MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) doctrine is the only valid doctrine. Putin is not suicidal.

In the light (and darkness) of Putin’s latest warning to Europeans and the west of risking lives from the expansion of conflict he started- the world needs to remind Russia’s leader that the only sane and legitimate nuclear doctrine remains Mutually Assured Destruction.  The Russian people have suffered more deaths and casualties than any other nation in world.

Putin is smart. He is not suicidal.  He knows that he will be targeted first with any retaliatory strike should he decide to use a nuke of any size - anywhere outside Russia’s Borders.  His generals, oligarchs, and their families want to avoid being vaporized as much as all Americans, Europeans, or Ukrainians.  

The next step must be for the US and other NATO states to make it absolutely clear with a rock-solid commitment that we will make the protection Russian civilians and troops the top priority, but only if they are outside Ukraine’s original borders.  But unlimited non-nuclear weapons will start flowing into Ukraine with the strictest of limitations for use ONLY within Ukraine and all of its territories that Russia has claimed after that nation surrendered its own nuclear weapons with the understanding they would be protected.  And the most sophisticated western military aid will continue flowing into Ukraine from multiple sources until all Russian soldiers are gone.  And the west will guarantee that Putin (or his surviving predecessor) will be allowed to keep their army and nuclear weapons.  And hopefully, someday, an enforceable global agreement will come to ensure no more wars will be launched to gain another nation’s territory.  And later, all nuclear states will agree to a rational control system with the intention of dismantling most nuclear weapons.  And using their materials in generating electrical power to replace fossil fuels.

The west must give Putin a date to have all his troops removed from Ukrainian lands.  Then follow through with military force within Ukraine if Russian forces have not exited.  If Putin does this, the world will not pursue his arrest for War Crimes.  But there will be an economic price to pay.  And those Russians who have benefited most from the corruption of Russia’s military industrial complex will be sought for payments for rebuilding Ukraine’s infrastructure.  If they or Putin refuse this deal, a hefty bounty will be put on all of their heads for any individual or group within Russia that removes any of them from their wealth and power, dead or alive.     

Top 10 Emerging Technologies: most with very disruptive consequences

 

August 2024 World Economic Forum report

The Top 10 Emerging Technologies report is a vital source of strategic intelligence.  First published in 2011, it draws on insights from scientists, researchers and futurists to identify 10 technologies poised to significantly influence societies and economies. These emerging technologies are disruptive, attractive to investors, and researcher -  and expected to achieve considerable scale within five years. (This edition expands its analysis by involving over 300 experts from the Forum’s Global Future Councils and a global network of comprising over 2,000 chief editors worldwide from top institutions through Frontiers, a leading publisher of academic research)

https://www.weforum.org/publications/top-10-emerging-technologies-2024/digest/  

The Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2024 are:

1. AI for scientific discovery: While artificial intelligence (AI) has been used in research for many years, advances in deep learning, generative AI and foundation models are revolutionizing the scientific discovery process [and the capacity for weaponization of anything]. AI will enable researchers to make unprecedented connections and advancements in understanding diseases, proposing new materials, and enhancing knowledge of the human body and mind. [and attacking vulnerabilities in our DNA and human/environmental/economic infrastructure]

2. Privacy-enhancing technologies: Protecting personal privacy while providing new opportunities for global data sharing and collaboration, “synthetic data” is set to transform how information is handled with powerful applications in health-related research.  [Feds call for private sector’s help to prepare for quantum cyberattack   By Ryan Lovelace THE WASHINGTON TIMES  8-19-24:  Federal officials are bracing for a quantum computer cyberattack and asking private businesses to help prevent widespread devastation.

National security officials fear a super code-breaking cryptanalytically relevant quantum computer, or CRQC, will crack the encryptions of modern systems, exposing state secrets, financial transactions and other sensitive information. Researchers warn darkly of “Q-Day,” when a combination of quantum-classical computing power and artificial intelligence technologies threaten to undermine data security encryption methods.

The U.S. intelligence community is asking private businesses to help defend against such a powerful machine, and the Commerce Department is working to get new encryption tools into the hands of defenders. At the Department of Homeland Security, officials are developing guidance to address quantum technology risk.

Kathryn Knerler, the U.S. intelligence community’s chief information security officer, told a gathering of cybersecurity experts and hackers in Las Vegas this month that the quantum computing age is approaching. She said quantum computing will be a “very large gamechanger” and people must secure artificial intelligence systems before the world takes the quantum leap.

“We have, in my estimation, about five or six years to look at how we secure artificial intelligence,” Ms. Knerler said at the Black Hat USA 2024 conference. “So my challenge to all of you is please help us to secure artificial intelligence and come up with the guardrails.”

Forecasts for the emergence of a CRQC vary, but the U.S. government is scrambling to contain the fallout of an adversary winning the race to obtain such a powerful machine.

Also this month, the National Institute of Standards and Technology revealed encryption tools “designed to withstand the attack of a quantum computer.”

The laboratory, housed inside the Commerce Department, said it finalized encryption algorithms “built for the future.”

Mathematician Dustin Moody urged people to use the three new standards while the government bolsters its defenses against a quantum attack.

“We need to be prepared in case of an attack that defeats the algorithms in these three standards, and we will continue working on backup plans to keep our data safe,” Mr. Moody said in a statement. “But for most applications, these new standards are the main event.”

Officials at the Black Hat conference said the Department of Homeland Security is working under the assumption that a CRQC will emerge by 2030.

Homeland Security policy adviser Florence Lewine said her team does not know when the CRQC will emerge, but the “threat to the asymmetric encryption models already exists today.”

“We don’t want you to start thinking about this concern when you open the newspapers and hear that one of our adversaries has a CRQC,” Ms. Lewine told the cybersecurity pros and hackers. “We want you to start thinking about how you can prepare for this right now.”

Ms. Lewine said Homeland Security is developing guidelines for emerging quantum technology, particularly involving quantum sensing, quantum communication and quantum-enabled artificial intelligence.

Government officials’ frantic efforts to secure systems are driven by global competition to gain a quantum edge. Noah Ringler, the department’s AI adviser, said researchers worldwide make breakthroughs in quantum supercomputers’ processing power every six to eight months.

“With that, the general trend towards more computational efficiency, even though we are very, very far from optimized systems because we see the potential for intersection of these breakthroughs, we have to prepare for the potential risk landscape,” Mr. Ringler said at the Black Hat conference.

Asked whether Ms. Lewine and Mr. Ringler expect the CRQC to emerge abroad, they told The Washington Times they were not operating under that assumption.

The National Security Agency is concerned that a foreign adversary may develop a CRQC first, but NSA research director Gil Herrera said in March that no country has a quantum computer that he would consider useful — so far.

3. Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces: These innovative surfaces turn ordinary walls and surfaces into intelligent components for wireless communication while enhancing energy efficiency in wireless networks. They hold promise for numerous applications, from smart factories to vehicular networks.  [and loss of privacy and security]

4. High-altitude platform stations: Using aircraft, blimps and balloons, these systems can extend mobile network access to remote regions, helping bridge the digital divide for over 2.6 billion people worldwide. [as well as fast and likely anonymous delivery of bio/chem/conventional weapons]

5. Integrated sensing and communication: The advent of 6G networks facilitates simultaneous data collection (sensing) and transmission (communication). This enables environmental monitoring systems that help in smart agriculture, environmental conservation and urban planning. Integrated sensing and communication devices also promise to reduce energy and silicon consumption. [and loss of privacy and security]

6. Immersive technology for the built world: Combining computing power with virtual and augmented reality, these technologies promise rapid improvements in infrastructure and daily systems. This technology allows designers and construction professionals to check for correspondence between physical and digital models, ensuring accuracy and safety and advancing sustainability. [This would all be wonderful if it applied to government policies]

7. Elastocalorics: As global temperatures rise, the need for cooling solutions is set to soar. Offering higher efficiency and lower energy use, elastocalorics release and absorb heat under mechanical stress, presenting a sustainable alternative to current technologies.  [Going under ground and water will be a greater jobs creator and likely cause less CO2 emissions sustainably?]

8. Carbon-capturing microbes: Engineered organisms convert emissions into valuable products like biofuels, providing a promising approach to mitigating climate change. [And bioweapons targeting people and crops when saving trees and planting more native trees would have less chance of something going wrong with engineered organisms.]

9. Alternative livestock feeds: protein feeds for livestock sourced from single-cell proteins, algae and food waste could offer a sustainable solution for the agricultural industry. [Doable now if there were sufficient political will and human wisdom]

10. Genomics for transplants: The successful implantation of genetically engineered organs into a human marks a significant advancement in healthcare, offering hope to millions awaiting transplants. [True- but less incentive to take care of one’s health to begin with...while increasing the cost of so called ‘health care’ – actually medical care – thus increasing risk of debt failure or investing in preventing other root causes of both health, environmental, and political disruptions.

Weapon evolution may end us first.

The article below was recently published in Foreign Affairs Magazine    July/August 2024  

Nearly every advancement in weapons and their unprecedented threat potential has been warned about for nearly three decades.  And "we the people" only have our dysfunctional change resistant political system/procurement process, elected official's addition to legacy weapon systems, and profit prioritizing military industrial complex to blame.  Worse yet, within in this article, there is virtually no mention of the unprecedented bioweapons threats now inevitable by violent extremists.  Warnings were ignored. 

America Isn’t Ready for the Wars of the Future:  And They’re Already Here   By Mark A. Milley and Eric Schmidt  September/October 2024   Published on August 5, 2024

On the battlefields of Ukraine, the future of war is quickly becoming its present. Thousands of drones fill the skies. These drones and their operators are using artificial intelligence systems to avoid obstacles and identify potential targets. AI models are also helping Ukraine predict where to strike. Thanks to these systems, Ukrainian soldiers are taking out tanks and downing planes with devastating effectiveness. Russian units find themselves under constant observation, and their communications lines are prone to enemy disruption—as are Ukraine’s. Both states are racing to develop even more advanced technologies that can counter relentless attacks and overcome their adversary’s defenses.

The war in Ukraine is hardly the only conflict in which new technology is transforming the nature of warfare. In Myanmar and Sudan, insurgents and the government are both using unmanned vehicles and algorithms as they fight. In 2020, an autonomous Turkish-made drone fielded by Libyan government-backed troops struck retreating combatants—perhaps the first drone attack conducted without human input. In the same year, Azerbaijan’s military used Turkish- and Israeli-made drones, along with loitering munitions (explosives designed to hover over a target), to seize the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. And in Gaza, Israel has fielded thousands of drones connected to AI algorithms, helping Israeli troops navigate the territory’s urban canyons.

In a sense, there is nothing surprising about the pace of such developments. War has always spurred innovation. But today’s shifts are unusually rapid, and they will have a far greater effect. Future wars will no longer be about who can mass the most people or field the best jets, ships, and tanks. Instead, they will be dominated by increasingly autonomous weapons systems and powerful algorithms.

Unfortunately, this is a future for which the United States remains unprepared. Its troops are not fully ready to fight in an environment in which they rarely enjoy the element of surprise. Its jets, ships, and tanks are not equipped to defend against an onslaught of drones. The military has not yet embraced artificial intelligence. The Pentagon does not have nearly enough initiatives aimed at rectifying these failures—and its current efforts are moving too slowly. Meanwhile, the Russian military has fielded many AI-powered drones in Ukraine. And in April, China announced its largest military restructuring in almost a decade, with a new emphasis on building up technology-driven forces.

If it wants to remain the preeminent global power, the United States will have to quickly shift course. The country needs to reform the structure of its armed forces. The U.S. military needs to reform its tactics and leadership development. It needs new ways to procure equipment. It needs to buy new types of gear. And it needs to better train soldiers to operate drones and use AI.

American policymakers, accustomed to governing the world’s most powerful defense apparatus, may not like the idea of such a systemic overhaul. But robots and AI are here to stay. If the United States fails to lead this revolution, malevolent actors equipped with new technologies will become more willing to attempt attacks on the United States.

When they do, they might succeed. Even if Washington prevails, it will find itself increasingly surrounded by military systems designed to support autocracies and deployed with little respect for liberal values. The United States must therefore transform its armed forces so it can maintain a decisive military advantage—and ensure that robots and AI are used in an ethical manner.

CHANGE OR PERISH: 

The nature of war is, arguably, immutable. In almost any armed conflict, one side seeks to impose its political will on another through organized violence. Battles are fought with imperfect information. Militaries must contend with constantly fluctuating dynamics, including within their ranks, between them and their governments, and between them and ordinary people. Troops experience fear, bloodshed, and death. These realities are unlikely to change even with the introduction of robots.

But the character of war—how armies fight, where and when the fighting occurs, and with what weapons and leadership techniques—can evolve. It can change in response to politics, demographics, and economics. Yet few forces bring more change than technological development. The invention of saddles and horseshoes, for example, helped enable the creation of cavalry in the ninth century BC, which extended the battlefield beyond the flat expanses required for chariots and into new types of terrain. The introduction of the long bow, which could fire arrows over great distances, enabled defenders to pierce heavy armor and decimate advancing armies from afar. The invention of gunpowder in the ninth century AD led to the use of explosives and firearms; in response, defenders built stronger fortifications and placed a greater emphasis on producing weapons. The effect of technology grew more pronounced with the Industrial Revolution, which led to the creation of machine guns, steamships, and radios. Eventually, it also led to motorized and armored vehicles, airplanes, and missiles.

The performance of militaries often depends on how well they adapt to and adopt technological innovations. During the American Revolution, for example, the Continental Army fired muskets at the British in massed volleys and then charged forward with fixed bayonets. This tactic was successful because Continental forces were able to cross the distances between opposing lines before the British reloaded. But by the Civil War, muskets had been replaced by rifled barrels, which took much less time to reload and were more accurate. As a result, defending armies were able to decimate advancing infantry. Generals on both sides adjusted their tactics—for example, by using snipers and defensive fortifications such as trenches. Their decisions paved the way for the trench warfare of World War I.

Traditional defense firms won’t design the next generation of small, cheap drones.

Technological adaptation also proved essential to World War II. In the lead-up to that conflict, all advanced countries had access to the then new technologies of motorized vehicles, armored tanks, aircraft, and the radio. But the German army was a trailblazer when it came to bringing these components together. Their new warfighting doctrine, commonly called blitzkrieg (“lightning war”), involved air bombings that disrupted communications and supply lines, followed by armored vehicle and infantry assaults that broke through Allied lines and then traveled far past them. As a result, the Germans were able to overrun almost all of Europe in 18 months. They were stopped in Stalingrad, but only by a Soviet military that was willing to take enormous casualties.

To respond, the Allies had to develop similar tactics and formations. They had to illustrate what one of us (Schmidt) termed “innovation power”: the ability to invent, adapt, and adopt new technologies faster than competitors. They eventually succeeded at mechanizing their own forces, developing better ways of communicating, using massive amounts of airpower, and, in the case of the Americans, building and employing the world’s first nuclear bombs. They were then able to defeat the Axis in multiple theaters at once.

The Allies’ effort was incredible. And yet they still came close to defeat. If Germany had more efficiently managed its industrial capacity, made better strategic choices, or beaten the United States to an atomic weapon, Berlin’s initial innovation edge could well have proved decisive. The outcome of World War II may now seem preordained. But as the Duke of Wellington reportedly said of the outcome at Waterloo over a century earlier, it was a close-run thing.

ALL SYSTEMS GO

It has often been difficult for military planners to predict which innovations will shape future battles. But forecasts are easier to make today. Drones are omnipresent, and robots are increasingly in use. The wars in Gaza and Ukraine have shown that artificial intelligence is already changing the way states fight. The next major conflict will likely see the wholesale integration of AI into every aspect of military planning and execution. AI systems could, for instance, simulate different tactical and operational approaches thousands of times, drastically shortening the period between preparation and execution. The Chinese military has already created an AI commander that has supreme authority in large-scale virtual war games. Although Beijing prohibits AI systems from making choices in live situations, it could take the lessons it learns from its many virtual simulations and feed them to human decision-makers. And China may eventually give AI models the authority to make choices, as might other states. Soldiers could sip coffee in their offices, monitoring screens far from the battlefield, as an AI system manages all kinds of robotic war machines. Ukraine has already sought to hand over as many dangerous frontline tasks as it can to robots to preserve scarce manpower.

So far, automation has focused on naval power and airpower in the form of sea and air drones. But it will turn to land warfare soon. In the future, the first phase of any war will likely be led by ground robots capable of everything from reconnaissance to direct attacks. Russia has already deployed unmanned ground vehicles that can launch antitank missiles, grenades, and drones. Ukraine has used robots for casualty evacuation and explosive disposal. The next generation of machines will be led by AI systems that use the robots’ sensors to map the battlefield and predict points of attack. Even when human soldiers eventually intervene, they will be led by first-person-view aerial drones that can help identify the enemy (as already happens in Ukraine). They will rely on machines to clear minefields, absorb the enemy’s first volleys, and expose hidden adversaries. If Russia’s war on Ukraine expands to other parts of Europe, a first wave of land-based robots and aerial drones could enable both NATO and Russia to oversee a wider frontline than humans alone can attack or defend.

The automation of war could prove essential to saving civilian lives. Historically, wars were fought and won in open terrain where few people live. But as global urbanization draws more people into cities and nonstate actors pivot to urban guerrilla tactics, the decisive battlefields of the future will likely be densely populated areas. Such fighting is far more deadly and far more resource-intensive. It will therefore require even more robotic weapons. Militaries will have to deploy small, maneuverable robots (such as robot dogs) on streets and flood the sky with unmanned aerial vehicles to take control of urban positions. They will be guided by algorithms, which can process visual data and make split-second decisions. Israel has helped pioneer such technology, using the first true drone swarm in Gaza in 2021. Those individual drones bypassed Hamas’s defenses and communicated through an AI weapons system to make collective decisions about where they should go.

The use of unmanned weapons is essential for another reason: they are cheap. Drones are a much more affordable class of weapons than are traditional military jets. An MQ-9 Reaper drone, for example, costs roughly a fourth as much as an F-35 fighter jet. And the MQ-9 is one of the most expensive such weapons; a simple first-person-view drone can cost just $500. A team of ten of them can immobilize a $10 million Russian tank in Ukraine. (Over the past few months, more than two-thirds of the Russian tanks that Ukraine has taken out were destroyed by such drones.) This affordability could allow states to send swarms of drones—some designed to surveil, others to attack—without worrying about attrition. These swarms could then overwhelm legacy air defense systems, which are not designed to simultaneously shoot down hundreds of objects. Even when defense systems prevail, the cost of defending against swarms will far surpass the cost of the attack for the enemy. Iran’s April mass drone and missile strike against Israel cost at most $100 million, but U.S. and Israeli interception efforts cost more than $2 billion.

The affordability of these weapons will, of course, make offense much easier—in turn empowering frugal, nonstate actors. In 2016, Islamic State (ISIS) terrorists used cheap drones to counter U.S.-supported advances on the Syrian city of Raqqa and the Iraqi city of Mosul, dropping grenade-sized munitions from the sky and making it hard for the Syrian Democratic Forces to set up antisniper positions. Today, Iranian-backed insurgents are using drones to strike U.S. air bases in Iraq. And the Houthis, the military group that controls much of Yemen, are sending drones to strike ships in the Red Sea. Their attacks have tripled the cost of shipping from Asia to Europe. Other groups could soon get in on the action. Hezbollah and al Qaeda in the Middle East, for example, might engage in more regional attacks, as could Boko Haram in Nigeria and al Shabab elsewhere in Africa.

Drones are helping groups beyond the Middle East and Africa, as well. A ragtag coalition of pro-democracy and ethnic militias in Myanmar is using repurposed commercial drones to fight off the military junta’s once feared air force. Now, it controls over half the country’s territory. Ukraine has similarly used drones to great effect, particularly in the war’s first year.

In the event of a Chinese amphibious assault, drones could help Taiwan, as well. Although Beijing is unlikely to launch a full attack on the island in the next few years, Chinese President Xi Jinping has ordered his country’s military to be capable of invading Taiwan by 2027. To stop such an attack, Taiwan and its allies would have to strike an enormous number of invading enemy assault craft within a very short time window. Unmanned systems—on land, sea, and air—may be the only way to do so effectively.

As a result, Taiwan’s allies will have to adapt the weapons used in Ukraine to a new type of battlefield. Unlike the Ukrainians, who have mostly fought on land and in the air, the Taiwanese will be reliant on underwater drones and autonomous sea mines that can quickly move around in battle. And their aerial drones will have to be capable of longer flight times over larger stretches of ocean. Western governments are at work developing such drones, and as soon as these new models are ready, Taiwan and its allies must manufacture them en masse.

SHAKE IT UP

No state is fully prepared for future wars. No country has begun producing the hardware it needs for robot weapons at scale, nor has any state created the software required to fully power automated weapons. But some countries are further along than others. And unfortunately, the United States’ adversaries are, in many ways, in the lead. Russia, having gained experience in Ukraine, has dramatically upped its drone production and now uses unmanned vehicles to great effect on the battlefield. China dominates the global commercial drone market: the Chinese company DJI controls an estimated 70 percent of global commercial drone production. And because of China’s authoritarian structure, the Chinese military has proved especially adroit at pushing through changes and adopting new concepts. One, termed “multidomain precision warfare,” entails the People’s Liberation Army’s use of advanced intelligence, reconnaissance, and other emerging technologies to coordinate firepower.

When it comes to AI, the United States still has the highest quality systems and spends the most on them. Yet China and Russia are swiftly gaining ground. Washington has the resources to keep outspending them, but even if it maintains this lead, it could struggle to overcome the bureaucratic and industrial obstacles to deploying its inventions on the battlefield. As a result, the U.S. military risks fighting a war in which its first-rate training and superior conventional weaponry will be rendered less than effective. U.S. troops, for example, have not been fully prepared to operate on a battlefield where their every move can be spotted and where they can be rapidly targeted by the drones hovering overhead. This inexperience would be especially dangerous on open battlefields like those in Ukraine, as well as other eastern European countries or in the wide expanses of the Arctic. The U.S. military would also be especially vulnerable in urban battlefields, where enemies can more easily sever U.S. communications lines and where many American weapons are less useful.

