The Declaration was written by The People who were proposing Divorce from the British Monarchy. They had no Government initially.
What they proposed for The People was the formation of a New Nation based on the Preexistence of certain Unalienable Rights that cannot be abridged or truncated or denied by anyone short of God Almighty.
A Democratic Republic with a Constitution and Bill of Rights. A Magnificent Idea that required the Ideators to bet their lives on The People’s ability to pull off such a stunning defeat of the reigning world power.
Sadly, to Franklin’s prescient prediction, We couldn’t keep it.
That’s on Us.
And any meaningful change of direction is also on Us.
True. I like to quote Thos Paine in The Rights of Man, "For upwards of two years from the commencement of the American War, and to a longer period in several of the American States, there were no established forms of government. The old governments had been abolished, and the country was too much occupied in defence to employ its attention in establishing new governments; yet during this interval order and harmony were preserved as inviolate as in any country in Europe."
"Clearly The State is not The Republic. That’s a Problem."
Yes, the U.S. government has become unaccountable rulers. It's a big problem.
On the contrary, they did have government: the state governments. These are the state governments they fought to protect from the encroachments of the British imperial government.
If you are both the governor and governed then you are self-governed, right?
Maybe a better word than 'government' is 'order'. Anarchy, as a form of societal organization, is not the absence of order, that would be chaos. Anarchy as a form of societal organization is self-organization, spontaneous order. Self-organization then is a kind of self-government.
Anarchy is not by any means defined by being "spontaneous." It is not chaos, it is simply a different kind of keeping order amongst equals. Here are a couple of different definitions: anarchy :
The state of a society being without authorities or a governing body.
Anarchism-- the political theory that a community is best organized by the voluntary cooperation of individuals, rather than by a government, which is regarded as being coercive by nature.
So, pretty much what you said, but the "spontaneous" is not part of it, though it could be.
It's not SELF-Governing, it's cooperation among equals. In other words, nobody comes to your door if you haven't paid your TAXES, and nobody tells you you have to have a LICENSE to fish in that creek, and nobody says you can't drive without forking over a wad of cash, etc etc etc
I abandoned the term conservative for reactionary. I don't want to conserve Obama Care, DEI, the current income tax, the Drug War, our Middle East policy, Auto Tune, etc. I want to turn the clock back on many issues.
What I wish to conserve, and think I do so every day in my own work, even in a small way, are the best, most nutritious, joyful, constructive and positive ideas of humankind gleaned over the millenia, which I constantly discover. They are diamonds just under the surface and all one has to do is look for them to find them.
There are good things from the past, bad things from the past. Same for the future. There has never been a time when everything was one or the other. But it's good to understand that for thousands of years, Humanity has been kept in thrall by a small group of elitist psychopaths who won Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much of the wealth of the world, and control Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much, have so little to contribute it's in the negative numbers, and who seem to delight in torture and death for most of the rest of us, while they commit genocide...
Or some old things which were dropped in the Reagan era, such as antitrust. Or a farm price support system which was designed to preserve the family farm -- which was dropped during the Nixon era.
I'm a smaller government populist, not a Reaganoid. I want some kind of antitrust measures, smaller government, AND higher taxes on the stupendously rich. Deficit spending is a subsidy for the Already Rich.
I want to roll back the clock to the America portrayed in 50s and 60s sitcoms, where Wise Dad could support a family with a blue collar job, where middle class people could afford to have a detached home in a save neighborhood, where cops behaved as well as Andy Taylor, where Herman Munster could legallly wake a midnight walk in the park.
OK, so that past was a bit idealized. But parts were real. I was there. And many of the other parts were attainable had we not taken a bunch of wrong turns.
However, I would encourage you to think beyond what we have already experienced. All that has been under an invisible "velvet glove" of Muckities hiding behind a curtain, pretending that This Is Just The Way It Is, when it is actually of their making. Humans are easy to dupe when someone can force them into poverty and dire need, so that they have little choice.
I am for NO central govt at all-- I see no need for one and plenty of reasons NOT to have one. I want to see things we've never had before, better, fairer ways of living... Reimagining how to live, with The Truth being set free so that we can see ALL the possibilities, not just those we're ALLOWED to see. So much of our experience is controlled. So much is hidden from us, and lies offered as truths...
