RW Emerson, GB Shaw, and Me

This is from the early 2000's - part of an attempt to more clearly define myself and my intellectual development. 

Savoring Emerson and Shaw

    For the past decade or more, I have been engaged in a unique and diligently pursued enterprise. I have tried to immerse myself in the minds of two men, who together span the 19th and first half of the 20th century. I was born in 1947, and that means that G. B. Shaw, like my own grandfather, was still alive (but very old) in the first few years of my own lifetime.
    My grandfather Stephens was born in 1865, so he and I were in synch for growing up in a period of post-war euphoria and paranoia which shared the characteristics of being punishing and moralistic, and not among the better periods in our history, from an ethical and esthetic point of view. His lifespan and Shaw's were very close. I've often had reason to think that the fact that my first 6 years were spent in his company had much to do with my subsequent affinities with 19th century thought and culture. My grandfather was an educated man and a devout Christian, more in the sense of living the example than preaching it - something of a rarity in frontier Montana in the 1890's.

    My interest in Emerson goes back to high school and college. Emerson was still the pre-eminent American thinker, and my grandparents' generation read his essays and understood them in the high school curriculum of their day. My father was an enthusiastic Thoreauvian in his own way, and Louisa May Alcott and Margaret Fuller were no doubt read and admired by my grandparents and/or their sisters. The political persuasion of the Stephens family was somewhere between Teddy Roosevelt and Jeanette Rankin Republicanism. My great-grandfather James Stephens had voted for Lincoln, and his father in-law knew the young Abe Lincoln personally. My grandparents were both Progressive and Prohibitionist, at a time when these parties fielded candidates or endorsed main-party candidates such as William Jennings Bryan or Robert LaFollette. My grandfather supported (and actively worked for) TR's break from the Republican Party, but like most Americans he was opposed to our entry into World War II right up until Pearl Harbor.  My grandmother Stephens was always outspoken against FDR and the New Deal - probably much more so than my grandfather, who rarely if ever made negative judgments about anyone.  

