This poll seems very interesting. Yes, it shows that a vote for Mourdock is a vote for Donnelly. Yawn…whatever. It suggests that the two-headed crony party will win again and you might as well just get over it. Yeah, yeah yeah.
But it also shows that I’m already polling higher than I’ve ever polled this early before. I won’t actually be the LP candidate until this weekend, and I’m already knocking on the door of double-digit poll numbers?
Woo hoo!
Yes, I’m still all gloom/doom about the odds of voters actually having that epiphany required to actually change anything. It’s still very likely that we’ll vote, again, for the status quo and act all slack-jaw stupefied that things go wrong.
But there is hope. I love hope. I live on hope. I can run on Hope…and Change. …Even if that’s been done before.
I really haven’t taken the time to verify everything I’ve read about Dr. No. But I’ve met him several times – even went to his birthday party a couple of years ago – and, full disclosure, he sent me money for a political campaign. I am very highly biased in favor of this man’s integrity and purpose. So, I’m just posting something here that somebody sent me. I believe (but don’t know for certain) that it’s all true:
In his high school years Ron Paul became the 220-yard dash state champion, he played football and baseball, and was student council president. An injury ended Ron’s career in sports, but he still managed to become the only Congressman in history to knock the ball out of the park in the Congressional Baseball Game.
He began working at his father’s dairy at age five, and later delivered newspapers and became a milkman upon reaching driving age. He paid for his first year at Gettysburg College with saved lemonade-sale and lawn-mowing money. In the later college years he started delivering mail and also managed the college coffee shop called “The Bullet Hole”. He earned a medical degree from Duke, became a “career obstretrician” and delivered over 4000 babies. In his practice, he refused Medicare and Medicaid payments, instead treating the poor at a discount rate or for free.
Ron Paul’s been married to his spouse Carol for over 50 years. He has 5 children, all of whom believe in him and support him.
He is a Southern Baptist and a Christian of deep faith, but never uses his religion in political fights.
Ron Paul is the only veteran in the race and he served part of his time close to the Afghani-Pakistani border back in the 60s. He gets three times as much donations from active military duty personnel as all other republican candidates combined, and 10 times the amount the next candidate, Romney, gets. That’s because Ron Paul is the one who wants to use the military with a clear goal – to defend the country. This means that if necessary he would send the troops to war, fight it, win it and get the troops back home. Other candidates want to continue the policy of sending the troops to wars without specific goal, nation-building missions without end, where soldiers risk their lives and they don’t know what for. Soldiers want to know that what they’re doing makes sense and they believe Ron Paul is the one who will not put them into fight without good reason.
Ron Paul entered politics not for personal gain, but because he was worried about wrong economic policies Washington was pursuing. He wanted to stop the out-of-control growth of the federal government. He opted out of the lucrative congressional pension plan and over the years returned over (…) million dollars from his budget to help pay off the national debt.
He is known to be incorruptible and the lobbyists don’t even bother to go to him. They know he will follow the Constitution and not what they tell him.
Ron Paul is the only Congressman in the last 20 years with a 100% Constitutional voting record. How is it possible? Simple. Before he decides on a bill, he always checks if it’s allowed by the Constitution. If it’s not, he votes against it.
He has always stood on principle, regardless of the political winds. He gave his support to Ronald Reagan long before it was popular, when Reagan was still sidelined and mocked by the establishment in 1976.
While the top campaign contributors of all other candidates are Wall Street and big corporations, Ron Paul gets almost all of his support from ordinary people who give him 50 or 100 bucks at a time.
Ron Paul is the only candidate with a deep and proven understanding of economics and monetary policy, far beyond the talking points other candidates use.
He’s been the only politician in Washington to predict the housing bubble, suspected it was coming in 2001 and was certain of it in 2003. You can check his old writings and congressional testimonies if you don’t believe it. He almost single-handedly raised public awareness about the Federal Reserve Bank, the institution which used to operate entirely in the shadows for decades. He is the only candidate with the knowledge needed to reform the banking sector and resurrect the economy after the financial crisis.
Thanks to an audit that Ron Paul pushed through Congress, we learned that the Federal Reserve had been bailing out foreign banks to the tune of 5 trillion dollars, and had given 30 billion to Qaddafi’s Bank of Libya, when Qaddafi was still in power. Ron Paul is the only candidate in the race, who has opposed the bailouts from the beginning and has never flip-flopped on the issue.
Ron Paul is the only candidate in the race who offers a plan to cut spending. None of the other candidates wants to cut any spending, what they’re talking about is cutting the proposed increases. Instead of raising spending by 500 billion they want to raise it by 400 billion, and they call it a cut. All other candidates guarantee that America will have a debt crisis like the bankrupt welfare states in Europe and the Social Security and Defense budgets will have to be slashed in a chaotic manner.