Even at sea, the United States would be vulnerable to its adversaries’ advances. Chinese hypersonic missiles could sink U.S. aircraft carriers before they make it out of Pearl Harbor. Beijing is already deploying AI-powered surveillance and electronic warfare systems that could give it a defensive advantage over the United States in the entire Indo-Pacific. In the air, the capable but costly F-35 might struggle against swarms of cheap drones. So might the heavily armored Abrams and Bradley tanks on the ground. Given these unfortunate facts, U.S. military planners are right to have concluded that the era of “shock and awe” campaigns—in which Washington could decimate its adversaries with overwhelming firepower—is finished.

In the worst-case scenario, AI warfare could endanger humanity.

To avoid becoming obsolete, the American military needs to make major reforms. It can start by shaking up its processes for acquiring software and weapons. Its current purchasing process is too bureaucratic, risk-averse, and slow to adapt to the rapidly developing threats of the future. For example, it relies on ten-year procurement cycles, which can lock it into particular systems and contracts long after the underlying technology has evolved. It should, instead, ink shorter deals whenever possible.

Similarly, the United States must look to purchase from a wider pool of companies than it typically uses. In 2022, Lockheed Martin, RTX, General Dynamics, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman received over 30 percent of all Defense Department contract money. New weapons manufacturers, by contrast, received hardly any. Last year, less than one percent of all Defense Department contracts went to venture-backed companies, which are generally more innovative than their larger counterparts. Those percentages should be far more equal. The next generation of small, cheap drones are unlikely to be designed by traditional defense firms, which are incentivized to produce fancy but expensive equipment. They are more likely to be created as they were in Ukraine: through a government initiative that supports dozens of small startups. (One of us, Schmidt, has been a longtime investor in defense technology companies.)

To adapt for the future, however, the United States will need to do more than simply reform the way it purchases weapons. It must also change the military’s organizational structures and training systems. It should make its complex, hierarchical chain of command more flexible and give greater autonomy to small, highly mobile units. These units should have leaders trained and empowered to make crucial combat decisions. Such units will be more nimble—a critical advantage given the fast pace of AI-powered war. They are also less likely to be paralyzed if adversaries disrupt their communications lines to headquarters. These units must be connected with new platforms, such as drones, so they can be as effective as possible. (Autonomous systems can also help improve training.) U.S. special forces are a possible template for how these units could operate.

RISKS AND REWARDS

This new age of warfare will have normative advantages. Advances in precision technology could lead to fewer indiscriminate aerial bombings and artillery attacks, and drones can spare the lives of soldiers in combat. But the rates of civilian casualties in Gaza and Ukraine cast doubt on the notion that conflicts are becoming any less deadly overall—especially as they move into urban areas. And the rise of AI warfare opens a Pandora’s box of ethical and legal issues. An autocratic state, for example, could easily take AI systems designed to collect intelligence in combat and deploy them against dissenters or political opponents. China’s DJI, for example, has been linked to human rights abuses against Chinese Uyghurs, and the Russian-linked Wagner paramilitary group has helped the Malian military conduct drone strikes against civilians. These concerns aren’t limited to U.S. adversaries. The Israeli military has used an AI program called Lavender to identify potential militants and target their homes with airstrikes in densely populated Gaza. The program has little human oversight. According to +972 Magazine, people spend just 20 seconds authorizing each attack.

In the worst-case scenario, AI warfare could even endanger humanity. War games conducted with AI models from OpenAI, Meta, and Anthropic have found that AI models tend to suddenly escalate to kinetic war, including nuclear war, compared with games conducted by humans. It doesn’t take much imagination to see how matters could go horribly wrong if these AI systems were actually used. In 1983, a Soviet missile detection system falsely classified light reflected off clouds as an incoming nuclear attack. Fortunately, the Soviet army had a human soldier in charge of processing the alert, who determined the warning was false. But in the age of AI, there might not be a human to double-check the system’s work. Thankfully, China and the United States appear to recognize that they must cooperate on AI. Following their November 2023 summit, U.S. President Joe Biden and Xi pledged to jointly discuss AI risk and safety issues, and the first round of talks took place in Geneva in May. This dialogue is essential. Even if cooperation between the two superpowers starts small, perhaps achieving nothing more than establishing shared language regarding the use of AI in war, it could lay the foundations for something greater. During the Cold War—an era of great-power rivalry significantly more intense than the current U.S.-Chinese competition—the Soviet Union and the United States were able to build a strong regime of nuclear safety measures. And like the Soviets, Chinese officials have incentives to cooperate with Washington on controlling new weapons. The United States and China have different global visions, but neither of them wants terrorists to gain possession of dangerous robots. They may also want to stop other states from acquiring such technology. Great powers that possess formidable military technology almost always have an overlapping interest in keeping it to themselves.

Even if China won’t cooperate, the United States should ensure that its own military AI is subject to strict controls. It should make sure AI systems can distinguish between military and civilian targets. It must keep them under human command. It should continuously test and assess systems to confirm that they operate as intended in real-world conditions. And the United States should pressure other countries—allies and adversaries alike—to adopt similar procedures. If other states refuse, Washington and its partners should use economic restrictions to limit their access to military AI. The next generation of autonomous weapons must be built in accordance with liberal values and a universal respect for human rights—and that requires aggressive U.S. leadership.

War is nasty, brutish, and often much too long. It is an illusion to think that technology will change the underlying human nature of conflict. But the character of war is changing both rapidly and fundamentally. The United States must change and adapt, as well, and American officials must do so faster than their country’s adversaries. Washington won’t get it exactly right—but it must get it less wrong than its enemies.

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MARK A. MILLEY served as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2019 to 2023. He is a Visiting Professor at Princeton University and Distinguished Fellow in Residence at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service.

ERIC SCHMIDT is Chair of the Special Competitive Studies Project and former CEO and Chair of Google. He is a co-author, with Henry Kissinger and Daniel Huttenlocher, of The Age of AI: And Our Human Future.

Prophecies that enslave us - will end us.

 

 

“It’s the prophecies that enslave us!” Frank Herbert, Dune sci-fi trilogy author.

Messiah prophecies encapsulate the foundation of fundamentalist’s extremist thinking as their religious truth.  An imagined truth that inspires believers to kill and die for in each of the three Abrahamic faiths.  Varying truths that could yet spawn the next World War.  And perhaps leave no tribe to survive.  Only the fundamental truths found in "the Laws of Nature and Nature's God" [the golden rule]. 

Why is the human mind so powerfully drawn to an ‘end of times’ story to find a messiah?  Is this thinking inevitable in every tribe?  Not in every indigenous culture.   Or is it only a self-fulfilling prophecy of the three most murderous religions that enabled them to grow and shun all objective truths?   

Or has modern human thinking been so shallow that still fails to comprehend the most obvious path into a sustainable future of global harmony - both within and between tribes that was offered less than 250 years ago.  This profound wisdom can be found within first sentence of the Declaration of Independence as “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” which is easily translated into 'take care of nature and each other' so that everyone in every tribe can survive and thrive for all time (as Abraham Lincoln stated). 

 Or has our human mind’s capacity to believe anything been so powerful and stubborn that it can still justifiably committing genocide of anyone who does not believe the same -- very specific ancient story belief that was passed down through nearly 100 generations via different languages and cultures? 

The human mind has difficulty imagining infinity. We see things begin and end.  So there must be a beginning and an end to everything (except God).   But it's seeming obvious that some unknowable power created the universe and life on earth.   Life so amazing and yet maybe alone among trillions of stars and planets.  Unlikely, but possible.   

Science now tells us that there was a beginning and everything.  And it will likely also likely come to an end.  Whether God or nature dictates such an end is irrelevant for those of us alive now. And humans may never know for sure.  

What is certain is that the miracle of life on this Goldilocks planet does not have to end just because of some old tribe's murderous faith in prophesy. And their desire for some spiritual leader to usher believers - and maybe survivors into a new era.

A future is possible with both science and the greater fundamental survival value of every religion (based on the golden rule) that humanity now has the resources and the power to create heaven on earth.  And restore the Garden of Eden here and perhaps other solar systems as well.  Logic vs prophecy?  We all have a mind that nature or God gave us as well as the freedom to choose. 

We only lack the political will of being united in heart, mind, and spirit.  And this is because too many believers and non-believers' worship various political truths instead of the objective truths we all now depend on -- for both our weapons systems or the technology for creating new life forms.  For mass murder on earth or sustaining life beyond it.

What is so complicated about taking care of nature and each other?  Can we finally accept the science that we are all 99.9% the same genetically.  And it is only the identities we have in our mind (religious, national, ethnic, sexual, economic, political…) that are only mental constructs?  And not who we really as members of the human family. 

United we stand a chance in these changing times.  Divided...we are about to see what happens next. 

 

EVERYTHING: An autological word that the US military ignores.

 EVERYTHING!!!  The evolution of weapons, war, and everything except our thinking. And our Constitution.   (This is an example of what my free blog book is making but not part of the book)

This new military project only brings us one step closer to a war that will end civilization as we know it.  Civilization that has mostly benefited us. But not billions of other people globally.  

The military minds below obviously missed the reality that “Everything is connected, everything is interdependent, so everything is vulnerable.... And that’s why this has to be a more than whole of government, a more than whole of nation [effort]. It really has to be a global effort....” Jen Easterly. CISA director.  Oct. 29, 2021. [the Cyber and Infrastructure Security Agency is our nation’s newest federal agency established by the Trump Administration in 2018].

SCIENCE & TECH:  Pentagon planning huge experiment for its connect-everything concept.  August 2024     “We see significant progress,” in opening up DOD data, one observer said. But a bigger, multinational test is coming.   By Patrick Tucker  Science & Technology Editor, Defense One   August 6, 2024

https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2024/08/pentagon-planning-huge-experiment-its-connect-everything-concept/398618/?oref=defenseone_today_nl&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Defense%20One%20Today:%20August%207%2C%202024&utm_term=newsletter_d1_today

The Pentagon is about to launch one of the biggest tests yet of its joint, all-domain command and control, or JADC2, concept, this time seeking to bring multiple nations together to test how well the Defense Department can rapidly share very sensitive information with foreign militaries that aren’t traditional partners, DOD CIO Daniel Holtzman said Tuesday during the Defense One Cloud Workshop.

The exercise will be part of the Defense Department’s Global Information Dominance experiments, or GIDE.

“The next series coming up in the next couple of months is building up to a worldwide joint activity where we're going to have a carrier strike group that the Brits are going to take across three different U.S. [combatant commands] and [ports across] four different international partners on the trip out, and then three [combatant commands] and three different international partners on the trip back,” Holtzman said.

The military works across different combatant commands and foreign countries all the time, but this carrier strike group exercise, scheduled for the end of 2025, will feature unprecedented data and information sharing, using data bridges the military will have to create quickly.

“What we are doing in the next GIDE is a series of experiments that all lead up to that activity,” Holtzman said. “We're connecting international partners—the UK, Australia and others—in ways in the cloud that we've prototyped that are pushing the bounds on certain things.”

Holtzman called it the “ultimate example of JADC2, to how do we sail that fleet through this partner that wasn't a partner yesterday, [where] there's now a partner who needs to connect to us. And we don't have a year and a half to build the new [cross-domain solution] and get it installed and get it authorized and put a U.S. person there.”

The experiment will test new communications strategies, but also how well the Defense Department can adjust its procedures and policies for information sharing, a long-time obstacle to faster operations.

 

Holtzman said the creation of his position has been critical for that information sharing, as he answers directly to the Deputy Defense Secretary and that allows him to get around rules that other offices or commands might put in the way.

“The challenge, I think, is everybody's trying to do the right thing. Their motive is right,” he said of mid-level officials and officers who inhibit the free flow of data. “Their desire is right. But their goal is, the most important thing is to protect the data. Don't share. Protect. When our goal is the mission. And that shift in thinking is what we're trying … through GIDE to show, how does the warfighter get to vote? How do they practice and train and do inventive things if you don't give them the opportunity to do that? That's really what GIDE is about.”

Tara Murphy Dougherty, the CEO of decision-science company Govini, which works with Defense Department data, said that while there is still a lot of work to do to free up data silos in the Pentagon, there has been some notable progress.

“We see significant progress…and it's [the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office], their [Open Data and Applications Government-owned Interoperable Repositories] initiative, and what they're leaning into with GIDE and JADC2, and the direction that CDAO is going where it's trying to be very thoughtful about the infrastructure that DOD has to own in order to ensure interoperability of systems. But opening things up as much as possible to be able to bring lots of different commercial companies and products into play is, I think, arguably, a very good model for the department,” she said. “It mandates the movement of data, not just within DOD and across services, but also between government and the commercial companies that are coming in to support them. And that's a really important exchange.”

Chapter 1: The Existential flaws of the U.S. CONSTIUTION

 

“Truth’s be told: Failing the Seven Cs (Constitution, Covid, Conflict, Climate, Capitalism, Culture, Corruption) and the need for Cognitive Change.”  (a free blog book.  By Chuck Woolery  (Posted 8-6-24) 

[Your honest feedback is vital. Editing is very helpful. Plus, exposing flaws in my logic - or a better idea you have will be deeply appreciated.  chuck@igc.org

Chapter 1:   The Existential flaws of the U.S. CONSTIUTION

What does it mean to be an American?  There are north, south and central Americans. But not all are US citizens.  When contemplating what it means to be an ‘American’ for US citizens we often blend the words and thoughts together believing that America is both the land we belong to as well as the best universal ideal.  Unfortunately, most of us “We the People” rarely live up to our idealism that was offered in the profound phrases in the first two paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence.  Then we idealize our U.S. Constitution believing it offers only us as citizens a unique and exclusive value of being an official U.S. citizen - whenever and wherever we travel.  Something special deserving of a higher status than people in other nations.

But what is most unique to our nation is both the quantity and variation of people from other nations, ethnic groups, races, and religions.  All residing here as official U.S. citizens.  In other words, ‘we are the world’.  More so than any other nation within this specific context.   From our very beginning the diversity of people immigrating to America the land, long before we had a constitution makes our nation’s soil and the mixed blood of all its citizens the best representation of humanity in history.  

The purpose of any constitution is to form a governing system between multiple entities that can overcome the problems within the system, between those entities, and to deal most effectively as a united force against any outside threat or even one from within.

"The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust."  -- James Madison   (1751-1836), Father of the Constitution for the USA, 4th US President   Source: Federalist #57

However, the purpose of the U.S. Constitution was to establish a system to ensure the survival of 13 states and most of the citizens within those states, in order to “form a more perfect union” between them.  A union that could best enable them to collectively and effectively deal with the threats from without those 13 states - and prevent those from within.

As we all know from the enormous cost of American lives and treasure from our civil war that the Constitution that was initially created had at least one great flaw.  Those who engineered it ignored the wisdom offered within the clear words and profound ideals expressed in the first two paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence. This appeal to all mankind was signed 11 years earlier by 56 men.  But only six participated in creating that major constitutional flaw.

The Declaration of Independence was the promise; the Constitution did not fulfill it.

“The secret rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for, among old parchments, or musty records. They are written, as with the sun beam in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power “.

Alexander Hamilton, 1775.

“…a constitution, intended to endure for ages to come, and consequently, to be adapted to the various crisis of human affairs.”  John Marshall, (September 24, 1755 – July 6, 1835) was an American statesman, lawyer, and Founding Father who served as the fourth chief justice of the United States from 1801 until his death in 1835.

 

The good news is that our government’s blueprint came with the capacity for change as they agreed it may be needed.  They also knew that changing it required a well-educated and well-armed citizenry with a clear understanding of their personal responsibilities for maintaining and/or changing it as time passed and the world changed.  And without adapting to change the entire system could be put at risk from either internal or external threats.   

As “we the people” approach the 2024 election a survey regarding the presidential race was conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) in partnership with the Brookings Institution.  It indicated that as many as 20% of American voters might resort to violence if their preferred candidate is not elected.  This alarming statistic reflects a broader concern that nearly a quarter of Americans believe "true American patriots may have to resort to violence to save the country," up from 15% in 2021.  The study also revealed that 75% of Americans think the future of American democracy is at risk in the upcoming election, with a higher proportion among Republicans who support Donald Trump.

 

And threats from outside our democratic republic of 50 states, the District of Columbia, 5 inhabited territories, 9 uninhabited territories, and 2 claimed territories that our Constitution covers is a growing list of threats.  With some accelerating and it should be a self-evident truth that while our Constitution may be at a breaking point, the freedom and security of every citizen is at increasing risks related to spreading global conflicts, infectious diseases, extreme weather events, violent extremists, economic instability, cyber-attacks, and artificial intelligence.  

 

Most citizens have great reverence for the Constitution. And some are advocating for special amendments in hopes of fixing it.  But most proposed amendments are as polarizing as the extremists within each political party with virtually no chance of achieving any of them.

Yet most people fail to understand that there are systemic catastrophic flaws that remain in this 238 year old governance blue print. 

 

Worse yet the vast majority don’t understand that the real problem is not the flawed Constitution, but ‘we the people’ who have largely ignored the real-world changes that started emerging after World War II - and started accelerating much faster after Sept, 11, 2001. 

 

“What the people want is simple. They want an America as good as its promise.”   Congresswoman Barbara C. Jordan

 "As the happiness of the people is the sole end of government, so the consent of the people is the only foundation of it, in reason, morality, and the natural fitness of things."   John Adams Proclamation, 1774

"Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people. When the people give way, their deceivers, betrayers, and destroyers press upon them so fast, that there is no resisting afterwards. The nature of the encroachment upon the American constitution is such, as to grow every day more and more encroaching. Like a cancer, it eats faster and faster every hour. The revenue creates pensioners, and the pensioners urge for more revenue. The people grow less steady, spirited, and virtuous, the seekers more numerous and more corrupt, and every day increases the circles of their dependents and expectants, until virtue, integrity, public spirit, simplicity, and frugality, become the objects of ridicule and scorn, and vanity, luxury, foppery, selfishness, meanness, and downright venality swallow up the whole society." 
-- John Adams
(1735-1826) Founding Father, 2nd US President
Source: Novanglus Letters, 1774

“A great part of that order which reigns among mankind is not the effect of government. It had its origin in the principles of society and the natural constitution of man. It existed prior to government, and would exist if the formality of government was abolished. The mutual dependence and reciprocal interest which man has upon man, and all parts of a civilized community upon each other, create that great chain of connection which holds it together. The landholder, the farmer, the manufacturer, the merchant, the tradesman, and every occupation, prospers by the aid which each receives from the other, and from the whole. Common interest regulates their concerns, and forms their laws; and the laws which common usage ordains, have a greater influence than the laws of government. In fine, society performs for itself almost everything which is ascribed to government.  – Thomas Paine, Rights of Man [1791]

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”   James Baldwin

 #1 Introduction:  Our U.S. Constitution is a flawed blueprint that has flouted “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God”.  For nearly 24 decades (a dozen generations) it has persisted in failing to achieve any of the seven intentions within the U.S. Constitution’s preamble.  This failure is primarily credited due to two persistently ignored systemic flaws.  1) its architectural foundation is an illusion.  Independence is an illusion.  It exists nowhere in the known universe.  Our minds assume we are independent of one another, and our nation is independent of other nations.  And our government systems of both national and international law are based on this illusion.

"For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities, and are often more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are."
-- Niccolo Machiavelli  (1469-1527) Italian Statesman and Political Philosopher    Source: Discourses, 1513-1517 

And 2), our Constitution's real-world inability to achieve liberty and justice for all -- and rarely any justice at all.  And neither of these are achievable without systemic amendments demanded by a majority of “We the People” which now appears impossible.  And without a transformational change in our thinking (with or without violence) we will remain on a treadmill to oblivion.   Chapter 2 explains why changing our minds is so hard.  

 

"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards. On the road to tyranny, we've gone so far that polite political action is about as useless as a miniskirt in a convent. ... Something’s eventually going to happen. Government will bloat until it chokes us to death, or one more tyrannical power grab will turn out to be one too many. ... Maybe it’ll be one more round of “reasonable gun control” or one more episode of burning children to death to save them from “child abuse.” Whatever, something will snap."  -- Claire Wolfe   Source: "101 Things To Do 'Til The Revolution" 1997

 

“…all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.” Declaration of Independence.

 

"How prone all human institutions have been to decay; how subject the best-formed and most wisely organized governments have been to lose their check and totally dissolve; how difficult it has been for mankind, in all ages and countries, to preserve their dearest rights and best privileges, impelled as it were by an irresistible fate of despotism."  -- James Monroe  (1758-1831), 5th US President   Source: speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788

“For we know that when a nation goes down and never comes back, when a society or a civilization perishes, one condition may always be found ~ they forgot where they came from.”– Carl Sandburg, Speech at Wade House Historic Site [1953]

 

“Unlike the rest of the world, we have ‘Constitutional rights,’ which apparently include the right to commit war crimes with impunity.” Rebecca Gordon. The United States Thinks It’s the Exception to the Rules of War, The Nation Jan 10, 2023.

On Jan 3, 2023, the first day of the new 118^th Congress, with a quorum to elect a Speaker of the House of Representatives, they started with a prayer and the pledge of alliance.

