More strikes against democracy and our Constitution

 More strikes against democracy and our Constitution being our self-evident truth 

“In a functioning liberal democracy, Trump would be seen right now as a once-in-a-century kind of monster, his despicable assault on our democracy a turning point for the GOP in coming to its senses.  He would be a pariah far beyond what Nixon was in 1974 – untouchable, toxic, despised.  His grotesque and corrosive lies about the election are disqualified on their face.  But our liberal democracy is extinct after four years of Trump.  We are in a tribal war now, in which our democratic institutions are mere tools for the conduct of hostilities.”  Andrew Sullivan, AndrewSullivan@substack.com  (printed in The Week magazine 1-7-22).

Mr. Sullivan missed the fact that “our democratic institutions” have always been “mere tools for the conduct of” corporate business, the rich tweaking the system, and the military-industrial complex getting what cannot bring us real security.  The masses of “we the people” are either too comfortable, distracted, or ignorant about citizen power to use it for making our nation (and the world) ‘a more perfect union'.   

Only about half of us show up to vote each election.  And most votes are based on emotions stimulated by one or two concerns.   Emotions exacerbated by the cognitive dissonance linked to tribal instincts.  A deep dive without bias into vital issues facing humanity are rare.  I’m guessing fewer than 2% of us actually ‘petition’ grievances directly with their elected officials those six hundred plus days between elections.  Protests, actually petitions, and riots have not worked.  Being in inspired by a better vision for humanity's healthy and sustainable future must be done in face-to-face meetings with constituents using loving persistence...not anger or hate-filled rants as deserving as they may be.

Yet we are shocked and in despair that things are not working as we want.  Too often what we want is not what we or our children and grandchildren need.  We fear “losing our democracy” forgetting that Hitler was elected to his first position of power.   Even when a vast majority get what they want there is no guarantee the fundamental human rights of any minority wouldn’t be abused.  Or their families terrorized by death threats or slaughtered.  And that’s even likely without a democracy.
What we really need and should desire above all other forms of government is the Rule of Law. 

The Rule of Law is a phrase we frequently hear, but few can list its fundamental elements as well as Supreme Court Justice Antonio Scalia.   Over 20 years ago in a C-span interview before an international audience, he was asked “what makes the Rule of law effective?”  He replied it requires three basic elements.  First, the laws need to be made and enforced by a democratic process. But that’s not enough. [which should be a painful self-evident truth to anyone now paying close attention to the withering of our increasingly imperfect union], Second, the laws need to be applied equally to everyone.  Third, the laws need to be protective of people’s inalienable rights. 

Note that our Constitution only provides us with a legal framework for making laws.  The Supreme Court, most lesser courts, or the Department of Justice interpret laws based on it within the framework of federalism or national sovereignty.  Not the concept of “justice for all” as every American has pledged repeatedly before our flag.  

True American patriotism would be based on the fundamental principles expressed in our nation’s profound founding document, the Declaration of Independence.  What Abraham Lincoln once wrote, was our “Apple of Gold”.  He labeled the Constitution as it ‘frame of silver’.   A true American patriot would see (and behave) as if ‘America’ were an ideal.  Not a varying collection of independent states increasingly divided internally and increasingly less likely to form a more perfect union.

If we did this, we could truly inspire others in the world to do the same.  Instead of converting more and more to violent extremists willing, and increasingly able, to undermine our nation’s freedom and security.  And better able to protect the sustainability of our collective environmental infrastructure which every human, economy, democracy, kleptocracy, dictatorship depends on to survive and thrive.

The evolution of weaponry, viral variants, conspiracy theories, and terrorism requires the adaptation of government systems and structures in order to avoid accelerating chaos and inevitable extinction.

It will require a comprehensive plan and effort to achieve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals before its 2030 deadline.  Perfecting democracy will NOT get us there.  Only the perfecting of the Rule of Law globally can.   Thomas Paine in his pamphlet “Common Sense” stated “Here then is the origin and rise of government; namely, a mode rendered necessary by the inability of moral virtue to govern the world; here too is the design and end of government, viz. freedom and security.  And however our eyes may be dazzled with show, or our ears deceived by sound; however prejudice may warp our wills, or interest darken our understanding, the simple voice of nature and of reason will say, it is right...I draw my idea of the form of government from a principle in nature, which no art can overturn, viz. that the more simple anything is, the less liable it is to be disordered, and the easier repaired when discorded; and with this maxim in view.”  He wrote these words about the “constitution of England”.  

I believe If he were alive today he would be saying the same about ours now. 