    My mother's aunt, Pearl Goodall, lived in Helena and knew Jeanette Rankin personally, and also worked hard for her election as the first woman in Congress, and in her anti-War causes generally. My grandmother Stephens liked Jeanette Rankin, but criticized her for her second vote against war in 1941, where it was politically inflammatory. Most Montanans had resented our participation in World War I, but we got on the bandwagon all the way in World War II, and continuing hatred of Asians was something I grew up with.  I can still remember being idignant as a student at UCLA when I was criticized for referring to China as "Communist China" - by other students of Chinese descent, of course. 
    According to our family history, Jeanette Rankin visited our family home on one occasion - probably when she was running for Congress the second time. My grandfather had been a state legislator for one term, and knew most of the prominent Republicans in the state, as well as the progressive Democrats. Montana Democrats were slow to embrace FDR's programs, and some, like Burton K. Wheeler, became political powers in their own right. Wheeler was LaFollette's running mate as a Progressive in one election (1924?).  Later, he became a leading Isolationist, but party pressure brought him around well before Pearl Harbor.  He also worked hard for a TVA-style federal dams program for the Missouri River, the fruit of which was Fort Peck and several other large dams in the Dakotas. 
    With this background, it is not such a stretch to imagine a rural Montanan being able to savor the writings and biographies of Emerson and Shaw. The first play by Shaw I remember seeing performed was “Arms and the Man,” which I saw at the age of 13 performed by a travelling company in our school. One of my friends in college enjoyed Shaw, and frequently quoted him. I saw a few more plays, learned about the Fabian movement, studied other figures in that milieu, and finally purchased the complete Holroyd biography - one of the great biographies of our time.
    An equally good (but shorter) biography of Emerson, Robert Richardson's Emerson  The Mind on Fire, appeared a few years ago, and I have read and selectively re-read from it constantly over the past two years. I have also had the good fortune to know a direct descendent of Emerson, and thus to get a better insight and flavor of some of the ideas and events in his life. The evolution of Emerson's work and ideas and their impact on the larger American and global culture is what interests me the most - mainly because I am sympathetic and thoroughly persuaded of the correctness of virtually all of his vision. The only real problem I can see is one of misdirected militancy - something which both Emerson and Shaw seemed to favor when real threats to human dignity and well-being were present. Both were missionaries for their view of progressive values and improvements in the quality of the human condition. Emerson was more of a universalist than Shaw, but both maintained a higher, idealistic kind of social vision.
    John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, Herzen's My Life and Thoughts, the work of Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dickens, Hugo, and other towering figures of 19th century thought have further affirmed my affinities with the progressive element in every age and place. How can these ideas have failed to triumph, and now be in full retreat or ruins? It's an obsession which I have had for my entire life: why does what is true, good, and beautiful have to constantly struggle against what is cruel, insane, and ugly? Perhaps there is a Gaia Hypothesis for history as well as science: our culture is sick and self-destructive. We cannot continue to prevail with the population density, the technology, and the awareness (or lack of it) which our governments and other social institutions are now burdened. We are destroying the earth and everything good in it, and there are natural processes which will cause us to self-destruct before that happens.
    It is imperative that we somehow reverse this course, and begin to reaffirm the science and philosophy which can save us - what Emerson first called (before Nietzsche) "the joyful science" of realizing the full potential of the human species through the individual. All of nature is contained in a leaf, and a leaf is a microcosm of all nature. Most of all, our human bodies are part of nature, as is our material survival, along with that of every other species. Human interactions are also part of nature, while Mind or Soul or Spirit is above it.
    Emerson was the first explicit phenomenologist, so far as I can tell. All of material reality is phenomenological in the sense that it reflects the highest understandings of individual and universal consciousness. Jung, too, should pay a heavy debt to Emerson's pioneering synthesis of Eastern and Western philosophy and tradition.
    As a pacifist/isolationist (in the sense of the "Prime Directive" of not interfering, or allowing interference in other nation's affairs, and certainly not defending multi-national corporations' interests), I am particularly disturbed by the militancy expressed by both Emerson and Shaw, the latter having gone so far as to endorse Stalin, and the former to have championed John Brown. Violence in a noble cause was no problem for them - indeed, they were often leading the charge.
    Of course, they lived in the pre-nuclear age, and could not imagine a world in which one nation could destroy not only its enemies but itself in the process, and probably set human civilization and its evolution back thousands or millions of years. This is the factor we must correct for, and one of the very few of them from the highpoints of 19th century thought. Another involves cybernation and the nature of the modern techno-state, with numerous totalitarian strategies and technologies at its disposal.
    One major difference between Emerson and Shaw is their place in their respective societies. Emerson was born to his vocation, and a figure of unblemished grandeur and integrity. He was a full-time philosopher-theologian with intensive training in the classics, and an active participant in the main-stream intellectual and social movements of his time, from Abolitionism to Feminism, Transcendentalism to the natural sciences.
    Shaw, on the other hand, was always on the fringes of respectable society, writing music criticism, fiction, and finally his famous plays, while engaging in a prodigious amount of organizing and propagandizing for the radical Left. Both seemed to have been workaholics who spent their entire adult lives in the single-minded pursuit of an intellectual enterprise which others only dimly understood. Both were evangelists for a new way of thinking, and highly successful in changing the way millions of people live and think. Yet, neither was an academic philosopher nor much in favor of academic life in general. Both preferred to address the public directly, whether by Emerson's lectures and published Essays, or Shaw's plays and political rallies.

Eco-Logo-Nomos - or The Eco-Eco Test

The Eco-Eco Test

Ever since the early 1970's, having just emerged as a philosophy and economics graduate from UCLA, I've been fixated on the idea that in Economics and Ecology, it's the same "Eco".  That's where I get my "greateco" handle, and I've written extensively about the connections  between the two fields and how they are "parts of a common problem-solution nexus".  I didn't patent that, or anything, and it turns out that Ken Boulding, who was teaching there in Boulder, CO when I showed up there, had already written a seminal article on that very topic.  I heard Boulding lecture once, and introduced myself  afterwards, and bought the  book which contained this essay, but  I only read it recently - or at least, I only remember reading it recently. 