Here are the highlights of the Chaplain’s prayer they were supposed to listen to: “ETERNAL GOD, YOU SPOKE AND THE EARTH BROUGHT FORTH LIFE. WITH A WORD YOUR SPIRIT BREATHED INTO HUMANITY THE ESSENCE AND PURPOSE OF OUR VERY BEING. ... BREATHE INTO THE BODY OF THE 118th CONGRESS YOUR WORD OF TRUTH AND JUSTICE, COMPASSION AND WISDOM. GIVE EACH MEMBER THE GUIDANCE TO BE FAITHFUL STEWARDS OF THIS DIVINE TASKING AND TO WIELD THIS PRIVILEGE CAREFULLY. ... REMIND US THAT AMIDST ALL THE DEBATE, YOU WILL ALWAYS HAVE THE FINAL WORD. .... LAY ON THE SHOULDERS OF THESE MEN AND WOMEN THE MANTLE OF BOTH RESPONSIBILITY AND ACCOUNTABILITY....  CALL THESE WHO REPRESENT THE HOPES AND DREAMS OF THE AMERICANS WHO HAVE VOTED THEM INTO OFFICE TO HEED FIRST YOUR VOICE AND THEN AS THEY UPHOLD AND DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION AND ITS MORAL PRINCIPLES, GRANT THEM STRENGTH AND REASON, PURPOSE, AND INSIGHT. ... GIVE US EYES TO SEE YOUR GUIDING HAND, EARS TO HEAR YOUR WISE TRUTH, AND HEARTS TO HOLD FIRMLY TO THE FAITH WE PROFESS IN YOU. WE PRAY THIS IN YOUR MOST SOVEREIGN NAME. AMEN.”

Their next pledge each of them made immediately after this holy plea ended with “with Liberty and Justice for all”.

"The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous."

Frederick Douglass

 

“Our society finds truth too strong a medicine to digest undiluted. In its purest form, truth is not a polite tap on the shoulder. It is a howling reproach.” Ted Koppel

 

Next in their very first day they debated who should be elected Speaker of the House.  This essential chamber vote required by the Constitution has never had more than one round of voting over the last 100 years.  Four days and 13 roll call votes later Kevin McCarthy was finally elected.  But only after making substantial concessions to his ‘Never McCarthy” GOP holdouts.  During these days of internal squabble, the House could not perform its fundamental job of filling committee assignments, congressional oversight, receiving intelligence briefings on national security matters, or appropriating money for any national security, foreign policy, or disaster assistance related tasks.  One of McCarthy’s concessions was to allow a single member of Congress to force a vote to remove the speaker.  A vote that would lead to the loss of more vital time for dealing with the full array of vital issues related to our nation and our citizens’ security.  Which in our new era is almost every issue.

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

In the days following there was more infighting as the GOP split into two factions - the ‘Never Trumpers and the ‘Putin GOP’.  This increasingly dysfunctional congress was witnessed by China’s Communist party, Iranian religious leaders, North Korea’s dictator, other authoritarian leaders, and every populist candidate in every democratic nation.  All they could see with joy was a sign of U.S. weakness and the instability inherent in adopting elements of democracy.   Then these same folks offered the self-evident truth ‘that our system of government is dysfunctional’. Then continued their ‘disinformation/misinformation’ campaigns on US social media (some owned by China’s corporate based companies).  Political conditions here were so bad that our enemies were actually telling the truth about the US government.

Then, as Americans had been warned, this GOP-led congress spent even more valuable time launching oversight investigations and impeachment hearings on Alejandro Mayorkas attacking his lack of action on immigration.  Then even more attempting to Impeach the head of Biden’s Justice Department claiming that he was weaponizing government.  This was simply showcasing that party's popular short-sighted narratives for building MAGA voter momentum for victory in 2024.  And for gaining more MAGA recruits if Trump loses the election.  Both parties have been using increasingly heated rhetoric driving fear on both sides that a civil war may be in the making.  By early July there was an assassination attempt on former President Trump which could yield a movement towards more violence or less.  Here’s the difference between thinking and wisdom. A smart gambler would bet on more violence. 

It was less than six months later the GOP’s newest Speaker Mike Johnson had to stave off a mutiny to retain his top leadership spot.  This time it hinged on a package of important foreign aid bills the House planned to vote on.  Johnson faced pushback from two Republicans over a broad legislative plan to provide funding for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, and a few other national security priorities.  This House holdup was simply because the Republican opposition prioritized short term provisions addressing the flaws in U.S. border security.  And the two GOP lawmakers (a tiny fraction of the conference due to the Republicans’ razor-thin majority) could leverage their votes then - to oust Mr. Johnson if all House Democrats voted along with them.  

Unprecedented challenges are rising while becoming more perilous.  Johnson told reporters that his two GOP colleagues were not helping advance the GOP agenda and called on them to put forward “a united front”.  He also said he sees himself as “a wartime speaker” who is facing unprecedented challenges.  Again, a self-evident truth. And if another long-contested GOP effort happens to find yet another Speaker during this time of escalating challenges, both national and global security threats could rapidly become even more perilous.

On July 16, 1996, the Senate Committee on Governmental affairs held hearings considering a bill to require Congress to specify for each new law which section of the Constitution gives it authority to pass the law. Sen. Glenn spoke out strongly against this requirement. He said "Why, if we had to do that we could not pass most of the laws we enact around here... Americans just want us to solve America's problems of health and safety -- and not be concerned if they can be constitutionally justified."   -- Sen. John Glenn  (1921- ) First American astronaut to orbit the Earth, US Senator (D-OH).

It’s irrelevant which Congressperson or political party captures the Speaker of the House.  The system remains dysfunctional with little prospect for improvement even within each political party.  Reelection appears to be far more important than doing the work that ‘we the people’ want. And even that would be short of what we really need.  While there are third party candidates for the upcoming Presidential election the top two runners are both burdened with enduring liabilities with nobody knowing for certain which leading candidate would benefit most from any rational third-party entry.  Meanwhile US citizens will see virtually no change in our two-party system now failing our republic.  A major flaw that our nation’s founding fathers had warned about - yet put no controls in the Constitution to avoid it.

THE 2024 Elections:  “We the People” are the problem! We continue to put these people on ballots.  Trump’s anti-truth.  Biden’s anti Trump rhetoric is complicit in our nation’s political parties polarization.  Add to this, President Biden’s botched Afghanistan withdrawal, the President’s son’s laptop computer, Biden’s age, and his speaking errors, and fumbling performance in the first unique public debate confined to Biden’s terms.   Now even his nomination is being questions by democrats.   This election will not be about stopping the polarization or solving problems.  It will be decided by passionate opinions and threats to our nation impossible to solve with existing policy makers and a dysfunctional democratically elected Congress and an inherently flawed Constitution.   

Imagine what might have been if the new Congress had internalized the prayer, they all heard at the beginning of their 118^th Congress.   And then kept their pledge of allegiance to our nation and republic that they had already given hundreds of times.  And then committed their own political party to passing laws “with liberty and justice for all’!    Do you think they could find ways to make Congress functional - and put our democratic republic on the right track to forming a more perfect union? Not without fear of losing their next election. 

Congress and most US citizens are yet to grasp the fundamental objective truth that our government is broken.  They sense it and think it.  But keep voting with a blind faith that those in power might yet be able to fix it.  They believe our democratic system will get the right people elected then 95% of Americans ignore most issues until the next election or one bites them somehow.  

“Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule--and both commonly succeed and are right.”  – H.L. Mencken

"Man can find meaning in life, short and perilous as it is, only through devoting himself to society" :  Albert Einstein 

Both political parties believe they have rational principles that will appease their special interest groups.  Their highest priority is always being elected or re-elected.  Thus, these two parties increasingly work against each other.  Like a train with two engines pulling in opposite directions on an outdated, poorly unregulated, and basically dysfunctional rail system - with only two destinations.  And both are insufficient to inspire or achieve success or change unless it voting to name a new post office. 

Ultimately it doesn’t matter if there were three, ten, or unlimited number of political parties.  The flaw is democracy itself.  It is a lovable notion that a majority of voters will know what is best for everyone within everyone, even minorities.  But what everyone wants and needs is an equal opportunity to survive and thrive together in a healthy and sustainable environment.

Unfortunately, every policy maker and others hired to serve our nation swear an oath to protect our Constitution. They do not swear an oath to protect everyone’s public health and safety like most engineers and medical professionals do.  Their work and expertise is shared globally.  And when used in this global context has done more to improve human life and the environment than any one government.  And when their skills are misused or abused, it is usually done for one purpose.  Protecting national sovereignty. 

"We need more understanding of human nature, because the only real danger that exists is man himself. He is the great danger. And we are pitifully unaware of it. We know nothing of man ... far too little. His psyche should be studied – because we are the origin of all coming evil."

C.G. Jung

 

Notice there has never been any measurable means offered to all voters regarding any progress made between elections in achieving any of the seven intentions in our Constitution’s preamble.  Accountability is only offered every two, four, or six years.  Our nation simply needs more voters’ aware of, committed to, and advocating for wise action regarding the growing numbers of obvious ‘self-evident’ truths that Covid, extreme weather, corruption, our culture, and our dysfunctional congress exposed in the number of excessive deaths because warning are basically ignored.  And most of our personal freedoms fail to account for how they impact others around us or in other nations.   What we need is a second Constitutional Convention, but our political, religious, and economic polarizations simply will not allow that.

I don’t believe for nanosecond that sufficient voters would join an “Interdependent” party to transform our Constitution.  But that is exactly what’s needed for codifying the wisdom of the principles that our nation was founded on and clearly express in the Declaration of Independence.   So why do I fantasize about this?   It feels better than being a gloom and doomer.   

Meanwhile our increasingly polarized partisanship and ununited states continues to metastasize and take our nation closer and faster to the inevitable trainwreck.  Inevitable because of our runaway debt, unsustainable environmental practices, and the persistently evolving weapons, wars, pathogens, and the capacity for anyone to weaponize anything and everything.  And given that ‘everything’ is connected, interdependent, and vulnerable, why not fantasize?  And do what needs to be done, regardless of how it turns out.  That is the ‘hope’ that Vaclav Havel offered decades ago.  And each day we escape the inevitable is one more day to experience the awe and wonder of life on this planet, and our species failures that need help.

 

Elected officials persist in the delusional belief that defending the Constitution as each has pledged to do, will protect our freedom and security.   What they don’t see is that the Constitution’s primary and inherent systemic flaw is that it is founded on the illusion that things are independent.  When in reality, everything in the known universe is interdependent and vulnerable.   And all they are really defending is their political party and its hopeful policy positions based on public whims and our collective delusion that issues, agencies, and nations are independent of each other.

 

It’s not difficult to believe that some US citizens still believe our government is working.  This is usually the wealthy people.  Only a fool or a liar would claim that their elected official is prioritizing the fundamental principles that our nation was originally founded on. 

 

Read and grade the U.S. Constitution’s seven preamble intents below.  Use the A B C D F grades related to our legal system’s current progress.  Given how long the system has been in operation an “I” for incomplete is not an option.   

“We the People...in order to:

1.      Form a more Perfect Union:  ___ While our civil war made significant progress on one of our Declaration’s fundamental principles, we may be approaching another civil war.  It won’t be anything like the first.  But it could get very ugly and bloody quickly without additional amendments supporting Self-evident Truths.

 

2.      Establish Justice:  ___ This may be the second greatest flaw in the Constitution.  We have a legal system, not a justice system.  A few relatively easy steps toward fairness not requiring a Constitutional Convention would be a) eliminating our two-tier tax system where those who are wealthy and well connected to corporations are taxed and enforced similarly as our nation’s working class.  B) Codifying the same jail sentences for most crimes.  C) finding a fair way to make sure that someone who is rich and likely guilty gets the same legal support as someone who is poor and probably innocent.  There is little fairness in our current legal system.  And the word ‘justice’ is only found in the Preamble and etched into stone on federal buildings.  It is rarely found in our domestic courts or in our military and foreign aid efforts globally.   And then we wonder why there is so much hatred domestically against our government and globally against both our government and our citizens.

 

3.      Ensure domestic Tranquility: ___   LOL!  Campus protests regarding US weapons support in response to an initially justified Israel counterattack against a genocidal Hamas political party, and then intentional efforts to prevent food from reaching nearly half a million now close to starvation is just criminal as the Hamas official targeting of Israeli genocide.   There obvious war crimes committed in the destruction of Gaza, as well as other murderous violations and sometimes approved ‘ethnic cleansing’ operations by some Israeli spokes people and violent settlers in the West Bank.  Some Americans are rightfully appalled by their tax dollars fueling the death and destruction of tens of thousands of Palestinians (about one third children) with Isreal insisting on continuing this murderous destruction.   What should be clear to any rational individual on any side of this conflict and debate is that the ongoing violence will not be stopped militarily.  A political two-state solution is needed.  And most important and self-evident is that continuance of violence will only reduce Israel’s security in the long run – and inflaming Middle East tensions that will inevitably lead to one side or the other using nuclear or biological weapons.  An event with unimaginable devastation to people, places, and things throughout the region and the world.  The combined religious, political, and moral beliefs polarizing both sides is insane.  And pushing other vital issues, criminal injustice, and preventable mass deaths out of the news.  Ukraine! Haiti! Sudan! Extreme weather events! The evolution of weapons and pathogens... combined with people’s capacity to believe anything, their failing to do what they know is right, and what both people and nature need most (relying on objective truths), only a fool would expect things to get more tranquil any time soon.  Domestically or globally.  

 

4.      Provide for the common defence:  ___ This is impossible without a total rewrite of our Constitution and effectively eliminating the concept of independence in all domestic and foreign laws.  Simply because everything is connected, interdependent and vulnerable.  And only a virtuous global effort will bring anyone a reasonable level of security anywhere on earth.  Not even the best candidates elected, our military fully funded, the border walls fully operational, efficient carbon sequestered successfully, wars ended, global populations reduced, WMD banned, and the 17 sustainable development goals achieved -- will human security be sufficiently gained. Because “everything can be weaponized”.   And pandemics, solar events, asteroids, a Kessler effect event, or super volcano eruption would still threaten everyone. The best we can do is work together to prevent, preempt, prepare for, and recover from these inevitable threats.  Security is an illusion.  A global security system is needed.  And our best chance to reduce and recover from threats will be found in the hearts and minds of the human family, and our species working together in prioritizing our need to take care of nature and each other with virtue and accountability.

 

5.      Promote the general Welfare:  ___ Absolutely possible with all of our nation’s wealth and natural resources and working with the rest of the world.  This won’t happen without shifting our appropriation bills toward investing primarily in addressing systemic root causes...instead of our reactionary band aids that only increase our debt to astronomical levels.   The other massive change must be cultural.  Our selfish, hedonist, reactionary, greedy, comfort seeking, stress avoiding, unhealthy freedoms, and virtue dodging behaviors are not what our mind, body, and spirit were engineered for.   We were engineered for solving problems, abiding by the Golden Rule, and having a greater purpose than just feeling good and looking great.  It takes a virtuous community to ensure everyone’s welfare.

 

6.      Secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves:  ___ We are free to have guns.  We have the right to protect ourselves, our loved ones, and our property with whatever weapon is needed.  But weaponry will be insufficient if our government collapses from debt, disease, civil war, or its own dysfunction.  We are even free to abuse our freedom with unvirtuous behaviors. But we will never be free of the costly consequences to our health, wealth, comfort, and survival.   In the 120 thousand written communications between George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison that are now digitally available in our national archives the word “virtue” is mentioned 6000 times.  That is more times than the word ‘freedom”.

 

"[D]emocracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man's life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mold itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few."   -- John Adams  (1735-1826) Founding Father, 2nd US President.   Source: An Essay on Man's Lust for Power, August 29, 1763

 

7.      And our Posterity:  Mission impossible without transforming our Constitution and sufficiently funding and achieving the 17 SDGs (and meeting the specific 168 measurable, achievable, and affordable targets within them) ASAP.   Current generations are already suffering from the Greatest Generations failure to create a United Nations capable of globally protecting the 30 unalienable human rights listed the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  Then my generation’s failure to act on the conclusion of the 1980 bipartisan Presidential Commission urging to end world hunger by the year 2000.   Acting on its warnings regarding the threats to everyone’s own personal, national, and global security would have prevented most of the problems we face today.  Our children and grandchildren are now witnessing and experiencing the wars, genocides, pandemics, terrorism, environment destuction, refugee flows, human trafficking, and other violations of human rights that could have been prevented had my generation had done what that commission told us was needed.  These problems are now accelerating unsustainably.  Thus, future generations will experience both the miracles of technology as well as the unprecedented horrors of technologies misuse and abuse- on a pace and scale we can now only image.

 

The earth belongs always to the living generation…not the dead. Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19. years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force and not of right.”   Thomas Jefferson in a 1789 letter to James Madison

 

The fundamental principles offered in the Declaration of Independence could best assist us in achieving most of the Constitution’s seven intentions.  And it is our presently flawed Constitutional principles that have determined and accelerated the growing chaos we are now seeing and feeling.   And these will keep coming to our lungs, homes,  jobs, cities, farmlands, states, and nation because we have never been, and can never be independent of other people, nations, or nature. 

 

Our mind and body are irreversibly dependent on food, air, water, and our immune system.  Because everything is connected, interdependent, and vulnerable, and this literally means everything!  Every cell in your body, every subcellular organelle, and every strand of DNA within each cell.  The same with everyone in your family, community, and world.   And every food crop, government, and nation (democratic or not) on the planet.   Plus, every living thing, including each of our planet’s natural systems that we depend on for our security, energy, livable climate, prospering economy, and our future.  

 

Meanwhile, our nation’s short-sighted interests, reactionary whole-of-government approaches cannot effectively work.  A global effort is urgently needed on nearly every problem!  We can pay now in money - or pay substantially more in money, blood and human suffering.  It’s our choice.  “We the People” can change this.

 

Remember our nation’s civil war killed more Americans than all the wars we have fought in since then – COMBINED!  And why President Lincoln wrote that our Declaration of Independence is our “Apple of Gold” and our Constitution its “Silver Frame”.

 

 

Two vital Constitutional amendments were approved after that ‘just’ war.  The 14th abolishing slavery and the 15th allowing citizens of any “race, color, or previous condition of servitude” to vote.  But these fell short of bringing peace into many communities.  Twelve amendments were later approved but none being devoted to “liberty and justice for all”.  A different civil war between those who hate and those who love is possible.   Even another World War on top of that.

 

“Nothing truly valuable arises from ambition or from a mere sense of duty; it stems rather from love and devotion towards men.” Albert Einstein

 

Short list of other Constitutional Flaws:

 

1.     States Rights are based on the same illusion as national sovereignty - global independence.

 

“All this is simply to say that all life is interrelated. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality; tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. As long as there is poverty in this world, no man can be totally rich even if he has a billion dollars. As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people cannot expect to live more than twenty or thirty years, no man can be totally healthy, even if he just got a clean bill of health from the finest clinic in America. Strangely enough, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.”  ― Martin Luther King Jr.

Just as elements of slave states complicated political relations with non-slave states, current differences between US states related to gerrymandering, voting laws, and even ballot designs at can have national, and thus global consequences.  Consider the year 2000 elections when a butterfly ballet design in on Florida community played a role in the Supreme Court decision to give that contested election to Goerge Bush instead of Al Gore.  Then 9 months later the attacks on September 11.  A bi-partisan Commission created by the Clinton/Gore Administration intended to prepare the next president with a better understanding of the new global security risks of the new century had issued its final report 3 months into President Bush’s first year in office.  So just three months prior to 9-11 the President, Congress, and the nation had been warned that the Commission concluded that terrorism was our nation’s greatest threat.  And ‘Americans should prepare to die in large numbers on American soil from a terrorist attack’.  That was ignored by the Bush/Cheney administration.  And even after the attack on 9-11 they still resisted the creation of the Department of Homeland Security.  Then in 2003 the Bush/Cheney duo launched their ‘shock and awe’ invasion of Iraq with that war/ending 20 years with another few thousand American deaths and an expansion of terrorism.  Many foreign policy experts agree that invasion/occupant was the worst US foreign policy decision in our nation’s history.  It’s hard to imagine Gore ignoring those bipartisan and experts’ recommendations.    Next came the death toll of over a thousand Americans in Louisiana due to the soppy response to Hurricane Katrina by a Bush appointee to FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Administration. Our Constitution allowing states to ‘independently’ Gerrymander House seats strip away the power of voters having fair elections with certain American voters losing their influence in the outcome of a state’s electoral college count.  So until every state changes this system that allows the rigging of power by one partisan political party to reside over the rights of others in that state, and possibly one state’s electoral slate deciding which Presidential candidate wins the general election (as in Florida in the 2000 election determining the final outcome for all US voters) then impacting everyone in the US and the world – that is simply unjust and crazy.

 

"For peace to reign on Earth, humans must evolve into new beings who have learned to see the whole first." - Immanuel Kant

 

"Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect." - Chief Seattle, Duwamish (1780-1866)

“All is connected. That’s the truth of the world’s wisdom traditions ... No single thing, no species or ecosystem, community or culture is safe when so much hangs in the balance. We unravel as one or we regenerate as one.”    - Ayana Elizabeth Johnson & Katharine K. Wilkinson, All We Can Save

 

 

“Every State has a natural right in cases not within the compact (casus non faederis) to nullify of their own authority all assumptions of power by others within their limits. Without this right, they would be under the dominion, absolute and unlimited, of whosoever might exercise this right of judgment for them.”  Thomas Jefferson, Draft Kentucky Resolutions [1798] 

 

Jefferson is saying that each state has the natural right to reject or ignore (nullify) any actions or laws imposed by the federal government that go beyond what is allowed by the Constitution. He argues that without this right, states would be completely controlled by the federal government, with no way to defend their own authority or the rights of their citizens. Essentially, Jefferson believed that states should have the power to protect themselves from overreach by the federal government.

Basically, arguing that without this right of separation from the Constitution, states would be completely controlled by the federal government, which could thus do whatever it pleased without any check or balance it so desired.  This shows Jefferson believed in the importance of states being able to stand up for their own rights and thus it has limits against any federal overreach.   But this ‘independence’ is not the way the real world works.   A deadly virus outbreak on any farm, in any city or state can soon spread to every state in the US and every nation globally.  And the Constitution as it exists would not be able to stop it without the state’s cooperation.  