It's time, I believe, I HOPE, to open up a whole new paradigm and begin to live as Free Beings, ALL OF US, without some group of Evil Clowns hiding behind a curtain and calling the shots because they have (virtually) all the wealth. We need to start with THAT and build from there... WEALTH DISTRIBUTION.
Did you know that Tesla invented a machine that pulled energy right out of the air... Imagine a world in which nobody has to PAY for heating, cooling, travel power, refrigeration, etc etc... Free power! For everyone! It's real, we just haven't been told. But if I can know this, everyone can know it.
Tesla pushed energy into the air. While people today complain about cell phone radiation and HAARP, Tesla's ghost is giggling: "Hold my beer."
You can get "free" energy from the power companies right now by running a fence parallel to high tension power lines. But don't let the power companies catch you. They frown on the practice.
Ah. Hmm. It's my understanding that Tesla PULLED electricity out of the air.
I don't "giggle" about radiation and HAARP, because I know both are very dangerous and harmful. I can't imagine Tesla "giggling" about any of that. I'm curious as to where you're getting your info? I've noticed just in the past few months a LOT of smearing going on of Tesla...
You are aware that that Onion article was meant to be satirizing the hypocrisy of the proposal. That is definitely how such a proposal would be perceived.
In any case, it is even less workable then our current drug laws.
People who defend no-knock raids at 3am in order to seize dope stashes and then whine about the fate of the Branch Davidians or the Jan 6th protestors are hypocrites in the woke range.
Recreational drugs have bad consequences when abused. Banning recreational drugs also has bad consequences. See Prohibition.
A drug deal between consenting players cannot be stopped without surveillance or entrapment. There is no victim to complain. There are plenty of people to complain about druggies dominating the public spaces or neglecting family duties, etc. No police state needed.
And requiring a drug test to get a welfare check is reasonable. You want government money; pay the price.
Freedom requires responsibility. Handle your high.
My term for the left's attempts to advance their fake issues is "Satan-Speak." We want to conserve liberty, they, like the devil, want to destroy it and everything else around them.
I love the 'shaken not stirred' Bond analogy! We do react, not oppose. And we oppose by promoting and support good ideas.
And by prayer, for it involves our Lord in our circumstances. If more people of God prayed more, we'd be better off altogether! We like to say, "start on our knees and roll up our sleeves."
We pray for leaders who say 'come, do this' and not those who merely say 'Don't do that.'
"...we oppose by promoting and support good ideas."
Absolutely. Oppose the evil with good; oppose the lies with truth. Oppose the destruction of what the leftists have destroyed by building something better than what we have lost. And pray. IMHO the way to get closer to God is to do His will, to obey the first Commandment, and to pray. He's always listening.
Decent people also have to remember the wisdom of Andrew Breitbart. When a leftist calls you something, racist, homophobe, etc., the way to really stop them in their tracks is to answer "so?"
Yes, Breitbart was an ex-leftist who understood their tactics and deceptions. He had a lot of good knowledge on how to oppose them, and no illusions about their motives.
Sounds like the Frankfort School of Marxism at work. They never see an issues that can't make critical. Conservative, I was more likely to be call nuts back in the 90s. Well look at us now.
"They never see an issues that can't make critical." Exactly. It's why their control of the mass media and academia is so empowering to them. That gives them the power to put issues in the forefront of the public mind.
Of course we should. But it needs to be real news. Not faux news or propaganda hour. More footage; less commentary.
The Left may be in propaganda mode, but they are skinsuiting media outlets which were once respectable. CNN used to be a real news channel. The New York Times had a great quantity of quality journalism. The Washington Post was a better paper than the Washington Times.
We need the Right friendly answer to PBS. In depth journalism. Put the real scientists on camera to make their cases. Go deep.
And have some decent children's programming for kids over 6. That has pretty much disappeared from broadcast TV. PBS Kids is really PBS preschool.
And the "Left" is so far right, it's almost all the way back to the Right, only it's not "liberal," it's not "conservative," its FASCIST. So saith the dog.
It's good to understand that EVERY tyrannical regime tries to set people at each other, and one of the most common tricks is to compromise the language... Pretending that this term no longer means what it has meant in the past... Such as the term "leftist"-- It used to mean those who are liberal, or progressive. Now it means "fascist."
