‘Endless Everywhere war’ ignored on Veteran's day.

“Shred the U.S. Constitution!”   That was the sentiment of government experts burdened with the secret job of America’s recovery had there been a catastrophic event during the Cold War.  Mostly former U.S. government officials - these experienced individuals were driven by the possibility of a nuclear war and the hope of rebuilding our nation after it or some other catastrophic event destroyed life as we know it.  

 

Not surprisingly they named the Declaration of Independence as the document worthy of protection.

It held the fundamental principles essential for creating any sustainable human system of government dedicated to human freedom, the fundamental promise of America’s greatness.

 

Abraham Lincoln recognized as much when our nation was close to dissolving over slavery.  That bloody civil war killed more Americans than all of our wars since then, combined.   Lincoln called the Declaration of Independence our “Apple of Gold” and our Constitution its “Frame of Silver”.   Our pledge ending with “Liberty and justice for all” reflects the same.  Having repeatedly failed this pledge Americans are now engaged in ‘endless everywhere wars’. That last stage of war’s evolution is unlikely to end well for humanity. I cannot believe that war is “hardwired” into our species” as a Marine Medal of Honor awardee said in an NPR interview on Veterans Day.  Being a soldier appeared to be the only thing he could think of to give him such a grand purpose for living.  OMG.  Where has our culture and political foundation gone so criminally and insanely wrong?

 

November 11^th was originally celebrated as Armistice Day.  Honoring ‘the War to end all Wars’ after 20 million died.  But its unjust political ending with the treaty of Versailles set the conditions leading to World War II where 50 million would die.  And after it the Korean War.  A war that our US Congress used to change that profoundly misjudged day as a holiday - to honor just US soldiers.  Now it’s Veterans Day.  An opportunity missed to actually teach of the root causes of war...as a way of ending war...and truly honoring all those who have died in them, and from them.

 

Today we are left with two prevailing yet untested passioned principles for achieving ‘peace’.  “Peace through strength’ and ‘peace through disarmament'.    Neither has a chance in hell of working.  Peace is a function of justice. FULL STOP!  No justice.  No peace!

 

War today remains an unsustainable option due to our worshiping of national sovereignty.   A logical concept that was accepted 400 years ago with the Treaty of Westphalia.  But it was fundamentally flawed in lacking justice.  Thus, it has never stopped or even slowed the wars between nations, or the evolution of war and the weapons used to wage it. 

Without a just and enforceable set of rules and regulations to peacefully hold governments accountable for any murderous actions inside or outside their borders, global chaos will continue to reign supreme and accelerate in threatening human freedom and security until we end it, or it ends us.  Put simply.  Protecting human rights and our environment must be put above the protection of National Sovereignty.  And ‘we the people’ accept this without violence or pause.

 

FDR’s wife Eleanor Roosevelt led a hopeful effort intended to remedy global injustices.  She led a project drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  It was unanimously approved on Dec. 10^th, 1948 (exactly 67 years ago and 29 days from today). Unfortunately, the UN was never given the power to enforce it.  And, within a few years, the Cold War began.  Then over the next four decades over 100 million innocent men, women, and children (mostly children) died from easily preventable malnutrition and infectious diseases - while hundreds of billions of dollars were spent on weapons to ‘prevent’ war. 

 

Nuclear weapons may have prevented another hot world war, but on Sept 11, 2001, just 19 individuals armed with razor knives and a little training used our own passenger airliners as WMD and ignited the ‘endless everywhere war’ that is burning out of control today.

 

Thus far it has cost trillions of American taxpayers dollars and twice as many American lives that were lost on the 9-11 attack itself.  Experts claim our 20-year war in Afghanistan and Iraq prevented attacks against us.  In reality, the likely hood of future catastrophic attacks and endless lone wolf attacks has only increased.  And in the last two years, there were more US deaths from domestic violent extremists since Timothy McVeigh’s attack killed 168 men, women, and children in Oklahoma City in 2015.  When (not if) today’s extremists acquire tactical efficiency in biological, chemical, nuclear, cyber, or robotics technology -- millions of Americans will likely die.   We must urgently choose another way to address the root causes of this insanity.  Time is NOT on our side. 

 

By now it should be self-evident that the most powerful military in the world cannot stop the abuse of any and every technology.   Just weeks ago the new director of our nation’s newest national security agency (CISA – Cyber and Infrastructure Security Agency) said “everything is connected, everything is interdependent, and everything is vulnerable”...we need a ‘whole of world’ approach. 