 

And this potentially catastrophic Constitutional law holds true or almost any other economic, environmental, military, political, or public health threat.  So, within this context the existing US Constitution is effectively a national and global suicide document.

 

Underlying unity isn't a dream; it's reality. The appearance of separation is, though, a dream, and it's turning into a nightmare.   ~Jude Currivan

 

Africans speak of ubuntu (humanity), often translated as “I am because we are.”

 

JUSTICE IS FOUND IN THE RIGHTS BESTOWED BY NATURE UPON MAN. The U.S. Department of Justice building in Washington, D.C.

2.      Justice is a natural right.  We may not be able to define it but we know when something is unjust and unfair to our survival.  Any species that allows itself to be killed or abused without some form of evasion or resistance will not survive to pass on its genes.

 

"For man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but, when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all; since armed injustice is the more dangerous, and he is equipped at birth with the arms of intelligence and with moral qualities which he may use for the worst ends."  -- Aristotle  (384-322 BC) Greek philosopher.  Source: Politics, 300 B.C.

 

If you go to trial in the US, you would be better off being rich and guilty than innocent and poor.   The one time I experienced a personal legal problem with construction of my home using used materials I was fined $200.  Unwise I didn’t have a lawyer.  I complained to the judge “that the law wasn’t just”.   He explained “we have a legal system.  Not a justice system” and kindly dropped the fine to $100.  The city had three lawyers and likely spent $10,000 in preparing and handling the trial.  It ended well.  I used the materials and about 20 years later the city gave me an environmental award.

 

"Law and justice are not always the same."  -- Gloria Steinem   (1944- ) Publisher of Ms. magazine

 

The trial regarding Trumps case of election interference by paying off a prostitute to hide this act and paying a media source to diminish the reputation of candidates he was running against in the 2016 elections - is a more important example of the power of wealth in politics.  If he gets away with what he did with any legal loophole his defense finds, my loss of confidence in our legal system would be complete.  And if he is found guilty, he will unlikely serve jail time. Which would have been part of sentence had if almost anyone else had done what he did.     

“Equal justice under law is not merely a caption on the facade of the Supreme Court building. It is perhaps the most inspiring ideal of our society. It is one of the ends for which our entire legal system exists…it is fundamental justice that should be the same, in substance and availability, without regard to economic status.”  Lewis F. Powell, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. 

The Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C., features the following inscription on its exterior: "Equal Justice Under Law." This phrase reflects the principle of justice being applied equally to all individuals, regardless of their background or status.  The hypocrisy of our federal legal system is laughable.

 

Agent Orange was a herbicide used by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War to clear vegetation. Its use has been controversial due to its harmful effects on both human health and the environment.

There was a lawsuit filed by Vietnamese citizens against several chemical companies, including Dow Chemical and Monsanto for their role in producing Agent Orange. The lawsuit alleged that these companies were responsible for the health problems and environmental damage caused by its use during that War.   In 2004, a group of Vietnamese plaintiffs filed a class-action lawsuit in the U.S. federal court against the chemical companies. But the case was dismissed by the court.  It ruled that the chemical companies were immune from lawsuits because they were acting under the direction of the U.S. government during the war.  

Despite the dismissal of this lawsuit, the issue of Agent Orange and its effects on the Vietnamese population and environment remains a contentious and unresolved issue.   There have been legal cases related to the use of Agent Orange by U.S. military personnel and its effects on their health. One significant case was the class-action lawsuit filed by Vietnam veterans against several chemical companies that produced Agent Orange. The case was settled out of court in 1984 for $180 million, which established a fund to compensate veterans and their families affected by exposure to Agent Orange.  The Supreme Court has still not issued a ruling specifically addressing the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam.

 

“Justice is the great interest of man on earth.   Wherever her temple stands, there is a foundation for social security, general happiness and the improvement and progress of our race.”    Inscribed above the entrance to the U.S. Department of Justice, Washington DC.

"The commonwealth endures only in proportion as the guarantees of the rights of the people are faithfully maintained."  The Department of Justice building in Washington, D.C.

This quote underscores the importance of upholding the rights of the people as a foundation for a strong and enduring society.  But outcomes in US courts are more money dependent than just.

LIBERTY IS MAINTAINED IN SECURITY OF JUSTICE. The Department of Justice building in Washington, D.C.

"If we do not maintain Justice, Justice will not maintain us.": Francis Bacon

"Iniquity [gross injustice], committed in this world, produces not fruit immediately, but, like the earth, in due season, and advancing by little and little, it eradicates the man who committed it. ...justice, being destroyed, will destroy; being preserved, will preserve; it must never therefore be violated." Manu 1200 bc

 

SUMMARY: A lack of justice in US laws (domestic and international) is simply unsustainable. 

 

3.      Zero-Sum budgeting between “Independent” agencies and states: Some agencies require secrecy and/or complete separation from other government agencies in competition with them for budget resources.  With all agencies overlapping on different issues and each with different rules and priorities, this competition for the same limited funds is essential for them to achieve their own departmental priorities.  This constant competition and overlap – is expensive, a waste of time/effort, and unsustainable.

 

Just a movement of harmonizing laws regarding elections, business licensing, pollution control, recycling procedures, building codes, fuel additives, speed limits, electrical grid protection... across most or all 50 states would result in enormous savings in money, time, and confusion for citizens vacationing, moving, or doing business between them.   This would also facilitate resolving irreversibly interconnected and interdependent problems given the vulnerability of everything.  Engineering, medicine, and other professional accreditations could follow with harmonizing of other federal laws and vital procedures that everyone benefits from -except lawyers.  

 

4.       The democratization (Congressional voting) of US the weapons procurement process is a national security threat.  The time it takes for Congress to approve of any weapon systems and pass appropriation bills when we are in military competition against autocratic governments capable of changing budget priorities immediately is unsustainable in a hot or cold war.  A March 6, 2024, Washington Post Opinion piece, “Let AI remake the whole U.S. government (oh, and save the country)”   By Josh Tyrangiel   https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/03/06/artificial-intelligence-state-of-the-union/  he detailed this growing national security threat of competing with other governments weapons procurement processes (both ally and enemy).   Unfortunately, our non-democratic enemy’s are uninhibited by oversight, safety, or environmental regulations.  This problem is more serious, larger, and applicable to our entire government management and funding system directly tied to our Constitution.

This slow and troublesome law making and law amending process in our democratic system was intentionally engineered into the US Constitution from its creation.  This is a catastrophic flaw given the pace of evolution of weapons, war, pathogens (via nature and labs), and any other element critical to our national security. 

 

"All our lauded technological progress - our very civilization - is like the axe in the hand of the pathological criminal." - Albert Einstein

The original constitutional intention was to keep a balance between the three legs of government and to prevent fast reactionary laws often demanded by a heated majority without sufficient vetting of the law.   In our real world of fast and exponential change of technologies combined with unpredictable superpowered enemies using hyper speed weapons systems, versus our own sluggishly slow deliberative legislative machine increasingly paralyzed by polarized dysfunction with political parties that more committed to protecting their power (or defending the constitution) than protecting our freedoms and security is simply and insanely unsustainable.

 

5. Our Democratic Republic is run by lawmakers elected by mostly ignorant citizens with most of their votes based on their personal gut feeling, party affiliation, misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theory, special interests, or simple self-interests.  This cannot yield a wise and cooperative House, Senate, or President.  Add to this conundrum the likelihood that only half of eligible voters will even turnout makes the outcome even more unpredictable at a time in history where time consuming uncertainty is not a survival advantage.  This is tied to another weakness given that each Congressional district has over 700,000 constituents.  Originally there were about 20,000.  This leaves each voter today with an entirely accurate feeling that their individual vote means next to nothing, and even disempowers those working with others in their district to inform their Congressperson.  This gives corporations or special interest groups with big money far more capacity to easily rig the rules to benefit themselves.  Then this hurts most  constituents if their most basic needs cost more and their taxes rise, because the system is rigged.

 

Consider housing vs corporate profit making.  A safe place to live (a home?) is a primary essential for a healthy human life and friendly community.   But from 2020 scarcely affordable houses became a commodity on Wall Street.  Corporate investors purchased hundreds of thousands of houses in U.S. suburbs with all-cash offers - buying single-family properties that could easily be converted into rental units and then traded or speculated on by financial markets and overseas investors.  This legal house-buying spree snagged one out of every four homes and deepened our nation's house affordability crisis.   Corporate raiders have been stealing the American dream with multibillion-dollar U.S. firms using “finely tuned algorithms to" find houses they can turn into rental properties.  By making over-market and unbeatable cash bids - often within minutes of a house hitting the market - American families within every political party found it hard to compete with that.   Some unable to buy a home falsely accused this rising home ‘inflation ‘on the President.  

Two corporate homebuyers, Invitation Homes and AMH, are publicly traded companies.  Others may be backed by private equity that values profit over people.  Lawmakers in Ohio, California, New York, and other states are sponsoring bills using heavy taxation to inhibit such institutional owners, but money talks.  And those seeking campaign donations gravitate to it.

“Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have researched the records for years and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.” - H.L. Mencken, Notes on Democracy

6. Government Secrecy: Trust is based on truth telling.  Our government legally lies and does it knowingly for what it can say is to protect our national security.  It is often to cover somebody’s mistakes.  Our just classified because someone doesn’t have the time or interest in classifying it.  Yet over 4.2 million Americans have access to classified government information, with more than 1.25 million holding top secret clearances.  A recent leak of classified Pentagon documents highlighted the vulnerability of the system which grants access to classified government information.  One was 21-year-old man who a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard was arrested was arrested.  The federal governments grant top secret clearance to large numbers of both government employees and contractors.   Even the National Security Agency has been hacked.  

"It is a great importance to set a resolution, not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible and he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual, he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all it's good dispositions."  -- Thomas Jefferson  (1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President

It is no mystery why most citizens have lost nearly all trust in our governing institutions.  In competition for investments, elections, wealth, power, technological advances, and idea patents, companies, and governments keep lots of secrets.  This makes it virtually impossible to know the truth about what our government, elected officials, or even our family members are doing.  Or what has been done with our tax dollars, or other valuable resources.   

 

“The steep decline in America's image and standing after 9/11 is a direct reflection of global distaste for the instruments of American hard power: the Iraq invasion, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, torture, rendition, Blackwater's killings of Iraqi civilians.” Shashi Tharoor

This undermines the trust of voter, the value of voting when valid signs and accusations of corruption or waste are reported, but doesn’t seem to reduce American optimism that our military can protect us.    This secrecy, and security around exposure of secrets also prevents citizens from holding government agencies and their leaders/policymakers accountable in a timely manner, if at all.   

“Everything secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show it can bear discussion and publicity.” - Lord Acton

“The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.” - Patrick Henry, American colonial

Read:  America’s Secret Government Crisis, by Patrick Eddington Posted on January 20, 2022, https://original.antiwar.com/patrick_eddington/2022/01/19/americas-secret-government-crisis

“It’s important to remember that the Constitution only mentions secrecy once, and not in connection with the executive branch but Congress – Article I, Section 5. Congress was the original arbiter of what should or should not be kept from the public, and if America’s governmental secrecy sickness is to be cured, it must reclaim that leading role.” Patrick Eddington

7.      Ambiguous words and phrases in the Constitution or our laws. Or the meaning or context of these changing over time. This flaw is usually not allowed in science, engineering, or the miliary.  But it is rampant in politics, religion, song writing, and sales.   Such broad word leniency rarely produces reliable or sustainable results except in poetry and music.   Yet these word and phrase imperfections are allowed and used repeatedly in making laws.  Then we wonder why the government doesn’t always work as promised or intended.  Then some actually have various altered interpretations over the years or between different agencies and administrations.  Some notable examples include:

1. "General Welfare": The Preamble of the Constitution states that one of its purposes is to "promote the general Welfare." Its meaning has been the subject of debate, with some interpreting it broadly to justify a wide range of federal government activities and others interpreting it more narrowly to limit the scope of federal power.   Any rational person, parent, health, or medical provider would know exactly what ‘promote the general welfare” means.   Ask a banker or policy maker and you’ll get a blank stare, a more ambiguous word salad, or a personal story. 

 

2. "Commerce": The Commerce Clause (Article I, Section 8, Clause 3) of the U.S. Constitution grants Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce. The meaning of "commerce" has been the subject of numerous Supreme Court cases, with the Court often expanding the definition to encompass a wide range of economic activities.  Again, the flexible definition can be used to help or hurt almost any special interest out of favor with the times, the place, or the producer.

 

3. "Necessary and Proper": The Necessary and Proper Clause (Article I, Section 8, Clause 18) of the Constitution grants Congress the power to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the enumerated powers. The meaning of "necessary and proper" has been debated, with some arguing that it gives Congress broad discretion to enact laws to achieve its goals, while others argue for a more limited interpretation.

 

4. "Cruel and Unusual Punishment": The Eighth Amendment prohibits the infliction of "cruel and unusual punishments." The meaning of "cruel and unusual" has evolved over time and is often subject to interpretation based on contemporary standards of decency.

 

5. "Due Process": The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments guarantee that no person shall be deprived of "life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." The meaning of "due process" has been the subject of numerous Supreme Court cases, with the Court interpreting it to encompass both procedural and substantive rights.  And again, these can change over time and with different technologies.

 

These are just a few examples.  There are many other words and phrases in the Constitution that have been subject to interpretation and debate.  And thousands more in the laws already passed or being put through legislative council which attempts to limit them.

 

And these don’t even begin to enter the chamber of horrible definitions that Congressional policy makers come up with.  Like “Right to Life”.  “Peace through Strength”.  “Market forces” will solve the problem”, there is “only males and females”.  Or the woke left words like “equity” that can mean either ‘access” or “outcome”.  “Gun Control” meaning certain firearms removal.  “Peace” meaning either cut military expenditures or increase them.

 

"One of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days
is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the great struggle for independence."  -- Charles Austin Beard  (1874-1948) Professor at Columbia Univ. 1935

 

You wouldn’t fly in an airplane or spacecraft engineered and constructed with the use of ambiguous words in designing or building the systems and structures that people’s lives depend on when taking a vacation or a trip to the moon with the desire to return home safely.  Why do we allow such ambiguous words when conducting operations protecting our health, our lives, and our environment.   

 

SUMMARY:  To ensure sustainability for you, your family, and your posterity here on spaceship earth (thank you Bucky Fuller for this unambiguous two word phrase) which kind of words would you prefer be used when engineering the systems needed for surviving and thriving? 

8. Partisanship stacking of Supreme Court Justices and the loss of public trust in its decisions.

 

“The Supreme Court is an anomalous institution. It combines vast power with minimal accountability. And trust in the Court has, rightfully, plunged to the lowest level ever recorded. Millions see it as hopelessly politicized. The Supreme Court is broken and urgently needs reform.”  Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law

 

Ideally every Supreme Court decision would be based on logic and the majority view of partisan justices.  But that is no longer the way it works.   Its biased conservative members recent decision to outlaw a woman’s freedom regarding the inalienable human right to control her own body was against “the Laws of Nature”, established legal precedent, and the vast majority of voter’s expectations.  

 

Next the Supreme Court overruled the administrative state’s decades-old precedent known as the Chevron deference.  A precedent that only the conservative legal movement has dreamed about reversing for decades.  The 1984 court’s ruling in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council held that courts should defer to federal agencies when there are disputes over the meaning of unclear or ambiguous language in laws passed by Congress. It was a sensible ruling given that nearly every law has holes and ambiguities, but the experts at federal agencies like the EPA, FDA have the knowledge and scientific skills to address the countless complicated, complex, and technical questions that almost always arise.   

 

Conservatives have long believed this gave excessive power to unelected bureaucrats with corporations fearing overregulation. But in a 6-3 ruling along ideological lines, the court now trusts jurists - not experts in their agencies—should have the final say on regulations affecting everything from food and drug safety to air and water quality.  Conservative Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority calling Chevron a “fundamentally misguided” doctrine that blocks judges “from judging.”

 

Justice Elena Kagan’ descent connected the true motivation to “judicial hubris” and with this one decision turned the court’s majority into our country’s “administrative czar.”

 

This case reversal will likely be met with multiple waves of litigation seeking reversal of other outcomes favoring environmental regulations businesses considered burdensome. The EPA has used the broadly written Clean Air Act during the 1970s to curb greenhouse gas emissions and recently turned to the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act to regulate the “forever chemicals” known as PFAS making these regulations vulnerable. The FDA could now see lawsuits ranging from the tracking of tainted veggies back to a farm to which drugs and e-cigarettes are safe for consumers. Former FDA associate commissioner Mitch Zeller said “This is disastrous for public health...”

 

Article III of the Constitution vests judges with the duty to say what the law is and reach their own independent, legal judgment.  Unfortunately, Supreme Court judges rarely have the technological or scientific expertise needed in determining all the life, death, and environmental consequences of all the new technologies, chemicals, and biologicals profit making industries are creating every day at an exponential pace. 

 

“How can five people amend the United States Constitution?  Become Supreme Court Justices.”  Peter Kellman, former POCLAD principal

 

Can the American people really depend on unelected bureaucrats and unelected jurists to be the best decision makers when we can’t even trust most elected officials?  In a recent ruling blocking the Biden administration’s plan to limit ozone pollution drifting from state to state, Justice Neil Gorsuch’s majority opinion repeatedly confused nitrogen oxide—which causes smog— with nitrous oxide, better known as laughing gas. We can only expect more ludicrous errors given the flood of cases now likely to come regardless of who wins the 2024 election.

 

"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." - Economist, Frederic Bastiat

 

Condoning corruption?   It appears wealth has more than just legal advantages.  It can also purchase policy maker decisions.  This appears to be the ‘case’ logic of the conservative Supreme Court majority in Snyder v. U.S. which centered on an Indiana mayor.  He had been found guilty of corruption for taking a $13,000 check from a trucking company after he had awarded them a $1 million contract.  In his appeal he argued he didn’t accept a bribe, because the payment came after he awarded the company a contract, not before.  The high court agreed with Justice Brett Kavanaugh stating in the majority opinion that gifts given to an official could be seen as a “gratuity” for good service, like tipping a waiter. Kavanaugh engineered a difference between obvious quid pro quo deals and “mere tokens of appreciation.” Even when those tokens are worth thousands of dollars.  Look to Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas to see how modern influence peddling works.  Both accepted generous “gifts” from Republican billionaires pleased with their far-right rulings. It appears these justices have now ‘justified’ other public officials embracing exactly this sort of corruption they’ve obviously have done themselves.

 

"America does not need another political campaign based on denial and avoidance of some of our real problems. It needs a crusade to reform and renew our country, its institutions and political system." - Richard Lamm   Reform Party's nomination for President of the United States in 1996.

"I would not use the US Constitution as a template if I was creating a new constitution."    Justice Ruth Bader Ginzberg

 

The Declaration of Independence is the foundation of thought that uniquely represents the original American ideal of universal freedom for all.   It has since inspired billions of people globally by expressing the simple yet profound concept that government exists purely to ensure people’s innate freedoms and their inalienable rights to survive and thrive.  In short, ensuring that all of humanity’s rights to “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of” Health (mind, body, spirit, family, community, environment, economy, and governance systems), all within the context of “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God”.  Happiness today is a brief feeling no human can perpetually sustain without drugs. Health however is what we all desire, especially when we don’t have it, and used drugs to try and sustain it.

 

“We therefore believe in liberty because we believe in the harmony of the universe, that is, in God. Proclaiming in the name of faith, formulating in the name of science, the divine laws, flexible and vital, of our dynamic moral order, we utterly reject the narrow, unwieldy, and static institutions that some men in their blindness would heedlessly introduce into this admirable mechanism.”    – George B. De Husza

 

9.     Political Parties: 

Political parties were not mandated or banned in the Constitution.  But the founding fathers warned against them.  Unfortunately, they are almost inevitable when voters have such a variety of special interests and affiliations and seek power to gain them. Whether they need them or not.   Our nation’s persistent party duopoly has only empowered and perpetuated the extremes within each party.  Winning elections now is more important than serving ‘we the people’ what we need to maximize our freedoms and security.   Our political differences will never go away with citizens who have little knowledge or interest in the fundamental principles of nature and sustaining healthy lives for all.   As James Madison said when discussing special interest factions and liberty in the Federalist #10, “Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. “

 

What if our Constitution allowed only one party based on the fundamental principle of interdependence.   Currently, every U.S. political party is based on the partisan principle that it alone is the best party to govern our nation.  The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) undoubtably believes it’s the best for making its government the most powerful in the world.  And it is on the path to doing so with far more people and far faster decision making than ours. 

 

What can we do to abort this?  Is there anything short of world war or a revolution inside of China?  Imagine all other freedom-loving nations uniting and forming a Global Interdependence party.  The CCP would not agree to this.  But maybe most Chinese people would.  

 

Could one global political party be established on the fundamental principle that ‘everything is interdependent and that protecting inalienable human rights, everyone’s freedoms and our common environment are irreversibly connected’?  And this is more important than any national government or private group priorities.  United, such a movement could stand a chance.  A small chance.  But humanity remaining divided has no chance of a free, secure, and sustainable future.   

 

The Democrats: Progressives lack the testosterone and wisdom to aggressively re-consider their own delusional Constitutional principles of democracy, peace, and disarmament.  And their failure, in achieving peace via ‘justice for all’ by prioritizing the global enforcement of fundamental human rights and protecting the environment.  Failing to grasp that disarmament is a non-starter, just as maintaining unenforceable international law.

 

The Republicans:  Conservatives lack the understanding and wisdom that the best means of reducing government, limiting its powers, and balancing its budget cannot be achieve by Peace through strength - and putting the protection of national sovereignty above the protection of human rights and the environment.  Maximizing freedoms requires virtues, fairness, and accountability globally. Not more weapons.

