Barack Obama we do not doubt your intelligence. To be an effective leader one must also display honesty, compassion, & guts. Stand with Ralph Nader, Ron Paul, & Cynthia McKinney. NOT John McCain. Your choice - your move.
Hope wish and pray away that our leaders do the right thing, if not today maybe the next day. As America decays we wish and pray, for our leaders to do the right thing. The consitution burns, 1/2 our population is in prison but we hope the Dennis or Ron Paul ride in on there magical horse to save America. Or the people could do something about it and enact the Ni4d and fix the problems of broken government themselves. ni4d(dot)us
Sure, some 527s do represent special interests and corporations, but most of them represent real people who are concerned about the issues. Why does McCain think his bill's silly little rules that restrict free speech, such as telling people when they can and can't have 527s and campaigning for a certain candidate, are necessary? I mean, there actually is a provision in the bill that says that you can't put out a 527 ad within I think 30 days of an election. WTF?? 30 days?? That's unreasonable
And, of course, John McCain keeps bitching about earmarks and pork, but he can't seem to do a damn thing to stop it. Go figure. If he's that concerned, why doesn't he ever filibuster a bill full of pork?? If McCain really cares about campaign finance reform, why does he push for weak, stupid bills like McCain-Feingold instead of the Fair Elections Now Act, which is REAL campaign finance reform?
McCain-Feingold goes after people and 527s, not corporate America or special interest money.
Career politicians like William Byrd, Ted Kennedy and John Kerry don't give 2 shits about what hte people really want. They jus think they KNOW what the people want and would never willingly give up any of their power so that the people could overturn their legislative acts.
Only way we're gonna get a National Initiative passed is if we can get enough people like Mike Gravel in Congress. But, of course, it'd take forever to convince liberty-minded folks to agree to guys like him. They're too deluded into voting for idiots like Obama and McCain, settling for 2nd or 3rd-best rather than the most qualified candidates.
After we do get enough like-minded Congressmen in office, it's an even tougher uphill battle convincing them to vote for it, if at all. :/
Ni4D is simply taking the power out of the hands of wal mart, Haliburton, General Electric, citigroup, and Ford and placing it in the hands of average Americans.
without a national initiative procedure NOTHING WILL CHANGE! there will be more war. more taxes. the dollar will continue to decline. wal mart will squash another million small business's
The American dream envisioned in the Declaration of Independence is the vision of all human beings. We have yet to realize it in America, and when we do, I predict it will race around the world like the light of the sun. Cicero defined freedom as participation in power. The goal of this book and the purpose of my life are to help people understand how they can have freedom by promoting their participation in power of government—lawmaking. It is our birthright, if we dare to claim it.
By becoming lawmakers and becoming responsible for public policy, the consequences of which we will enjoy or suffer, we will facilitate our civic maturation—a human development that will benefit all facets of human life. Civic maturity is the most important result of turning to each other to exert control over our system of representative government.
I CONCLUDE THIS MANUSCRIPT with the simple observation that the answer to the problems of human governance lies with the people and not their leaders. The design of representative government maintains citizens in civic adolescence. We want the largesse of government, but are reluctant to pay for it. We blame our elected officials when things go wrong, when, in fact, we are responsible for putting them in office. That is the definition of adolescence.
Will laws enacted by majority decisions of citizens be perfect? Far from it. But they will be much improved over the minority rule we now suffer. When people make mistakes, they will be more inclined to make corrections. That is not the case with representatives who are averse to admitting error for fear of having that information used against them in the next election.
That is not the case with representatives in government who have generic barriers in dealing with the public interest that in many cases do not coincide with their personal self interest, the financial interests of their backers or the interests of their political party in gaining or retaining power.
I do not mean to imply that the people as individuals are superior in intellect to their leaders as individuals. Not at all. But the people acting as a constituency of the whole, legislating by majority rule, do not have barriers in making decisions involving the public interest. The constituent majority identifies and votes its enlightened self interest.
THE ABOVE DESCRIPTION of representative government is not meant to be pejorative in any way. It's how I experienced and understand the process. I do not believe those within representative government can correct it. There are only two venues of change—the government and the people; the solution is obvious. People must be brought into the governing process in the only possible role, that of lawmakers.
Historically, they evolved around regional economic ideologies into a two-party monopoly, which they jealously guard with the full force of the law and the police power of government. It is this unsanctioned power that gravitate the special interests of the nation who seek to influence the direction of public policy in a venue hidden from public view.
I have yet to touch upon where the real machinations of the legislative process take place and where the ultimate control of government resides—in the political parties. They are not even referred to in the Constitution, and the Founders universally disdained them as odious "factions;" yet, they appeared in the first presidential administration of George Washington and to this day carry more clout than any power defined by the Constitution.
Add to this a committee system designed to compartmentalize the specialization and expertise of individual members who are ruled over by committee chairman and ranking members who acquire control of legislative empires by a seniority system regardless of competence.
I blame the competitive, confrontational structure of the Congress and the legislative monopoly it holds at the federal level. The Constitution distributes congressional representation geographically where the economic, resource, and social special interests of each state and each district come into competitive confrontation for the limited wealth of the whole government.
In this book, I have attempted to identify a number important policy issues that face our nation today. I have the advantage of having dealt with most of them more than a generation ago. I have had to face up to disappointments as I looked back on my experiences. I am disheartened to see that political and social issues have gotten worse in the past 37 years, and many of the solutions proposed today, in my opinion, will make matters even worse.
No force in history is more oppressive than government. There is never a guarantee that successful governance in one era will be passed down in a straight line to subsequent generations. So many factors come into chain of human events that nothing can be guaranteed, and malevolent forces are always at play.
The problem of citizen participation in government applies not only to those states with initiative law, but also to all states and at all levels of government. It has never been easy for people to participate in the political process except under the direction and control of political parties that hold a monopoly over the electoral process.
The legislative role of the people with different laws from state to state has not been consistent. Additionally, citizen lawmaking has not been independent of representative government, which has sought to use its control to continually diminish the people's legislative role.
The motivation for the Initiative, Referendum, and Recall (IRR) laws was the abusive corruption of government by the business community in the post-Civil War boom and the "robber baron" era.
THE FIRST FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE in American governance since the founding took place at the turn of the last century without amending the Constitution. Starting in 1898 and up until the First World War, more than 20 states amended their constitutions to permit their citizens to initiate and enact laws and amend constitutions.
By controlling who could get elected to federal office—president, Congress—states asserted real power many times superior to the federal power based in the Constitution. This issue is better understood as "states' rights." It has kept in contention the supremacy of the federal government. This treatise is too short to treat havoc that this issue has wrought on the nation.
From my perspective, the most damaging legacy of slavery on the Constitution, other than the exclusion of the legitimate exercise of the people's legislative power, is the control of federal elections by state governments.
The property requirements were essentially removed at the state level prior to the Civil War. The expansion of the voting franchise to male blacks was the product of the Civil War Reconstruction amendments. The way was paved for a federal amendment to include women in 1920 as a result of repeated passage of initiative and referendum laws granting women the right to vote by state governments.
The amending process described in Article V is so undemocratic that the chambers (House and Senate) of the 13 smallest states can stop any national reform—a population ratio considerably less than 10%. Little wonder why so few changes have been made to update the Constitution to meet the needs of the 21st Century since its ratification in 1788. Other than housekeeping, the only changes to the Constitution have been the expansion of the voting franchise.
Of the five features locking slavery into the Constitution, only one—that of a slave being counted as three-fifths of a person for representative purposes in the U.S. House—had been removed by the Civil War. The other four highly undemocratic features of the Constitution have remained to work their mischief on us to this day, long after the demise of slavery. They are: 1) the Electoral College, 2) Article V, 3) the U.S. Senate, and 4) state control of federal elections.
Their fears that the people would remove slavery from the Constitution if so empowered were well founded. The first lobbying act of the first Congress was an assault on slavery by Pennsylvania Quakers led by Benjamin Franklin. It was successfully thwarted by James Madison and accepted as an understanding in Congress that the subject would never be addressed again.
Nevertheless, they sacrificed the people's lawmaking right to protect the ratification of their compact with the devil—slavery. They locked into the Constitution by excluding procedures that rightly belonged in Article VII for the people to amend the Constitution and make laws.
All of the Founders and Framers believed that the people had every right to exercise their legislative sovereignty to make laws. They are quoted frequently, pointing out that future generations have an obligation to alter their governments and constitutions to suit their interests. They also pointed with pride to the seminal lawmaking act of the Declaration of Independence.
The real impact of the people being cut out of this legislative act was to alter the entire nature and the rule of citizens in American governance to this day.
The real impact of the people being cut out of this legislative act was to alter the entire nature and the rule of citizens in American governance to this day.
Even with the success of overcoming these barriers, it was literally a miracle that the Constitution was ratified at all. Fifteen votes strategically placed in three states would have mean defeat. Would a Constitution sans slavery have fared better? I think so. At least the Framers would have had the integrity to put the ratification before the people who, as the Preamble stated, "do ordain..."