Trying to communicate is difficult enough-- When the Nasties deliberately confuse everyone with terminology changing, upside-down and backwards, it's just even harder to try to understand each other, which is the goal, after all. We should ALWAYS keep in mind that our language has been absconded with, and twisted up to set us fighting with each other.
If a conservative is someone who opposes changes to the status quo (the dictionary definition hereof) then in many ways the liberals are the conservatives. They support the liberal status quo. Right-wing populists, like Trump, want to change the status quo; which makes liberals agitated to the point of bloodthirst.
I could not agree more. That is exactly what real rightism and real Americanism should be and should do.
"...we Americans are driven to a rejection of the maxims of the Past... We are the pioneers of the world; the advance-guard, sent on through the wilderness of untried things..."
We say it—and walk it out daily:
– Meritocracy is superior to Equity;
– Truth is Universal not subjective;
– There are two sexes: Male/Female;
– God is God and we are not;
– America is a Republic, not a Democracy;
– We, The People, ARE the Government;
– The U.S. Constitution is Bedrock.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Forward March.
Wait... We the People are the GOVT????????????
Then I will have to kill myself, and you, too...
We, The People, SHOULD BE the Government;
We, The People, ARE RIGHTLY the Government;
We, The People, ONE DAY WILL AGAIN BE the Government, HOPEFULLY;
The Declaration was written by The People who were proposing Divorce from the British Monarchy. They had no Government initially.
What they proposed for The People was the formation of a New Nation based on the Preexistence of certain Unalienable Rights that cannot be abridged or truncated or denied by anyone short of God Almighty.
A Democratic Republic with a Constitution and Bill of Rights. A Magnificent Idea that required the Ideators to bet their lives on The People’s ability to pull off such a stunning defeat of the reigning world power.
Sadly, to Franklin’s prescient prediction, We couldn’t keep it.
That’s on Us.
And any meaningful change of direction is also on Us.
Clearly The State is not The Republic.
That’s a Problem.
"They had no Government initially."
True. I like to quote Thos Paine in The Rights of Man, "For upwards of two years from the commencement of the American War, and to a longer period in several of the American States, there were no established forms of government. The old governments had been abolished, and the country was too much occupied in defence to employ its attention in establishing new governments; yet during this interval order and harmony were preserved as inviolate as in any country in Europe."
"Clearly The State is not The Republic. That’s a Problem."
Yes, the U.S. government has become unaccountable rulers. It's a big problem.
On the contrary, they did have government: the state governments. These are the state governments they fought to protect from the encroachments of the British imperial government.
Um, okay.
Me, I don't feel I need to be "governed."
Maybe we can CHOOSE which we want. ;)
I think Anarchy is a better model.
"Me, I don't feel I need to be 'governed.'"
If you are both the governor and governed then you are self-governed, right?
Maybe a better word than 'government' is 'order'. Anarchy, as a form of societal organization, is not the absence of order, that would be chaos. Anarchy as a form of societal organization is self-organization, spontaneous order. Self-organization then is a kind of self-government.
Anarchy is not by any means defined by being "spontaneous." It is not chaos, it is simply a different kind of keeping order amongst equals. Here are a couple of different definitions: anarchy :
The state of a society being without authorities or a governing body.
Anarchism-- the political theory that a community is best organized by the voluntary cooperation of individuals, rather than by a government, which is regarded as being coercive by nature.
So, pretty much what you said, but the "spontaneous" is not part of it, though it could be.
It's not SELF-Governing, it's cooperation among equals. In other words, nobody comes to your door if you haven't paid your TAXES, and nobody tells you you have to have a LICENSE to fish in that creek, and nobody says you can't drive without forking over a wad of cash, etc etc etc
COOPERATION is the ticket.
I love the term conservative. It means only that I find there is much worthy of conservation.
I abandoned the term conservative for reactionary. I don't want to conserve Obama Care, DEI, the current income tax, the Drug War, our Middle East policy, Auto Tune, etc. I want to turn the clock back on many issues.
What I wish to conserve, and think I do so every day in my own work, even in a small way, are the best, most nutritious, joyful, constructive and positive ideas of humankind gleaned over the millenia, which I constantly discover. They are diamonds just under the surface and all one has to do is look for them to find them.