Biden should be more like Jimmy Carter

 Dear Editor,

Jonathan Alter’s superb detailing of “major” problems with the current Carter/Biden “analogies” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/01/14/jimmy-carter-biden-comparisons/) missed two profoundly important Carter contributions.  Commission reports that could have radically improved the increasingly chaotic world we have today if they had been popular reading.  First is the foresighted conclusion and warnings of President Carter’s 1980 bi-partisan Commission on World Hunger.  It stated “In the final analysis, unless Americans -- as citizens of an increasingly interdependent world -- place far higher priority on overcoming world hunger, its effects will no longer remain remote or unfamiliar.  Nor can we wait until we reach the brink of the precipice; the major actions required do not lend themselves to crisis planning, patchwork management, or emergency financing... The hour is late.  Age-old forces of poverty, disease, inequity, and hunger continue to challenge the world.  Our humanity demands that we act upon these challenges now...”   

It then warned that “The most potentially explosive force in the world today is the frustrated desire of poor people to attain a decent standard of living. The anger, despair and often hatred that result represent real and persistent threats to international order…  Neither the cost to national security of allowing malnutrition to spread nor the gain to be derived by a genuine effort to resolve the problem can be predicted or measured in any precise, mathematical way. Nor can monetary value be placed on avoiding the chaos that will ensue unless the United States and the rest of the world begin to develop a common institutional framework for meeting such other critical global threats… Calculable or not, however, this combination of problems now threatens the national security of all countries just as surely as advancing armies or nuclear arsenals.”

It then recommended “that promoting economic development in general, and overcoming hunger in particular, are tasks far more critical to the U.S. national security than most policymakers acknowledge or even believe. Since the advent of nuclear weapons most Americans have been conditioned to equate national security with the strength of strategic military forces. The Commission considers this prevailing belief to be a simplistic illusion. Armed might represents merely the physical aspect of national security. Military force is ultimately useless in the absence of the global security that only coordinated international progress toward social justice can bring.”

This should have been Alder’s expose’s conclusion on MLK Day’s Washington Post Outlook section.  Along with the predictions listed in Carter’s Global 2000 Report ...which nearly all eventually proved accurate - and are now a “painful ‘what if’” for us and the rest of humanity.

“Before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you've depended on more than half of the world. This is the way our universe is structured; this is its interrelated quality. We aren't going to have peace on earth until we recognize this basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

Libertarians' worst promoter: Senator Rand Paul

Today's (1-11-22)  C-Span hearing with Anthony Fauci...had comments/questions and assertions by this libertarian Senator.   https://www.c-span.org/video/?517046-1/drs-walensky-fauci-testify-response-covid-19-variants   JANUARY 11, 2022   Drs. Walensky, Fauci, and Others Testify on Response to COVID-19 Variants

Dr. Anthony Fauci, along with CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky and others, testified on the federal response to new COVID-19 variants before the Senate Health Committee.

In my opinion, Senator Rand Paul disgraced the libertarian movement and endangered US national security instead of using precious time to address a tsunami of urgent issues before humanity.

Senator Paul made more flawed assertions, misquotes, and demeaning, inflammatory, degrading, false, and deplorable comments than I have ever heard in listing to C-span for the last 30 years.  He did this repeatedly interrupting Fauci’s answers and his attempts to refute with facts what the Senator did NOT want to hear. 

Fauci gave a legitimate detailed report of one man apprehended on his way to DC traveling all the way across the nation with AR15 and sufficient ammunition to kill a hundred members of Congress.  But he stated he had the singular intention of killing Fauci and all of his family.   The Senator did not express any concern for Fauci or this family.  He simply went on continuing his angry, partisan, delusional rant until shut down by the Ctee chair.    

Any true libertarian would know that the essential human characteristic to ensure the preservation of humanity's freedoms is for individuals to put responsibility and virtue at the top of their personal behaviors and words.

As a new Rotarian, I will try to live by their 4 foundation questions.  1.  Is it true?  2.  Is it fair?  3. Does it build goodwill?  4.  Does it benefit everyone?   Paul used his precious time doing none of these.  Instead of meaningfully addressing the greatest killer of Americans today, preparing for the next variant or pandemic, or other serious and urgent national security threats we all face he gave the worst advertisement for anyone professing to be a libertarian.  

My generation's failure. How we got to this chaotic point in our nation's history.

 My generation's failure to do what was needed got us to this chaotic point in our nation's history.

 

At sports events, we pledged before our flag “liberty and justice for all” thousands of times without voting for it.

On Thanksgiving, we thanked the Lord for all we have...and then ignored the story of the Good Samaritan.