The elites then controlled the conventions. This had universal appeal. It offered a way to kill the Constitution without the existing governments being held accountable. It permitted the political elites for and against the Constitution to gather and duke it out without being pestered by the real people.
The Framers in Philadelphia were well aware of ordinary people's attitude toward slavery, so they figured out how to keep them one step removed from the ratification process; that was to have the state legislatures call for state conventions and refer the Constitution for ratification to them.
In 1778, Massachusetts placed before its citizens a constitution for ratification that included slavery. The people refused to ratify it. In 1780, a constitution authored by John Adams that excluded slavery was then overwhelmingly ratified.
THE FRAMERS HAD TO EXCLUDE the people from the ratification process in order to secure the ratification of their flawed Constitution. They had a daunting task. They had to avoid a vote in the Confederate Congress, where the Constitution would likely not have been ratified. Similarly, they had to avoid votes in the state legislatures by persuading them to refer ratification to state conventions called for that purpose.
The Swiss Constitution, written in 1848, added the people as lawmakers creating a very successful governing partnership with their elected officials. This was the intended road but the one not taken by the Framers of the American Constitution.
The Framers wrote a document that defined the first constitutional representative government in history. Representative government has since been the norm in all democracies except Switzerland, which copied our Constitution but added one very powerful change, which represents the next step in the evolution of democracy.
Our Constitution has been extensively copied around the world. Obviously, the structure of representative government does not threaten other elites governing foreign societies.
Our Constitution, creating the structure of representative government, favors elites simply because it was written by elites. And, of course, they did not fail to provide for the continuity of their own power by establishing procedures whereby they could amend the Constitution with Article V and make laws with Article VII.
The Constitutional Framers, the elites of their day, created a system of representative government that held a monopoly of legislative power that facilitated policies that shame us to this day. Regardless of how much we praise our form of government, it cannot by any stretch of the imagination be called egalitarian or democratic.
The land of the continent was there for the taking, even though the land was already occupied by the Indians. In a cruel electoral calculus, settlers used their government's military power to legalize their continued encroachments on Indian lands. Settlers voted; Indians did not. The Indians were not enslaved but nearly annihilated.
The American psyche was further coarsened by the national sense of "manifest destiny," the idea that God wished us to exercise dominion over the land. Land represented economic freedom and a chance for upward mobility.
The legacy of slavery plagues us to this day. Repeated generational transfers of cruel, inhuman norms of conduct toward fellow humans, rationalized by Holy Scripture, have damaged the American psyche, beyond repair. We are a violent people, still sustained by religious fervor. And we wonder why.
The Framers compromised the moral principles articulated in the Declaration of Independence and made a deal with the devil in order to unify a new nation and prevent the certain collapse of the Confederate States that threatened their personal wealth and power.
Delegate John Rutledge of South Carolina, backed by the delegates of Georgia, blackmailed James Madison, the architect of the convention, and the rest of the delegates into accepting slavery as the price for their states joining the new government.
I believe the point at which the American dream of freedom was eclipsed was when the delegates to the convention failed to keep faith with the principles of the Declaration of Independence articulated 11 years earlier. That Declaration was the dream, the vision—all men are created equal.
Free blacks and slaves had fought in the Revolutionary War in numbers that exceeded their demographic distribution and king cotton had yet to take command of the Deep South with Eli Whitney's gin. Blacks had earned their piece of the dream.
Compounding the tragedy the Framers were about to initiate was the fact that probably the best opportunity to rid the nation of the scourge of slavery was the period from the cessation of the Revolutionary War hostilities in 1781 to the beginning of the Philadelphia Convention in May 1787.
The convention delegates were the wealthy elites of those states; any loss of civic cohesion would directly affect their personal property. Their initial preference for the structure of a new government, derived from the successful colonial experience with the town meeting system of governance, should have produced an amalgam of representative and direct citizen involvement in government.
When the Constitutional Framers met in Philadelphia, their options in designing our new government were unduly influenced by the fact that the 13 confederate states, all independently sovereign, were in the process of falling apart internally and as a confederation.
Nevertheless, we had to struggle for our freedom with blood and sacrifice in a revolutionary war. It wasn't until 1787 that the structure of our government took permanent shape, the design of which became a beacon that would guide the peoples of the world toward a system of representative government.
ALL PEOPLES DREAM of freedom and happiness, particularly those who have experienced the inequities and repressions of autocratic governments. We Americans were blessed with the opportunity to realize our dream of freedom at the confluence of the Scottish, English, and French Ages of Enlightenment in the 18th Century, when ancient Greek concepts of democracy experienced a rebirth.
I do not diminish the vital need to elect people of integrity to public office. The point I make is that such elections are not nearly enough to overcome the shortcomings of representative government.
All of our efforts at improving public policy are rooted in the structure of representative government. Unfortunately, we continue to believe that electing the right people to public office will bring about beneficial change. So we repeat over and over again something that has been proven repeatedly not to work.
My present analysis is somewhat better informed by the intervening years from the beginning of my Senate career when the book was first published in 1972 to the present. My view of the corporation—an institution lacking memory and morality—is not less harsh; however, my view of government—a tool for cooperative action—has become harsher.
The title of this chapter suggests that some force has been denying us our dream while, at the same time, bombarding us with jingoistic rhetoric that the American dream is the pinnacle of human achievement.
The dream of freedom, respect for individual sovereignty, is not uniquely American; it began with civilization. The struggle to prevent enslavement or subjugation in any relationship is universal in all people.
The title of this chapter is the same as it was 37 years ago. I thought of freedom, and personal and civil liberty, as uniquely American. I think most of us believe this without realizing that such national hubris devalues the concept.
"The present state of things is the consequence of the past; and it is natural to inquire as to the sources of the good we enjoy or the evils we suffer."
- By empowering people at home, we would advance the idea of direct democracy abroad and, in so doing, restructure the United Nations to become a global institution of governance that recognizes individual sovereignty.
- The National Initiative can restructure the global polity for world governance and, at the same time, enjoy peace and equitably share the Earth's resources with all peoples.
- We need to lead the world in new standards of international law through moral example, economic aid, and support for international law and institutions.
- To grow into civic maturity, we must admit our mistakes and learn from them to avoid repetition.
- We have established priorities that advance state interests internationally rather than addressing citizen concerns at home.
- We must abandon notions of forcing other peoples to accept our ways and instead reframe our views of what constitutes beneficial changes in undeveloped nations.
- For our national security, we must curtail subversive intrusions and clandestine activities abroad.
- Americans must recognize we have wandered far from our intended national purpose and world leadership role.
- Failures in Vietnam and Iraq have taught us that we have lost our moral compass, departing dramatically from America's long anti-colonial tradition.
- The gulf between the government and the people has grown even greater, furthered largely by pervasive secrecy structures.
The National Initiative is the vehicle to accomplish a restructuring of the global polity for world governance and bring about peace and equitable management of the Earth's resources for the benefit of its peoples.
Dwight Eisenhower said, "I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days, governments had better get out of the way and let them have it."
If the OECD countries and key countries like India, China, Brazil, the United States, the European Union, and Russia come into this system, no country would choose to be left out. They would all clamor to get in, and like the European Union, they would have to adhere to a certain standard of human governance; that standard would require in the minimum that the people be empowered as lawmakers in their country.
Let's say China is a member, but does not have a complete democratic structure of governance, it would not enjoy the full weight of delegates to reflect its population. Sweden, Finland and other Scandinavian countries because of their unusual level of successful democratic governance would have their number of delegates weighted to reflect the success of governance at home. The weighted formula would take into consideration the political, social and economic performance of each nation-state.
A Council of Regions could replace the Security Council. It would be divided into geographic regions like the European Union, South American, North American, Southeast Asia and the Middle East. China and India are sufficiently populous to be entities unto themselves.
The next step to expand the National Initiative would be to seek enactment in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries (OECD), plus India, China, and Brazil. Once people in those countries are empowered to share power with their elected government officials, the people of the world could call for a convention under the auspices of the United Nations, and then restructure the United Nations to do away with the veto power of the Security Council.
If the United States were successful in bringing about the federal ballot initiative, the National Initiative for Democracy where the people are empowered as lawmakers, this advance would race around the world like wildfire and set the stage to restructure the United Nations.
How do we repair those fractures? It starts with the process of empowering the people in one country at a time, something that has started in Switzerland in 1848 and has ripened with great success; and yet the Swiss model has not been sufficiently appreciated by the people of the world to incite its widespread emulation.
The present, inadequate system of global governance fractures sovereignty, not unlike what existed at the founding of our country before the sovereign colonies were united in a federal system of United States.
The sovereign individual citizen cedes a certain degree of sovereignty at every level of government, whether it is at the local level, the state level, or national. The individual has no sovereignty left except for the brief moments when s/he exercises it on Election Day. I am suggesting that we shift a degree of sovereignty, already lost to the individual at the federal level (nation-state), to a global institution for some degree of governance in the no-man's land of world anarchy.
