Revolution-
I arbitrarily choose to celebrate only Chinese New Year’s Day- An arbitrary coordinate in our path around the sun that the inhabitants choose to celebrate full solar revolution. A good time for Today’s word: Revolution
Lots of people say revolution is overdue. I agree- I’ve actually gone so far as to invoke the right to revolution myself. once by recording it on Youtube, surely as close to a public record system as we have in this day and age, and the second by application to federal court.( to think, our founding fathers fought for the right to revolution, and today we have no idea that it exists, written clearly in our founding documentation.) I think we should talk about what it is, as the clearer the picture of what you want the more likely it is that you will get to it by most philosophies, self help books, goal management leadership books, and even the practice of prayer. Also, if I were to judge the end result of say, the Bolshevik revolution, in which poor and starving people revolted (with the help of bourgeoisie) against a system of power, land and production was in the hands of a rich few royalty and some nobility that had their own games of losses and gains, but never dropped to the level of the people. It became a system of power, land and production was in the hands of a rich few elite party members hat had their own games of losses and gains, but never dropped to the level of the people. I’d say it sounds more like the third defintion of revolution below, the action of moving around a path, to get back to the same place, relatively. I would also say that a “capitalist” republic sounds a lot like a system of power; land and production is in the hands of a few wealthy and their well off employees who have their own games of losses and gains, but never drop to the level of the people.
So let’s be clear about what we want.
What is a revolution? (from Merriam-Webster on-line dictionary)
: the usually violent attempt by many people to end the rule of one government and start a new one
: a sudden, extreme, or complete change in the way people live, think, work, etc.
:a fundamental change in the way of thinking about or visualizing something
: a change of paradigm
: the action of moving around something in a path that is similar to a circle to the same place
Let’s see- I am interested in the first one, mostly, violent, not so much, but the end of the rule of government we’ve had. The stuff on paper is good to me, but the implementation is spotty at best and awfully corrupt and hypocritical at it’s worst. A major problem is that so many people are unfamiliar with the basic principles behind most laws, and to which laws apply when and where, and in truth those who practice it also seem to be (not surprising as a lawyer’s job is to present a reasonable sounding argument that a certain outcome works within the law for people who have enough money to pay- an incentive problem). Self-governance requires wide spread law training. So I would say that I am for a radical re-branding of the basic concepts, as a framework to a legal revolution, building and popularizing based upon the work that’s already been done, using the national conversation and legal action to narrow the gap between the words on paper and the implementation. Once we have something that is what it says it is- we can then create something that is even better. The Declaration of Independence must take the force of law, and the definition of government’s role to the individual. What neither the Declaration nor the Constitution specify precisely is the government’s role in regulating and growing business/organizations (corporations are certainly not people, though they are run by them) as part of the functions of the people within the government. This is especially true in the realm of research and infrastructure. It is clear from practice that the New Deal legislation left many positive legacies, and that it was government spending that stimulated the economy through the New Deal, and later completely pulled us out of the depression with World War II, because funding doubled, and the government running the economy was officially ok. It is worth noting with 91% nominal tax rate on the rich, the US experienced the largest economic expansion in human history, not getting the next tax cut until Kennedy. Nuclear energy, for better or for worse, came in to the world born by US government bills. Taxes were very much higher on the wealthy. The interstate highway system built by Eisenhower was a great thing for our country. That was then.
The government is spending more than ever, and what we got for it? NSA spying on the people, at 200k average salary- mostly people doing nothing but watching or listening to people doing normal people things . A trillion two for “victory” in Iraq. A government that is the largest purchaser of drugs, with the most expensive price for drugs. We can do better than that.
And talking every little thing to death, the Affordable Care act is a small step toward something which clearly works better. Health care is easier to get, and cheaper in other countries- why is that? .Health care costs are crazy- somebody had to try something to fix it. We need to let it settle, because we have other things to talk about.
Big things like climate change, like an American designed nuclear reactor is leaking into the Pacific ocean in our ally Japan, like an American weaponized nuclear stock pile that could power all of America for years and still take out every major city in the world with redundancy.
How the land of the free can have a higher percentage of people in jail than any other place in the world, with lower violent crime rates. How there can be more empty homes than homeless people?
Violent crime tends to spring from joblessness and money problems- Idle hands are the devils playthings.
How we look at things needs to change as well- I agree, we probably shouldn’t be paying people to not work or go to school- what about doing skills analysis and job recommendations, and shifting people into temp, part time work on projects for the government instead of simply paying them to job search from home?
I do think it is time to ask a large part of Congress to resign, retire.
Approval ratings less than 10%. More importantly, I think the minimum wage fight illustrates the problem- Congress has been receiving automatic “Cost of Living” increases in their wages. 4% per year, an increase of pay 110% (needs citation)since the year the most recent (1992) amendment took effect, which said that Congress may not change their pay in between terms. In other words, all of Congress is in violation of any reasonable definition of the Constitution. Minimum, (living) wage has increased by little more than 50% over the same time period.
There also needs to be a federal investigation, and public hearings regarding the rise of college education costs. The cost hikes are absurd, leaving people in mountains of debt by their 21st birthday.