 

Leaders in each party have sworn an oath to protect the Constitution.  And each has allowed their party’s inner power to be the primary source of dysfunction.   Even before the GOP went off the rails by electing Trump in 2016 our nation’s best national security experts rated our nation’s own “government dysfunction” as its “second” greatest threat.  Terrorism was number one.  Both a higher threat than Russia, China, N. Korea, Iran, or climate change.   In a new survey they would likely move government dysfunction to the top.   I wonder how they would judge a white supremacy group genetically engineering a biological weapon targeting Blacks or Jews,  Or an anti-government conspiracy using a bioweapon to incite national disorder and then taking advantage in the Chaos? 

 

A June 25, 2012 blog by Jessie Jane Duff titled “Defense Secretary: D.C. ‘Dysfunction’ A National Security Threat    https://jessiejaneduff.com/defense-secretary-d-c-dysfunction-a-national-security-threat/  she wrote, “on Friday Defense Secretary Leon Panetta spoke at the Center for National Policy, where he warned that “dysfunction” in Congress will have serious implications for the nation’s security.  As one report on Panetta’s speech details it:   The “dysfunction” in the US Congress, where Republicans and Democrats have failed to compromise on debt reduction, threatens US national security, according to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.  “One my greatest concerns as secretary is the dysfunction that we see in Washington,” he said late Thursday at a ceremony in which he received an award for public service.  “It threatens our security and it raises questions about the capacity of our democracy to respond to crisis.”

 

“The constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruption's of time and party, its members would become despots.”   Thomas Jefferson

 

Thomas Jefferson's statement reflects his concerns about the concentration of power in a single institution. He emphasizes that the U.S. Constitution does not establish one supreme, unchallengeable authority or body that can decide all matters definitively. This is crucial in maintaining a balance of power.  He acknowledges the potential for corruption over time and through political party influences. Jefferson feared that if a single group or tribunal held unchecked power, its members could be swayed by self-interest, party loyalty, or corruption.  And by suggesting that such members would "become despots," Jefferson warned that unchecked power could lead to tyranny where a single entity rules with absolute power, often oppressively.  His broader point is about the importance of checks and balances within government. He advocated for a system where power is divided among different branches (executive, legislative, judicial) to prevent any one group from gaining too much control and potentially becoming tyrannical. 

 

Conclusion:  Jefferson’s idea is foundational to the structure of the U.S. government, ensuring that power is distributed and that various institutions can hold each other accountable. But he and it does not account for the ignorance of science and technology now exhibited within each institution or the hyper pace of change and weaponry with our competition with other governments hostile to ours. 

 

10. Voter ignorance, selfishness, and lack of virtue:

Sadly, many Americans today have difficulty distinguishing between our Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.  Abraham Lincoln made a simple and clear distinction.  He wrote that our “Declaration of Independence is our Apple of Gold” and our “Constitution” its “Frame of Silver”.  A biblical reference with poetic and functional meaning.

 

"If all men are created equal, that is final.   If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions."  Calvin Coolidge   (1872-1933) 30th US President.  Commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

 

This ignorance of our Constitution’s systemic flaws and our individual short-term selfishness is tragically linked to our nation’s dependence on elections and its now wavering hope that the next election will give us best candidates for making the right decisions on nearly every aspect that of our lives depend on.  Yet they are still expecting a majority vote of the 535 politically polarized House and Senate members to cooperate together, or to at least override a Presidential veto.   Citizens continue to expect quick fixes to complicated and complex problems then only get more polarized and increasingly radical when things don’t go their way. 

 

Both sides have gone off the rails.  Consider the US invasion of Iraq, January 6^th, 2021, or our exit from Afghanistan.  Our reactionary short-term thinking and extended length of policy decision making is a profound disadvantage for any democracy.   And autocracies know that this makes their own government look good - given their capacity to make immediate decisions on key issues to placate the masses or sometimes the minorities.  This continued failure of our democratic systems to insist on wise investments in preventative measures that are urgently needed to economically and physically sustain our vital infrastructure systems will not end well.  And they won’t end given our nation’s level  of citizen ignorance of, or their ignoring of, this reality.  In this era of unprecedented dependency on critical but vulnerable systems that are all connected and interdependent will not end in comfort.

 

11.   MARCH 11, 2024, three high ranking US Intelligence officials testified on Global Threats before the Senate Select Intelligence Committee. One mentioned this very systemic threat.  And there should be no doubt that multiple hostile government, criminal, and/or religious extremist entities outside the US would support, likely cooperate, and participate in any disruptive plan then ‘cover their tracks’ as they can - as warned about in the threat assessment.  

 

Even just the threat of a pandemic or report of another ‘gain of function’ research accident in China could spark a drop in the Stock market.   Just knowing the timing of such a nefarious event could yield substantial profits for those in the know.  Even if they didn’t plan it. The threat of Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) was also on their Global Threats list. 

 

But these were no pre-Trump threat list yet on Jan 6, 2021, when hundreds of mentally biased MAGA followers tested the stability of our political system.  Fortunately, it held.  This time.  No one can guarantee a peaceful transition of power in 2024/2025.  Trump and some of his supporters are already claiming his victory with an unwillingness to accept a Biden election victory even if it goes Biden’s way. That makes a clear Trump victory a good thing?  OMG. Its embarrassing, dispiriting, and shameful knowing of all the lives lost in conflicts to protect our Constitution. 

 

A sound case can be made to any rational mind that Trump came to power largely because our constitutional system and its two-party domination matrix that failed to improve the lives of middle-class Americans.  Or really protect us from multiple global forces of nature, hostiles, or our own mass ignorance, apathy, and stupidity.  

 

We didn’t see or feel opportunities rising while the rich were getting obscenely richer.  And many Americans were hurting with other democratic nations experiencing similar declines linked to the inability of our global governance system’s failure to protect people in other nations, universal human rights, and the environment.  And our own dependence on independent-national government systems to address those same global threats impacting human security (economic, health, environmental, political) here at home.  Meanwhile authoritarian governments appeared better able to quickly and decisively adapt when needed, making them look wiser and our leaders to be chumps.

 

Klaus Schwab, chairman of The World Economic Forum, praised China's economic and political model said: "I think it's a role model for many countries... the Chinese model is certainly a very attractive model for quite a number of countries."   Even if its system does have less freedom, a stronger surveillance apparatus, and state-controlled media.  The decline of the U.S. has been linked in several ways to China’s rise.  The Chinese government’s success in enriching its people with its own version of capitalism, even though it now is struggling.  But China still has the ability to change policy on a dime, as while any progress in the U.S. will be stagnant, tiresome, and depressing given our legal political capacity to rapidly change any policy is almost nonexistent.  Hopefully a real emergency could change that.  But certainly not the next election unless a new President Trump starts dictating as he has suggested.  Which would be a violation of the Constitution that many Americans will likely support. 

 

Friedrich Nietzsche said it best.   "Hope, in reality, is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man." 

 

12.  Privacy: The 4^th Amendment.  “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”  Americans have had a centuries long love affair with this amendment for all the right reasons.   The following quotes sound entirely logical and suitable.  But now the 4^th Amendment makes the U.S. Constitution a virtual suicide document.

"I prefer liberty with danger to peace with slavery."  -- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
(1712-1778) Political philosopher, educationist and essayist

“Uncontrolled search and seizure is one of the first and most effective weapons in the arsenal of every arbitrary government. Among deprivations of rights, none is so effective in cowing a population, crushing the spirit of the individual and putting terror in every heart.”  Justice Robert H. Jackson, Brinegar v. United States [1949]

 

"The right to privacy is one of the most cherished rights an American citizen has; the right to privacy sets America apart from totalitarian states in which the interests of the state prevail over individual rights. A fundamental part  of our concept of ordered liberty is the right to protect one’s home and family against dangerous intrusions subject to the criminal law."   -- John Louis Coffey  (1922-2012 ) Judge, U. S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit   Source: Quilici v. Village of Morton Grove, 695 F.2d 261, 272, 278 (1982) (dissent) cert. denied 464 U.S. 863 (1983).  “

"...[W]e insist on the principle that no danger or crisis, foreign or domestic, will be solved by Americans surrendering more of their constitutional liberties, in the foolish hope that a bigger government will provide greater security."  -- Larry P. Arnn  (1952- ) President of Hillsdale College, MI

 

But privacy is not a natural law. It exists nowhere in nature.  And only exists as a human-created principle intended for the most natural of personal of reasons particularly within our bedrooms and bathrooms.  Civilization and cultures evolved this idea of keeping more things private - like one’s personal habits and economic affairs which has enabled human freedoms to flourish. And with this came wealth, a lack of virtue, along with a tsunami of corruption and secrets that enabled one person or group of people to succeed over others. Sometimes righteously. And at other times catastrophically as civilizations, weapons systems, and flawed cultures grew.

 

The founders were wise in establishing the 4th Amendment and many of the personal rights it has secured since then.   In the words of Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, in Silverman v. United States [1961].  The 4^th Amendment is “At the very core stands the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion.”

 

It’s when someone leaves their home in this modern era then enters a corporate office, research lab, or the military that this ideal of personal privacy can go catastrophically wrong and harm equality, health, individual or community safety, plus national/global/environmental security.

 

“Like so many government policies, the Patriot Act is a shell game, promising to protect us from enemies abroad but instead being turned inward to persecute American citizens. — Sam Martin, "The Patriot Act is Un-American" [2022]

 

Resistance to eliminating privacy and the freedoms that come with it within a comfortable and civilized society has multiple downsides, and individually understandable and justifiable when entering public affairs or institutions.   But those reasons will quickly melt away with the detonation of a car bomb, nuclear weapon, or the release of a genetically engineered virus capable of targeting one or more specific genetic profiles - like a Camelpox engineered only to kill people who were never exposed to camels - or the special vaccine engineered with it as a means of protecting only those favored for survival.

 

This is where the overpowering value of virtue in being kind to all others should be obvious to everyone.  And the wisdom of abiding by the golden rule - while taking care of nature and all of the basic health and survival services that mother nature provides.  Those few selected rights in our Constitution’s Bill of Rights is nowhere near this virtuous ideal that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights comes very close too. 

 

“Civilization is a hopeless race to discover remedies for the evils it produces.” Rousseau

 

Reducing privacy to financial transactions would go a long way to achieving this.   Limiting global financial transactions to smart phones has the potential for making significant progress increasingly vital to human security, national security, and environmental sustainability.  fewer cash transactions would also diminish minor crimes and violence.  Less cash, less motivation. 

 

“Prosperity ripened the principle of decay” Edward Gibbon 1776

 

Digital transactions could also eliminate the problem of counterfeit currency, money laundering or fraud, especially in any cash-based economy.  Digital transactions create electronic records, making it easier for authorities to trace the flow of money which is vital in helping to identify and prosecute criminal activities by oligarchs, kleptocrats, violent extremist groups, or wealthy individuals and corporations evading taxes.   Cash facilitates bribery and corruption making transactions less transparent and harder to audit.  Additional tax resources can help governments reduced debts, invest in prevention, and increase revenue for funding basic human needs vital to reducing economic disparities, fighting organized crime, while reducing financial exclusions/discriminations of under privileged groups thereby improving their health, social, and economic stability leading to the better possibility of their stewardship of the environment.

Shifting to mobile payments offers these benefits but also raises major privacy concerns about state surveillance and the global need to balance the protection of individual rights and both individual and national security - given humanities irreversible global interdependence.

 

There will always be the ignorant crazies that want to commit mass shootings or some group’s genocide.  This is where closely protecting everyone’s privacy inhibits a community’s capacity to identify in advance someone, or some group- with such a murderous mind set.  And best ensure that mind won’t achieve its intention.  And the born psychopath will most likely be discovered early, then treated appropriately without violating their basic human rights.

 

Most human minds are geniuses at solving problems.  The problem is avoiding the creation of problems that would likely drive a human mind to hillbilly justice or the mass murder others for any reason.  With today’s technological power both affordable and globally available we must all recognize that where there is a will, there is always a way.  This is where insisting on objective truths instead of enabling and empowering personal, economic, religious, or political truths to dominate -  is where humanity can best focus and make sufficient early investments of time and money to prevent the human will to kill.  

 

13.  Moral Injury:  Excessive sentences and a lack of affordable and competent defense lawyers can cause moral Injury.  So when our nation allows its own citizens to suffer injustices to which they have no immediate remedy, physical and biological bodily harm can follow.  This consequence was first identified as “Moral Injury” nearly a decade ago.   It is a relatively recent mental health term was detailed in late 2022 in a Scientific American article “An Invisible Epidemic; Moral Injury results when a person’s core principles are violated...”.  It stated, “Moral injury is a specific [bodily] trauma that arises when people face situations that deeply violate their conscience or threaten their core values.”  “Those who grapple with [this] can struggle with guilt, anger, and a consuming sense that they can’t forgive themselves or others.”  These mental dilemmas produce powerful feelings that often lead to a depressed immune system, harmful addiction, suicide, or a related accident.  Soldiers, medical emergency workers, police, veterinarians, teachers, social workers, activists, and other deeply caring service professionals have not yet developed the vocabulary to fittingly summarize their deep feelings of hopelessness.  Their powerful emotions are distinct from PTSD which is the stress suffered by those who were directly traumatized by threats or injury to themselves.

 

Imagine being a medical care worker unable to meet your oath in aiding patients in a hospital overwhelmed with Covid patients, a lack of beds, and supplies to help even regular life and death emergency patients during the height of the pandemic.   All this then someone walks in unvaccinated and refusing to wear a mask, believing that they have the right to receive treatment.   Yet feel no responsibility for the health and survival of others that they may have at home, or even you.  Consider a soldier committed to following orders while knowing innocent civilians will be killed by hitting a legitimate military target intended to save the lives of his own military forces.  Or a veterinarian needing to euthanize loving pets that no one would adopt.

 

14.  WHAT US Government agencies work?

In researching US government agencies looking for accountability one might ask “Who polices the police” if you are suspicious of our government.  Intelligently there are three Federal agencies with the mission of doing objective non-partisan research, auditing, and oversight of our federal government.  Here are their 2024 budget numbers.

 

1.       Government Accountability Office (GAO): The bill provides $811.9 million for GAO—a $21.5 million increase over fiscal year 2023—to support the agency’s essential oversight and auditing responsibilities. As Congress’ independent, nonpartisan watchdog, GAO helps ensure federal programmatic and grant activities are executed in an efficient and effective manner as intended by law.

 

2.       Congressional Budget Office (CBO): The bill provides $70 million—a $6.8 million increase over fiscal year 2023—to support CBO’s essential role providing Congress with objective, timely, and non-partisan analysis to inform budgetary and economic deliberations essential to the legislative process.

 

3.       Congressional Research Service (CRS): The bill provides $136 million for CRS— $2.5 million above fiscal year 2023—to support its vital responsibility to provide Congress with expert, non-partisan policy and legal analysis. . It provides Congress with analysis, reports, and briefings on a wide range of legislative issues. Funding for the CRS comes from the congressional budget, and specific amounts can vary from year to year. Congress may adjust CRS funding as part of the annual appropriations process.  It has been subject to cuts by Congress in the past. Congress periodically reviews and adjusts funding for various government agencies and programs, including the CRS, as part of the budgeting process. These adjustments can involve increases, decreases, or other changes to the agency's funding levels based on congressional priorities and budgetary considerations.   It also serves as shared staff to congressional committees and Members of Congress with experts who can assist at every stage of the legislative process — from the early considerations that precede bill drafting, through committee hearings and floor debate, to the oversight of enacted laws and various agency activities.  CRS approaches complex topics from a variety of perspectives and examines all sides of an issue. Staff members analyze current policies and present the impact of proposed policy alternatives. Its services come in many forms:  reports on major policy issues, tailored confidential memoranda, briefings and consultations; seminars and workshops; expert congressional testimony; responses to individual inquiries;

 

With public policy issues growing more complex, the need for insightful and comprehensive analysis has become even more vital.  Why hasn’t it reached the same conclusion as CISA’s director (“Everything is connected...).  If congress relies on CRS to marshal interdisciplinary resources, encourage critical thinking, and create innovative frameworks to help legislators form sound policies and reach decisions on a host of difficult issues they are failing their job if they are ignoring the weighty preventative aspects of achieving the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.   Measurable, doable, and affordable goals that could guide and shape the nation, and the world, now and for generations to come.

 

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a US prestigious honorific society established by an Act of Congress signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863.  Its founding was prompted by a need for an independent organization to provide expert advice on scientific matters to the government. The NAS operates as a private, nonprofit institution and is composed of leading scientists, engineers, and other experts who are elected by their peers in recognition of their distinguished achievements in their respective fields.   It’s key role in transforming our dysfunction government is considered below.

 

And fortunately, our Constitution was engineered to be fixed.  Theoretically, it could ultimately achieve what’s needed to form a more perfect union globally.  This isn’t likely, but it is possible.  And perhaps with more public support and advocacy it could inspire a more perfect world that no political party has ever inspired to achieve. 

 

Our U.S. Constitution contains four readable instructions embedded into it that could enable policy makers to actually achieve the best solutions for addressing the root causes of threats to nearly everything we know, love, and need.   The constitutions articles were intended for adapting a growing nation to a rapidly changing world and making it worthy of swearing an allegiance to defend and protect.  A living blueprint capable of ensuring and sustaining liberty and justice for all, even for our posterity.

 

1.      Proposed by Congress and ratified by the states: The most common requiring a two-thirds vote of both the House and Senate.  Then ratified by three-fourths of the states (currently 38 of 50 states) to become effective.

 

2.      Proposed by a national convention and ratified by the states: This has never been used. It requires two-thirds of the state legislatures (currently 34 states) to call for a national convention to propose an amendment.  Then the amendment must be ratified by three-fourths of the states to become effective.

 

3.      Ratified by the states, upon the application of legislatures of two-thirds of the several states:  This method has also never been used.   It allows states to bypass Congress and propose an amendment directly. Which must then be ratified by three-fourths of the states to become effective.

 

4.      Ratified by the states, upon the application of the legislatures of two-thirds of the several states, or by a convention in each state called for the purpose: This method has also never been used.  It allows the states to bypass Congress and either propose an amendment directly through their legislatures or through a state convention called for the purpose. The amendment must then be ratified by three-fourths of the states to become effective.

In all four cases ratifying an amendment involves the state legislatures or state conventions voting on whether to approve the amendment.  Once proposed, it becomes a part of the Constitution if it is ratified by the required number of states within a certain period (usually seven years). 

What about the accountability of elected officials?  Is two, four, or six years too long to wait?  Given the hyper pace of change today that answer should be self-evident.

 

"You can't run a society or cope with its problems if people are not

held accountable for what they do."  John Leo   Columnist

 

 

“If people in the position of power are not made to be accountable, then, ungodliness, injustice and oppression will continue to be the order of the day in the society.” - Sunday Adelaja

 

The guarding of military and diplomatic secrets at the expense of informed representative government provides no real security for our republic.  – Hugo L. Black

 

“The trouble is that once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And once you’ve seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There’s no innocence. Either way, you’re accountable.” - Arundhati Roy.

 

Other options aside from another civil war is States Rights:

“Every State has a natural right in cases not within the compact (casus non faederis) to nullify of their own authority all assumptions of power by others within their limits. Without this right, they would be under the dominion, absolute and unlimited, of whosoever might exercise this right of judgment for them.”  – Thomas Jefferson, Draft Kentucky Resolutions [1798]

 

In this statement, Jefferson is expressing the idea that states have the inherent right to nullify or invalidate any federal laws or actions that exceed the powers granted to the federal government by the Constitution. His argument is rooted in the belief that the federal government’s authority is limited by the Constitution.  His key points include 1. the ‘Natural Right of Nullification’ asserting that states have such a natural, inherent right.  2. ‘Federalism and State Sovereignty’ underscoring the principle of federalism, where states retain certain powers and autonomy.  3. ‘Warning Against Centralized Power’ that without this right of nullification, states would be at the mercy of the federal government, effectively losing their autonomy and rights.    Jefferson’s desire was to protect state authority and prevent the emergence of an overly powerful central government.  

Some examples of this were ‘The Alien and Sedition Acts’ (1798) passed by the Federalist-controlled Congress and signed into law by President John Adams. These acts included laws that restricted speech critical of the federal government and allowed the president to deport non-citizens deemed dangerous.

Or the ‘Nullification Response’ when Jefferson and James Madison drafted the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, arguing that the acts were unconstitutional and that states had the right to nullify them. They believed that the federal government had exceeded its constitutional authority by infringing on freedoms of speech and press.  I wonder how dealing with the COVID19 pandemic, or a future pandemic far more deadly, would cause similar problems leading to the deaths of tens of millions of Americans.

In our globalized economy today ‘The Tariff of Abominations’ (1828) how would high duties on imported goods from China, Russia, or Iran be delt with if it benefitted only people from those nations but harmed the general population or a particular state economy? 

Another modern hypothetical example would be ‘Federal Mandates on Environmental Regulations’ with the federal government enacting stringent environmental regulations that impose significant economic burdens on certain states or key industries, such as coal mining in West Virginia. Oh wait!  This is not hypothetical.  A state could claim that environmental an regulation is primarily a state responsibility thus a federal mandate would be infringing upon state sovereignty.  Notice that each of these issues are working on the flawed assumption that things are independent.

 

One simple law Congress could pass with a super majority could make Congress somewhat more accountable.  It would be a new rule requiring every Member of Congress (House and Senate) to read a bill before they can vote on it.  They won’t do this because the massive $1.7 trillion Omnibus spending bill passed by the 117^th Congress was 4,155 pages.  It’s almost certain that no elected official reads that entire bill before voting. And it is outrageous that most members didn’t even know what was in that bill until after it passed.   What if voting against such an ‘accountability’ bill would be grounds for an immediate election recall?    

