THE REVOLUTION
11/13/08
by Joe Pardee

WE HAVE JUST BEGUN

Congratulations are in order for all who have participated in the successful election we have just seen. This is a victory for all the American people, not only the American people but for the people of the world if we can bring about the change that is the promise of the election.
There is going to be a worldwide party in celebration of a President Obama. Imagine a President that can speak with an intelligent understanding of the world.
 For all those that have worked and for all those that have voted for this change that we have just witnessed this is just the beginning. We must now get down to the actual work of making this a long term success.
We are ready to start our journey but first we need a road map. Right now we are at a point best described as "We are lost and confused but we are making great time." We have thousands of groups and activities with many thousands of people involved, everyone going somewhere and we need to bring them together, moving in the same direction. We should and must all continue with what we are doing. Every group and activity brings together different people and no group is suitable or capable of being all things to all people. What we need is a road map, a set of principles that we can all accept and work with to a common end. We need to define that end and then find ways to reach it.

It is time to declare a REVOLUTION.

Not a Revolution of blood and death and destruction. We must begin to bring about a new revolution. A new society of free enlightened human beings.
The American Revolution has been defined by Daniel Boorstin a former librarian at the Library of Congress as actually an Evolution. He stated in a text we used many years ago in a US History class that he felt the Colonies had actually evolved a new country in the years prior to the Revolutionary War. The war was not about creating a new country as much as it was about the American Colonies resisting the reimposition of British domination. (With all due respect this is at best a paraphrasing of his statements.)
The success of the Revolution was that it was not an attempt to overthrow a bad government and create a new one. It had been a process of creating or evolving a new government over time based on the best of the enlightened principles developed over the course of human history. When the British came back to take control and among other things tax the colonies for the benefit of the crown people rose up and rejected them.
As we enter the 21st Century we are again faced with people attempting to take over the county for their own benefit. The reactionaries have gained control of a great deal of the structure in this country in an attempt to return us to the principles of the 19th century. The Gilded Age of Robber Barons and laissez-faire government, supporting not regulating business and eliminating the progress made in the rights and responsibilities of the people and the society.
These reactionaries want to reverse all the gains made with the progressive movement beginning with Teddy Roosevelt and continuing with the New Deal of the Franklin D Roosevelt administration. Their goal is apparently to allow corporations to run the economy without government interference and to eliminate individual rights wherever it suits their purposes. Building a country based on fear and a war against TERRORISM, a replacement for Communism, as a unifying force of evil to divert our attention and a source of unending money spent on the military and war machine. Their attempt has shown itself to be an utter failure as can be seen by the economic meltdown we are experiencing.

It is time for the people of the United States of America to take control of our destinies and move the world forward.

"We are the ones we have been waiting for."

To begin this Revolution I propose the following:

DECLARATION of PURPOSE

We the progressive people of The United States of America must take a stand to move our country forward into the 21st Century.

We need to declare our support for the human rights of all people.
We need to develop a new social compact with the people of this country.  A health system and an education system that develops and maintains strong knowledgeable citizens capable of making informed decisions about themselves and the country and a social safety net to provide for people in need to prevent them from falling into a situation where they become a burden to the society. We also need a sustainable environmental policy to provide for the future. We need to define government for the 21st Century. We need to allow for capitalism to flourish within the constraints of a civil society, to allow individuals and society as a whole to benefit from the economy. We need a system of law, criminal justice and correction that actually functions for the necessary purpose. We must revamp the concept of the use of military force and move to diplomacy, advancing the United Nations to a leading role in resolving disputes before they become crises. Finally we must decide how to pay for all this by designing a fair and equitable tax system. Our international policy must be based on these rights and principals and must attempt to extend these rights and principals to the rest of the world.

We must begin to rebuild the country and the world for the 21st Century and beyond. We need to begin with a statement of human rights that encompasses all people and their right to exist without interference from others and without interfering with others rights, within a structured society brought about by the sheer number of people on the face of the earth. We are a society of nearly three hundred million (300,000,000) people in this country alone. We need to define what our needs and desires are for the society of the 21st century. We must also form a social compact with the people to advance this society to its potential as the most advanced and enlightened to ever exist. 

STATEMENT of HUMAN RIGHTS

We as human beings have the right to the privacy to control our lives without interference from other people.