: a sudden, extreme, or complete change in the way people live, think, work, etc.
This I am very interested in; even with the idea that I must be a better example. Especially with that idea. Making better use of what we have, taking only what we need and working to make our world better, happier and healthier. Making love a part of everyones life that wants it or needs it, which is everyone. Better balances with nature, less trash, and almost everything recyclable. Real ideas about what wealth is, and how much is enough- many here are drowning in their stuff. Everybody’s learning, which also slows birth rates down.
:a fundamental change in the way of thinking about or visualizing something
government. What it is supposed to do, what are our roles in it, what’s good,what’s bad. What do we have in common, what do we need, how do we make sure we are getting back something good for our money. What kinds of people do we need in it? Is it more random folks, or genuinely intelligent people, who plan, negotiate and discuss. Do we need Congress to be 80% male? Can we have some folks who are educated in urban design, resource management, engineering, math or science?
: a change of paradigm
YES! YES! YES, please. A new truth, a way of looking at the world that takes us from thinking the sun goes around us to us around the Sun. Boy that must have been a mind flip for anybody remotely smart.
Can you imagine anyone blowing your mind like that, on something so fundamental? Today we take it as a fact, despite that it’s unlikely you know anyone who could discern the difference. (It is known, Khaleesi.)
: the action of moving around something in a path that is similar to a circle to the same place(also called periods)
The third I am also not interested in. Well, I am interested in better understanding periods, which is generally speaking what that form of revolution around the sun, is a year, which has it’s weather cycles. I have this theory that anything you do (with others) that you can measure through one cycle, can conservatively be done 50% better in the next cycle, depending on how well you measure that which you are doing against your goals.***
What I was not interested in, was doing that whole Bolshevik thing again, going through a great lot of motions just to end up with something that also doesn’t work that well, with the illusion of choice(I will say that towards the end at least, I would think Soviet Russia was better than the prior nobility, though)
In this day and age, a widespread recognition that, by any real definition of Law, and the accepted American process of defining our major national legislative pieces of documentation, the Declaration of Independence is our basic moral law, the principles by which a government is formed, protecting the fundamental human rights, that of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness is a revolution in and of itself. “All men are created equal” is a phrase which seems to mean all individuals have the same basic rights as humans. Life I take to mean protection of the whole being, from things which would interrupt or shorten length of life. (meaning threats from outside invaders, poisons, pissed off individuals, or carcinogens from next door neighbors) Thomas Jefferson on Liberty: “Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.” The pursuit of happiness, is less well defined, but pursuit in those days meant more like occupation or job, so the abilty to make pursuing happiness a fundamental part of day to day living. Finally, the Declaration, the one ratified by the thirteen original Colonies, asserts a final right, a duty, of the people, to alter or abolish their Government when it becomes destructive of any of the first three. It is certain that many will scoff at the validity of the Declaration as law, or even guiding principles through which the Constitution and all subsequent laws, and outcomes of governmental action should be viewed. Certainly contrary examples, like 2/3 of a person in the Constitution, like Japanese internment camps, like mass incarceration exist as shadow on our history. Consistency of words and action is always difficult for individuals or for humankind. However, I would say that like Lincoln, Martin Luther King and Obama, that the words our nation were founded upon must be a guiding light, a set of goals, that it is time were fully realized. And when our collective belief- the same one that says that the 0’s and 1’s in our bank account translate in to greenish (blue) pieces of paper that are the ultimate expression of personal worth – is similarly imbued in the fundamental belief that people of all shapes colors, sizes and intelligences have the same rights, as small pieces of our teeming lifemass of humanity, then we will have a new age, turn a new page in the human story, a time of glory unimaginable by the creative team of Walter Mitty, Walt Disney and Buckminster Fuller. You have a choice- you can be a believer, that these are fundamental rights of human kind that have been firmly ensconced on our national heritage by people in another exciting time, and play your part in realizing this change in closing the gap between our stated goals and our implementations. Or you can be a nay sayer, who says that our rights have been compromised by the actions and inconsistencies of corruptions past and present, that a rich, vibrant nation is permanently sick and the best bet is to put your head in the sand and live without hope? I’ve made my choice, and you must make the choice that has always been yours.
*Like most people and most things- practicing what you preach is the hardest part. I have certainly been the classical example of this. But if the basics of the social contract are understood by and applied equally to all, then it eases the burden on enforcement, as most people obey willingly rules they understand and at least offer a “tsk, tsk” and the breakers break it less.
In conditioning, from child psych, behavior reinforcement- the toughest patterns to break are those that are enforced inconsistently or unequally. Why then is our criminal justice system set up that way?
**I’m recalling a specific conversation with a law school student from the Bronx, advocate for the poor, but insisted that stop and frisk was not a constitutional issue- though there’s already Ohio vs. Terry which says it is, and as though no one should have the right to search people unless they happen to be walking down the street in a tough neighborhood.
*** Be interesting if that was a corollary effect of Heisenbergs uncertainty principle
References:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/05/declaration_of_independence_as_1.html
http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2012/06/the-meaning-of-the-ldquopursuit-of-happinessrdquo
Alg0rhythm 