We won the cold war... then turned inward...instead of out.

We asked God to Bless America and then ignored “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God”

And now nearly half of us can’t grasp the simple concept of ‘Truths we hold to be self-evident”.

 

Almost a year ago to this day, those who stormed the Capitol did so believing lies of someone ordained by the laws of our Constitution and pledged on a Bible to protect it.   Abraham Lincoln may have endorsed a radical change in the Constitution.  But he would be appalled at this unpatriotic logic.   He wrote that our Declaration of Independence was our “Apple of Gold”.  And our Constitution it’s “frame of silver”.  Many have sworn to protect it...instead of the freedom and security God intended for all human beings.

 

The single greatest factor motivating last year’s insurrectionists (mostly white, gainfully employed, middle-aged males) was fear.  Fear they were going to be replaced by others if our nation actually lived up to its founding ideal of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” via “justice for all”. 

Today many fear we are on the precipice of another civil war. We all know things are going to get worse before they get better... 

 

My generation was warned 42 years ago by a bipartisan Presidential Commission on World Hunger.  We failed and are now reaping the consequences.   Sadly, the only thing we remember about the US President who initiated that profound and prophetic commission is ‘inflation’.

 

“In the final analysis, unless Americans -- as citizens of an increasingly interdependent world -- place far higher priority on overcoming world hunger, its effects will no longer remain remote or unfamiliar.  Nor can we wait until we reach the brink of the precipice; the major actions required do not lend themselves to crisis planning, patchwork management, or emergency financing... The hour is late.  Age-old forces of poverty, disease, inequity, and hunger continue to challenge the world.  Our humanity demands that we act upon these challenges now...”    Presidential Commission on World Hunger, 1980.

 

The Commission details warned about “diseases”, “international terrorism”, “war”, “environmental problems” and “other human rights problems” (refugees, genocide, human trafficking…).  Each threatens our lives, our freedoms, and our prosperity.   Today these consequences fuel fear and generate populist movements.  Movements that make it impossible to peacefully change the course. 

 

The commission specifically warned that “The most potentially explosive force in the world today is the frustrated desire of poor people to attain a decent standard of living. The anger, despair and often hatred that result represent real and persistent threats to international order…  Neither the cost to national security of allowing malnutrition to spread nor the gain to be derived by a genuine effort to resolve the problem can be predicted or measured in any precise, mathematical way. Nor can monetary value be placed on avoiding the chaos that will ensue unless the United States and the rest of the world begin to develop a common institutional framework for meeting such other critical global threats… Calculable or not, however, this combination of problems now threatens the national security of all countries just as surely as advancing armies or nuclear arsenals.”

 

It also stated “that promoting economic development in general, and overcoming hunger in particular, are tasks far more critical to the U.S. national security than most policymakers acknowledge or even believe. Since the advent of nuclear weapons most Americans have been conditioned to equate national security with the strength of strategic military forces. The Commission considers this prevailing belief to be a simplistic illusion. Armed might represents merely the physical aspect of national security. Military force is ultimately useless in the absence of the global security that only coordinated international progress toward social justice can bring.”

 

Our failure to focus on the protection of human rights in combatting terrorism after 9-11 has cost the US twice as many lives since then.  And over six trillion in US tax dollars.  These costs will keep climbing.   The US economic cost of Covid-19 alone cost six trillion in just 4 months.  And approximately six times the number of American lives lost during 19 years fighting terrorism. 

 

It should be a self-evident truth that Covid-19 and most other threats we face today are largely the result of ignoring this report's recommendations.   Dozens of other prestigious, bipartisan studies and academic reports have followed since then.   Each report clearly documented the direct and indirect links between world hunger, conflicts, human rights violations, environmental degradation, refugees, and increasing global instability.   Accelerating threats to our nation’s security, economy, and political stability.   

 

Addressing these threats requires a comprehensive global action plan.   The good news -an affordable and achievable plan exists today.  It is the 17 Sustainable Development Goals most nations agreed upon in 2015.    Unfortunately, most Americans are unaware of this action agenda.  An agenda intended to tackle the root causes of the growing chaos we are now witnessing.  Interdependent problems, by definition, cannot be solved with independent agencies or countries.  What is missing is the political will.  The will to do what’s right  -- and make adequate investments in sustainable local, national, and planetary health for all.   Working together humanity has the potential for maximining human freedom and security globally while protecting nature.  And this can be achieved for dozens of generations to come.

 

Time is not on our side.  The evolution of pathogens, weapons, and war is outpacing our will to voluntarily change.   This by definition is literally…unsustainable.   Things change.  Can we?