But when I was in Boulder, I offered the first course of lectures and discussions I'd ever done.  And it was called that:  "Eco-Logo-Nomos" - how economics and ecology work together. 
There are many schools of "environmental economics," now, and those ideas were in play long before I was born - especially in Thoreau and other Transcendental Romantiks.  It's Darwinism and Spencerism in Britain;  Nietzsche, Humboldt, and Goethe, perhaps, in the German-speaking world, and many Scandinavians, past and present, are part of this tradition. 

With the obviousness and near-universal agreement with these ideas, it continues to amaze me how the whole enlightened community can be bullied into acquiesence by a handful of "resource" corporations.  Didn't anybody see "Avatar"?  This is real.  This is happening, now, in Northern Alberta.  And we've been connected to it ever since my father worked as an "Indian Agent" in that very locale in the 1960's.  I'm supposed to even have some relatives there, among the indigenous Cree. 

Unfortunately, I destroyed a priceless archive of photos and his work there.  He was accused of producing pornography - for photographing Native women without clothes, or whatever - and was rousted by the Mounties and deported from Canada.  As a small boy, my father lived half a block from Charlie Russell, and he distributed a lot of prints of Russell's work to his Indian friends.  Anyone who knew my father knows that he wasn't into anything "for the money" or to exploit people. 

It reminds me of the woman artist who took a roll of film of her naked children playing or posing for some art work she was doing to a Fuji kiosk, and as a consequence, lost custody of her children and had to spend $175,000 on lawyer fees just to stay out of prison.  I hope Fuji reimbursed her, and if not, they should have. 

This is a rather oblique example of the "Eco-eco Test" (EET).  We can subject any law or regulation to the EET.  In many cases, it will be a matter of determining whether or not the law and its consequences are both ethical and practical.  And does it satisfy other basic criteria of social welfare like Pareto's "Optimality"?  Of course we do make interpersonal calculations of utility for any public policy.  Pareto assures us that a minority are not being made actually worse-off for the benefit of some privileged elite.  Not at all in force, so far as the modern "criminal justice system" is concerned.  They violate that principle every day, along with traditional bans on any kind of torture, administrative detention, or commercial exploitation (slavery). 

It is one of the ironies of Montana history that Jeanette Rankin, Montana's (and the nation's) first woman elected to Congress, who was basically a liberal socialist, feminist, probably lesbian, and otherwise far to the "left" of today's Democrats, actually ran and won as a Republican, and her brother, J. Wellington, was one of the most powerful men in Montana, using prison labor to run his vast ranches, which are still largely owned by the Galt family.  One wonders at the veracity of the Jeanette Rankin "re-enactment" video produced a few years ago.  Maybe the Galt family financed it. 

Why is it that no one running for office outside of the Green Party seems to have any awareness of the EET?  Just use simple input-output analysis.  Everything counts.  There aren't any "externalities."  That is why we use a "socialist" model, or other "holistic" thinking.  We have to think of the good (survival, prosperity, health, welfare, etc.) of the WHOLE, not just our particular "team", city, state, nation, or family.  That is why we have DEMOCRACY.  Everything counts, and no information can be excluded.  We're not a small gang or clique trying to control or exploit others. 

The Law - Authority or Science?

LAW - Authority or Science?    10-2-12

I'm constantly running into people and situations where their view of "the law" is one of "Authority."  The Law is what justifies and empowers Authority.  Therefore, it is a handmaiden of tyranny and rigid class structure.  It is part of the War and Conflict Machine, not Peace and Justice. 