People attach their sovereignty to their particular nation-state to the point of jingoistic idiocy. The same emotions that we attach to athletics are superimposed in an exaggerated fashion on the nation-state. As live are lost in riots after athletic events, so too are many more lives lost in the irrational fervor of competing nation-states. This excessive patriotism for one's own nation becomes the worst form of mob action.
The answer at this point takes us back to Chapter 2, which points to the methodology for arriving at a system of equitable global governance. At heart, it is the issue of sovereignty—something a human being acquires at birth. The individual is sovereign.
It is unfortunate that at the close of the Age of Enlightenment, human governance topped out at the nation-state level, rather than progressing to the global level. The nation-state holds itself sovereign. At the last effort at global governance, after the Second World War, the victors enshrined their power in a Security Council with veto powers; thereby holding hostage the public interest of all other people in the world to their selfish foreign policy interests.
These three elements threatening the planet—nuclear annihilation, environmental extinction, and the anarchy of globalization—need not be the norm for human existence. The tragedy is that the planet has sufficient resources to satisfy the needs of all human beings if we had the capacity to manage them. That brings us to the need for a United Nations that can govern the global community.
We try with new institutions and trade agreements to regulate globalization but fail at the altar of profit. The state-less economic organizations of globalization are operating in regulatory no-man's land.
This process is lowering the national barriers that all countries guard jealousy under the name of sovereignty, and they are being lowered in a pell mell, unorganized fashion, that as a result, will cause a great deal of suffering, because corporations essentially have no morality, memory or sense of responsibility to future generations. They are motivated by profit. And so greed and profit become the operative agents of globalization.
Essentially, what we are doing through our use of energy, our despoliation of the environment is literally cooking ourselves off the planet, quite possibly within a hundred years. This dilemma of human economic outreach organized by corporate society is part of the process that we call globalization.
World War II brought to us advances in science that gave human beings the capacity to destroy the planet with a single global nuclear exchange. Science has given us the ability to destroy the planet, which we are in the process of doing over time as a result of industrialization's impact on the environment.
When we make a mistake and refuse to admit it, we likely will repeat the mistake; certainly a sign of immaturity in our personal lives. We develop maturity by acknowledging our mistakes and making the necessary correction to avoid repeating them in the future; that's how we permit our children to improve, by acknowledging and learning from their mistakes.
As a result, it brought us to the point with Vietnam where we were not able to admit our error. We refused to accept the fact that we made a grievous mistake in Vietnam and that our troops died in vain and that over three million Vietnamese and Southeast Asians died in vain at our hands.
It is just a jumble of fear that translates into foreign policy that is an aberration where we define our public interest as always superior to the public interest of the rest of the world. That kind of a definition leaves very little room for accommodation between peoples and nations. We act as if the "American dream" is the only dream that is valid; as if other nations don't have the right to their own dream.
In terms of foreign policy, fear mongering has persisted more subtly than we choose to admit, from the fear of communism to the fear of Islamism, and the fear of "Jihadism." The whole attitude of fear drills right down through the national psyche with the fear of blacks, Latinos, Chinese, gays, the fear of women asserting their power, and a whole host of other fears.
Vietnam has now become a most favored nation trading partner of the United States. You can buy a Baskin Robbins ice cream cone or Kentucky Fried Chicken in Hanoi, and yet our vindictiveness over Vietnam not permitting us to "win" (whatever that means) resulted in our mean-spirited punishment of the Vietnamese with sanctions for a generation.
Since Citizen Power was first written, we have seen the implosion of communism, the realization of freedom in the Warsaw Pact countries, the opening up of Chinese and Russian market economies, China maintaining itself as a communist country, and Russia becoming a capitalist democracy.
What was apparent with the Vietnam experience, and now with the Iraq experience is the chasm of distrust that exists between the people and their government. This chasm now is being maintained through the want use of secrecy by the government.
There was a fear of communism back then, but today in Iraq we don't even that to offer. Arguments were made in fear of terrorism but that was not the case. Iraq under Saddam Hussein posed no threat to the United States and, in fact, no weapons of mass destruction were ever found there.
What's more immoral today is that at least we could say we were in Vietnam for fear of communism but in fact there was more than a passing interest in the rubber and other resources of that country. Now, it's all about the oil.
Looking back 37 years, the best and the brightest of the liberal and moderate leadership were the ones that brought us into the quagmire of Vietnam. We have a replay with the best and brightest of moderate Republicans and far-right religious conservatives taking us into Iraq.
Our policy should be to strengthen the institutions of cooperation and conventions of international law. We must seize upon every opportunity to press for cooperation and the peaceful means of settling all disputes.
How can the lone citizen have an influence on these issues? It isn't as hard as it sometimes seems. First, he should see that he and other members of his community are informed. Local organizations such as world affairs councils, UN support groups, World Federalist chapters are effective venues for information and discussion.
For instance, every year thousands of Americans travel abroad and get a clearer mental picture of the world. A picture is worth a thousand words. A visit is a million pictures. Citizens are no less capable of making informed decisions on the monumental questions of foreign policy issues than their leaders.
THE COMPLEXITY AND REMOTENESS of international affairs seem to suggest that effective citizen action is impossible. On many issues an informed portion of our citizens already has at least as good a grasp on foreign affairs as their elected representatives in Congress.
In pursuing what our leaders have deemed to be our "national interest," we have too often flouted international law and prior international agreements and, by this action, reduced the effectiveness of these restraints for maintaining world peace. A policy of pursuing "vital interest" above all is a policy of "beggar thy neighbor." Such a policy by the most powerful nation on Earth guarantees that the nations of the world will remain in beggary.
They serve only to allow the executive branch to project itself overseas. They create and preserve client regimes. They overthrow obstreperous regimes that refuse to kowtow to America. They advance American business interests by bribing friendly government officials and defaming the opposition. Finally, they engage in the kind of improper and, at times, illegal activities which most Americans would object to if any country but their own were engaged in them.
The CIA and our other intelligence agencies serve as a direct arm of our interventionist policy, providing the information on which military preparations are based, subverting revolutionary governments, and, at times, organizing and leading covert armies. We need to know something about potential adversaries, but essential information can be provided today by reconnaissance satellites and by reading published information.
Equally, our subversive activities must be curtailed in order that our presence can be a legitimate one and that the small entanglements that lead to big wars can be avoided.
Our world leadership should be exercised, not through might as in the past, but through moral example, economic aid, and support for international law and institutions.
Just as we believe in the supremacy of law over might in relations within our nation, we must begin to apply these same standards in our dealings with other nations. I believe that only when we recognize this and begin to take international institutions seriously will we at last be on the road to workable arrangements for preserving the peace.
We must become, again, the champion of revolutionary change and of decolonization, leading the world in new norms of international law, appropriate to an age of economic interdependence.
Our country should not attempt to take on the tasks of the United Nations or manage political and economic change around the world, or be the police force of the world. We can only assist, with our extraordinary wealth and industrial capacity, as young countries attempt to find their own ways toward a better life.
Nor should our military power be applied to enforce our will. With the rise of sophisticated techniques of guerrilla warfare and new means of communicating ideas—and hence of arousing latent national feelings and welding popular movements together—great powers, regardless of the military force they deploy, should no longer exert control over territory not occupied by their own citizens.
We need only reflect on our inability to solve the problems we have within our own country to recognize the far greater limitations we have when we attempt to introduce change in other nations.
We must recognize that there are real limits to how much we can influence another country. Foreign affairs analyst and author of The Politics of Hysteria, William Pfaff has wisely written that "foreign policy is fundamentally a means by which the American nation is protected, and it is not an appropriate vehicle for reform or revolution of foreign societies."
The United States may want to resist these developments, but the pressures from the unhappy masses are overwhelming. In the end we will find ourselves shut out of these countries entirely, if we do not alter our view of what constitutes beneficial changes in these lands.
If all the people of these nations are to benefit from modernization there will likely be revolutionary struggles in which political control is wrested from the traditional ruling classes and a program of land reform, education, and economic reform having mass support is instituted.
IN DEALING WITH THE UNDEVELOPED WORLD, we must recognize that most of the existing governments are composed of conservative elites which hold onto their positions of power and privilege by force of arms (usually purchased from the United States).
Many factors point to a new era in world relations. Europe, both East and West, is demonstrating renewed self confidence and vitality, suggesting the ability to determine its own defense needs and to meet them through its own, not inconsiderable resources, based on its own perceptions of the threats it faces. Western Europe's GNP is fully 80% of our own, and it is quite capable of meeting its own defense requirements.
While we begin to recognize our limitations, both of understanding and resources, we must gain the confidence to relate to other nations on the same basis as lesser powers have for centuries—using negotiation, peaceful contacts, and trade, expecting to win some contests and lose others, but retaining a belief in our ability to participate productively on the world scene in a peaceful and cooperative fashion.
In the United States, our leaders have wanted to keep America first, even though that meant maintaining the world's largest arsenal of destruction: we would be first in death, even if we could not be first in life in healthcare, in quality of education, in concern for the aged and the underprivileged, in support for culture, and in all the activities that make life worth living.