The establishment in Washington already discussed plans to take over the people’s pension funds to pay for the government spending. Ron Paul will avoid this by cutting wasteful and unnecessary government spending in a sensible fashion, so that people’s IRAs, the Social Security fund, and Defense of the Homeland are not sacrificed.
The health care system in the United States is costly and often ineffective. Instead of fixing it, president Bush added to the costs by introducing the prescription drug program and president Obama introduced the Mandated Insurance, taking control over medical expenses further away from the patients. All that the other Republican candidates are capable of is repealing Obamacare. Ron Paul has a plan to empower the people to take control of their money, bring the competition back into health care and restore the doctor-patient relationship.
Ron Paul’s health care plan provides the employees with the same tax deductions that today apply only to employer-provided insurance. It empowers the people to take full control over their health care money themselves. Everyone will be allowed to put together an individual medical plan that best suits one’s needs. Ron Paul will allow the people to purchase insurance over state lines, ending the local insurance monopolies and bringing prices down. The excessive restrictions put on the medical personnel by lobbyists will be undone, and the nurses will once again be able to perform easier procedures, bringing the costs down. A tax credit will encourage doctors to provide services charitably to the poor. Finally, the out-of-control legal liabilities which force hospitals to spend hundreds of billions of dollars every year on unnecessary procedures in fear of the lawsuits, will be in most cases eliminated and replaced with the medical insurance contracts. Allowing the hospitals not to perform unnecessary procedures will bring down the cost of health care by additional 3000 dollars per household every year.
Health insurance is now 1/4 of the whole worker’s compensation. Lower costs of health insurance will bring down the cost of work and employers will be able to hire a lot more people. With health care costs reduced, the people will have more money left to spend and invest. Ron Paul’s health care plan alone would be enough to kick-start the economy.
The other politicians constantly invoke fear: fear of global warming, fear of people having guns. They need it to grow the size and power of the government, because the scared population is more likely to give away their rights and their money. Ron Paul has been a staunch defender of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, fighting to protect the 2nd amendment, to protect the right to privacy, to protect the right to a fair trial.
Ron Paul’s opponents scare the people with a nuclear bomb being smuggled to the USA and exploding in one of the American cities, yet none of them has any plans to secure the American border. If some ordinary criminals can smuggle weapons and drugs through the border, the terrorists could do the same with the bomb, if they had one. Ron Paul understands that the leaky borders are a great threat to national security. He will save money on fruitless nation-building in the Middle East and use it to protect the borders and expand the Coast Guard, to insure that no terrorist can infiltrate the United States either by land or by sea. Ron Paul is the only candidate with a serious plan to make America substantially safer, by protecting the border, concentrating the defense forces that have been spread thin, and avoiding a financial debacle.
Ron Paul is the only candidate with enough conviction, knowledge and integrity to shape the course of events in these difficult times. None of his corporate-funded opponents has a credible plan to reform the banking system, avoid a debt crisis and secure the entitlements for the people that have paid into them all their life. None of these establishment candidates is willing to put the rule of law, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights first, like Ron Paul does. Every one of his opponents supported the bailouts. None of them has a plan to secure the border. None of them has a plan to fix the health care system.
The opponents of Ron Paul are not going to challenge the status quo on the issues that matter. They are guaranteed to go with the tide, bringing the country closer to national bankruptcy and endangering the accomplishments of generations of hard-working Americans. Learn about Ron Paul, search the Internet, ask your children to find more information about him for you, and you will see that he’s the best candidate for President America has had in a long time. You have a choice, your actions matter. Register to vote in the state Republican primary, become a delegate to the caucus, choose Ron Paul and help restore the American Republic.
RON PAUL 2012
Ron Paul is totally different from any of his opponents and most other politicians. Compare and contrast and you’ll see that every time he’s different, it’s for the better. Hire a friendly show host or someone alike who can pump up the crowd with a speech. Distribute the message in print so that the rally attendees take it home. Attach it to the Super Brochure mailings. Spread it. Do something with it. Ron Paul’s ideas are great, but their greatness can be recognized a hundred times better when compared to the others’.
The community needs to spread this. I don’t know who would reject this reasoning. Someone with better writing skills could rewrite it more eloquently. Ultimately I wish we will create a polished text similar in content to the one presented and make it into a pdf file that anyone could download, print in large amount (even at home) and distribute. What do you think?
Please VOTE UP & COMMENT.
Nice link about Ron’s life: http://streetsmartdirect.com/ronpaul.html