The militarization and regimentation of American Society over the past 20 years is unprecedented in our history, and nearly any other history.  The Meiji Restoration in Japan is another (what we call, "the opening of Japan" with Commodore Perry telling the Emperor, "Open up to trade or we'll open fire").  Not a literal quote, but close enough to the truth.  We do this to countries all over the world, and then wonder why they hate us.  

Running a Free Republic is a lot different than running a multi-national Empire or commanding an invincible army which can destroy anything in its path.  Obviously, the Free Republic idea was discarded long ago, and we are now outlaws in the Empire we helped to create.  Such is the Dialectic of History (and yes, Hegel was a horrible person, but he may have been right about the mechanics of this Dialectic). 

"Our Side" (OS, the Green Libertarians) does not share this authoritarian view of law.  To us, law is about discovery.  It is creative science, testing and discarding hypotheses and theories as they prove to be wrong or obsolete.  The present legal system and thinking really hasn't changed since Greco-Roman times.  We have not incorporated any of the more recent findings in psychology or sociology (or even economics and political science - what was once called "political economy") into our "modern" and barbaric "criminal justice system"  (CJS).

This semantic shift is important.  It is no longer a system of Truth, Reason and Justice; rather, it serves the criminal element and those attempting to defend themselves or compete successfully in that corporate war of all against all.  There is little awareness of, or concern for, Justice.  It's all about getting paid off.  It is the jungle rules of individual bosses, gang leaders, or relatively democratic and egalitarian groups like unions or fraternal societies.  Even our so-called "social safety net" is run for anything but social purposes.  It, too, is the province of competing private interests, political machines, etc.  And they have little interest in working together for the common good.  It's all about one's status within the boss-dom hierarchy. 

So, let's start with defining our legal system more along the lines of a free and democratic Republic.  We all seem to prefer that sort of government, don't we?  We don't like to be used as pawns and victims.   What Gov Romney said about 47% of Americans seeing themselves as victims and not paying income tax turned out to be true.  As someone who has explored both the exalted heights and lowest dregs of American life, I agree with him.  I certainly see myself as a victim, although not specifically a victim of "big government".  It's more like I see myself as a victim of gangster capitalism, of which Mr. Romney is an integral part [and just to keep things in proportion, the Obama Machine even more so]. 

For that very reason, they should both be banned (or voluntarily withdraw) from running for President of the United States.  Mr. Obama should be in prison awaiting trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity, not to mention crimes against unions, public education, the environment, and many other categories. We're at the point where we have to get it right this time - and every time.  No more room for dancing around the issues and blaming "the other guys."  We have to all agree and work together to implement a program of restoration and preservation, from the personal level to the global ecosystem, where all are interconnected and interdependent.  

We have no more resources to spend attacking and arms-racing with other countries which are poorer than we are, but  hungrier.  If the Brits and other imperialists were correct, this is the road to ruin - taking over and trying to loot, regiment, and control other nations and peoples.  It's nothing but trouble, and it causes a lot more "trouble" (losses of people, wealth, security of all kinds, etc.) than if we'd minded our own business.  And  it also leads to once-subject nations and peoples to finally get revenge, and take over the imperialist countries which long subjected them to tyranny and oppression. 

Mormons often seem to be "imperialistic".  They are a theocracy.  They are growing and proving themselves in all areas of human endeavor.  The one prize which has escaped them is the White House.  Indeed, they never would have thought to put one of their own there until the past few decades, when Marriott, Romney Senior, Thiokol, Word Perfect, and many other Utah names were major players in "creating the future" which is now. 

So, this has a lot to do with Mormonism, and the rights of minority faiths and belief-systems to prosper and succeed.  Mormons are truthful and responsible people, so if Mr. Romney actually believes and intends to carry out things like attacking Iran, increasing military spending by 30%, protecting the "personhood" of corporations, and otherwise following the Ryan agenda and its now (really) Voodoo Economics, he can't be president.  Of course, he also knows that it's only Congress which can do these things, and it is up to him to approve or veto it.  He is showing more and more sanity as the campaign progresses. 