We as a democratic society of free and enlightened human beings must accept and preserve the dignity and human rights of every person including the right to privacy, to exist and function as we see fit without interference from or to anyone else. These rights exist without distinction of any kind such as skin color, national or social origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, language, religion, political or other opinion, property, birth or other status, or any other characteristic or classification.  Everyone female and male has the fundamental right to privacy to control their bodies and lives. The responsibility of the state is to insure that all individuals have a full sexual education, access to medical care and access to contraception and are prepared to make an educated, informed decision about reproduction.

Any intrusion on these rights by the government, the people acting collectively, must be restricted to providing for the orderly function of the society and must be shown to be absolutely necessary to this purpose and as limited as possible.

ESTABLISHING JEFFERSON'S
"MORE PERFECT UNION…"

We must work toward perfecting Jefferson's … more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity …(US Constitution).

We need to define the purpose of government as a collective process of the people. It is the society coming together for a common purpose, to accomplish things collectively that cannot be done individually, or are accomplished in a better manor by the collective body.  The government is not something outside of us; it is us acting as a body. The reactionaries have attempted with a great deal of success to define government as a separate entity that is the enemy of the people. This is only true if we allow these people and their greedy self-serving special interests to take over our government and create a fascist state or a dictatorship, which is apparently what they are attempting.
We need to define what it is that we expect of our society and what our responsibilities are to society.
Part of the purpose of government, the collective body of the people, must be to provide for the health, education and welfare of the society to provide a strong knowledgeable citizenry capable of functioning within the society and making informed decisions about themselves and the country. We must move forward and build upon what we have developed as a civilized society. We, as human beings, are all in this together.

1. We must create a social compact with ourselves the people of the United States to provide for a healthy educated society living in a sustainable environment with a social welfare system to provide for the least among us.

2. We must redefine government as a functional part of the society.

3. The process of law and criminal justice must move into the 21st Century.

4. Commerce is very important to the country it must provide benefits to the individual and the society as a whole.

5. The defense of this country and the world has to move away from war as a way of resolving disputes. We must build the United Nations into the organization it has the potential to be.

6. We have to pay for our society by creating a fair and equitable tax system.

7. Our international policies and actions must be based on these principles and must promote human rights and these principles throughout the world.

We must also promote the 8 Millennium goals of the United Nations
which we have signed on to as a member of the UN.

There is much more to be said and I will continue in future postings. The key to this entire Revolution in thinking and establishing this set of principles is education. In my next posting I will discuss the healthy educated society.

There really is not anything new in the ideas expressed here, what is new is the concept that we as individuals all working in different ways toward a better more progressive society must begin to work with a universal set of stated principles and goals.

These principles and goals must be broad and universal, to be applied to the society as a whole and to all of our activities. Ending the war is a fine and necessary short term goal but we must also look beyond that to a new policy of not starting wars to begin with, we must establish the principle of developing the United Nations into the body it is capable of being. If we establish these larger principles and a much broader view of the world and society than the smaller goals and actions become targets along the way. As far as the war, we must not get tied down by discussions about the fine details of specific actions of the military. We have the best educated, trained and equipped force on earth. We need to tell them what we want and set goals and time tables for them to accomplish it. Our job as citizens of this country must be to state our principle, which I suggest in this case is that we do not want wars of choice started for political or any other reason and demand that our elected representatives, our employees, bring this war to an end.

We need the same action with health care. We must establish the principle of universal health care. I think that most everyone that accepts this principle realizes that the only way we are going to accomplish this is a single payer system created by expanding Medicare. It is going to take some time to bring everyone around to this but again we must not get tied up in discussion of this program against that program that tinkers around the edges of the problem, we must state what we want and then demand our representatives follow thru and accomplish this in the end.   

I realize that this is just the scratching of the surface in a long process of developing a new Revolutionary plan for the future. I want to invite all of you who read this to respond and to bring you friends and acquaintances into the discussion.

As I stated at the beginning every person and group is Important to the success of this concept of a road map of principles to a better society. Most everyone at one point or another may question or disagree with one point or another. I have been a member of the ACLU for a number of years. There are times I question the sanity of some of these decisions when I don't necessarily agree with them but the overall actions are what must be looked at.

You may respond to this on the site and or my personal Email. If you respond on my Email please include on your message line: responding to the Revolution and please keep it to a concise message as I work for a living and want to avoid being swamped by Email.

Joe Pardee
joepardee@sbcglobal.net