In such a state system, policy makers act on the international scene to advance their own interests and those of the state, rather than those of the citizens they are supposed to represent or the people in other lands affected by their policies. In Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Iraq we have seen our leaders decimate whole countries and destroy the societies of those countries, simply to preserve their own reputations for toughness and determination.
It is axiomatic that the custodians of the state will attempt to preserve it and to advance its interests. But when the state surrounds itself with the structures of secrecy, creates a loyalty system to ensure that those who serve it possess its values, and maintains a surveillance network to detect and apprehend citizens who oppose its purposes, then we are far along toward a 1984-style state system which suppresses its citizens to serve its own interests first and foremost.
We have witnessed in the United States during the past quarter century a growing separation of the state apparatus, including the presidency, the Department of Defense, the CIA, FBI, the Department of State, and associated agencies, from the people it is supposed to be protecting.
While people everywhere are searching for a style of life and a set of institutions which will promote humane life, the expansionist interest of many nation-states continue to pursue the course of death and to use the most advanced talents to magnify still further their ability to inflict oppression on already-suffering populations.
The global crisis brought on by nuclear weapons, assaults on the environment, population growth, and the advance of technology demands from us higher standards of humanity and wisdom than ever before. But the nation-state has show itself unable to respond to this challenge. America is the most powerful example; but it is not alone in its inability to respond to the needs of this era.
We must let them work out their own destiny, true to the character of their own diverse cultures. Our attempts to "modernize" them, that is to mold them in our image, by force if necessary, inflict far more destruction on these societies, than they would ever inflict themselves, if left to their own, less "modern" devices.
Out of the caldrons of Vietnam and Iraq we have learned that our innocent dream of being a benevolent empire is destined to be in the end, no more benevolent than the cruel empires of yore. We cannot mold societies so different from our own to our liking, but must allow them to develop in their own way.
We want them to join us in military alliance and permit us to base our armed forces and intelligence services on their soil, and we want the right to invest in, and thus to exploit, their natural resources. We are playing exactly the same role in the underdeveloped world as the British, the French, the Dutch, and the Germans did before us. We are pursuing in Iraq a colonial policy—control of their oil—through military occupation in a post-colonial world.
America has a long anti-colonial tradition, going back to its beginnings. The recognition that we have become an imperial power has not been a pleasant one for Americans, and we shield ourselves from it by pretending that our kind of empire is somehow different from those that preceded us. It is true that we do not want to colonize the land ourselves, but we want to determine the type of government the people may have.
Our actions in Iraq have created threats to our own security, making us our own worst enemy. We are paying dearly for our blunders, not only in loss of life, but in loss of faith in government. This is the ultimate threat to a nation, when people no longer have confidence in government.
I am not saying that other nations are necessarily more peace-loving than we or that they are less willing than we to use force to achieve their goals. It is only that we have the power to be a danger to world peace, with no constraints on our nation's leaders but their own moral judgment—and we have learned in Vietnam and now in Iraq to our horror how shockingly lacking our leaders are in moral judgment.
In the eyes of the rest of the world, our country has shown itself to be not as it likes to view itself, the preserver of world order, the exemplar of freedom and democracy, but as a belligerent country disrupting world order. Our pattern of using our immense power—both economic and military—where and when we please has made us the world's most dangerous nation.
They realize that their government is unable to protect its people from harm; it cannot promote economic development, either overseas in underdeveloped nations or in the underdeveloped inner cities of our own country; and it cannot work its military will on small but stubborn countries halfway around the world—or 90 miles off our shore. Many Americans are asking if our institutions and leaders are capable of responding to the contemporary world's social, moral and economic issues.
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE are experiencing a profound loss of faith in their nation's purposes in the world, and the world has lost respect for America's leadership. They see their leaders unable to deal effectively with the problems that face the nation, either domestically or on the foreign scene.
To all you people saying that this would topple our government need to realize that if a wacky law was passed by the people the supreme court could still over rule it.
It amazes me that people think only career politicians could keep this country afloat.
0pioid: For how much longer will the general public switch from party to party and politician to politician, under the impression that one corporate/globalist-sponsored candidate is any different than the other. I can just hear them now, "...but Obama is for 'change'". No one who gets proper media coverage and funding is gonna change anything. Our presidents only have the power to obey corporations, Israel & globalists.
Oh no, you actually have to spend more than 2 minutes in a Google search to find unbiased and correct information about a candidate.
THE PEOPLE can elect people to CONGRESS. CONGRESS can amend the Constitution. Sorry, your kind of wrong, I support Obama, and he doesn't support what your saying.
If you think the government is corrupt, work to elect new leaders. Inform people of who you think would be a good choice. Don't make an anarchy.
The people can elect people to congress if they know about them. As proven in the primaries your only allowed to know who the 5 major media outlets owned by the war profiteers wants to you to know about. If someone thinks the governments corrupt which many people do thier attempts to change the system will be shot down like Kucinichs attempt to impeach Bush. Congress can only ammend the consitution if it serves their purpose finacially. ni4d(dot)us
its not chaos. Its simply allowing Informed Citizens the right to voice their opinion with a Vote. Which is one of the founding principles of this great country.
Set this countries greatest economists, scientists, doctors, and inventors free and we will be the most progressive nation in the world. stay with things the way they are and we're done for.
The people as a whole would mess our nation up if we had it any other way.
We can't just go amending the Constitution whenever we feel like, it's the BASE of our government, and if it gets messed up, our government would topple, and there would be chaos.
Become an informed voter, brush up on the issues, and truthfully inform other voters. That is all that is needed.
you are essentially supporting the WAR. supporting the income tax, supporting the crooked health care system, supporting Wal Mart.
amend the constitution or else you're stuck with with military industrial complex, corporate abuses, and health care scams because THOSE corporations are who are REALLY in control of our country.
and lastly.
as it stands today "WE" can't amend the constitution at ALL! so wtf are you even talking about
the reason why the government is structured the way it is is because of Slavery!
and you show that you have absolutely NO faith in your country. You think that Obama has all the answers or Ron Paul has all the answers when the truth is that We as a Nation have all the answers but we don't have any power to implement them because the congress is nothing but a gang of Thieves that aren't really interested in solutions.
how about that prohibition amendment? boy that was a great amendment. Really did a LOT of good huh? yea lets leave in the hands of the rich. They won't screw anything up. They won't get us into a 3,000,000,000,000,000 dollar war that cost the lives of over 4000 Americans will they? yea that constitution prevented us from going into Vietnam and killing Millions of people there too huh?
the constitution was written to be amended as progress occurs. That's the entire basis of its conception
whats the point of being an informed voter if you never have anyone worthwhile to vote for? you vote for who They tell you to vote for. So how is that the solution? the solution is giving us the right to make demands on how our taxes are spent by LAW. All of a sudden we'll have a government that is actually held accountable to the People.
If you could vote to impeach Bush would you do it? well common sense tells anyone that we need a National Initiative procedure in this country.
oldhacks: I agree. So, we're informed voters. The only way we get information about candidates is via corporate-sponsored media. Our 'informed' votes are Trumped by delegates, superdelegates, Diebold voting machines, the electoral college or the Surpreme Court.
When the fox is guarding the hen house, why should the hens select a different fox?
This is bullshit, as Karl Marx said "True Democracy is one short step away from Socialism"
It has never worked in the past learn from history. It also changes the face of America and disavows the Constitution!
If this gets put into place I start shooting instantly to defend my country!
boxingboycow 1 year ago
This tells nothing and demonstrates nothing... it's stupid and pointless.
Rayvn7 2 years ago
Spoil what? Waste what? Steal what?
Barack Obama we do not doubt your intelligence. To be an effective leader one must also display honesty, compassion, & guts. Stand with Ralph Nader, Ron Paul, & Cynthia McKinney. NOT John McCain. Your choice - your move.
ryanshaunkelly 3 years ago
trippyyyyy
curlyfry1106 3 years ago 2
LOVE IT!!!
Thanks, Gravel08
themorningshowlive 3 years ago 3
FIRE IT UP!
NatureLegalized 3 years ago 2
This has been flagged as spam show
Hope wish and pray away that our leaders do the right thing, if not today maybe the next day. As America decays we wish and pray, for our leaders to do the right thing. The consitution burns, 1/2 our population is in prison but we hope the Dennis or Ron Paul ride in on there magical horse to save America. Or the people could do something about it and enact the Ni4d and fix the problems of broken government themselves. ni4d(dot)us
kyeot 3 years ago 2
Sure, some 527s do represent special interests and corporations, but most of them represent real people who are concerned about the issues. Why does McCain think his bill's silly little rules that restrict free speech, such as telling people when they can and can't have 527s and campaigning for a certain candidate, are necessary? I mean, there actually is a provision in the bill that says that you can't put out a 527 ad within I think 30 days of an election. WTF?? 30 days?? That's unreasonable
Whoo69 3 years ago
And, of course, John McCain keeps bitching about earmarks and pork, but he can't seem to do a damn thing to stop it. Go figure. If he's that concerned, why doesn't he ever filibuster a bill full of pork?? If McCain really cares about campaign finance reform, why does he push for weak, stupid bills like McCain-Feingold instead of the Fair Elections Now Act, which is REAL campaign finance reform?