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act is a 2006 federal law enacted in response to many high-profile corporate and accounting scandals.  It contains several provisions designed to enhance the integrity of financial reporting processes.  One key provision established an oversight board requiring CEO and CFO certification of financial reports.  Something similar is needed regarding votes on appropriation bills.  But members of Congress would never allow such a law.  It would put their annual $170,000+ salary at great risk.  But simply making bills smaller and easier to understand (even by elected officials) could be the first step to fiscal accountability and eventual responsibility. 

 

With every aviation incident involving civilian or military casualties there is always an extensive scientific investigation.  No piece of wreckage is ignored until the exact cause of the accident and loss of human life is determined.  Be it mechanical, human error, or act of God (Law of Nature - things will change).  Yet Congress is allowed to pass various bills every session that fail to prevent the needless loss of thousands of human lives here or abroad.  Consider the annual loss of over 100,000 lives from opioids which have taken more American lives in the last four years than our nation lost during World War II.  And the GOP solution is sealing the border and drone strikes on Mexico’s drug cartels.  And ‘progressives’ are gun shy of blaming our pill dependent culture and our nation’s constant pursuit freedom without virtue, always feeling good, and being ‘happy’ by being selfish.   And most people only ‘react’ to the loss of their own private financial security or a self-inflicted health concern.  And that depends on which party is in power, whose ox is getting gored, and who will chair the oversight investigation.  Why are politician’s votes immune to science-based data and their flawed reasoning regarding life and death outcomes for U.S. or foreign citizens?   This would be a good question for the NAS to research and answer, but congress would probably cut their funding.

 

The National Academy of Sciences is what we need most today to protect and empower ‘we the people’ if we truly intend to sustain our freedoms, security, interdependent environment, and form a more perfect union.  Meanwhile all human life support systems are under accelerating harmful change and increasing political strains. 

 

The NAS is part of a larger organization called the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, which also includes the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Medicine.  Together, these organizations form a non-partisan, non-profit organization capable of providing autonomous interdependent objective advice to the nation on matters related to everything related to science, engineering, medicine, and our collective future.   It is made up of approximately 2,000 elected members, who are some of the leading scientists, engineers, and medical professionals in the nation. They are elected through a rigorous, peer-review process, based on their outstanding contributions to their respective fields.  The NAS also includes some international members, who are elected in recognition of their distinguished scientific achievements.  

 

Over the years, the NAS has played a key role in advising the federal government on a wide range of issues, including the impact of climate change, the use of nuclear energy, and the development of new technologies that are changing far faster than our nation’s law-making bodies have been able to keep pace with.  The NAS also has been involved in several high-profile projects, such as the Human Genome Project, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and a wide range of issues directly linked to U.S. national security. 

 

Some examples include guidance on the development of new technologies for military use, such as missile defense systems, satellites, and unmanned aerial vehicles;  research related to homeland security, including studies on the effectiveness of security measures at ports, airports, and other critical infrastructure;  providing expert advice on issues related to nuclear weapons and nonproliferation, including studies on the technical feasibility and consequences of disarmament and the potential for proliferation of nuclear weapons;  and research related to cyber security, including studies on the vulnerabilities of computer systems and networks, as well as strategies for protecting against cyber-attacks.

 

In 2022, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NAS) released 269 new publications. Its top 15 most-downloaded titles reflect its mission to address the world’s most pressing issues and provide guidance to inform our nation’s future. Some titles explore issues including environmental health, research and policy, health care, educational equity, and new directions for science and exploration.

 

One publication stands out. It offers a path for our nation to transform our Constitution to meet the ideals of our Declaration of Independence:  ‘Origins, Worlds, and Life: A Decadal Strategy for Planetary Science and Astrobiology 2023-2032’.   The next decade of planetary science and astrobiology holds tremendous promise. New research will expand our understanding of our solar system's origins, how planets form and evolve, under what conditions life can survive, and where to find potentially habitable environments in our solar system and beyond. It highlights key science questions, identifies priority missions, and presents a comprehensive research strategy that includes both planetary defense and human exploration. This report also recommends ways to support the profession as well as the technologies and infrastructure needed to carry out the science.  The only thing this visionary publication is missing is the formula to make Congress politically functional with the capacity to achieve what is scientifically possible and desperately needed.  This change is needed because change has always been inevitable.

 

14. Changing our Constitution with wisdom or by shredding it.  The exponential growth, power, affordability, and availability of technology combined with our mind’s linear capacity for understanding, predicting, or anticipating inevitable consequences is simply unsustainable.  With our overarching government nearly frozen in time we are in deep triple squared trouble.  AI Could save us.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/03/06/artificial-intelligence-state-of-the-union/  

 

With our current Constitution unchanged, it is effectively a suicide document.   Sustainably managing any government and eventually the entire world will require coping with the global growth of unprecedented volumes of information and data, misinformation, disinformation, unprecedented technological killing power, and at the same time the widespread American public ignorance, loneliness, obesity, apathy, hopelessness, inequality, debt, and injustice.  With our lack of political will to change our system at all.

 

The growth of digital data alone is incomprehensible.  Humanity will have generated 175 zettabytes (a number with 24 digits) of digital data by 2025.  And after that, the data deluge will require new prefixes for the metric system.  The quettabyte is currently its largest number with 30 zeros after the first digit. Combining AI with fake news and the election -- time is not on our side.

 

“Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years” because  “[T]he earth belongs always to the living and not to the dead... The only “umpire” between the generations is the” law of nature.”  - Thomas Jefferson, c.1789

 

“Shred the Constitution.” During the Cold War a secondary government was created to replace the real government, had a nuclear war obliterating it.  Those who proposed and then organized such a ‘replacement government’ proposed this as a means of starting over. What could have been their reasoning?

 

Then there is Project 2025 initiated by the Heritage Foundation.  It outlines a comprehensive plan to reshape the federal government significantly if a conservative administration, potentially led by Donald Trump, takes office in 2025. The project proposes various changes that could impact the existing U.S. Constitution, particularly regarding the balance of powers and federalism. Key aspects include:

 

1.       ‘Unitary Executive Theory’ aims to consolidate executive power by reclassifying many federal civil service positions as political appointments. This would allow the president to replace many federal positions with loyalists, effectively reducing legal separations within the federal bureaucracy and increasing the president's control within the executive branch.

2.       ‘Dismantling Federal Agencies’ by significant restructuring or outright elimination. Including the Department of Education and the Department of Homeland Security. This would shift responsibilities either to other federal agencies or to state governments, which could alter the balance of power between federal and state authorities.

3.       ‘Judicial and Law Enforcement Control’ envisions bringing the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) under tighter presidential control. This could undermine the rule of law and reduce the legal separations between these critical law enforcement bodies, posing a challenge to the checks and balances enshrined in the Constitution. 

4.       ‘Economic and Regulatory Changes’ will include significant tax reforms, deregulation of environmental and climate policies, and support for fossil fuel production. These economic shifts could lead to conflicts over constitutional interpretations of federal versus state regulatory powers and the federal government's role in economic management capable of grievous human health and environmental concerns that are often linked to human and national security threats.

5.       ‘Christian Values in Governance’ proposes infusing government policies with Christian values. This raised concerns about the separation of church and state by implementing policies based on specific religious doctrines.  This could lead to constitutional challenges regarding the First Amendment.

 

In summary, Project 2025's ambitious blueprint seeks to centralize executive power, dismantle or restructure key federal agencies, and implement policies that reflect conservative values, all of which could significantly impact the current constitutional framework and its principles of checks and balances, federalism, and the separation of church and state.

 

What would be possible in our personal lives if future elected officials acted on science instead of political partisanship?  Many things!   And one defining challenge of this century in the U.S and many other well-developed nations is an ageing global population that will fundamentally impact how families, communities, societies, industries, economies, and the environment functions.  Another NAS report (its 2022 Global Roadmap for Healthy Longevity) envisions what societies could look like in 2050 if humanity applied all that we know now on how societies can remain robust and even thrive because of, not just despite, demographic change, lower birth rates, and level population numbers.  This is the basis of a “Future-Back Vision,” supported with evidence where available, and otherwise with expert opinion.

 

It would require humanity revisiting our current life stages.  And instead of compartmentalization into phases of learning, working, and then retirement, consider a blended journey where the elements of learning, working, and leisure are intertwined - from early adulthood to old age.  

 

We can be heartened that globally there is a significant number of elderly people who wish to remain engaged and contribute to society.  This will require a significant financial investment but the benefits and returns in terms of human, social, and economic capital will more than justify the expenditures.  This economic and human capital growth can also help protect and restore the environment.   Much of this is detailed in the report’s chapters.  And investments like this are arguably the strongest protection we have against the fears that demography will dictate destiny and increase environmental decay. 

 

The NAS report builds on and reinforces recent critical efforts, especially the United Nations Decade of Healthy Ageing (2021–2030) by providing a roadmap for leaders across societies to extend health spans and identify what actions will be required to ensure the success of each community as they become aging societies.  Central to this success would be the need for societies to address their social compact and accomplish equity. 

 

Such an ambitious all-of-society approach to revolutionize humanities current approaches in caring for the aging is unlikely with the U.S. Constitution given its inward facing laws and regulations which rarely takes a serious view of how its laws will benefit all of humanity.  It continues to largely ignore how other societies benefit us when all people globally live healthier, longer, more productive, and meaningful lives. 

 

Victor J. Dzau, M.D. President, National Academy of Medicine believes that the US needs immediate movement in this direction so it can benefit everyone sooner.   Unfortunately, even if a majority of U.S. policy makers wanted to act on this wisdom our current Constitution and increasingly polarized political party would likely limit such progress if not stop it completely.

 

"The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.”

- Neil DeGrasse Tyson

 

“The greatest distance is not between Earth and the Stars.  It’s between two minds that don’t understand each other”  Turkish Poet

 

“What country ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? …The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”

 Thomas Jefferson, Letter to William Stephens Smith [1787]

 

 

 

Democracy’s other flaws.

Relying on democracy, the will of a democratic majority rarely lasts.  It can swing back and forth or change dramatically over time or place when we are running out of time.  In recent years right-wing domination of largely democratic nations by populist movements, the traditional democracies have been failing.  The GOP barely survived its ‘speaker of the House’ circular firing squad, and MAGA numbers are increasing. 

 

Elsewhere populist movements are failing.   UK’s Brexit led to economic chaos and turmoil within its conservative party and suffered five new prime ministers within six years.  And both conservative and liberal populist political parties in South America have failed wretchedly.  Brazil’s Bolsonaro was ousted in an election while Chile’s voters rejected the far-left wing’s populist effort to create a new constitution. 

 

But populism will continue to happen as ‘independent nations’ fail to solve fundamental interdependent problems.  In 2024 more than half the world’s population will be voting within so-called democratic nations.  None of which can stem the rise of domestic security threats alone. The only rational solution is stemming the rising costly disruptions in global economic, health, security, and environmental problems that independent government cannot solve with independent agencies - and will increasingly turn military power try and control the problem or to resist the voter’s wrath from failing efforts.   This will be the continuing trend for years unless most nations unite to achieve the UNs 17 Sustainable Development Goals ASAP.  Finding ways to fund or enforce the basic inalienable human rights of the vast majority of citizens will always be the best path to global stability and sustainability.

 

But here is yet another creative human principle offered by the CATO institute that misses this fundamental reality. 

 

"The real reason to abolish departments like Energy and Education is not to promote efficiency, nor even to save taxpayers’ money. It is that many agencies perform functions that are not Federal responsibility. The founders delegated to the Government only strictly defined authority in Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution. Search the entire Constitution, and you will find no authorization for Congress to subsidize the arts, finance and regulate education or invest tax revenues in energy research."  -- David Boaz
(1953-) Author, executive vice president of the Cato Institute   Source: Budget Cuts: Less Than Meets the Eye, New York Times, Op-Ed Thursday, July 6, 1995

 

Does this freedom loving NGO really think people or corporations are going to sufficient fund education or energy innovations before the destructive homeland consequences of ignoring these global fundamental needs hit?   Art may usually be a distraction or waste of resources, but funding artists to develop and test creative solutions to urgent global problems holds merit. 

 

Democratically elected populist movements cannot thrive if the voters do not have the knowledge and wisdom to recognize that global interdependent problems are immune to ‘independent’ national solutions and their ‘independent’ agencies.  Ignorant, selfish, and shortsighted masses will always elect demagogues offering reactionary solutions to complex problems that require a comprehensive, holistic, and global systemic response.

 

Freedom to be ignorant of, or to ignore, fundamental principles will not end well.  Rampant American ignorance combined with our reactionary thinking, favored conspiracy theories, and the constant tsunami of fake news, misinformation, and limiting our news sources to social media algorithms will not solve problems with mere opinions, hoping and praying.   And with accelerating global problems our nation cannot achieve ‘domestic tranquility’, “the common defence”, ‘promote the general Welfare’, or ‘secure the Blessings of Liberty for ourselves and our Posterity’.   Ignorance is legal, lethal, unacceptable, and unsustainable.

 

We need to amend, rewrite, or ignore our existing constitution but too many people still believe it serves us.   Fortunately some are suggesting change.  

 

Given our irreversible dependence on a healthy environment the most important change would be to codify nature’s rights.  A ‘Rights for Nature’ movement is growing.  They, and this author agrees that we need an ethical and legal system at every level to counteract or reverse any human, capitalist, nationalist, or corporate exploitation of nature.  Those intending to convert nature into commodities primarily for profit without funding safeguards and assurances of nature’s restoration must be sufficiently penalized to deter such crimes to existing and future generations.   Failing to grasps the increasing ecological costs will lead increasingly to an unsustainable “standard of living” for most of humanity.  The extinction of species and damaging earth's life support systems are simply unacceptable and like most other trends unsustainable.  There must be enforceable laws to ensure the surviving and thriving of humanity and most other life forms that nature has provided over the hundreds of thousands of years our species has lived on earth. A Rights of Nature for Nature advocacy movement is urgently needed to develop an effective body of law capable of influencing the societal ethics and norms needed to shift away from our existing view that nature exists primarily for humans.  Our minds need to grasp the fact that we are a part of nature and cannot live healthy lives sustainably without it.  If you agree with this, consider supporting this organization. 

 

The New Constitution Project by “crowdsource”.  This strives to make the Constitution a force for solving the 21st Century challenges that we face as Americans. The project seeks to gather comments, text, and ideas from across the body politic, beginning with a proposed draft of a new Constitution. The National Constitution Center also reconvened the conservative, progressive, and libertarian teams for a virtual constitutional convention to draft and propose a series of amendments to the U.S. Constitution.  The result was five new amendments adopted by representatives from all three teams.

 

1. Eliminating the Natural-Born Citizen Requirement: This amendment allows foreign-born citizens to become President, provided they have resided in the United States for at least 14 years.

2. Creating a Legislative Veto: Congress would be able to veto executive actions with a majority vote in both the House and the Senate.

3.  Revising the Impeachment Process: This amendment raises the standard for impeachment in the House but lowers the threshold for conviction in the Senate, and clarifies that former officers can be impeached within six months of leaving office. It also specifies that the bar against future officeholding applies to both the presidency and vice presidency.

4. Imposing Term Limits on Supreme Court Justices: This amendment sets term limits for Supreme Court justices, fixes the number of justices at nine, and mandates automatic appointments if the Senate fails to act within three months.

5. Easing the Amendment Process: This amendment makes it easier to propose and adopt new constitutional amendments by lowering the threshold from two-thirds of Congress and three-quarters of the states to three-fifths of Congress and two-thirds of the states

 

New Constitution Project:  https://www.centerforenvironmentalrights.org/the-new-constitution-project   

Working Draft https://www.n2k.world/workingdraftofthenewconstitution

 

 

Other movements are trying.  But going in the opposite direction.   It is a large and growing conservative political movement in the U.S. calling for “The Convention of States” advocating for the use of the Article V convention - for proposing new amendments to the U.S. Constitution.  The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) website states as of May 2024 that "Congressional approval has reached record lows, and the national government appears incapable of governing effectively. America’s founding fathers included a mechanism for the states to submit applications to compel Congress to call a convention of the states for a time like this, and [this] work is an important resource to describe the historical underpinnings for an amendments convention and to address the concerns of those who are still skeptical of the process."  The ALEC posted this Oct 31, 2017. 

 

It goes claiming to be "America’s largest nonpartisan, voluntary membership organization of state legislators dedicated to the principles of limited government, free markets and federalism..." And “Comprised of nearly one-quarter of the country’s state legislators and stakeholders from across the policy spectrum..."   It wants to put "people in control" and "provides a forum for experts to discuss business and economic issues facing the states."   And its "model policy library is home to dynamic and innovative ideas that reduce the cost of everyday life and ensure economic freedom."   ALEC’s “ideas and publications" are to “serve as a toolkit for anyone who wants to increase effectiveness and reduce the size, reach and cost of government."

 

This movement fails to grasp that this targeted weakening of the U.S. federal government would be leaving all 50 states, territories, and their inhabitant to defend for themselves against any and all national security threats from Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, violent extremists groups (within or beyond our US borders), pandemics, and nature's wrath from the onslaught of unregulated capitalism and profit making in terms of extreme weather events, evolving weapon systems, or economic contagion from any maligned source.    

 

ALEC represents "more than 60 million Americans" maybe of the best evidence I've found that confirms the dangerous ignorance Americans who are most incapable of understanding the reality that "everything" is “connected”, “interdependent”, and “vulnerable”, thus requiring a “global effort”  if they seriously want reduce the size and cost of government expenditures required to effectively deal with the growing array of global threats.  Personal threats to the freedom and security of all Americans that are now accelerating because these ideologically conservative fools, and other ignorant 'independent' minded citizens refuse to adapt in the only sane direction possible - abiding by “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God”.   And this regressive movement is supported by a network of organizations and individuals who believe this will address the problems they see with the federal government related to the size, scope, and balance of power between the federal government and the US states.  And as of March 2024, it was restricted to proposing amendments that will impose fiscal restraints on the federal government, limit its power and jurisdiction, and impose term limits on its officials and members of Congress.  While some of its ideas launched in 2013 may sound good, they have spread nationally with millions of supporters and petition signers in every single state house district across the US and are now active in all fifty states.  I’m guessing they are linked to Project 2025.

 

An Article V convention has never been called in the United States.  The process for doing so is highly controversial and has never been tested. It is not clear what would happen if an Article V convention were called, or what the outcome of such a convention might be.  But this ALEC movement is happening.  And they are well organized and funded.

 

While a convention is needed, this movement is taking us backward while the progressive movements remain divided and some splintered due to Hamas genocidal attempts in the Middle east that will never be stopped military.  Especially because of the unacceptable death toll of nearly 20 Palestinians to every Israeli that was brutally murdered on Oct 7^th, 2023.  And there is no indication this loss of life on either side is going away without a political two-state solution.  The obvious solution that the current leader of Israel will never accept.

 

One other progressive movement has been suggesting an amendment to the U.S. Constitution.  It is fittingly called “Move to Amend”.   Its December 23, 2022, appeal stated the obvious, “We are under no illusions. Amending the U.S. Constitution is enormously challenging.”   It has been done only 27 times before, including the first 10 (the Bill of Rights) all at once. In March of 2024 MoveOn was urging Congress to support H.J.R. 54, the We the People Amendment -- a constitutional amendment to end corporate personhood and get big money out of politics.

 

US citizens oblivious to our current problems will not be solved by electing better officials, passing better laws, reducing regulations, or making executive decisions.  Especially if the laws governing our society continue to favor corporate rights, special interests, American exceptionalism, or Constitutional originalism over the protection of our God given inalienable human rights and the health of our home planet.

 

This needs to change!  Our need to  significantly amend, or abandon the U.S. Constitution in event of a catastrophic failure is inescapable. And while democracy is not the final goal, we can and must democratize the ground rules to start for whatever follows.   U.S history shows that fundamental constitutional change happens only alongside a fundamental cultural change.   One that requires educating and organizing a large majority of people to challenge both the credibility and sustainability of the status quo.  And then expand to a truly united grassroots movement for systemic and structural change to make what now seems impossible – not just accepted, but necessary, and quickly inevitable. 

 

The things to do are: the things that need doing: that you see need to be done, and that no one else seems to see need to be done. Then you will conceive your own way of doing that which needs to be done - that no one else has told you to do or how to do it. This will bring out the real you that often gets buried inside a character that has acquired a superficial array of behaviors induced or imposed by others on the individual. R. Buckminster Fuller

 

In an interesting 2007 article, “The U.S. Constitution: Pull the Curtain”, by Greg Coleridge and Virginia Rasmussen “reveal the many examples within the Constitution which blow up our beliefs that this sacred document represents ‘We the People’”.  They obviously did not dug deep enough to find the greatest flaws in the Constitution mentioned above.    But while most Americans have only worshiped this profoundly flawed document for decades, some are finally writing about it.

 

The simplest amendment needed in transforming THE CONSTITUTION would be insisting that only unambiguous words be used in engineering any changes.  Most flaws of our Constitution may have been unintetionally engineered into it.  Some ambigous words may have been used to pass laws but ambigous words can no longer be allowed to do this or be in our laws.  Most of our flawed laws have been written with ambious words by political, religious, or economic ideaists seeking specail advantage.  We need realists in the global context using and enforcing self evident truths.

 

WORDS:   No sane person would choose to ride on a rocket launch vehicle designed by engineers who didnt follow the agreed upon words or phrases with clear and precise definitions used to achieve highly predictable outcomes for any vehicle.  Yet we are literally flying around the sun at 67,000 miles per hour on a finite planet that obeys all the laws of nature.  But we agreed to ride on it having engineered an inherently flawed global govenance system and we think nothing about it except an occasional fear of another world war. 