FACT 1:  When a person, group, or nation is determined to commit mass murder (with some willing to die in the process), security is an illusion.  Biosecurity and cybersecurity are oxymorons.  And anyone who believes any technology can be made safe...is a moron.  Social media will only be effectively controlled when the hearts and minds of those who use it, grasp the fundamental principle that ‘united we stand’ – stand a chance of maximizing humanities freedoms and security.  And ‘divided’, we are doing down.

 

FACT 2:  US military involvement since 9-11 has created more committed murderous extremists than existed before 9-11.   Don’t believe that our most capable and honorable military force will be able to stop a biological weapon entering our nation or truck bombs from obliterating our public buildings.  Understand that a cyber-attack, an EMP event, or someone with a book of matches can target our vulnerable infrastructure and inflict mass murder.   A recent GAO study of our military's most sophisticated weapons systems reported that 80 percent were hackable by relatively simple methods. 

 

We fail to realize that our Constitution as it is, cannot protect us.  And is actually making things worse.  Any serious effort to detect and then preempt a domestic attack must inevitably violate our 4^th Amendment. And with the recent rise in domestic ‘terrorism’ irreversibly linked to a global White Supremacy movement that is catastrophically clear.   

 

This is often framed as a freedom/security dilemma.  Its best resolution requires deeper thinking beyond our primal fears.  This can start by thoroughly understanding the evolution of weaponry and war itself.  Then calculate the costs of future war.  Then realize It can no longer be calculated in terms of lost blood and treasure.  But we could lose civilization as we know it.  

 

After the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, someone asked Albert Einstein “What weapons would WW III be fought with?’  Einstein wisely answered that he didn’t know.   But he was certain that “WW IV would be fought with sticks and stones.” 

 

Exponential advances in every technology now yields unprecedented killing capacity to almost anyone with a serious grudge and enough money to buy a car, truck, or computer.    The dual-use nature of every technology means that any disarmament effort can easily be thwarted with human creativity if the will is there to commit mass murder.  

 

With or without the Second Amendment we will not be safe.  Take guns away and cars or trucks can be used to slaughter dozens.   Timothy McVeigh, a former US soldier used his knowledge, a rental truck, fuel oil, fertilizer, some copper wire, and a timer.  In seconds nearly 200 people died.

 

This one factor of ‘dual-use technology’ should fundamentally shift our approach to war, peace, and security.  And now we know that intentional mass murder isn’t the only or even the greatest threat we face.  Pandemics, global warming, supervolcanoes, asteroids, and now Artificial Intelligence are also grave threats to our freedom and security.  If you doubt this read Global Catastrophic Risks 2018 https://globalchallenges.org/en/our-work/annual-report/annual-report-2018

Or the NOVEMBER 3, 2021  FBI and Homeland Officials Testify on Domestic Terrorism before the House Intelligence Committee on agency efforts to counter domestic terrorism. The witnesses answered questions on a variety of topics, including the rise of white supremacy, the protection of civil rights and civil liberties, the role of social media in the spread of extremist ideas, distrust of federal law enforcement agencies, and the U.S. attorney general’s investigation into threats made against local school board members.   FBI and Homeland Security Officials Testify on Domestic Terrorism

 

 

Yet our nation’s war budging priorities have only escalated.  Remember, we were already spending more on defense than the 7 next largest national military budgets combined -- most of those are our allies. And budgeting for a Space Force to address the weaponization of space.

 

Few lawmakers consider the opportunity costs of relying on weapons to protect us.  The funding that could have been invested in preventing other threats we know will come and now did come as Covid19.   Or used to prepare for threats that we can never really prevent like a super volcano or EMP event.

 

Most expert discussions about any national security threat now stress the word ‘resilience’.  They know we aren’t going to be able to prevent them given the limited funds of our government, the constraints of our Constitution, and the abhorrent stultification of our elected policy-making bodies.

 

Those who study ‘war’ or ‘peace’ need to get rapidly schooled regarding the fundamental causes of both and the advantages of addressing systemic causes rather than symptoms. 