McCain-Feingold goes after people and 527s, not corporate America or special interest money.
Whoo69 3 years ago
Career politicians like William Byrd, Ted Kennedy and John Kerry don't give 2 shits about what hte people really want. They jus think they KNOW what the people want and would never willingly give up any of their power so that the people could overturn their legislative acts.
Whoo69 3 years ago 2
Only way we're gonna get a National Initiative passed is if we can get enough people like Mike Gravel in Congress. But, of course, it'd take forever to convince liberty-minded folks to agree to guys like him. They're too deluded into voting for idiots like Obama and McCain, settling for 2nd or 3rd-best rather than the most qualified candidates.
After we do get enough like-minded Congressmen in office, it's an even tougher uphill battle convincing them to vote for it, if at all. :/
Whoo69 3 years ago
Come on! Sighn on to National Initiative 4 democracy! Wan't it done right? You've got to do it your self!
AshMan32 3 years ago 2
CITIZEN-POWERdotUS
VOTEdotORG
NatureLegalized 3 years ago
Educate yourselves
Visit the website
Vote YES on the NI4D
Empower the People
wentrikin 3 years ago
Ni4D is simply taking the power out of the hands of wal mart, Haliburton, General Electric, citigroup, and Ford and placing it in the hands of average Americans.
without a national initiative procedure NOTHING WILL CHANGE! there will be more war. more taxes. the dollar will continue to decline. wal mart will squash another million small business's
oldhacks 3 years ago 2
AGREED.
The only conceivable way to do things like abolish corporate personhood?
by empowering the American People with Ni4D.
PeaceCzar 3 years ago 3
NI4D will save America from itself! or atleast from it's current leaders.
ShawnHydedotcom 3 years ago 4
CITIZEN POWER
by MIKE GRAVEL
BamaGravelian 3 years ago 2
The American dream envisioned in the Declaration of Independence is the vision of all human beings. We have yet to realize it in America, and when we do, I predict it will race around the world like the light of the sun. Cicero defined freedom as participation in power. The goal of this book and the purpose of my life are to help people understand how they can have freedom by promoting their participation in power of government—lawmaking. It is our birthright, if we dare to claim it.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago 3
By becoming lawmakers and becoming responsible for public policy, the consequences of which we will enjoy or suffer, we will facilitate our civic maturation—a human development that will benefit all facets of human life. Civic maturity is the most important result of turning to each other to exert control over our system of representative government.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
I CONCLUDE THIS MANUSCRIPT with the simple observation that the answer to the problems of human governance lies with the people and not their leaders. The design of representative government maintains citizens in civic adolescence. We want the largesse of government, but are reluctant to pay for it. We blame our elected officials when things go wrong, when, in fact, we are responsible for putting them in office. That is the definition of adolescence.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
Will laws enacted by majority decisions of citizens be perfect? Far from it. But they will be much improved over the minority rule we now suffer. When people make mistakes, they will be more inclined to make corrections. That is not the case with representatives who are averse to admitting error for fear of having that information used against them in the next election.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
That is not the case with representatives in government who have generic barriers in dealing with the public interest that in many cases do not coincide with their personal self interest, the financial interests of their backers or the interests of their political party in gaining or retaining power.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
I do not mean to imply that the people as individuals are superior in intellect to their leaders as individuals. Not at all. But the people acting as a constituency of the whole, legislating by majority rule, do not have barriers in making decisions involving the public interest. The constituent majority identifies and votes its enlightened self interest.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
THE ABOVE DESCRIPTION of representative government is not meant to be pejorative in any way. It's how I experienced and understand the process. I do not believe those within representative government can correct it. There are only two venues of change—the government and the people; the solution is obvious. People must be brought into the governing process in the only possible role, that of lawmakers.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
Historically, they evolved around regional economic ideologies into a two-party monopoly, which they jealously guard with the full force of the law and the police power of government. It is this unsanctioned power that gravitate the special interests of the nation who seek to influence the direction of public policy in a venue hidden from public view.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
I have yet to touch upon where the real machinations of the legislative process take place and where the ultimate control of government resides—in the political parties. They are not even referred to in the Constitution, and the Founders universally disdained them as odious "factions;" yet, they appeared in the first presidential administration of George Washington and to this day carry more clout than any power defined by the Constitution.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
Add to this a committee system designed to compartmentalize the specialization and expertise of individual members who are ruled over by committee chairman and ranking members who acquire control of legislative empires by a seniority system regardless of competence.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
I blame the competitive, confrontational structure of the Congress and the legislative monopoly it holds at the federal level. The Constitution distributes congressional representation geographically where the economic, resource, and social special interests of each state and each district come into competitive confrontation for the limited wealth of the whole government.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
In this book, I have attempted to identify a number important policy issues that face our nation today. I have the advantage of having dealt with most of them more than a generation ago. I have had to face up to disappointments as I looked back on my experiences. I am disheartened to see that political and social issues have gotten worse in the past 37 years, and many of the solutions proposed today, in my opinion, will make matters even worse.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
No force in history is more oppressive than government. There is never a guarantee that successful governance in one era will be passed down in a straight line to subsequent generations. So many factors come into chain of human events that nothing can be guaranteed, and malevolent forces are always at play.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
The problem of citizen participation in government applies not only to those states with initiative law, but also to all states and at all levels of government. It has never been easy for people to participate in the political process except under the direction and control of political parties that hold a monopoly over the electoral process.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
The legislative role of the people with different laws from state to state has not been consistent. Additionally, citizen lawmaking has not been independent of representative government, which has sought to use its control to continually diminish the people's legislative role.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
The motivation for the Initiative, Referendum, and Recall (IRR) laws was the abusive corruption of government by the business community in the post-Civil War boom and the "robber baron" era.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
THE FIRST FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE in American governance since the founding took place at the turn of the last century without amending the Constitution. Starting in 1898 and up until the First World War, more than 20 states amended their constitutions to permit their citizens to initiate and enact laws and amend constitutions.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
By controlling who could get elected to federal office—president, Congress—states asserted real power many times superior to the federal power based in the Constitution. This issue is better understood as "states' rights." It has kept in contention the supremacy of the federal government. This treatise is too short to treat havoc that this issue has wrought on the nation.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
From my perspective, the most damaging legacy of slavery on the Constitution, other than the exclusion of the legitimate exercise of the people's legislative power, is the control of federal elections by state governments.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
The property requirements were essentially removed at the state level prior to the Civil War. The expansion of the voting franchise to male blacks was the product of the Civil War Reconstruction amendments. The way was paved for a federal amendment to include women in 1920 as a result of repeated passage of initiative and referendum laws granting women the right to vote by state governments.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
The amending process described in Article V is so undemocratic that the chambers (House and Senate) of the 13 smallest states can stop any national reform—a population ratio considerably less than 10%. Little wonder why so few changes have been made to update the Constitution to meet the needs of the 21st Century since its ratification in 1788. Other than housekeeping, the only changes to the Constitution have been the expansion of the voting franchise.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
Of the five features locking slavery into the Constitution, only one—that of a slave being counted as three-fifths of a person for representative purposes in the U.S. House—had been removed by the Civil War. The other four highly undemocratic features of the Constitution have remained to work their mischief on us to this day, long after the demise of slavery. They are: 1) the Electoral College, 2) Article V, 3) the U.S. Senate, and 4) state control of federal elections.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
Slavery was so effectively embedded in the Constitution that its removal, short of a civil war, was impossible.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
Their fears that the people would remove slavery from the Constitution if so empowered were well founded. The first lobbying act of the first Congress was an assault on slavery by Pennsylvania Quakers led by Benjamin Franklin. It was successfully thwarted by James Madison and accepted as an understanding in Congress that the subject would never be addressed again.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
Nevertheless, they sacrificed the people's lawmaking right to protect the ratification of their compact with the devil—slavery. They locked into the Constitution by excluding procedures that rightly belonged in Article VII for the people to amend the Constitution and make laws.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
All of the Founders and Framers believed that the people had every right to exercise their legislative sovereignty to make laws. They are quoted frequently, pointing out that future generations have an obligation to alter their governments and constitutions to suit their interests. They also pointed with pride to the seminal lawmaking act of the Declaration of Independence.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
The real impact of the people being cut out of this legislative act was to alter the entire nature and the rule of citizens in American governance to this day.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
The real impact of the people being cut out of this legislative act was to alter the entire nature and the rule of citizens in American governance to this day.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
Even with the success of overcoming these barriers, it was literally a miracle that the Constitution was ratified at all. Fifteen votes strategically placed in three states would have mean defeat. Would a Constitution sans slavery have fared better? I think so. At least the Framers would have had the integrity to put the ratification before the people who, as the Preamble stated, "do ordain..."