This essay was fairly complete before the debate last night at the University of Denver.  Polls today show that Romney won the debate by 67% to Obama's 25% - apparently a mainstream polling organization which, according to accepted standards, is within a 4.5% margin of error.  (I don't know how many respondents actually understand the statistical methods behind such polls.  I flunked my college statistics course required for an econ degree.  I had to make it up, later, and I cheated.  In those days, we were supposed to memorize the formulas we used, and I wrote them on my hand or a crib sheet of some sort. Still, I knew how to work the problems, and thus "passed" in my own reckoning.  One of the texts we used was "How to lie with Statistics."). 

So, I don't put a lot of stock in such polls, and others show Obama leading in many "battleground states" - sometimes by a considerable margin.  These are the same states where past Republican operatives are alleged to have stolen the votes necessary for a Bush-Cheney victory in 2000 and 2004, and include Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida.  Ron Paul supporters have similar issues with the Republican Machine throughout the West, and in Maine and other more traditional American locales.  We don't all welcome the advance of the hi-tech urban gangster-fiefdoms, and the machine politics they practice.  But like everyone else, we have to deal with it. 

Obama is still somewhat under the direct control of the "fascist left", so he isn't going to do anything really stupid.  He's done more than enough already with his tough "war lord" I-can-kill-you stuff - now openly waged against American patriots.  On the plus side, he has made great capital out of Bibi's bullying.  To counter Israeli gangsterism, you need a lot more than Rev. Wright singing cum bay ya, or however you spell it, and Obama is one of the first to do so openly in quite some time. 

By ignoring our complaints and defending the drone war and other "NATO missions", Obama has demonstrated a singular lack of moral sensitivity, as well as simple humanity.  We know he's killing people needlessly, and destroying our Bill of Rights protections which we expected him to defend.  So, as Glen Ford of BAR famously said, Obama is "the more effective evil."  And that is why he is leading so substantially.  We're not going to get any good guys running for these offices for quite some time, so we may as well choose the most palatable of the lot.  If Mitt Romney can suddenly reinvent himself as a sane and prudent man who fears the wrath of a just God, he can win. 

Now, Gov. Romney's path is clear.  All he has to do is drop his military build-up proposals, quit taking a knee to Zionism, and actually be the American president we want and need.  He needs to affirm the limits of presidential power BEFORE we vote for him.  Those who voted for Clinton and Obama, thinking they were peace and environmental candidates, were severely disillusioned.  Perhaps we can be positively disillusioned with Romney, but I won't be one of those supporting his candidacy.  

I'm a Green, first, and a Libertarian, second, and even though many Mormons I know are one or both of these, Mr. Romney certainly is not.  He has made some good adjustments which give us hope.  But the vote should be reserved for more than hope - to actually affirm those who speak the truth, and who have a real track record of fighting injustice and oppression, and being a serious student of the public interest and what is needed to further it.  

I heard the Libertarian presidential candidate, Gov Johnson of New Mexico. on an NPR clip last week.  He's got the numbers right.  What we need this year is a balanced budget - even a little surplus.  He wants to cut military spending and Medicare by 43%, each.  That would raise about half of what is required.  The rest could be found in cutting all the corporate welfare and subsidies - a view shared by both Ralph Nader and Ron Paul.  I've long been a proponent of a balanced budget rule.  I don't know why it has to be a Constitutional Amendment.  Just do it, and establish that as a fundamental principle of good government, which it always has been.

The NPR segment made fun of Gov. Johnson for this, saying that he makes Ryan look like a big spender.  As indeed he is.  Cutting military spending by 43% is a bare minimum.  We'll still be spending more than twice as China, and we now spend more than all other countries, combined, only a couple of which can be considered adversaries in any way.  We need a balanced budget THIS YEAR, not 10 or 1000 years down the road, long after we are bankrupt and a province of China. 