 

This perpetual reactionary approach is simply unsustainable economically.  And in this context the education of all Americans is the most vital element essential to our national security, preserving our freedoms, and continued prosperity.   Still unknown to most Americans is the weighty conclusion of the final report of the bipartisan Presidential Commission on National Security in the 21^st Century.  Released just six months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, it concluded that the lack of education in the US secondary and university level institutions was the second greatest threat to our national security.   Terrorism was #1.  As evidenced in the GOP Governor victory in VA early this month, liberals continue to fear the use of fear in using education in the context of national security in motivating its voters.

 

In honoring our veterans in the future or celebrating the 100^th anniversary of the end of WW I we could also remember (or learn about) President Kennedy’s creation of the Peace Corps.  He knew the foundation of peace.  And its trainees also risked their lives in villages and hamlets around the world to bring education, health care and farming to the poor.  They deserved to be honored as much as military veterans.  Our brave military veterans who recently served in Iraq, Afghanistan, or nations in Africa rightfully debate the value of having our military do nation-building.  And some of our best military leaders acknowledge that if we don’t fund more humanitarian efforts we need to “buy more bullets”.

 

Fundamentally, ‘we the people’ need to urgently redefine what is meant by national security.  And how it must be achieved.   The answer lies mostly in how we decide to use our Constitution to address the root causes of war, disease, genocide, hunger, poverty, and other global injustices.  We must put all people first.  Not our national pride or self-interests.   This is the biblical concept that helped create our great nation.  Failing this, we will increasingly fail to be great.  It may be our only means of keeping ahead of China in global standings.

 

I’m offering a new meaning of the acronym NFL.  Forty-one years ago another bipartisan Presidential Commission (on World Hunger) unanimously offered a practical means of maximizing our national security.  “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...” 

 

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 as the growing scarcity of fossil fuels and other non-renewable resources, environmental hazards, pollution of the seas, and international terrorism. 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.”

 

Today, the best means of addressing these global injustices is the 17 Sustainable Development Goals that every nation agreed to in 2015.  Funding them can be done without increasing any debt to any government.  Freezing and then seizing illicit wealth stashed in offshore accounts (see Pandora Papers) could start to achieve these affordable, attainable, and nationally agreed-upon goals using solutions that already exist.   What’s needed is the political will that could be achieved if each of the major progressive movements (peace, environment, and social/economic justice) and the tens of thousands of not-for-profit organizations within each of them, come together as a Movement of movements, to pass legislation to make it happen. 

Each member of Congress swore to protect the Constitution.  It cannot protect them, you, or your loved ones without using it to achieve “liberty and justice for all”.   That is what most of us have pledged to do thousands of times.  

So much of what we have been doing...and continue to do...is simply unsustainable.

Time is running out.   

 

 

Plandemic? No! Panflation? Yes!

 Plandemic? No!  Panflation?  Yes!

Inflation, inflation, inflation... It's now in every news report and political commentary and is primarily used to bash Biden instead of enlightening the masses.   But inflation is like cats. Not all cats are the same. Some are the furry domesticated kind. Another, a man-eating Siberian tiger.   This current inflation is certainly a new hybrid cat.  It should be called ‘panflation’ for its unprecedented mix of factors.

I’m no economist but I do know that the global Covid19 pandemic worked like an X-ray exposing every flawed and broken system in our national and global governance systems.  Yet our current President is catching flack for it.

Massive injections of government money flowing into the economy started before he was elected.  And this inflation may not even be the primary cause of rising prices.  There are multiple factors involved.  Some directly related to the pandemic which the last President called a hoax.

Some companies have been raising prices due to “cost recovery fees” and “supply-chain surcharges”.  David Lazarus reported in the LA Times that when Bob Klatskin emailed Brinks home Security about a $1.97 “cost recovery fee” on top of his $4.0 monthly bill, he was told the fee was supposed to cover the “increased costs of providing service.” Klatskins’s Brinks contract states that total service costs won’t increase by more than 5 percent per year. But the new fee guarantees a higher price hike.  The Sherwin- Williams paint company recently added a 4% “supply chain charge” onto the bill at the cash register.

Technically, inflation is normally related to a good and growing economy.   Our economic growth is good (mainly for the well-off) and unemployment is falling.  The new infrastructure bill and BBB budget could improve that....but the pandemic certainly causes a loss of jobs that are slowly coming back. 

Consider the economic principle of “supply and demand”.

