Egalitarianism

The Declaration of Independence states that "all men are created equal." But what happens after these people are created? Are they still provided with equal opportunities to attain the "inalienable rights" of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"? Egalitarians are individuals who are devoted to the proposition of keeping men (and women) equal long after their creation. There are various types of egalitarianism addressing different types of inequalities. It seems to me that there are a number of significant inequalities in our society today. Four types of inequalities which I consider to be apparent in the United States are economic, political, civil, and social inequalities.

In the United States, the economic inequality, or the unequal distribution of wealth, is startling. According to inequality.org and the Economic Policy Institute, "The richest one percent of U.S. households now owns 34.3 percent of the nation's private wealth, more than the combined wealth of the bottom 90 percent." The top 10% of the people in the United States own 71% of the wealth. That is a striking inequality and indicates the level of concentrated wealth and power in the United States.

Economic egalitarianism is based on the principle that each and every person in a society has equal standing and equal opportunity in the realm of economic wealth and power. In a more egalitarian society, the strikingly unequal distribution of wealth seen in our society, with an enormous amount of wealth concentrated in the hands of a very small minority of the population, would be much lessened. The poor would be helped and made richer, and the rich individuals and entities would still remain very well-off but not to the point of the present ludicrous concentration of opulence. The key, though, here is not to target the rich but to extend a hand to pull up and out those who are currently suffering from poverty, desolation, and despair. In an egalitarian society, no one would be poor to the point of desolation, and no one would be rich to the point of disgusting opulence, monopolizing a huge amount of the resources of society. I think that increasing economic equality will lead to a more generally healthy economy and nation (a greater number of people will be happy and content with money to save and spend); that furthering the cause of economic egalitarianism will help to eliminate both poverty and severe concentration of wealth and power.

Economic inequality leads to political inequality, the second type of inequality that I mentioned. I say this for two reasons: (1) the ones who can afford to donate the most money to political campaigns achieve the most influence in the government; and (2) political and financial elites are often the same people because of the connection between money and politics (and the need for millions of dollars to win an election), so financial elites often get elected to political office. Consequently, the wealthy and the corporations achieve greater influence in our government than the masses of the people. That is an example of political inequality, the disproportionate and unequal distribution of power.

Political egalitarianism is based on the principle that each and every citizen in a society has equal political power and influence. This indicates that, in a more egalitarian society, direct democracy, in which each citizen has just one vote, would be used. The United States is not a direct democracy. First of all, it uses an "electoral college" rather than a national popular vote to determine its President of the United States, and secondly, it is an indirect democracy in the way that the citizens elect representatives who will make policy decisions for them (instead of the citizens directly making policy decisions themselves with such a proposal as the National Initiative for Democracy). I think that furthering the cause of political egalitarianism will do much to further this grand experiment of democracy in human governance that our forefathers embarked upon centuries ago.

But, as for the present, high-minded ideals give way to cold reality. Recollect the statistic that I quoted previously, that a mere 10% of the people in this nation control the vast majority, 71%, of the wealth. The bottom 90% only owns 29% of the wealth. And, as economic inequality breeds political inequality, so this bottom 90% mass of the citizenry has greatly lessened influence in the government and the wealthiest 10% of citizens and corporations have greatly increased, although decidedly undemocratic influence. This disparity in the influences of particular groups upon the government, I believe, makes it so that the priorities in government are skewed and wrongly organized. The civil and social rights of the People are neglected and destroyed, while the rights of corporations are closely guarded. I will provide a recent example of this. Last year, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 2008 was passed by a Democratic Congress. This bill provided immunity for telecommunications companies which helped the National Security Agency and the government spy on telephone conversations. The bill ignored the civil liberties of working people while improving the civil liberties of corporations. One of these telecommunications corporations granted immunity by the FISA bill passed in Congress was AT&T; a couple weeks later, should it have been any surprise when the AT&T logo was emblazoned on the official bag of the Democratic National Convention? AT&T was one of the convention's corporate sponsors. The people within the government, using the system of government itself, have compromised individual liberty in favor of corporate liberty, and that is unacceptable, and all due to the influence of rich corporations upon the government. Corruption ensues. Money is power, and power corrupts, and so therefore money corrupts. Particularly when the money is concentrated in so few hands; and this has proved true in the case of the government.