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
The elites then controlled the conventions. This had universal appeal. It offered a way to kill the Constitution without the existing governments being held accountable. It permitted the political elites for and against the Constitution to gather and duke it out without being pestered by the real people.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
The Framers in Philadelphia were well aware of ordinary people's attitude toward slavery, so they figured out how to keep them one step removed from the ratification process; that was to have the state legislatures call for state conventions and refer the Constitution for ratification to them.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
In 1778, Massachusetts placed before its citizens a constitution for ratification that included slavery. The people refused to ratify it. In 1780, a constitution authored by John Adams that excluded slavery was then overwhelmingly ratified.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
The convention scenario also permitted the Framers to circumvent the people, denying them a legislative role in the ratification process.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
THE FRAMERS HAD TO EXCLUDE the people from the ratification process in order to secure the ratification of their flawed Constitution. They had a daunting task. They had to avoid a vote in the Confederate Congress, where the Constitution would likely not have been ratified. Similarly, they had to avoid votes in the state legislatures by persuading them to refer ratification to state conventions called for that purpose.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
The Swiss Constitution, written in 1848, added the people as lawmakers creating a very successful governing partnership with their elected officials. This was the intended road but the one not taken by the Framers of the American Constitution.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
The Framers wrote a document that defined the first constitutional representative government in history. Representative government has since been the norm in all democracies except Switzerland, which copied our Constitution but added one very powerful change, which represents the next step in the evolution of democracy.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
Our Constitution has been extensively copied around the world. Obviously, the structure of representative government does not threaten other elites governing foreign societies.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
Our Constitution, creating the structure of representative government, favors elites simply because it was written by elites. And, of course, they did not fail to provide for the continuity of their own power by establishing procedures whereby they could amend the Constitution with Article V and make laws with Article VII.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
The Constitutional Framers, the elites of their day, created a system of representative government that held a monopoly of legislative power that facilitated policies that shame us to this day. Regardless of how much we praise our form of government, it cannot by any stretch of the imagination be called egalitarian or democratic.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
The land of the continent was there for the taking, even though the land was already occupied by the Indians. In a cruel electoral calculus, settlers used their government's military power to legalize their continued encroachments on Indian lands. Settlers voted; Indians did not. The Indians were not enslaved but nearly annihilated.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
The American psyche was further coarsened by the national sense of "manifest destiny," the idea that God wished us to exercise dominion over the land. Land represented economic freedom and a chance for upward mobility.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
The legacy of slavery plagues us to this day. Repeated generational transfers of cruel, inhuman norms of conduct toward fellow humans, rationalized by Holy Scripture, have damaged the American psyche, beyond repair. We are a violent people, still sustained by religious fervor. And we wonder why.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
The Framers compromised the moral principles articulated in the Declaration of Independence and made a deal with the devil in order to unify a new nation and prevent the certain collapse of the Confederate States that threatened their personal wealth and power.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
Delegate John Rutledge of South Carolina, backed by the delegates of Georgia, blackmailed James Madison, the architect of the convention, and the rest of the delegates into accepting slavery as the price for their states joining the new government.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
I believe the point at which the American dream of freedom was eclipsed was when the delegates to the convention failed to keep faith with the principles of the Declaration of Independence articulated 11 years earlier. That Declaration was the dream, the vision—all men are created equal.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
Free blacks and slaves had fought in the Revolutionary War in numbers that exceeded their demographic distribution and king cotton had yet to take command of the Deep South with Eli Whitney's gin. Blacks had earned their piece of the dream.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
Compounding the tragedy the Framers were about to initiate was the fact that probably the best opportunity to rid the nation of the scourge of slavery was the period from the cessation of the Revolutionary War hostilities in 1781 to the beginning of the Philadelphia Convention in May 1787.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
Unfortunately, the pall of slavery gripped the convention's proceedings, holding hostage any possible truly democratic success.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
The convention delegates were the wealthy elites of those states; any loss of civic cohesion would directly affect their personal property. Their initial preference for the structure of a new government, derived from the successful colonial experience with the town meeting system of governance, should have produced an amalgam of representative and direct citizen involvement in government.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
When the Constitutional Framers met in Philadelphia, their options in designing our new government were unduly influenced by the fact that the 13 confederate states, all independently sovereign, were in the process of falling apart internally and as a confederation.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
Nevertheless, we had to struggle for our freedom with blood and sacrifice in a revolutionary war. It wasn't until 1787 that the structure of our government took permanent shape, the design of which became a beacon that would guide the peoples of the world toward a system of representative government.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
ALL PEOPLES DREAM of freedom and happiness, particularly those who have experienced the inequities and repressions of autocratic governments. We Americans were blessed with the opportunity to realize our dream of freedom at the confluence of the Scottish, English, and French Ages of Enlightenment in the 18th Century, when ancient Greek concepts of democracy experienced a rebirth.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
I do not diminish the vital need to elect people of integrity to public office. The point I make is that such elections are not nearly enough to overcome the shortcomings of representative government.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
All of our efforts at improving public policy are rooted in the structure of representative government. Unfortunately, we continue to believe that electing the right people to public office will bring about beneficial change. So we repeat over and over again something that has been proven repeatedly not to work.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
My present analysis is somewhat better informed by the intervening years from the beginning of my Senate career when the book was first published in 1972 to the present. My view of the corporation—an institution lacking memory and morality—is not less harsh; however, my view of government—a tool for cooperative action—has become harsher.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
The title of this chapter suggests that some force has been denying us our dream while, at the same time, bombarding us with jingoistic rhetoric that the American dream is the pinnacle of human achievement.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
The dream of freedom, respect for individual sovereignty, is not uniquely American; it began with civilization. The struggle to prevent enslavement or subjugation in any relationship is universal in all people.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
The title of this chapter is the same as it was 37 years ago. I thought of freedom, and personal and civil liberty, as uniquely American. I think most of us believe this without realizing that such national hubris devalues the concept.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
Chapter 12
Who Stole the American Dream?
"The present state of things is the consequence of the past; and it is natural to inquire as to the sources of the good we enjoy or the evils we suffer."
--Samuel Johnson
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
- By empowering people at home, we would advance the idea of direct democracy abroad and, in so doing, restructure the United Nations to become a global institution of governance that recognizes individual sovereignty.
- The National Initiative can restructure the global polity for world governance and, at the same time, enjoy peace and equitably share the Earth's resources with all peoples.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
- We need to lead the world in new standards of international law through moral example, economic aid, and support for international law and institutions.
- To grow into civic maturity, we must admit our mistakes and learn from them to avoid repetition.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
- We have established priorities that advance state interests internationally rather than addressing citizen concerns at home.
- We must abandon notions of forcing other peoples to accept our ways and instead reframe our views of what constitutes beneficial changes in undeveloped nations.
- For our national security, we must curtail subversive intrusions and clandestine activities abroad.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
Global Governance
- Americans must recognize we have wandered far from our intended national purpose and world leadership role.
- Failures in Vietnam and Iraq have taught us that we have lost our moral compass, departing dramatically from America's long anti-colonial tradition.
- The gulf between the government and the people has grown even greater, furthered largely by pervasive secrecy structures.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
The National Initiative is the vehicle to accomplish a restructuring of the global polity for world governance and bring about peace and equitable management of the Earth's resources for the benefit of its peoples.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
Dwight Eisenhower said, "I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days, governments had better get out of the way and let them have it."