When supply is down, prices go up.  When demand is high, prices go up.  The hit on ‘supply’ currently is pandemic and employment-related brakes in supply chains. And pent-up demand is now going ballistic... also driving up prices.   The pre-covid “Just in time” delivery was crippled by several factors related to the pandemic.  Where production was halted to prevent the spread of the contagion, or the contagion infected the production making people sick or dead, there was bound to be less produced.  And those involved in shipping suffered similar reductions.  Demands for other services (food, transportation, entertainment...) also fell as trillions in economic assistance were pumped into the economy to prevent a collapse.  Some demands like home repairs, construction, and fitness movement went up as people were trapped at home with money to spend.  Further reducing supplies.  None of this was Biden’s fault.  Much could rightfully be put on those before him who ignored the decades of warnings or misinformed the public during the pandemic.

Understand that the highest rates of inflation of goods in the US are connected to energy and food.  And roughly a 5% rise in most other goods and services.   Energy and food are both essentials for a healthy economy and population.  Both are also heavily sourced from offshore then imported in.  

Agriculture prices normally fluctuate and are hard to pin to any common inflation numbers.  Prices went down for a while on oil...but now rising globally for a multitude of reasons.  Reasons mostly unrelated to Biden policies yet linked by creative political hacks. 

Other production and supply limiting factors include extreme weather events (droughts, wildfires, hurricanes, and flooding), cyber ransomware attacks (Colonial Pipeline), and human error (Suez Canal blockage).  These also are not Biden’s doing. 

With so many things limiting supplies in most products, prices were bound to rise.   

Here’s the reality.   Biden has a flotilla of problems to solve that could have been prevented if other US Presidents and elected members of both parties had listened to experts and taken collective action on their wise recommendations to prepare for pandemics or prevent climate change. 

 Unfortunately, short-term thinking of voters and those seeking votes doesn’t allow for preventive actions.  Our national desire for short-term ‘feel good’ solutions based on what we believe or ‘looks good’ to our tribe - is far more important than doing or being good in preventing costly policies like a 20-year war in Afghanistan, or how we treat each another. Consider our homeless problem. US military troops going hungry, or an opioid deaths crisis out of control.   Then there are those in dire need at our borders...because of our own failings in foreign policy for at least 4 decades in central and South America.  Sort-term feeling and looking good politics are NOT in our nation’s long-term interest.   

 

 

Two Constitutional fundamental flaws

 Dear Editor, (submitted Oct. 26, 2021 but not acknowledged or printed)

Former Congressman Garry Giffords’ disturbing list of violent and lethal attacks (Attacks on Politicians…Oct. 25, 2021) on US policymakers and other elected officials in increasingly unstable democracies missed two fundamental factors inflaming human passions.

The first.  Democracies don’t work. Never have.  Never will.  Majority decisions rarely reflect reality.  You can peg this habit to tribalism, cognitive dissonance, apathy, or simply gross individual ignorance regarding the multitude of disrupters that threaten everyone’s freedoms and security -- and the sustainability of our essential environmental infrastructure.  But then you would miss the other underlying engineering flaw of our government and governance systems.  The absence of justice.

They are both based on “independence” – a mental illusion that exists nowhere in the known universe.  This delusional principle infects the human mind to prioritize freedom – and ignore responsibility.   Wise minds have always understood that acting irresponsibly has negative consequences. 

Read the preamble to the Constitution.  It has six fundamental intentions that few people on earth would reject.  Everything after the preamble (except a few Amendments) is largely responsible for inflaming most civil discontent.  Too many laws passed with these are unjust.  Our Constitution is a legal system, not a justice system.  Its failure to “establish Justice” explains its failure to ‘insure domestic tranquility” and every other preamble intention.

Inscribed above the entrance to the US Dept. of Justice is “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.”

For those of us who have benefited from the status quo of our unjust system, it is hard to imagine the lethal rage of those at the effect of it.  It has been our sustained comforts and the failure of our imagination that has been fueling such discontent with our government and elected officials for decades.  From the Oklahoma City Bombing to the attacks on 9-11.  Real or perceived injustices drive rational minds to consider lethal violence when their fundamental rights have no majority appeal in a flawed or non-existing (international law) justice system. 

The founders insisted on the 2^nd Amendment as a check on any irresponsible government.  The founders also included our capacity to alter the Constitution.  Unfortunately, our dysfunctional two-party democratic system prevents that.

Thomas Ricks, in his book “First Principles” identified the word “virtue” as a core value of the founders.  It was used over 6000 times in the 120,000 archived digitized documents he searched.  Virtue appeared more than “freedom”.  