As for Medicare, we only  need to prioritize it to save the 43%.  More than half of total (not just Medicare) health care expenditures go to expensive, "heroic" procedures and treatments which only prolong life by a few months.  And many other treatments and alternatives are either outlawed (like medical MJ and other folk and traditional medicines and remedies), or suppressed because the "official system" does not pay or support them.  

How about the economy?  According to the Green New Deal, we give everyone a job who wants one.  One of my ideas, which neither the Libertarians nor Greens thought worthy of adoption, is this:
We institute a "freedom tithe" on the richest members of society.  Each year, you will pay 10% of your net worth over $1 million.  In return, you will be buying and retiring federal Treasury Bills.  This will continue until the National Debt is reduced to $1 trillion or less, and a balanced budget amendment or other inviolable law is in place. 

The theory, here, is that since all of these billionaires are the beneficiaries of easy credit and other inflationary policies, and they have profited the most from them, it is up to them to fix it - in as painless a way as possible.  This is the rational, scientific way, consistent with universal principles of justice.  The rich can't simply say that they have a "right" to their wealth, and that the rest of us must live in poverty and misery to sustain them.  John Locke, the great codifier of property rights, also defended chattel slavery, and that's largely why we had so much of it in the United States.

Lobbying and TV advertising for political campaigns needs to be banned, entirely.  All campaigning and advertising will be restricted to statements of policy, the candidate's record on voting or supporting other legislation, etc., delivered in a standardized format and in debates and town meetings, in which all qualified candidates are allowed to participate on an equal basis. We simply cannot allow the wealthiest and least honest members of society to buy the elections, and ruin it for all the rest of us. 

According to Brian Kahn, the Simpson-Bowles proposal (vilified for its "deflationary" cutting of federal spending and increasing taxes) identified more than $1 trillion a year in corporate welfare, subsidies to rich people, and other pork which was of very low priority in a time of shrinking revenues and ballooning public sector needs.  A $100/tonne carbon tax would raise several hundred billions per year, while only adding $1/gallon tax to petroleum (of course, most countries already tax it $5/gal or more).   And it would create millions of jobs developing and building the technology to replace fossil fuels, the continuing consumption of which is destroying our climate and precipitating massive dislocations of ice packs, sea levels, and arable farmland.

The 43% cut in military spending (first year alone) is easily covered.  Get out of NATO, close all overseas bases, suspend all new weapons-development and building programs, and organize the vast resources thus freed to start producing for the American market with cooperative ownership and management by the present employees.  You all have your same jobs and incomes (or maybe reduced to some "industry average" so you don't have an unfair advantage).  Just figure out better things to do than designing weapons of mass or robotic destruction.  Have a bunch of meetings to choose your bosses and other leaders, and reorganize your facilities for public purposes, or to produce for the American market whatever goods and services we most need, and are now importing.  Or, if that is not  possible, just shut them down and prohibit their use for any military purposes. 

Johnson does understand real market economics.  And he realizes than you can't keep borrowing above your ability to repay without eventual collapse and bankruptcy.  We need to make things here, instead of making cheeseburgers for each other.  We need to clean up the environment, the food supply, the corporate media, and most of all, the various levels of government and the "criminal justice system." 

Here in Montana, it's all about coal, oil, gas pipelines, extra processing, the Bakken, etc.  Few know that the Norwegian State Oil Company as well as several different Chinese companies are the main developers of the Alberta Tar Sands.  The Keystone Pipeline is merely a means of transport to China.  All it will do for us is perhaps increase our consumption of Canadian (non-tar sands) oil, which is already quite large, and we run a balance of payments deficit with them.  It would be far easier and cheaper for them to  build a pipeline directly to the B.C coast.  Apparently, there are tribes and the BC government  which oppose it.  Among the richest fishing grounds in the world, the BC coast is far more valuable as habitat  and unspoiled wilderness, inhabited largely by indigenous peoples.   