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
In summary, what we're talking about is that the source of sovereignty at all levels of government is the sovereignty of individuals.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
If the OECD countries and key countries like India, China, Brazil, the United States, the European Union, and Russia come into this system, no country would choose to be left out. They would all clamor to get in, and like the European Union, they would have to adhere to a certain standard of human governance; that standard would require in the minimum that the people be empowered as lawmakers in their country.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
We need not worry about the tyrannies of the world or the countries which are not mature enough to move to this level of governance.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
Let's say China is a member, but does not have a complete democratic structure of governance, it would not enjoy the full weight of delegates to reflect its population. Sweden, Finland and other Scandinavian countries because of their unusual level of successful democratic governance would have their number of delegates weighted to reflect the success of governance at home. The weighted formula would take into consideration the political, social and economic performance of each nation-state.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
The restructuring of the UN General Assembly would be based upon population and quality of governance within each nation.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
A Council of Regions could replace the Security Council. It would be divided into geographic regions like the European Union, South American, North American, Southeast Asia and the Middle East. China and India are sufficiently populous to be entities unto themselves.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
The next step to expand the National Initiative would be to seek enactment in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries (OECD), plus India, China, and Brazil. Once people in those countries are empowered to share power with their elected government officials, the people of the world could call for a convention under the auspices of the United Nations, and then restructure the United Nations to do away with the veto power of the Security Council.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
If the United States were successful in bringing about the federal ballot initiative, the National Initiative for Democracy where the people are empowered as lawmakers, this advance would race around the world like wildfire and set the stage to restructure the United Nations.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
How do we repair those fractures? It starts with the process of empowering the people in one country at a time, something that has started in Switzerland in 1848 and has ripened with great success; and yet the Swiss model has not been sufficiently appreciated by the people of the world to incite its widespread emulation.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
The present, inadequate system of global governance fractures sovereignty, not unlike what existed at the founding of our country before the sovereign colonies were united in a federal system of United States.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
The sovereign individual citizen cedes a certain degree of sovereignty at every level of government, whether it is at the local level, the state level, or national. The individual has no sovereignty left except for the brief moments when s/he exercises it on Election Day. I am suggesting that we shift a degree of sovereignty, already lost to the individual at the federal level (nation-state), to a global institution for some degree of governance in the no-man's land of world anarchy.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
People attach their sovereignty to their particular nation-state to the point of jingoistic idiocy. The same emotions that we attach to athletics are superimposed in an exaggerated fashion on the nation-state. As live are lost in riots after athletic events, so too are many more lives lost in the irrational fervor of competing nation-states. This excessive patriotism for one's own nation becomes the worst form of mob action.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
The answer at this point takes us back to Chapter 2, which points to the methodology for arriving at a system of equitable global governance. At heart, it is the issue of sovereignty—something a human being acquires at birth. The individual is sovereign.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
It is unfortunate that at the close of the Age of Enlightenment, human governance topped out at the nation-state level, rather than progressing to the global level. The nation-state holds itself sovereign. At the last effort at global governance, after the Second World War, the victors enshrined their power in a Security Council with veto powers; thereby holding hostage the public interest of all other people in the world to their selfish foreign policy interests.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
These three elements threatening the planet—nuclear annihilation, environmental extinction, and the anarchy of globalization—need not be the norm for human existence. The tragedy is that the planet has sufficient resources to satisfy the needs of all human beings if we had the capacity to manage them. That brings us to the need for a United Nations that can govern the global community.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
We try with new institutions and trade agreements to regulate globalization but fail at the altar of profit. The state-less economic organizations of globalization are operating in regulatory no-man's land.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
This process is lowering the national barriers that all countries guard jealousy under the name of sovereignty, and they are being lowered in a pell mell, unorganized fashion, that as a result, will cause a great deal of suffering, because corporations essentially have no morality, memory or sense of responsibility to future generations. They are motivated by profit. And so greed and profit become the operative agents of globalization.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
Essentially, what we are doing through our use of energy, our despoliation of the environment is literally cooking ourselves off the planet, quite possibly within a hundred years. This dilemma of human economic outreach organized by corporate society is part of the process that we call globalization.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
World War II brought to us advances in science that gave human beings the capacity to destroy the planet with a single global nuclear exchange. Science has given us the ability to destroy the planet, which we are in the process of doing over time as a result of industrialization's impact on the environment.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
When we failed to admit the mistake of Vietnam, we set ourselves up to repeat that mistake in Iraq.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
When we make a mistake and refuse to admit it, we likely will repeat the mistake; certainly a sign of immaturity in our personal lives. We develop maturity by acknowledging our mistakes and making the necessary correction to avoid repeating them in the future; that's how we permit our children to improve, by acknowledging and learning from their mistakes.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
As a result, it brought us to the point with Vietnam where we were not able to admit our error. We refused to accept the fact that we made a grievous mistake in Vietnam and that our troops died in vain and that over three million Vietnamese and Southeast Asians died in vain at our hands.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
It is just a jumble of fear that translates into foreign policy that is an aberration where we define our public interest as always superior to the public interest of the rest of the world. That kind of a definition leaves very little room for accommodation between peoples and nations. We act as if the "American dream" is the only dream that is valid; as if other nations don't have the right to their own dream.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
In terms of foreign policy, fear mongering has persisted more subtly than we choose to admit, from the fear of communism to the fear of Islamism, and the fear of "Jihadism." The whole attitude of fear drills right down through the national psyche with the fear of blacks, Latinos, Chinese, gays, the fear of women asserting their power, and a whole host of other fears.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
Vietnam has now become a most favored nation trading partner of the United States. You can buy a Baskin Robbins ice cream cone or Kentucky Fried Chicken in Hanoi, and yet our vindictiveness over Vietnam not permitting us to "win" (whatever that means) resulted in our mean-spirited punishment of the Vietnamese with sanctions for a generation.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
Since Citizen Power was first written, we have seen the implosion of communism, the realization of freedom in the Warsaw Pact countries, the opening up of Chinese and Russian market economies, China maintaining itself as a communist country, and Russia becoming a capitalist democracy.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
What was apparent with the Vietnam experience, and now with the Iraq experience is the chasm of distrust that exists between the people and their government. This chasm now is being maintained through the want use of secrecy by the government.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
There was a fear of communism back then, but today in Iraq we don't even that to offer. Arguments were made in fear of terrorism but that was not the case. Iraq under Saddam Hussein posed no threat to the United States and, in fact, no weapons of mass destruction were ever found there.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
What's more immoral today is that at least we could say we were in Vietnam for fear of communism but in fact there was more than a passing interest in the rubber and other resources of that country. Now, it's all about the oil.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
Looking back 37 years, the best and the brightest of the liberal and moderate leadership were the ones that brought us into the quagmire of Vietnam. We have a replay with the best and brightest of moderate Republicans and far-right religious conservatives taking us into Iraq.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
Our policy should be to strengthen the institutions of cooperation and conventions of international law. We must seize upon every opportunity to press for cooperation and the peaceful means of settling all disputes.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
How can the lone citizen have an influence on these issues? It isn't as hard as it sometimes seems. First, he should see that he and other members of his community are informed. Local organizations such as world affairs councils, UN support groups, World Federalist chapters are effective venues for information and discussion.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
For instance, every year thousands of Americans travel abroad and get a clearer mental picture of the world. A picture is worth a thousand words. A visit is a million pictures. Citizens are no less capable of making informed decisions on the monumental questions of foreign policy issues than their leaders.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
THE COMPLEXITY AND REMOTENESS of international affairs seem to suggest that effective citizen action is impossible. On many issues an informed portion of our citizens already has at least as good a grasp on foreign affairs as their elected representatives in Congress.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
In pursuing what our leaders have deemed to be our "national interest," we have too often flouted international law and prior international agreements and, by this action, reduced the effectiveness of these restraints for maintaining world peace. A policy of pursuing "vital interest" above all is a policy of "beggar thy neighbor." Such a policy by the most powerful nation on Earth guarantees that the nations of the world will remain in beggary.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
They serve only to allow the executive branch to project itself overseas. They create and preserve client regimes. They overthrow obstreperous regimes that refuse to kowtow to America. They advance American business interests by bribing friendly government officials and defaming the opposition. Finally, they engage in the kind of improper and, at times, illegal activities which most Americans would object to if any country but their own were engaged in them.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
The clandestine activities in which our government engages today do not truly defend our nation.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
The CIA and our other intelligence agencies serve as a direct arm of our interventionist policy, providing the information on which military preparations are based, subverting revolutionary governments, and, at times, organizing and leading covert armies. We need to know something about potential adversaries, but essential information can be provided today by reconnaissance satellites and by reading published information.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
Equally, our subversive activities must be curtailed in order that our presence can be a legitimate one and that the small entanglements that lead to big wars can be avoided.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
Our world leadership should be exercised, not through might as in the past, but through moral example, economic aid, and support for international law and institutions.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
Just as we believe in the supremacy of law over might in relations within our nation, we must begin to apply these same standards in our dealings with other nations. I believe that only when we recognize this and begin to take international institutions seriously will we at last be on the road to workable arrangements for preserving the peace.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
We must become, again, the champion of revolutionary change and of decolonization, leading the world in new norms of international law, appropriate to an age of economic interdependence.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
Our country should not attempt to take on the tasks of the United Nations or manage political and economic change around the world, or be the police force of the world. We can only assist, with our extraordinary wealth and industrial capacity, as young countries attempt to find their own ways toward a better life.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
Nor should our military power be applied to enforce our will. With the rise of sophisticated techniques of guerrilla warfare and new means of communicating ideas—and hence of arousing latent national feelings and welding popular movements together—great powers, regardless of the military force they deploy, should no longer exert control over territory not occupied by their own citizens.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
We need only reflect on our inability to solve the problems we have within our own country to recognize the far greater limitations we have when we attempt to introduce change in other nations.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
We must recognize that there are real limits to how much we can influence another country. Foreign affairs analyst and author of The Politics of Hysteria, William Pfaff has wisely written that "foreign policy is fundamentally a means by which the American nation is protected, and it is not an appropriate vehicle for reform or revolution of foreign societies."
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
The United States may want to resist these developments, but the pressures from the unhappy masses are overwhelming. In the end we will find ourselves shut out of these countries entirely, if we do not alter our view of what constitutes beneficial changes in these lands.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
If all the people of these nations are to benefit from modernization there will likely be revolutionary struggles in which political control is wrested from the traditional ruling classes and a program of land reform, education, and economic reform having mass support is instituted.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
IN DEALING WITH THE UNDEVELOPED WORLD, we must recognize that most of the existing governments are composed of conservative elites which hold onto their positions of power and privilege by force of arms (usually purchased from the United States).