 

"What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do." -  John Ruskin (1819 - 1900)

 

And on our significant patch of ground we allow many ambignous words or phrases to keep our Constitution as is.  Some words being interpreted differently by political parties or special interest groups to meet their short-term goals or to protect their reactionary impulses ahead of the needs of many others.    Words like “Democracy”, “Peace”, “Terrorism”, “Strong”, “Freedom”...  We use these words ad nauseum.  And have done so for decades to manipulate political power and favor instead of negotiating reality.  There should be no mystery why Americans and much of the world appears to be more divided today than at any time in the last 150 years.   We have more rational and/or irrational fears of local or global threats than ever before as our world today is more fragmented and multipolar than at any time in living memory, with our systems exhibiting attributes of unipolarity, bipolarity, and multipolarity simultaneously.

 

In reality, democracy has never worked.  Peace isn’t security or maximum freedom.  Real Strength is the power to adapt not kill.  Terrorism in an emotion that cannot be defeated.  Freedom requires virtue and accountabilty or nothing will work reliablly.  These should be self-evident truths yet our minds chose to defend these words or ignor them. And then we wonder WTF is happening.  And why, in spite of a few succeses, most things are continuing to worsen. 

 

DEMOCRACY:  A noun or verb? It can be both.  But in both cases it is entirely insufficient to achieve maximum human freedom and security without everyone following the golden rule and protecting Mother Nature. 

"Elections are held to delude the populace into believing that they are participating in government." -  Gerald F. Lieberman

"You want sanity, democracy, community, an intact Earth? We can't get there obeying Constitutional theory and law crafted by slave masters, imperialists, corporate masters, and Nature destroyers. We can't get there kneeling before robbed lawyers stockpiling class plunder precedent up their venerable sleeves. So, isn't disobedience the challenge of our age? Principled, inventive, escalating disobedience to liberate our souls, to transfigure our work as humans on this Earth." Richard Grossman

Democracy means nothing more than people having some say in the rules or laws they must live under.  This individual personal agency or ‘God-given sovereignty’ to communicate in some way about one’s concerns, wants, and needs is something we are all born with. Speaking out is a universal freedom.  It is an unalienable right to try and influence our own life’s trajectory.  But our freedom must consider of the same rights of all others around us, or lose it.

 

Sovereignty was originally conceived and defined as a gift from God to all people.  Essentially, it was human freedom, self-ownership and autonomy. Or a fundamental natural right to be one's own person, to be the exclusive controller of one’s own body, thoughts, actions, and direction in life.  This religious context varies among different belief systems and traditions. In monotheistic religions such as Christianity and Islam, sovereignty is believed to be held by God as the supreme authority.   God then granted that freedom of action to those born, thus giving them the choice of how to live their lives with the intention and hope they would live virtuous lives.    This changed when charlatans, rulers and earthly governments claimed their sovereign authority was God given.  In other religious traditions, such as Hinduism and Buddhism, sovereignty is seen as an illusion and the ultimate authority lies in spiritual enlightenment or nirvana. In any case, the idea of whether God gives sovereignty to individuals or governments is a matter of human interpretation and belief.  But governments now own it.

 

“The love and hopes of those who are no longer with us resides in our hearts; The love and hopes of current and future generations resides in our actions.” Steven Jay

 

 

About 400 years ago that individual right was confiscated and consolidated into the right of a king, religious ruler, a majority within a nation state, or a government with the ‘Sovern ‘power to do whatever it wanted to whomever it wanted, whenever it decided.  Today we call this murderous concept “National Sovereignty”.  This two-word phrase was invented as a principle during the creation of the treaty of Westphalia.  It was based on the rational desire for separation between warring religious factions.  It offered the illusion of independence which was cemented into our minds and over 50 million human bodies about 350 years later at the creation of the U.N.  And just as Slavery in the U.S. was initially established by a democratic vote, it was the victors of World War II - including two nations armed with nuclear weapons - that ‘democratically’ established this suicide governance system that powerful governments still resist changing today. And most of humanity blindly accepts this flawed yet dominant global governance principle without question now so it remains globally tolerated.    

 

But this western dominated ‘world order’ has not stopped wars, genocides, terrorism, environmental destruction, pandemics or the global crime and corruption that benefits from all this chaos.   There was one exception.  The global eradication of smallpox.  A global effort in which every national leader and violent extremist group cooperated to eliminate. 

 

"[T]he people as ultimate sovereigns, retain the ultimate power -- and even the duty -- to overthrow any government that fails to respect their authority."  -- Glenn Harlan Reynolds
(1960- ) Beauchamp Brogan Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee
Source: The Right to Keep and Bear Arms Under the Tennessee Constitution, A Case Study in Civic Republican Thought, 61 TENN. L. R. 647, 652 (1994)

 

 

Individuals always have the freedom to do whatever we want, anywhere we want, and whenever we want.  But we will never be free of the consequences when freedom is abusive to nature or others. And now, with the unstoppable evolution of technology and lack of change in some governments, this freedom increasingly enables bad actors to avoid accountability.  Especially if they have nuclear weapons, a strong military, or are willing to sacrifice their own lives while committing mass murder that has been justified in someone’s mind or experience by their own real or perceived grievances.

 

Such payback, blowback, or ‘hillbilly justice’ is nearly inevitable without a global justice system.  And over the last 80 years humanity has collectively failed to manage our existence justly.  Now we have basically two options.  Continue down this current path to oblivion with persistent wars, genocides, terrorism, diseases, environmental loss because we value our national sovereignty (independence) more than we value human rights, life, health, and the environment.  Or we invest sufficiently and urgently with a planetary focus on deterring violence by ensuring liberty and justice for all.  Even taking responsibility for our original sins and pleading for forgiveness.

 

For 2024 with a record breaking number of elections, rising global temperatrures, as crisis’ continue expanding – the world’s authoritarian leaders will remain a logical attraction and beneficiary of the chaos.  And believing that more democracy (as a noun or a verb) will pull us away from increasing global chaos is simple insanity.

 

“Never has our future been more unpredictable, never have we depended so much on political forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common sense and self-interest—forces that look like sheer insanity" - Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

 

Consider real-world examples of democracies failing to ensure their cititzen’s basic rights, freedoms, and any semblance of sustainable security.  Argentina, Sweden, India, Russia, Ukraine, China, Israel, Haiti, and the US.

 

Argentina’s Javier Milei, a far-right libertarian president issued a decree banning the use of “inclusive language” like nouns endings that include the feminine and neutral, in any government communications.   Public officials are also forbidden to “unnecessarily include the feminine” when masculine could be the default.  Milei appeared to be removing women from the national conversation with even references to members of the lower House of Deputies using only the masculine diputados, not diputados y diputadas. This is creating more fear in Argentina women.   Milei and his young male followers don’t want progressive social change.  They are fearful of men losing their power, respect, or status.  And women gaining theirs.  Milei has campaigned on overturning the legalization of abortion while his male minions harassed women journalists and activists with rape and death threats.  He is just following the global wave of regressive populists, including Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Hungary’s Viktor Orban.  These men may seem ridiculous and backward in their reactionary zeal.  But in the face of almost every democracy losing its capacity to stop growing global forces impacting on their majorities they must keep them happy. And in this case the abuse and domination of women is not the only downside he can manage with unenforceable treaties, sanctions, and anemic diplomacy power.

 

Gambia is a relatively new republic with a democratic government. It has a multi-party system, and elections are held regularly to elect the president and members of the National Assembly. However, like any democracy, it adheres to democratic principles that will vary over time.  In March 2024 Gambia ‘s national assembly voted to advance legislation to overturn a ban on female genital mutilation.  This would put this tiny west African country on the path to be the first nation globally to roll back this human rights crime against a woman’s body.  The parliament majority are men.  Only five of Gambia 58 lawmakers are women.   The majority of males intended to uphold religious rights and ‘safeguard’ cultural, norms, and values.’  They considered the ban a direct violation of citizens’ rights to practice their own culture.  If it passes other nations could follow.  This barbaric procedure has no medical benefits.  And can cause multiple short and long-term harms, including infections, severe pain, scarring, infertility, and loss of pleasure.  This is a case of democracy accurately defined as tyranny of the minority.  In this case the majority of people in Gambia may be female but the majority in power are ignorant, fearful, and elected by a population with seriously flawed cultural values.

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VIETNAM:   In March of 2022 the Vietnamese President Vo Van Thuong resigned after a little over a year.  This makes him the latest senior official to leave office after being implicated in an intense anti-corruption campaign.  The only political party in Vietnam said, “violations by Vo Van Thuong have left a bad mark on the reputation of the Communist Party.” They are fortunate not to have a two-party system like in the US.  That would mean twice as much corruption.  Mr. Thuong is the second president to resign in two years, some analysts see this as a worrying sign for political stability for a country sitting between the U.S.-China competition fault lines for influence in East Asia.  Vietnam has become a rising player in global manufacturing with many economic temptations to gain an advantage. 

 

President Vo Van Thuong claimed it was “personnel matters” but said earlier, Vietnamese police had arrested the former head of Central Vietnam’s Quang Ngai province for corruption. He was previously supervised by Mr. Thuong as the provincial party chief. Mr. Thuong, 54, became president in March 2023, two months after his predecessor Nguyen Xuan Phuc resigned to take “political responsibility” for corruption scandals during the pandemic.  While the position of president in Vietnam is mostly ceremonial and ranks third in the country’s political hierarchy, the most powerful position is that of Communist Party general secretary. A post held by Nguyen Phu Trong, since 2011.    Analysts have warned that the anticorruption drive has hurt Vietnam’s business environment, making foreign investors jittery about unpredictable economic policies.  Vietnam has tried to strike a balance between its larger neighbor China and the U.S. while positioning itself as an ideal home for businesses looking to shift their supply chains out of China. Last year it was the only country that received both President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping on state visits.

 

Sweden joining NATO was a major change.   For over 2 centuries it was a stubbornly neutral country with an understandable terrified fear of international involvements.  During the Napoleonic Wars it had joined with Britain and Russia against Napoleon’s France.  That led to the loss of Finland, which Sweden had ruled for seven centuries.  That war also came close to Sweden’s downfall.   After that the nation had one goal.  Keeping peace by keeping out of war.  Even after World War II when they allowed trainloads of Nazis in to avert an imminent German invasion. Their pacifism was always “realism rather than idealism”.  After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that flipped to realism.  Now Sweden has taken the ‘peace through strength’ path believing that an alliance that would require them fight a war to defend others being their best chance for peace.  Democracy is a gamble that it is taking hoping they there will not be another world war between the axis of Russia, China, Iran, N. Korea, and any other nation’s siding with autocratic governments with a much faster reaction time than any democracy relying on a majority vote.

 

Ireland:  In mid-March 2024, Leo Varadkar, Ireland's prime minister and the leader of the governing Fine Gael party, made a surprise move in stepping down from his elected office, for "personal and political" reasons.  His departure as head of the three-party coalition did not automatically trigger a general election.  He did ask for a new leader of the party to be elected ahead of Fine Gael's annual conference in April.  Following that election Ireland's parliament would vote on who would be prime minister after the Easter break.  In making his announcement he said, "after careful consideration, and some soul searching, I believe that a new taoiseach (prime minister) and a new leader will be better placed than me to achieve that (the coalition government's re-election)."   The main opposition Sinn Fein party, the former political wing of the Irish Republican Army, has held a wide lead over Fine Gael and their main coalition partner Fianna Fail - in all opinion polls for the last two years.

 

Germany:  The bad old days in the east return. (From Sebastian Huld NTV report in the Week. May 24, 2024.)  The “baseball bat years” are coming back. That term was given to the era right after Germany reunified in 1990, when neo-Nazis and other right-wing extremists roamed the formerly communist eastern states, beating up leftists and immigrants.  Such violence is surging again now, in the run-up to the June European Parliament elections, in the eastern states of Thuringia and Saxony. Lawmaker Matthias Ecke, a Social Democrat, was putting up posters in Dresden two weeks ago when he was jumped by far-right hooligans who kicked and beat him, shattering his cheekbone and eye socket. And he’s not the only one. Many campaign workers say they’ve been harassed and threatened, their posters covered with Nazi symbols. At rallies for the far-right Alternative for Germany party, “pictures of left-wing politicians are symbolically hung on the gallows.” Thuringia and Saxony are fertile ground for right-wing thuggery today, as they were in the ’90s, because they are still underdeveloped relative to western Germany, and resentment is smoldering. But local politicians from the Greens and Social Democrats say that this time they won’t be intimidated. They’re calling on police to give “a clear stop signal” to this “aggressive, violent minority.” Eastern Germans don’t want to “leave the field to the enemies of democracy without a fight.”

 

Russia a democracy in name only.  It uses its propaganda machine and police to keep its majority in line. That might work as long as a majority of Russian people keep believing in the propaganda and are no longer sacrificing young men in Ukraine.  Or Ukraine’s majority decides to take the Pope’s advice and seriously consider Russia’s cease fire plan believing Putin will stop there.  

 

Ukraine: A strong national democratic ideology with a brave but dwindling military may not last.  And a united democracies attempt to stop Russia’s success might lead to a world war.

Israel: A theological democracy with nuclear weapons (and I’m guessing a thriving biodefense industry) only offers limited freedoms to its minority of non-Jewish Israel citizens within its own boarders.  And ensures far fewer human rights and freedoms to the much larger Palestinian population that Israel dominates in Gaza and the West Bank.  Meanwhile allowing its own citizens the freedom to settle into rightfully disputed lands east of its own border.  All while relentlessly murdering tens of thousands of a Gaza Palestinian majority population and anyone else who may be there.  The majority population of Gaza originally elected a leader of the Hamas political party. And it persists with a genocidal goal of killing Jews.   With all the death and continuing destruction, it would have been hard for even a minority of those suffering and starving to hold a vote.   And how would anyone determine if those in Gaza were responsible for the Oct 7^th slaughter of pro-Zionist voting families?   Should be handed over to the Israel democratic government?   What seems inevitable now given the relentless killing and starvation of Gazans-  is a growing majority of Palestinians, Arabs, and even Persians plans of some retaliation or revenge.   With the U.S. elections and inevitable future security caught in the middle.

Haiti’s decent into gang rule came after it’s multiple attempts at democracy failed. Even one supported by the US, which may have contributed to it failing.  Its failures would have happened even without the 2010 earthquake that killed more Haitians in Port-au-Prince in 10 minutes than the number of Japanese fatalities from the bombing of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.  Haiti’s persistent and extreme poverty was also the driver of corruption and untold suffering for decades as other nations in this hemisphere ignored or exacerbated the suffering. Meanwhile the current unelected leader in March 2024 is Jimmy “Barbeque” Cherizier.  He is a ‘God-fearing Robin Hood’ that got his name from burning people alive.  He may never be elected if elections are ever allowed but remember Hitler came to power under harsh economic conditions and how that worked out.  Dominican Republic has little to fear except hurricanes and the flow of migrants seeking a better place to survive and maybe thrive.  And every nation in the western hemisphere is going to face the same. 

 

USA:  With our 2024 election near it is hard to imagine what this nation or the world will be like afterwords.  But there is a near certainty that things will worsen no matter who wins.  And things will continue to get worse with growing chaos here and in many other nations regardless of their system of government, and the US system is no longer the last great hope for the world.  But the founding principles that sparked the creation of our nation remain both great and golden.   How do you define what it means to be an American?  Is it an idea? Or is it the place you live?  Your answer will determine the world’s future.

 

“The hallmark of Wisdom is asking, what effects will the decision I make today have on future generations? On the health of the planet?”  Dr. Jane Goodall, Douglas, Abrams, and Gail Hudson.

 

 

Collective actions could literally make all the difference in the world.  The only thing certain is that Trump will not intentionally create that collective wisdom and become the greatest man in history. If he loses the election, it is impossible to know what he and his supporters will do.  But it’s a safe bet non-violence will not be their priority.   Both parties have polarized extremes within them.  Whoever gets radicalized most will likely turn to violence first.    

 

Unfortunately, neither extreme within either party has gotten radicalized enough to go back to the basic ideals and the fundamental principles that our nation was founded on.  Everyone’s “Unalienable rights” to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’.    In more words moving U.S. citizens beyond our flawed identities as a nation of initially 13 states (now 50 ) consolidated by a majority vote into a constitutional democratic republic with one immoral amendment democratically passed - to now become a true wonder of the world with no fear that ‘God is Just’ because our nation of mixed nationalities and colors now live virtuously with each other and all other people and nationalities in the world.   And engineer a new constitutional framework for global sustainability that will greatly enhance the protection of everyone’s freedoms and security with no more wars or genocides.  There will always be violent extremists and natural or accidentally released pathogens...but a truly united world (based on fundamental principles not radical fundamentalists) will be far more able to prevent these horrors, quickly identify them, quickly and appropriately respond, and then recover and rebuild after the chaos comes.

 

But the 2024 election season is nearly here.  And ‘illegal Immigration’ is likely to remain a key issue of contention and increasingly weaponized by the GOP.   It remains their best wedge for putting fear into voters, only months after they buried a tough bipartisan border bill they had originally helped forge and support.  And dumped it simply because their candidate feared its passage would help Biden.  Now they might seek new talking points against a different target.  

 

And a greater disruption may happen before the election.  The GOP shifting on the abortion issue or their overwhelmingly opposition to both the Infrastructure Bill and the Chips Act to help fund semiconductor factories in the U.S. - which could change with both of these bills that address serious national security issues. 

 

Will the Democrats keep using Trump’s convictions, two impeachments, and inciting a violent insurrection against him?    Or Trump continue his opposition of US military aid critical to Ukraine’s survival and his favoring Vladimir Putin and N. Korea’s despot leader?  Will their new House Speaker Mike Johnson who said Trump “is a Christian nationalist who thinks he was chosen by God and takes direction from the Bible, not the Constitution” recant?  Wiil it take a war with China or a super volcano eruption to stop this growing political polarization since Trump’s potentially lethal ear piercing didn’t?  What can stop the insanity of conspiracy theories on both sides or the flat out lies and bold hypocrisy from either?  

 

It appears our nation’s experiment by “We the People” favoring a democracy and our U.S. Constitution is doomed to fail or implode.  We repeatedly hear the phrase “Rule of Law” must be followed.  But the only rational definition I’ve heard came over two decades ago on a C-span program when Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy was asked by a foreigner “What does it take for the Rule of Law to be effective?”  He responded; ‘it works best when it has three basic elements’.   When the laws are made and enforced by a democratic process.  People want to have some say in the laws they will be expected to live under.  Second, the laws must apply equally to everyone.  Last the laws must be used to protect people’s basic rights.’  He referenced Hitler’s democratic election.  And the disruptions when there is a lack of justice or the violation of people’s most basic rights.  At that point I fell in love with the “rule of Law” phrase which I had not liked or understood because my few experiences with ‘the Law” and “law enforcement” were not good.   The analogy of concrete comes to  mind.  Three basic elements – cement, an aggregate, and water.  Together in the right proportions they harden into something more solid than most rocks.  Leave one out element, or add too much of another, and it loses its structural integrity or fails completely.  

 

"No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and
this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him."  -- Thomas Jefferson

 

The most essential fundamental principles were clearly written in our nation’s founding document the Declaration of Independence.  Yet we still ignore the rock-hard foundation we could sustainably build on by codifying “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God”.   

 

“If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.” Charles Darwin

Dr Benjamine Rush was a close friend of Thomas Jefferson and a signer of the Declaration of Independence.  As Jefferson was writing it Rush suggested he edit the last word in its most mentioned phrase “Life, liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”  Rush suggested changing “Happiness” to “Health”.  Happiness is now defined differently by each person.  Most think of it as an immediate feeling.  And believe they have the right to feel it all the time.  Back then it meant something you gained from being vitious and using your talents serve those you love and the community in which you live with others. 

I wonder what our nation would be like today if Jeferson had used that edit. 

"The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well." -  Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ideally health would be our first fundamental value underpinning every aspect of our lives. Including healthy politics formed by healthy minds, bodies, spirits, families communities, environments, economy, governance systems, and global relations.  With the key element of health being ‘prevention’. 

 

Another fundamental principle essential for achieving, maintaining, and sustaining all seven intentions in our current Constitution’s preamble is our global interdependence.  Imagine if health and our global interdependce instead of feel good happiness had been idealized over the last 248 years.   And firmly applied to every system and structure engineered into each of our U.S. governance systems.   As our U.S. Constitution is -  is simply unsustainable.  

 

“If the American Revolution had produced nothing but the Declaration of Independence, it would have been worthwhile...The beauty and cogency of the preamble, reaching back to remotest antiquity and forward to an indefinite future, have lifted the hearts of millions of men and will continue to do so.... These words are more revolutionary than anything written by Robespierre, Marx, or Lenin, more explosive than the atom, a continual challenge to ourselves as well as an inspiration to the oppressed of all the world. – Samuel Eliot Morison, The Oxford History of the American People [1965]”

While ‘health’ is difficult ill-define, both Congress and our culture has actually done it. By codifying what is really a medical care system we have now and naming it “Health Care”.

"Everything is backwards; everything is upside down.  Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the major media destroy information, and religions destroy spirituality."  -- Michael Ellner

No sane person would argue against being healthy in most aspects of life.  Yet rarely do we make health a priority.  Both Albert Einstein and Mother Theresa made it their highest for obvious reasons.  Most people have many things they want to do.  A sick person usually has one.  And too many things in our nation and culture is sick.  Our nation’s Surgeon general calls loneliness our nation’s greatest single health problem. 

Time magazine’s Jan. 18/Jan. 23, 2023 cover story was “The Secrets of Happiness Experts”.  It surveyed 18 leading happiness experts about their daily habits and the professional insights that they offered others to boost their moods and well-being.   They interpret happiness as both subjective (how we feel) and objective (scientifically agreed upon beliefs and actions that can basically make most people feel better, good, or great for a longer period of time). 

 

Objective happiness is based on the fact that we all have some control or agency in our life that is guided by meaning and/or purpose.  Creating a purpose for one’s life can be learned, measured, and intensified with practice.   To this degree happiness is a choice in this massively complex and complicated world we live in (especially given the mental world that our mind spends so much time in).  Both with many disappointing or disruptive factors. 

