If all humans lived by the Golden Rule, there’d be nothing like what we call, “civil government.”
We have kings and bureaucrats and jails and armies for two main reasons:
1. Because some percentage of us behave badly.
2. Because we think that politics will somehow fix that.
Of course, there is not now, nor was there ever, a government that operated on the Golden Rule. Governments are always, to some degree, corrupt. And that is because people (including politicians, of course) misbehave, all power is inherently for sale, and government is nothing but delegated violence.
It’s force. It’s the threat and use of violence, imprisonment, fines and death. That’s why a small corrupt government is much, much better than a big corrupt government.
You’d think that since human governments have a 100% failure rate, we’d have learned this by now. But we humans are a surprisingly dumb species. We tend to self-destruct in ways that make great movies, but bad reality.
So, let’s consider our current situation with the Islam that we long ago militarized for our own purposes, monetized for our own purposes, gave good cause to unite where before it kept itself divided against itself, and now consider our enemy.
Wait… Before that… let me interject one more line of thought:
The only people who ever threatened to kill me, personally, were USA Americans (no, not Mexicans, not even Canadians). One was a black man who claimed I shouldn’t live in a black neighborhood. But several were red-blooded Tea Party folk who said I should burn in hell for running against their Republican Savior.
The only people who tell me what I can do, can’t do and must do are USA citizens. It’s my fellows who take away my dwindling freedoms, take my money, tell me what I can do with what little I can keep, and make sure that I know that whatever it is I think I own (including my life), will be taken away if I don’t follow their rules.
It’s my fellow Americans who divide us into three classes for the purposes of rights, privileges, electoral access, and in courts:
1. Rich People,
2. Democrat/Republicans and their cronies,
3. All the rest of us poor suckers who believe their promises and keep reelecting the people of classes 1 and 2.
And it’s been only my fellow Americans who’ve lied and lied and lied to me about why we’ve been at war forever.
OK, so, back to Muslims, the North Koreans, Russians, or whoever our rabid Fear-Aggression Syndrome makes us see as the enemy du jour:
They think they’re right, too, you know. They’re convinced that their corrupt, self-destructing political scheme is right, and we’re the bad guys. And they’re not living by the Golden Rule any better than we are.
Are they our enemy?
Sure they are.
Who isn’t?
Just as hammer sees everything as a nail, a government, or by extension to the root…a human, sees everything outside its limits of power as a threat.
Even within our borders we make enemies of white men, Jews, gays, Democrats, Republicans…or people who aren’t gay Jewish white Democrats or Republicans. We’ve been dividing and subdividing against ourselves for so long that we feel we must tighten the cliques in order to defend them against all outsiders.
Right?
But this is why we suffer discord, fear, and violence.
We have politics because of our discord, fear and violence.
And governments thrive and depend upon discord, fear and violence. Governments tend to stimulate and amplify that discord, fear and violence because that means more power and money for the individual politicians and cronies who comprise governments…
But hasn’t our own government, our own society, become a vastly greater threat to our personal freedom, health, security and prosperity? Shouldn’t we address this before we go picking fights with others?
Here’s what I recommend:
The Golden Rule.
Exemplify the peace, freedom, prosperity and security that’d flow from better behavior – both personally, and then reflected in our governance (our government is, after all, just our reflection, our avatar, our sins amplified).
To whatever degree we do The Golden Rule, our debts, intrusions, deceits and aggressions would diminish, and everything else would get…better. Other people would see that what we’re doing is working, and maybe try to emulate that to some degree.
Would that be so bad?
I’m not saying that we don’t have to go blow up half the world. Maybe we do. Maybe we’ve been equipping, funding, training and motivating enemies so well and for so long that now we really do have to unleash all the hell we’ve been summoning before it eats us up first.
Maybe.
But how about we try to do at least a little of what we say we’re all about, first?
We Declare 