There are good things from the past, bad things from the past. Same for the future. There has never been a time when everything was one or the other. But it's good to understand that for thousands of years, Humanity has been kept in thrall by a small group of elitist psychopaths who won Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much of the wealth of the world, and control Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much, have so little to contribute it's in the negative numbers, and who seem to delight in torture and death for most of the rest of us, while they commit genocide...
Time for a New Thing, eh?
Or some old things which were dropped in the Reagan era, such as antitrust. Or a farm price support system which was designed to preserve the family farm -- which was dropped during the Nixon era.
I'm a smaller government populist, not a Reaganoid. I want some kind of antitrust measures, smaller government, AND higher taxes on the stupendously rich. Deficit spending is a subsidy for the Already Rich.
I want to roll back the clock to the America portrayed in 50s and 60s sitcoms, where Wise Dad could support a family with a blue collar job, where middle class people could afford to have a detached home in a save neighborhood, where cops behaved as well as Andy Taylor, where Herman Munster could legallly wake a midnight walk in the park.
OK, so that past was a bit idealized. But parts were real. I was there. And many of the other parts were attainable had we not taken a bunch of wrong turns.
Populism is the Way.
https://rulesforreactionaries.substack.com/p/populism-is-the-way
That sounds reasonable.
However, I would encourage you to think beyond what we have already experienced. All that has been under an invisible "velvet glove" of Muckities hiding behind a curtain, pretending that This Is Just The Way It Is, when it is actually of their making. Humans are easy to dupe when someone can force them into poverty and dire need, so that they have little choice.
I am for NO central govt at all-- I see no need for one and plenty of reasons NOT to have one. I want to see things we've never had before, better, fairer ways of living... Reimagining how to live, with The Truth being set free so that we can see ALL the possibilities, not just those we're ALLOWED to see. So much of our experience is controlled. So much is hidden from us, and lies offered as truths...
It's time, I believe, I HOPE, to open up a whole new paradigm and begin to live as Free Beings, ALL OF US, without some group of Evil Clowns hiding behind a curtain and calling the shots because they have (virtually) all the wealth. We need to start with THAT and build from there... WEALTH DISTRIBUTION.
Did you know that Tesla invented a machine that pulled energy right out of the air... Imagine a world in which nobody has to PAY for heating, cooling, travel power, refrigeration, etc etc... Free power! For everyone! It's real, we just haven't been told. But if I can know this, everyone can know it.
Tesla pushed energy into the air. While people today complain about cell phone radiation and HAARP, Tesla's ghost is giggling: "Hold my beer."
You can get "free" energy from the power companies right now by running a fence parallel to high tension power lines. But don't let the power companies catch you. They frown on the practice.
Ah. Hmm. It's my understanding that Tesla PULLED electricity out of the air.
I don't "giggle" about radiation and HAARP, because I know both are very dangerous and harmful. I can't imagine Tesla "giggling" about any of that. I'm curious as to where you're getting your info? I've noticed just in the past few months a LOT of smearing going on of Tesla...
> the Drug War
Do you prefer SF-style de facto drug legalization?
Drug *abuse* should be illegal. If you are neglecting your family or pooping on the sidewalks, the state has a right to dry you out.
I'd treat drugs like Republican treat guns.
The Onion is wiser than any of the political parties:
https://www.theonion.com/drugs-now-legal-if-user-is-employed-1819566391
You are aware that that Onion article was meant to be satirizing the hypocrisy of the proposal. That is definitely how such a proposal would be perceived.
In any case, it is even less workable then our current drug laws.
People who defend no-knock raids at 3am in order to seize dope stashes and then whine about the fate of the Branch Davidians or the Jan 6th protestors are hypocrites in the woke range.
Recreational drugs have bad consequences when abused. Banning recreational drugs also has bad consequences. See Prohibition.
A drug deal between consenting players cannot be stopped without surveillance or entrapment. There is no victim to complain. There are plenty of people to complain about druggies dominating the public spaces or neglecting family duties, etc. No police state needed.
And requiring a drug test to get a welfare check is reasonable. You want government money; pay the price.
Freedom requires responsibility. Handle your high.