Abraham Lincoln once wrote that our Declaration of Independence is our “Apple of Gold”.  And our Constitution its ‘frame of silver’.    It is guaranteed that things are going to get worse, a lot worse until our elected officials understand the need to consistently codify federal laws that are consistent with “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God”.  And start swearing an oath to protect these instead of an inherently flawed Constitution.

Once we fully grasp the reality of our global interdependence, the common phrase “US interests” would be replaced by ‘humanities interests’.  Then for the first time in US history, our nation would have a virtuous foreign policy.  And laws that finally reflect every American’s flag pledge of “liberty and justice for all”. 

Chuck Woolery   chuck@igc.org   240-997-2209

315 Dean Dr., Rockville, MD 20851

 

 

Virtue of greater value than freedom!

 

Dear Editor, (not printed in the WTimes as of 10-13-21)

Everett Piper displayed a profound misinterpretation of Dr. Fauci’s comments in Canada (“Small man’s disease...” Op-ed, Washington Times 10-11-21).   If the founding fathers of our great nation read what Mr. Piper wrote, they would laugh.

Anyone reading the quotes of those wise souls would readily grasp the vital importance of individuals being “responsible” with their freedoms -- if they intend to keep them.   In writing his book “First Principles” (an in-depth study Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and Madison’s sources of wisdom) Thomas Ricks’ researched “some 120,000 documents in the U.S. National Archives’ database, Founders Online”. He found the word “virtue” mentioned about “6000 times”.  More often than the word “freedom”! 

In our nation’s revolutionary days the word ‘virtue’ had a different and very powerful meaning.   It was understood as an “essential element of public life” --  good men ”putting the common good before one’s own interests.”  Ricks quoted the historian Joyce Appleby who asserted that virtue was the ‘lynchpin’ of public life – that is, the fastener that held together the structure.”

In this proper context, Mr. Piper lacks a realistic understanding of what it takes to keep Americans in our freedom-loving nation healthy, alive, and united.   This pandemic has already killed more Americans than our last Civil war (which took more American lives than all the wars Americans had fought in since then…combined!)  If Mr. Piper continues his irresponsible rhetoric, his ignorance of biology, history, and reality may be turning this highly lethal rhetorical war into another bloody civil war.  

Off shore illicit funds needed for global security

 

Dear Editor, (10-4-21):  NOT printed in the post.  Not even acknowledged.  

Finally!  The “billions” (and more likely trillions of dollars) stashed in offshore accounts made the Post’s front page!   I write trillions because that was printed in the Post’s “Five myths about Kleptocracy, By Natalie Duffy and Nate Sibley (both researchers at Hudson Institute’s Kleptocracy Initiative) 1-8-2017.   They referred to a 2012 report asserting that at least $32 trillion may be stashed in these anonymous havens by kleptocrats, oligarchs, international crime cartels, violent extremist groups, and rich capitalists avoiding taxes.   https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-kleptocracy/2017/01/04/42b30d72-c78f-11e6-8bee-54e800ef2a63_story.html . 

A later Post news article alleged that US authorities don’t know who owns approximately half of all the US homes valued at over $5 million in our nation’s wealthiest cities.  This anonymity is compliments of the greed of the US real estate industry lobby. 

And if that isn’t enough corruption corroding our nation’s financial system - that corruption also inflames our greatest national security threats (the forces of poverty that fuel hunger, pandemics, wars, environmental destruction, populism, refugee flows, species extinctions, indebtedness, and terrorism. Another news source April 5, 2017 (MARTIN KENNEY: PUT YOUR OWN TAX HAVENS IN ORDER, AMERICA, by Martin Kenney asserted that the U.S. holds 20 percent of the global market for financial services for non-residents with foreign assets of $16.75 trillion (2013), and foreign direct investment of $3 trillion (2014). http://www.fcpablog.com/blog/2017/4/5/martin-kenney-put-your-own-tax-havens-in-order-america.html#sthash.IiaU0HjG.dpufhttp://www.fcpablog.com/blog/2017/4/5/martin-kenney-put-your-own-tax-havens-in-order-america.html

In 2015 the United Nations offered the world a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals to achieve by the year 2030, and most nations have agreed to meet them.  These remain a comprehensive and holistic approach intended to address the root causes now driving most of our accelerating threats.  A lack of financial resources is not the problem.  Just the lack of political will and wise foresight to grasp that a “whole of government” approach cannot work against hyper corrupt globalization.   We need a whole of government's effort.  First to freeze these illicit funds. Then seize them and devote what is needed to actually achieve these wise goals.  Is there anything else that could bring our nation or our world together during this increasingly tense and chaotic time?    It is increasingly a self-evident truth that time is not on our side.  The momentum of change around us cannot be stopped with the glacial speed at which our democratic political systems change.  Why do we continue to ignore the warnings?