 

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read or write, but those who cannot unlearn the lies they have been taught to believe.” - Alvin Toffler

 

Most external factors we have little immediate control over.  Being grateful for what we do have, however, may be the first vital building block of happiness.  Billions of other people will almost always have things worse.  When someone habitually or sincerely ask you “How ya doing?”  You can look them in the eye with a smile and sincerely say “I’m fine!  I only have first world problems and a lack of discipline.  Other than that, I’m great!”.  This can temporarily assist others in really thinking.  

 

Most of the time we all have freedom of mind when something is said or happens.  But only if we stop and think instead of robotically responding.  With almost every person, place, or thing we encounter we have a choice to say or do nothing in response. Ignore, accept, resist, joke with, complain, or be in awe.   Or do a variety of these.  Find a simple way to make a person’s day.  Open a door.  Fix something broken.  Use your mind to be kind and/or helpful.   

 

"You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them." - Maya Angelou

 

"The purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others." -Albert Schweitzer

 

I’m often reminding myself (and occasionally others) “Don’t believe everything your mind thinks!”.  It’s helpful in negotiating a world where our perceptions are usually wrong.    

 

My mind can easily fall into hopelessness thinking about how we can actually amend the Constitution.  Then I get to wrestle with my mind and the feelings it generates by such a crazy thought.   Then I try to use the coaching advice mentioned earlier and “be the landlord” of my own mind.  It doesn’t always stick.  But I know this fundamental truth works when applied.  And enlivens me when I do.  And knowing that amendments are absolutely needed and urgently-  reminds me that it is more important to do the right thing, than worry about it not working.

 

Another personal revelation applicable to humankind occurred to me when I was first hired to coach wrestling at a Jewish school.  Not being Jewish, I was stymied in thinking of ‘how I could interest these young Jewish students into joining the wrestling team?’.   Wrestling had made a profound difference in my own life and I was hoping it could do the same in theirs.  So, I asked a Rabbi friend about how I might introduce wrestling to them.  He laughed.  He said, ‘the first wrestling match in recorded history was between Jacob and an Angle.’  I won’t expose my lack of details about that biblical story, but I later wondered “why was that allegory used so early in the bible?’.  After a quick google search, I learned most people interpret it as a metaphor for Jacob's struggle with his own identity, morals, and faith.  And Jacob had a very long wrestling match. 

This symbolic struggle with his inner turmoil and desires was a turning point in his life.  He was injured.  But what really changed his life was after the match, Jacob was renamed Israel, which means "he who struggles with God."  This renaming signifies his transformation and his newfound faith and determination.  WOW!  Thank you, Lord! 

 

“Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings,so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.”  Socrates (a wrestler)

 

Winning a wrestling match is nice.  But what’s most important is learning from it either way if you plan on beating the same opponent again.  That made constant improvement and adaptation as important as cardio, technique, focus, and persistent repetition key elements of improvement.  And important for health and mastering many things in life because everything changes except fundamental principles.  If someone fails to change when things change - one’s life may not work as well as planned or hoped for.  Strength is rarely important - unless it is strength in spirit.   Peace through military strength is now global suicide given that everything can now be affordably weaponized, hidden, and disguised as something normal.

 

And what is the American spirit?  Hopeless?  Angry?  Distrusting?  Uncertain? WTF?  Most of us already have the most important basics.  A flush toilet. Clean water, shelter, refrigerator, access to emergency care, vaccinations, a wide variety of food (we eat too much of, and usually the wrong stuff), breathable air, and means of transportation, and hopefully a job that pays enough to maintain these basics...and maybe a little extra for some fun/relaxation/donations.  A level of comforts once only imagined.  And about half the world has access to a voting system that sometimes works.  

 

Changing things is rarely easy.  But sometimes it can be simple but not easy.  Most things happen without our assistance.  We just accept it and use what we have, like, or can buy if we have the money and want it bad enough. But do we need it?  Do we need to go into debt to buy it.   What do we value?  Looking good and feeling good - or being good and doing good?  Maximizing humanities freedom and security - or continuing down our current path of losing both?

 

The big things that need to change will require us working together in very large numbers.  Humanity now has the technology to facilitate such global transformation with near instant global communications, increasing technologies for cooperation, real solutions, at mostly affordable economic prices.  The big question is, what will we do and how will we use these unprecedented resources going forward?  And, bot going backward, or off the rails?  What we have been doing simply isn’t working and systemic changes are needed.  And letting things happen as they are now will not end well for anyone. 

 

Every person’s mind needs to understand that our freedoms and security - our very survival - depends on making essential things happen sustainably.   And make it clear in our hearts and minds the profound distinction between fundamental principles and the alternative principles that our creative minds have invented for selfish, shortsighted, or special interests.  For over 100 years Rotary International has had a universal test that its members learn and repeat in meetings almost weekly.  They take an oath regarding the things we ‘think, say, or do’.  It’s called the “four-way test”.  1) Is it the TRUTH?  2) Is it FAIR to all concerned? 3) Will it build GOODWILL & BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?  4) Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?   And there should be a resounded YES to each of these regarding humanities need to systemically and comprehensively achieve the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.

 

If we are truly committed to creating a nation and world that can achieve and sustain the seven intentions of our U.S. Constitution, we must transform the world by engineering a governing system capable of doing so.  A global system that puts the sustainable health of every system and structure that each of us is dependent upon within our body, mind, family, community, environment, economy, food supply, energy supply, city, state, nation, soil, waters, sky, and even space.  Simply because everything is connected, interdependent and vulnerable. 

 

Objective ‘truths’ can set us free from most suffering and best sustain security for us and the nature’s systems we need.   We cannot trust our polarized minds, religious divisions, woke philosophies, or weapon systems, artificial intelligence, hopes, or prayers to protect us and our freedoms.  It must be our intentional commitment of who we really are.  Members of the human family and not any of our mind’s various identities that we cling to - or kill and die defending.  

 

A father gave his young wrestler, Kyle Snyder (the world’s first 19-year-old Gold medal Olympic heavyweight champion) the greatest coaching advice I’d ever heard.  “Be the landlord of your Mind”.  Kyle wanted to be the best wrestler he could be and took that coaching to heart by convincing his mind to “torture” his body every day in wrestling practices so he would never need to “fear anyone” when he stopped on the mat.  Kyle defeated both a Russian and Iranian in the Olympic heavyweight division.  Wrestlers from most nations considered these two heavyweight wrestlers to be ‘deities’ in the wrestling world. 

 

In our American culture we over value comfort and avoiding stress to our own harm.  Astronauts spending time in zero-gravity space need to be taken away in wheelchairs when they return to earth.  The body has the capacity to recover from stress and thus grow stronger and more resilient.  We too often interpret unusual sensations as uncomfortable or stress that doesn’t feel good.  That feeling alone inhibits the immune system’s growth.  While choosing stress, and even seeking it, actually boosts the immune system.  Research has discovered a new tissue in the Femur (upper leg bone) that produces white blood cells as well as red blood cells when the femur is stressed.   Being an Olympian, or just being a healthy and fit person requires being ok with stress, and continually being comfortable, with being uncomfortable to maximize one’s health and fitness.   Being comfortable is certainly important for the recovery and growth in muscle, neurological, and brain tissue.  But comfort is not what our bodies were engineered for.  It was engineered for stress.

 

FACT:  Without stress our body withers.  Same with the mind, body, and spirit.  Your systems grow after being stressed beyond what is comfortable if given the time and essential nutritional elements needed.   And it is the mental attitude we pick that can determine the difference between withering or thriving in this hard and often unfair systems we live in.  The saying “That’s all in your head” has profound value.   It might also all apply to “its only a feeling” because of the culture that your mind has adopted to be landlord of who you really are.  A human being capable of incredible physical feats by maintaining good fitness habits, thoughts, and fundamental principles.

 

"You do not belong to you. You belong to the universe. The significance of you will remain forever obscure to you, but you may assume you are fulfilling your significance if you apply yourself to converting all you experience to highest advantage to others. Make the world work, for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone." ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

 

So, by changing our minds from being the landlord of our bodies and running it into feelings of depression, hopelessness, obesity, illness, and early death, we can use our heart and soul felt commitment to manage our mind.  And use our own words to express exactly what we are committed to achieving by being the landlord of our mind.  This is who we truly are.  A powerful human ‘being’ with a commitment to solving problems.  Not a flawed mind that creates and defends flawed ideas, negative thoughts, and uncomfortable feeling.   We must use our mind, body and spirit to wrestle with problems to work through the barriers we must in order to achieve our intended goal(s).   And adapt when we fail.  Then fail again. And adapt again.

 

“To the ordinary person in life, everything is either a blessing, boring, irrelevant, or a curse.  To  a warrior for life on this troubled planet, everything is an opportunity for action.”  cw (adapted from the definition of the Warrior Spirit)

 

Another perspective. Balance our mind’s gifts in both our right and left-brain hemispheres to serve who we really are, all others that we love, and the natural systems essential to sustaining humanities health, wealth, freedoms, survival, and thriving.  

 

“The love and hopes of those who are no longer with us resides in our hearts; The love and hopes of current and future generations resides in our actions.” Steven Jay

 

Albert Einstein’s mind believed our intuitive or metaphorical mind is our sacred gift. And our rational mind is our faithful servant.  In modern life many of the catastrophic consequences that we are now experiencing are due to prioritizing our servant mind that has distanced us from the divine.  We simply value more stuff - rather than the organic systems that got us here.  And we use our logical minds to build reliable weapons, medicines, and machines.  Then use these while ignoring how these will be used to kill innocent people.  This is because our minds are now value and prioritize mental constructs like nationalism, religion, and money more than clean air, clean water, healthy soils, a cooperative spirit, and the golden rule.   The very fundamental resources that got us to this point in time - but are now on the edge of destroying.  

 

 

Below are two basic institutional systems humanity can put great trust in.  One we known as engineering.   Consider NASA, our technological model with the most experience in keeping humans alive in the most extreme, deadly, and chaotic environment beyond our planet.

 

As Astronaut Rusty Weikart said, we must work “as crew members on space ship earth not just passengers.”

 

Putting humans on the moon and returning them safely to earth may be the most astounding technological human feat thus far in history.  But NASA has had catastrophic systemic or structural failures.  Then it used these to learn from its mistakes and constantly adapt when imperfections are made clear.  But NASA can only do this when managed by minds sufficiently funded by the minds and governing systems outside of NASA.  And these then prioritize the healthy minds and bodies of all employees within it.

 

The first memorable NASA tragedy was in 1967 during a test of the Apollo 1 spacecraft. It was only a test intended to simulate launch conditions at the launchpad at Cape Kennedy (now Cape Canaveral), Florida.  A fire broke out in the cockpit, and the three astronauts on board, Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee, were unable to escape.  The cause of the fire was later determined to be a combination of factors, including faulty electrical wiring and the use of highly flammable materials in the cockpit. That tragedy led to significant improvements in engineering and safety procedures paving the way for future successful Apollo missions.

 

Later on, Apollo 13 had an oxygen tank exploded enroute to the Moon endangering the lives of its three-member crew.  But creative engineers on earth working closely with the Apollo crew used ideas and materials based on the laws of nature to solve it.  Prayer cannot be ruled out.   But then almost 20 years later the space shuttle Challenger disaster killed all seven crew members on board when it broke apart 73 seconds after launch. And in 2003 there was another space shuttle disaster when the Columbia shuttle broke apart upon re-entry, killing all seven of its crew. 

 

NASA has had other failures and incidents which were not catastrophic, but each one resulted in modifications to the program.  Imagine if those responsible for our Constitution (we the people and those we have elected and allowed to be appointed) functioned the same way.  Relying on the fundamentals of the laws of nature and nature’s God as our nation’s founding fathers had signed off on.

 

What would our government look like if our public servants adopted and applied such functional engineering principles to their work?  Instead of swearing an oath to protect and defend an outdated governing system?   A system that is leading toward catastrophic events.  And continuing to make the same mistake repeatedly.  The key takeaway for ‘we the people’ is that most of us don’t learn from history.   This must change.  And that change must begin in our minds.  And perhaps applying our mind’s most powerful game-changing technology - Artificial Intelligence – without causing catastrophic harm.  AI holds enormous possibility of bringing our government back from its increasing dysfunction and inevitable collision with reality. Hopefully before a total collapse. 

 

The Olympics is the second global system of sustainable governance functioning is the world’s Olympics.  A highly competitive global event where guns, spears, using globally approved of rules and regulations applied equally to all participants with their basic rights protected and a sufficiently financed operation with objectively judged competition and combat is allowed.  Cheating and injuries happen.  But there are investigations by people trained and approved by another global system of people who have earned their status by merit, not majority vote.  This human engineered governance system originated with a democratic global participation process with various values and fair consequences.  And if violations are found to be intentional then individuals or groups of individuals are held accountable.  And if further regulations are needed, they are democratically created and then changed with unanimous approval.

 

A few intentional deaths occurred in the 1972 Olympics but those were due to political tensions outside the Olympic system when Palestinian violent extremists murdered seven Jewish athletes and their coaches in the Munich games.   

But then in the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain there was the first time the Olympic Committee allowed all participants to enter the stadium during the closing ceremony without marching in together with their nation’s team. This change was made to offer athletes more freedom and allow them to express their individuality. And as in every Olympics these participants represented every sex, sport, nationality, religion, culture, sexual orientation, and political ideology.  And there were no injuries, deaths, or riots.  Many participants and some people watching it said it felt like a spiritual experience.

 

And the global eradication of smallpox deserves a second mention within this context of what is realistically possible when everyone, every nation, and government in the world comes together for the protection of our species.  And now Polio is very close to being the second virus eradicated from Earth.   A global mindset that must continue to be reborn regarding the growing array of threats we all face today.   Our nation won’t fall from an invasion of a foreign power. It will fall from an ignorant, apathetic, and arrogant population ignoring the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God and not changing their minds.

 

I apprehend no danger to our country from a foreign foe. Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing. Make them intelligent, and they will be vigilant; give them the means of detecting the wrong, and they will apply the remedy.  – Daniel Webster [1837]

 

"By far the most dangerous foe we have to fight is apathy - indifference from whatever cause, not from a lack of knowledge, but from carelessness, from absorption in other pursuits, from a contempt bred of self satisfaction" William Osler (Canadian Physician, 1849-1919)

 

"Most Americans aren't the sort of citizens the Founding Fathers expected; they are contented serfs. Far from being active critics of government, they assume that its might makes it right." Joseph Sobran  Columnist

 

“Oblivion as manifested by a collapse of civilization will happen if we do not take urgent action. We have free will. It is up to us to decide on the path we are going to take. Do we band together and take a collective activist approach to 2030, or not? There are three distinct paths forward: the catastrophic (business as usual), the risky (protest, recycle, complain and blame), or probable success (a full blown reinvention of how we live on Spaceship Earth).”  Spaceship Earth founder

 

“Distrust of authority should be the first civic duty.” – Norman Douglas, An Almanac [1941]

 

U.S. Constitution Chapter REVIEW:  Some of the greatest flaws in the U.S. Constitution: The delusion of Independence, a lack of justice, excess freedoms lacking virtue and accountability, the over reliance on the democratic will of the people, gross ignorance of “we the people” regarding fundamental objective principles and ignoring what we know and have been told that already works – “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God”.

 

Independence:  Our founders engineered our constitutional system on the illusion of independence.  A flawed mental construct is better defined as ‘separate’ yet connected and interdependent.  It is delusional to believe that without transformational amendments to our constitution it can ensure liberty and justice for any American.  Or anyone anywhere.  And it will never achieve any of the seven intentions listed in its preamble.  Our nation is fading from whatever functionality it may have once had.  If we are to successfully correct our Constitution’s flawed engineering, we must overcome our heartfelt desire to worship it and the delusional human-created principle of Independence. 

 

“It is the duty of everyman, so far as his ability allows, to detect and expose delusion and error.” - Thomas Paine

 

JUSTICE for ALL?  Our Constitution and legal system are easily manipulated by money.  Fairness or justice cannot be found within it.  Ask any indigenous American Indian.  Or many citizens who have experienced in our “criminal justice” system, increasingly seen as ‘more criminal than just’ with too many judges using current laws to justify unjust sentences, unfair verdicts inspiring some people to justify breaking of other laws - or turning to our Constitution’s 2^nd Amendment for justice -- a fundamental right to enable anyone to protect their freedom, security, family, and property.  

 

In his 1838 Lyceum Address in Springfield, Illinois, Abraham Lincoln advocated that schools should teach a reverence for our American ideals: “Let reverence for the laws be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe, that prattles on her lap—let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in Primers, spelling books, and in Almanacs;—let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation.”

 

Most Americans today have difficulty distinguishing between our Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.  Abraham Lincoln made a simple and clear distinction.  He wrote that our “Declaration of Independence is our Apple of Gold” and our “Constitution” its “Frame of Silver”.  A biblical reference with poetic and functional meaning.

 

And if you have any doubts that our Declaration of Independence is truly a universal document applicable to all people, in all places, for all time please watch this 7 minute video regarding Abraham Lincoln’s persistent belief  “The Declaration - For all People, at All Times, Everywhere.”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcxysVRmy5Q

 

*************Chapter Resources for verification of concepts within it *****************

 

1.     Taking [human] rights seriously:  To the government, they are merely privileges.  By Andrew P. Napolitano.   July 18, 2024 Washington Times Opinion piece.   https://washingtontimes-dc.newsmemory.com/?clip_article&token=5rXYy9fP3d3QrrbK38fYnZmfhpmTpZKumMNwdo7p1tTel6aFnZKhmKiWlXBvkqaYkqagn4OV    “If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, Mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, Than he, if he had the power, Would be justified in silencing mankind.”  — John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)   The world is filled with self-evident truths — truisms — that philosophers, lawyers and judges know need not be proved. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Two plus two equals four. A cup of hot coffee sitting on a table in a room at 70 degrees Fahrenheit will eventually cool down.

2.    July 20, 2024   C-span WASHINGTON JOURNAL     Eli Merritt on His Book "Disunion Among Ourselves"    He is a Political Historian, Vanderbilt University.  The author discussed his book about the political divisions among the country’s founders and what it can teach us about today’s political polarization.    https://www.c-span.org/video/?537132-5/eli-merritt-book-disunion-ourselves  41 minutes.   His book won the 2024 Society of the Cincinnati Prize from the American Revolution Institute.  In this eye-opening C-span interview Eli Merritt reveals the deep political divisions that almost tore the Union apart during the American Revolution. So fractious were the founders’ political fights that they feared the War of Independence might end in disunion and civil war.  And how they apply today.    I urge you to apply them to the threats in the world humanity now shares.   Time for a “shot gun” wedding? 

3.       Robert Wright opinion piece printed in the Washington Post 7-14-24.  Mr. Wright was the keynote speaker at the 1998 World Federalist Association national conference when as WFA’s ‘Issues Director’ I was warning about the evolution of weaponry, war, and the biosecurity threats that I had well documented in my congressional testimony in both 1996 and ’97 as Issues Director at the Global Health Council before my role within WFA.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/07/10/progressive-realism-foreign-policy-wright/  

4.       Thomas Ricks 2020 book “First Principles: What America’s founders learned from the Greeks and Romans and how they shaped our country”    If you seek a profound base of knowledge regarding the foundations of reasoning in the wordings that created our nation’s federation read this book.  And discover why it is stumbling.    In his Epilogue “What We Can Do”  offers  10 steps. The first is “Don’t Panic”  #2 Curtail campaign finance,  #3 Re-focus on the public good,  #4 Promote, cultivate, and reward virtue in public life – but don’t count on it., #5 Respect our core institutions – and push them!    #6 Wake Up Congress.  #7 Enrich the Political Vocabulary.  #8 Reclaim the definition of “un-American”.  “Make American More American!”  MAMA  (I love this...with a focus on the principles of the Declaration of Independence).  #9 Rehabilitate “Happiness”    [this has potential...for transforming the American way...and how we went wrong.]  #10 Know your history.

5.       June 2023, Bank of America Chair & CEO, Brian Moynihan spoke on C-span about the state of the economy, the U.S. financial system, and capitalism. * He said, ‘the SDGs will cost approximately’ “$6 trillion annually”. “Governments are too debt burdened” and “charity is insufficient”. “Business leaders” “like the oil companies” and others must step up prioritize a balancing of ‘short-term gains’ with ‘long term interests’. ‘Profits must be good for business and society all the way down to the community level’. “Capitalism” “requires a greater purpose than making more profit.” Neither are sustainable without these SDG goals being achieved.'  C-span covered this interview hosted by the City Club of Cleveland. Program ID: 529044-1 https://www.c-span.org/video/?529044-1/bank-america-ceo-remarks-city-club-cleveland

6.       2017 book WARNINGS: FINDING CASSANDRAS TO STOP CATASTROPHES  By Richard A. Clarke and R.P. Eddy,  2017: https://cco.ndu.edu/PRISM-7-2/Article/1401978/warnings-finding-cassandras-to-stop-catastrophes/   The first 8 chapters detail the millions of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars lost to catastrophes,– natural and human engineered – due to people in power failing to act on the advanced warnings of experts.   The last eight chapters estimates the billions of lives and trillions of dollars that could be saved if humanity collectively works to prevent the other dire warnings now being given regarding other threats (some existential).  Chapter 11 “The Journalist: Pandemic Disease”.   Most instructive is Chapter 9.  It outlines three cognitive reasons why humans ignore such warnings.

7.      Here’s a video of optimism if humanity wakes up, adapts using fundamental principles in envissioning a sustainable future. https://www.rethinkx.com/videos

Chuck Woolery

Former Chair, United Nations Association Council of Organizations

Former Issues Director, Global Health Council.

Former Action Board member, American Public Health Association.

Author of 1996 and 1997 Congressional testimony warnings regarding threats to US and global bio- security.