> There are plenty of people to complain about druggies dominating the public spaces or neglecting family duties, etc.
By the time it gets to that point it's generally too late to do much.
Also opioids are legal with a prescription from an easily corrupted doctor, let's look at how that's going.
A conservative is someone who understands Chesterton's Fence. Nothing more.
I had to google Chestertons' Fence.
Great! Thanks!!!
My term for the left's attempts to advance their fake issues is "Satan-Speak." We want to conserve liberty, they, like the devil, want to destroy it and everything else around them.
Yes, good term. The leftists are nihilists, The Enemy. Satan-Speak is their ammunition in their war against all that is good and right.
I love the 'shaken not stirred' Bond analogy! We do react, not oppose. And we oppose by promoting and support good ideas.
And by prayer, for it involves our Lord in our circumstances. If more people of God prayed more, we'd be better off altogether! We like to say, "start on our knees and roll up our sleeves."
We pray for leaders who say 'come, do this' and not those who merely say 'Don't do that.'
"...we oppose by promoting and support good ideas."
Absolutely. Oppose the evil with good; oppose the lies with truth. Oppose the destruction of what the leftists have destroyed by building something better than what we have lost. And pray. IMHO the way to get closer to God is to do His will, to obey the first Commandment, and to pray. He's always listening.
Decent people also have to remember the wisdom of Andrew Breitbart. When a leftist calls you something, racist, homophobe, etc., the way to really stop them in their tracks is to answer "so?"
https://wholeamericancatalog.substack.com/p/remembering-the-great-american-andrew
Yes, Breitbart was an ex-leftist who understood their tactics and deceptions. He had a lot of good knowledge on how to oppose them, and no illusions about their motives.
My time at Stratton Oakmont (The Wolf Of Wall Street) https://open.substack.com/pub/michael880/p/another-chapter-from-can-i-have-your?r=3b6pw1&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Sounds like the Frankfort School of Marxism at work. They never see an issues that can't make critical. Conservative, I was more likely to be call nuts back in the 90s. Well look at us now.
"They never see an issues that can't make critical." Exactly. It's why their control of the mass media and academia is so empowering to them. That gives them the power to put issues in the forefront of the public mind.
Of course we should. But it needs to be real news. Not faux news or propaganda hour. More footage; less commentary.
The Left may be in propaganda mode, but they are skinsuiting media outlets which were once respectable. CNN used to be a real news channel. The New York Times had a great quantity of quality journalism. The Washington Post was a better paper than the Washington Times.
We need the Right friendly answer to PBS. In depth journalism. Put the real scientists on camera to make their cases. Go deep.
And have some decent children's programming for kids over 6. That has pretty much disappeared from broadcast TV. PBS Kids is really PBS preschool.
And the "Left" is so far right, it's almost all the way back to the Right, only it's not "liberal," it's not "conservative," its FASCIST. So saith the dog.
Today's Left is yesteryear's Lower Right, only gayer.
lol
"One reason this matters is because the leftists really do create a never-ending series of bad ideas, issues, and policies." You nailed it!
“God makes men what they are.” ~ William Wallace
It's good to understand that EVERY tyrannical regime tries to set people at each other, and one of the most common tricks is to compromise the language... Pretending that this term no longer means what it has meant in the past... Such as the term "leftist"-- It used to mean those who are liberal, or progressive. Now it means "fascist."
Trying to communicate is difficult enough-- When the Nasties deliberately confuse everyone with terminology changing, upside-down and backwards, it's just even harder to try to understand each other, which is the goal, after all. We should ALWAYS keep in mind that our language has been absconded with, and twisted up to set us fighting with each other.
Yes, I very much agree with you that the right should be a thing in it of itself, instead of merely being in opposition to the left.
If a conservative is someone who opposes changes to the status quo (the dictionary definition hereof) then in many ways the liberals are the conservatives. They support the liberal status quo. Right-wing populists, like Trump, want to change the status quo; which makes liberals agitated to the point of bloodthirst.
I could not agree more. That is exactly what real rightism and real Americanism should be and should do.
"...we Americans are driven to a rejection of the maxims of the Past... We are the pioneers of the world; the advance-guard, sent on through the wilderness of untried things..."
Herman Melville, White Jacket (1850)