Freezing and seizing some of the $32 trillion stashed in offshore accounts could go a long way toward meeting the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.. 

 "The accomplice to the crime of corruption is frequently our own indifference" Bess Myerson

Religion's Purpose: On Columbus/Indiginous People's Day

 

Like economics, politics, science, and technology-- religion is a tool.

 

A multi-use tool.   Our mind (also a tool) can use each of these tools for saving lives, improving health, reducing suffering, or bringing life as we know it to an end on this unique planet.

 

Religious beliefs, rituals, and practices have the power to leverage the human mind to control the body in undertaking the noblest of actions - or committing the most horrific atrocities. It is we who decide what our minds will believe.  Choose wisely. Not just on what religion, ethnicity, or culture you were born into.   Heritage is important. But it should not be more important than the sustainable survival and thriving of humankind. 

 

There are an estimated 4,300 religions in the world with new ones being invented each year.  The seven most popular religions represent about 75% of the world’s people.  Christianity alone has an estimated 40,000 variations.  

Each religion has its own variations of beliefs, rituals, and practices.  But the popular religions are each based on a single call to action.  We know this as ‘the Golden Rule” – ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’.

This maxim is found in most religions and cultures for a reason.  It has a sound biological and moral underpinning of empathy, compassion, honesty, kindness, generosity, and trust.  It is linked to justice. 

Thus, justice, the Golden Rule, and the Jesus story of the Good Samaritan all represent a self-evident truth.  A fundamental principle essential for sustainably securing the “Blessings of Liberty for ourselves and our posterity.”

In summary, the primary purpose of religion is to encourage us to be more virtuous.  We don’t need religion or even mediation to do that.  But it can help!  Unfortunately, in today’s world people too often believe that their beliefs are the truth.   A truth they are easily willing to sacrifice their lives for, or the lives of others who believe differently.  It is within this shallow and stubborn mindset that our own greatest and most immediate threat has been created.   It’s not climate change!  It is what our minds have created with science and technology in a world lacking justice.  Both nations, groups, and individuals now have an unprecedented capacity for mass murder.  Combined with economic beliefs that are driven by selfishness that has perpetuated global poverty and continues to trash our environmental infrastructure while ignoring our vital yet crumbling national physical infrastructures that Americans all depend on.

Even before the creation of the atom bomb Albert Einstein wrote “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” Albert Einstein, 1941

Next 4^th of July read the Declaration of Independence and deeply consider the two law sets (the Laws of Nature and Nature's God) that led to the phrase “all men are created equal”.  If you think “men” only mean ‘males’ remember who birthed and protected, you when your survival was most dependent on a female’s breast and loving care. And that males are all missing a fourth of the chromosome that mostly determines one’s sexual attributes.  Not always.  But mostly.  We all possess fundamental God-given rights, to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness – however, we define happiness.

And don’t forget that our founding fathers believed most in the value of virtue (mentioned 6000 times in more than 120,000 documents they exchanged between themselves and others).  More than freedom!  Back then the word virtue was understood as an “essential element of public life”.  It implied good men “putting the common good before one’s own interests.”  Historian Joyce Appleby asserted that virtue was the ‘lynchpin’ of public life – that is, the fastener that held together the structure.”   Religion may be the greatest human path to virtue.  But it is not the only one.

I’ll assert that nothing destroys the respect that many people have for religion…than those who do not practice the Golden Rule.  And most threats humankind faces are exacerbated by that.

 

20 yrs after 9-11: What hasn't yet been stressed?

 

Post 9/11: Truth or Continued Consequences:  What hasn't been stressed yet? 

What did 9-11, Covid19, the Covid variants, the end of our 20-year war in Afghanistan, recent extreme weather events globally, and a decline in democracy in many nations all have in common?  First, they were all predictable, predicted, and preventable. Second, more costly blood and treasure consequences are yet to come - unless we understand the root cause and urgently act on it.   