Economic inequality produced political inequality, and, as I have illustrated above, with the gifting of civil liberties to corporations which removing them from individual citizens, political inequality produces civil inequality (or inequality in the realm of civil liberties). Inequality builds upon itself. Inequality anywhere is a threat to equality everywhere, to paraphrase Martin Luther King, Jr. Look back in history and you will see examples of how this inequality compounds upon itself. People shipped from Africa to America centuries ago (presumably not wealthy people, as it would probably have been troublesome to drag rich princes and such onto a slave ship) were ripped from their native lands and enslaved and made desolate by rich landowners in America. They had no political influence and were not granted freedom from slavery, let alone any other human rights, in the United States until a terrible civil war made it exceedingly necessary, for the survival of the nation, to abolish slavery. These individuals, in the difficult climb up from slavery and desolation, were still fighting for equal civil rights one hundred years after slavery had been abolished, and being equal socially in the eyes of American society would take even longer than that. Until then, African Americans suffered from the prejudices brought by social inequality.

Social inequality, the fourth and final inequality that I mentioned in the beginning of this article, is the inequality of persons or groups in the eyes of a society. This is different from civil inequality, as that is the inequality of persons or groups in the laws of a government. (One modern example is that of GLBT rights; civil unions only provide a measure of civil equality, as in the laws of government, while not providing equality in the eyes of the society itself by allowing GLBT individuals to marry just as heterosexual couples would.) Social inequality is much more fluid and much more difficult to lessen and eradicate than civil inequality. The entire enlightenment level of a society has to improve for social inequality to disappear; it can’t be dealt with by simply writing up a law to change it. Increasing economic equality will increase political equality, which in turn will increase civil equality and social equality over time.

I believe that these egalitarian philosophies of de-concentrating and making more equal economic and political power are good and necessary to advancing the progress of our nation, addressing increasing inequalities in American society, and creating a more equal and democratic society which truly exemplifies the principle that all people are created equal, with equal opportunities for self-betterment and contribution to their country and the world.

2008 Presidential Election approaches

As the 2008 Presidential Election is now so fast-approaching, I suppose that I should now take the opportunity to clearly state my sentiments on it. I think that Obama and McCain are essentially good people. But they have been corrupted by the political system which they inhabit and are not, I believe, capable of bringing about the fundamental reforms which our country truly needs.

For example, on foreign policy, McCain and Obama, both corrupted by the military-industrial complex and other pressures such as the militaristic and pro-Israel AIPAC, are American imperialists who will continue to police the world; who will not cut the bloated military budget; who will continue to espouse American exceptionalism; who totally ignore the humanitarian crisis among the Palestinian people on the Gaza Strip; who will, by their espoused policies, keep us in Iraq for an undetermined period of time (Obama with his "residual forces") and likely turn Iraq into a new Germany, or Vietnam, with American forces remaining there long after the fighting has ended. Both McCain and Obama will both mistakenly treat the "War on Terror" as an actual, physical war---when it should be instead a police and intelligence action. Obama wants to expand the size of the military by 100,000 people. Obama and McCain, it seems to me, will both be incapable of bringing needed reforms to American foreign policy, because they are interventionists who shall police the world because they are owned lock, stock, and barrel by the military-industrial complex, the defense industries who donate to their political campaigns.

I believe that both Obama and McCain will be similarly unable to bring reforms on the domestic front, particularly in the realm of addressing our economic problems. Both candidates have been corrupted by the influence of corporations on Wall Street, and they both voted for the $700 billion bail-out of Wall Street accordingly. Some of that bail-out is now being used by corporations to pay the salaries and bonuses of company executives. Obama/McCain, it seems to me, are too busy representing the interests of rich corporations to represent the interests of the working people, and I think that Obama/McCain will continue to maintain these qualities when they are elected, for the most part. They do not support and make no indication that they will fight for a living wage, fair trade policies (to protect the worker), cutting the military budget so that that money can be re-directed to education and infrastructure, blocking another bail-out of Wall Street, a prescription drug benefit which would pay for all of the prescription drugs of seniors, and many other such things which would benefit working people and those living in poverty. The only thing that may be accomplished, by Obama, due to great public demand, is a universal healthcare system, and even of that I am doubtful due to Obama's campaign contributions from insurance companies.