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
Many factors point to a new era in world relations. Europe, both East and West, is demonstrating renewed self confidence and vitality, suggesting the ability to determine its own defense needs and to meet them through its own, not inconsiderable resources, based on its own perceptions of the threats it faces. Western Europe's GNP is fully 80% of our own, and it is quite capable of meeting its own defense requirements.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
While we begin to recognize our limitations, both of understanding and resources, we must gain the confidence to relate to other nations on the same basis as lesser powers have for centuries—using negotiation, peaceful contacts, and trade, expecting to win some contests and lose others, but retaining a belief in our ability to participate productively on the world scene in a peaceful and cooperative fashion.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
In the United States, our leaders have wanted to keep America first, even though that meant maintaining the world's largest arsenal of destruction: we would be first in death, even if we could not be first in life in healthcare, in quality of education, in concern for the aged and the underprivileged, in support for culture, and in all the activities that make life worth living.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
In such a state system, policy makers act on the international scene to advance their own interests and those of the state, rather than those of the citizens they are supposed to represent or the people in other lands affected by their policies. In Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Iraq we have seen our leaders decimate whole countries and destroy the societies of those countries, simply to preserve their own reputations for toughness and determination.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
It is axiomatic that the custodians of the state will attempt to preserve it and to advance its interests. But when the state surrounds itself with the structures of secrecy, creates a loyalty system to ensure that those who serve it possess its values, and maintains a surveillance network to detect and apprehend citizens who oppose its purposes, then we are far along toward a 1984-style state system which suppresses its citizens to serve its own interests first and foremost.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
We have witnessed in the United States during the past quarter century a growing separation of the state apparatus, including the presidency, the Department of Defense, the CIA, FBI, the Department of State, and associated agencies, from the people it is supposed to be protecting.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
While people everywhere are searching for a style of life and a set of institutions which will promote humane life, the expansionist interest of many nation-states continue to pursue the course of death and to use the most advanced talents to magnify still further their ability to inflict oppression on already-suffering populations.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
The global crisis brought on by nuclear weapons, assaults on the environment, population growth, and the advance of technology demands from us higher standards of humanity and wisdom than ever before. But the nation-state has show itself unable to respond to this challenge. America is the most powerful example; but it is not alone in its inability to respond to the needs of this era.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
We must let them work out their own destiny, true to the character of their own diverse cultures. Our attempts to "modernize" them, that is to mold them in our image, by force if necessary, inflict far more destruction on these societies, than they would ever inflict themselves, if left to their own, less "modern" devices.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
Out of the caldrons of Vietnam and Iraq we have learned that our innocent dream of being a benevolent empire is destined to be in the end, no more benevolent than the cruel empires of yore. We cannot mold societies so different from our own to our liking, but must allow them to develop in their own way.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
We want them to join us in military alliance and permit us to base our armed forces and intelligence services on their soil, and we want the right to invest in, and thus to exploit, their natural resources. We are playing exactly the same role in the underdeveloped world as the British, the French, the Dutch, and the Germans did before us. We are pursuing in Iraq a colonial policy—control of their oil—through military occupation in a post-colonial world.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
America has a long anti-colonial tradition, going back to its beginnings. The recognition that we have become an imperial power has not been a pleasant one for Americans, and we shield ourselves from it by pretending that our kind of empire is somehow different from those that preceded us. It is true that we do not want to colonize the land ourselves, but we want to determine the type of government the people may have.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
Our actions in Iraq have created threats to our own security, making us our own worst enemy. We are paying dearly for our blunders, not only in loss of life, but in loss of faith in government. This is the ultimate threat to a nation, when people no longer have confidence in government.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
I am not saying that other nations are necessarily more peace-loving than we or that they are less willing than we to use force to achieve their goals. It is only that we have the power to be a danger to world peace, with no constraints on our nation's leaders but their own moral judgment—and we have learned in Vietnam and now in Iraq to our horror how shockingly lacking our leaders are in moral judgment.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
In the eyes of the rest of the world, our country has shown itself to be not as it likes to view itself, the preserver of world order, the exemplar of freedom and democracy, but as a belligerent country disrupting world order. Our pattern of using our immense power—both economic and military—where and when we please has made us the world's most dangerous nation.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
They realize that their government is unable to protect its people from harm; it cannot promote economic development, either overseas in underdeveloped nations or in the underdeveloped inner cities of our own country; and it cannot work its military will on small but stubborn countries halfway around the world—or 90 miles off our shore. Many Americans are asking if our institutions and leaders are capable of responding to the contemporary world's social, moral and economic issues.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE are experiencing a profound loss of faith in their nation's purposes in the world, and the world has lost respect for America's leadership. They see their leaders unable to deal effectively with the problems that face the nation, either domestically or on the foreign scene.
BamaGravelian 3 years ago
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Viva la revolution! ;)
CalJennings 3 years ago
To all you people saying that this would topple our government need to realize that if a wacky law was passed by the people the supreme court could still over rule it.
It amazes me that people think only career politicians could keep this country afloat.
0pioid 3 years ago
0pioid: For how much longer will the general public switch from party to party and politician to politician, under the impression that one corporate/globalist-sponsored candidate is any different than the other. I can just hear them now, "...but Obama is for 'change'". No one who gets proper media coverage and funding is gonna change anything. Our presidents only have the power to obey corporations, Israel & globalists.
proteanview 3 years ago
proteanview - are you an ni4d supporter?
jandrewmurphy 3 years ago
Go Gravel!!!
blackturtleus 3 years ago
Oh no, you actually have to spend more than 2 minutes in a Google search to find unbiased and correct information about a candidate.
THE PEOPLE can elect people to CONGRESS. CONGRESS can amend the Constitution. Sorry, your kind of wrong, I support Obama, and he doesn't support what your saying.
If you think the government is corrupt, work to elect new leaders. Inform people of who you think would be a good choice. Don't make an anarchy.
Cripplebro99 3 years ago
The people can elect people to congress if they know about them. As proven in the primaries your only allowed to know who the 5 major media outlets owned by the war profiteers wants to you to know about. If someone thinks the governments corrupt which many people do thier attempts to change the system will be shot down like Kucinichs attempt to impeach Bush. Congress can only ammend the consitution if it serves their purpose finacially. ni4d(dot)us
kyeot 3 years ago
its not chaos. Its simply allowing Informed Citizens the right to voice their opinion with a Vote. Which is one of the founding principles of this great country.
Set this countries greatest economists, scientists, doctors, and inventors free and we will be the most progressive nation in the world. stay with things the way they are and we're done for.
oldhacks 3 years ago
how do you know obama doesn't support it?
jandrewmurphy 3 years ago
Theres a reason we have the government we have.
The people as a whole would mess our nation up if we had it any other way.
We can't just go amending the Constitution whenever we feel like, it's the BASE of our government, and if it gets messed up, our government would topple, and there would be chaos.
Become an informed voter, brush up on the issues, and truthfully inform other voters. That is all that is needed.
Cripplebro99 3 years ago
you are essentially supporting the WAR. supporting the income tax, supporting the crooked health care system, supporting Wal Mart.
amend the constitution or else you're stuck with with military industrial complex, corporate abuses, and health care scams because THOSE corporations are who are REALLY in control of our country.
and lastly.
as it stands today "WE" can't amend the constitution at ALL! so wtf are you even talking about
oldhacks 3 years ago 2
the reason why the government is structured the way it is is because of Slavery!
and you show that you have absolutely NO faith in your country. You think that Obama has all the answers or Ron Paul has all the answers when the truth is that We as a Nation have all the answers but we don't have any power to implement them because the congress is nothing but a gang of Thieves that aren't really interested in solutions.
oldhacks 3 years ago 2
how about that prohibition amendment? boy that was a great amendment. Really did a LOT of good huh? yea lets leave in the hands of the rich. They won't screw anything up. They won't get us into a 3,000,000,000,000,000 dollar war that cost the lives of over 4000 Americans will they? yea that constitution prevented us from going into Vietnam and killing Millions of people there too huh?
the constitution was written to be amended as progress occurs. That's the entire basis of its conception
oldhacks 3 years ago 2
whats the point of being an informed voter if you never have anyone worthwhile to vote for? you vote for who They tell you to vote for. So how is that the solution? the solution is giving us the right to make demands on how our taxes are spent by LAW. All of a sudden we'll have a government that is actually held accountable to the People.
If you could vote to impeach Bush would you do it? well common sense tells anyone that we need a National Initiative procedure in this country.
oldhacks 3 years ago
oldhacks: I agree. So, we're informed voters. The only way we get information about candidates is via corporate-sponsored media. Our 'informed' votes are Trumped by delegates, superdelegates, Diebold voting machines, the electoral college or the Surpreme Court.
When the fox is guarding the hen house, why should the hens select a different fox?
proteanview 3 years ago 2
that would literally be the FOX guarding the hen house!
jandrewmurphy 3 years ago
41,000 views on my last NI4D video!!!
holy fuck.
oldhacks 3 years ago
citizen-power . us
you can order it there
inkabinkaboo182 3 years ago
he's posting the chapters of citizen power, man! read up!
inkabinkaboo182 3 years ago
Does anyone even read what BamaGravelian writes...? Lol. I imagine a guy in his basement with a dug-out hole he keeps his female victims in.
Commando303X 3 years ago
Respect! What can i say?
system0slaven 3 years ago
Is he still running? I thought he dropped out.
CalJennings 3 years ago