Everyone who was conscious on September 11, 2001, recalls the events of that day. But understanding both the origins and the results of 9/11 is far more important than any acts of remembrance that we might perform. If we truly care to honor those who died and suffered on that unforgettable day, we must use our powers of understanding to develop sustainable strategies for preventing the next terrorizing event that might occur. Understanding must matter more than body counts.

The Post’s lead editorial of 9/11 cites Abraham Lincoln's statement that, when combating danger "the best defense (against the dangers of his time) …lay in cultivating robust 'reverence for the Constitution and laws,' " as well as his hopes that doing so "would inspire and sustain the people's commitment to liberty and equality." 

In his writings, Lincoln also described the Declaration of Independence as “our apple of gold” and the Constitution as its “frame of silver.” To my mind, these analogies reflect our foundational goal of equality for all people, as invoked in the Declaration.   But our “rule of law, as detailed in the Constitution ignores both the concept of justice and humanities inalienable rights.  The Constitution’s reliance on the proposition of independence — a deeply flawed concept rooted deeply in our minds has not delivered justice or consistently protected human rights since its creation.  From the start it was engineered into every level of our nation’s government.

Many Americans today proclaim their allegiance to individual liberty at the freedom to infect others in their communities.  For a significant portion US citizens “independence” has come to denote the license to act irresponsibly without regard for the medical, environmental, or economic consequences their actions on others (rejecting masks, refusing vaccinations, or denying climate change).

This prevalent fusion of “freedom” with “self-gratification” has long consequences for rest of the world too. For many decades our foreign and military policies have disparaged other cultures as unworthy of the respect and privilege that we ourselves take for granted; we’ve dismissed foreign casualties as “collateral damage”, communist or terrorist sympathizers, or humans irrelevant to our nation’s interests.

My studies as a biologist and student of the natural world have made the fundamental flaws in our Constitution to be “self-evident”.  They consistently ignore the “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” expressed in the first paragraph of our “Apple of Gold” the Declaration of Independence.   Interdependence is at the heart of nature’s laws. Chief Seattle (1780-1866), the head of the Duwamish and Suquamish nations, saw this clearly: “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."   Yet most of us ignore our irreversible global interdependence environmentally, economically, militarily, and health wise.   Without being responsible with our freedoms abroad we cannot expect to sustainably preserve our freedom, security, or prosperity here. 

Until we grasp the wisdom and survival value of putting the global protection of human rights and the environment above the protection of national sovereignty and corporate power, our vulnerability to the kind of dangers inflicted on 9/11 will grow.  Sustaining what quality of life that remains and improving it for ourselves and our children we must abandon the illusion of independence.

 

Our interdependence within this nation and on this planet is accelerating and irreversible. Nearly every troubling trend we are experiencing today is a symptom of our delusion of separation. There is a medical term for this mental condition – anosognosia.  It is when someone is unaware of their own mental health condition.  In a world with the accelerating evolution of weapons, pathogens, failing democracies, and civil strife It’s time for a wake-up call.

Our human-created construct of independence is responsible for our persistent failure to understand and respond effectively to nearly every danger we face (pandemics, pollution, terrorism, cyber security, economic stability, drug trade, refugee flows, food insecurity, extreme weather events…), each with lethal and unfavorable consequences for all — both here and abroad.

We can no longer simply react when disaster strikes. We can no longer build back to what we had before. It’s imperative now that we build forward in ways that prevent dangers and conserve limited resources.  It is our only means of maximizing any sustainable prospects of freedom, security, and prosperity for ourselves and our posterity.  Most nations have agreed to achieve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals by the year 2030.  It is the only comprehensive set of solutions we have, and humanity is not on track to meet them.  Time is not on our side…and e may not get another chance. 

The truth of our interdependence can set us free.  Ignoring it will only have more unfavorable consequences.  

“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.

"A human being is part of the whole, called by us 'Universe'; a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but striving for such achievement is, in itself, a part of the liberation, and a foundation for inner security."   -Albert Einstein.  As quoted in Quantum Reality, Beyond the New Physics, p. 250.

"Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good."  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man [1791]

Yet reading his pamphlet “Common Sense” he concludes that the concept of complete independence is impossible. And, unless one does good in all things, one’s freedom and security can never be completely free of the negative consequences.