So, is this a good reason, then, to oppose the Keystone XL pipeline?  A Green would say yes, a Libertarian might say no, and many Libertarians actually deny anthropogenic climate change.  But they don't deny marginal utility theory, or the "Laws of Bureaucracy" which say that the more centralized and politicized an organization is, the less it is capable of actually meeting any human needs, or otherwise benefiting the larger society. 

Because the Democrats and Republicans are owned and controlled by the "resource industries," the "military industrial complex" (plus schools and prisons) and otherwise represent "the establishment" almost exclusively, we only have a meaningful discussion going on amongst the small parties.  If we (the Greens, Libertarians, and Independents) control even 5% of the vote, we have a good chance of  "spoiling" someone's election, as Perrot did Bush I's, and Nader is alleged to have done with Gore-Lieberman (surely Lieberman's selection as Gore's running mate was an admission of defeat before the campaign ever started). 

The Greens are proud to have defeated Gore - if only because of his moral cowardice.  He was not a good Democrat, and he would not have made a good President.  Neither would John Kerry.  Chameleon-like, they change their spots regardless of the science or more sophisticated political analysis.  They are pure power politicians, who should have known better than to sell out for money or the social pressures of America's wealthiest families, AIPAC, ALEC, and other sinister and powerful influences. 

This essay began by distinguishing two opposing views of THE LAW, and why it is necessary reject authoritarianism in order to have a SCIENTIFIC, RATIONAL, OBJECTIVE legal system if we are to maintain a free Republic.  THE LAW is what protects us from government and private, corporate tyranny.  But it has been subverted  to do the opposite - to act as an instrument of oppression, suppression, repression of speech, religion, assembly, the press, and other communications. 

Now, we have the basis for defining the purpose of a positive legal system -  one designed to maximize social welfare, minimize conflicts, and other class hatreds.  It certainly is not based on blind Authority, which all must serve blindly.  Nor is it about personalities, parties, families, or factions.  It's about our survival as a nation.  We're closer  to the brink than most people are even capable of imagining.  And we need to take some drastic corrective actions soon.  Otherwise, there are factions in the military and the National Security State who are already in a position to do that.  If we don't act for our own preservation and future as a nation and people, then they will act in our stead.  Indeed, they are already doing so.  But we are not too far along that we can't reverse this process, and restore all power and force of law to the states and to the people, as our Constitution demands. 

"Too big to fail" isn't just an argument in favor of bailing out the Wall Street casinos or General Motors.  It also applies to empires and other giant multi-national organizations.  We have a United Nations.  U.S. leaders claim it has no authority over us, while small nations are ruined by its decisions or lack of them.  Clearly, large empires have failed, and are counterproductive in our global village of world-wide trade and other interaction.  We need to get rid of the institutions of organized murder and plunder.  And we need to reverse a lot of our dependency on technology, and on irreplaceable resources of minerals and fossil fuels. 

The Future is forever.  We must  return to a future focus, a sense of purpose which is wholesome and universal, not Amerika Uber Alles.  There are actually candidates and thinkers who are still defending "American exceptionalism" - much like Zionism - which says that we are God's Favorite, or "History is on our Side."  God gave us this land, but not at the expense of everyone we claim isn't "us."  There are no slaves and victims unless we create them.  It's time to re-think some of our class presuppositions.  Going to Harvard doesn't give us a "right to rule."  Neither does spending the most money in a Presidential election. 

Other countries do this correctly, including our brothers, the Brits.  They don't allow TV advertising for elections.  Just imagine how much that one simple change would accomplish.  The Prime Minister can spend a total of $150,000 in a national campaign.  And he can only become PM because he has led the Opposition beforehand.  He has to already have that kind of national leadership experience.  We have no such requirements in the U.S.  And thus, our "democracy" is mostly a sham.  Smoke and mirrors.  Rival gangs struggling to control the vote and the allocation of government jobs and powers to "the fittest" or the least ethical and visionary in their goals and methods.  Some system.