The issue of civil liberties is of specific importance. Obama and McCain both voted for the re-authorization of the Patriot Act, which harms the American right to privacy (by allowing law enforcement officials to search an individual's telephone, medical, e-mail, financial, and other records) and generally tramples upon constitutional rights. A number of the Patriot Act's provisions have been ruled unconstitutional by Federal courts. In addition, neither Obama nor McCain support the LGBT right to marry; Obama supports "civil unions" but not outright marriage, while McCain takes a "states'-rights" stance on the issue and is unsupportive of gay marriage and civil unions. But I contend that it is unconstitutional to discriminate and not allow this group to have the same rights as heterosexual people.

However, both Obama and McCain supported corporate liberties with the 2008 FISA (Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act) bill. This bill provided immunity for telecommunications companies which helped the National Security Agency and the government spy on telephone conversations. Liberties for the ordinary citizens: bad; but liberties for corporations: good. Obama and McCain have, in these stated instances, ignored the civil liberties of working people while improving the civil liberties of corporations. One of these corporations granted immunity by the FISA bill passed in Congress was AT&T; a couple weeks later, should it have been any surprise when the AT&T logo was emblazoned on the official bag of the Democratic National Convention? AT&T was one of the convention's corporate sponsors. The two major candidates and parties have compromised individual liberty in favor of corporate liberty, and that is unacceptable.

The fact of the matter, it seems to me, is that the candidates will be unable to make needed reforms when they are immeshed in a system corrupted and controlled by entities who are opposed to these reforms. It is a broken system of government, one of concentrated power and wealth; one controlled by the few and not the many; one which is not truly a democracy of the people, by the people, and for the people. The appeal of Independent Presidential candidate Ralph Nader is that he seeks to reverse this. He wishes to give the power to the people and shift the power from the few to the many. He bucks corrupting corporations and special interests---he has fought corporations during his entire career as a consumer advocate. Nader opposed the Wall Street bail-out, the telecom immunity in the FISA bill, and the Patriot Act; he advocates cutting the bloated military budget and repealing America's militaristic foreign policies in the Middle East and elsewhere; he supports a living wage, fair trade policies (to protect manufacturing jobs), the repeal of the anti-union Taft-Hartley Act, and other things to give greater power to the workers; and etcetera.

A vote for Ralph Nader is a protest vote well worth making. It is a protest vote against corporate control of government in our country. It is a protest vote against all that has subverted our democracy, broken our system, corrupted our government, and silenced the voices of the people. It is a protest vote against compromising the general welfare in favor of the corporate welfare. It is a protest vote against the two corrupt parties who have not made much progress on any of the major issues for the past few decades, who have not succeeded in making needed reforms during these past few decades, and who are so immeshed in the corruption surrounding our government that for them to attempt to destroy it would be like someone attempting to cut off their own leg. And that protest vote is, in my view, the only vote worth making in this 2008 Presidential Election.

Moral Leadership

This is about Moral Leadership in the United States and the World. To start off with, perhaps I should define what "moral" means, in my view of the term. In my mind, moral does not mean religious, though many people seem to think that it does. I see morality as differentiating between right and wrong---I see morality as doing what is right and just and compassionate---as acting in a fashion that is respectful and loving of your fellow human beings and of the earth as a whole, and, naturally, not taking unnecessary action to harm your fellows and the earth---as demonstrating the common human decency which unites us all but which we often forget unites us. Acting upon these basic principles and ideas is, in my view, the definition of moral leadership. There is nothing religious about these ideas, unless religiosity is the same as humanity, and the human race and religion are not synonymous (the ideas within the Bible and other documents, it seems to me, however heretical this may be, are simply expressions of humanity).

So, now that I have informed you of my view of moral leadership, I suppose that the next thing to do is examine whether the United States's leadership has been consistently moral during the 20th and 21st centuries, the modern era. I am personally inclined to the opinion that morality has not been the primary concern of most leaders. I will provide some examples. During the years 1959 to 1975, fifty-eight thousand American soldiers were killed, over three hundred thousand were wounded, and millions of south-east Asian civilians were killed in the Vietnam War, a war that was sustained by lies and deceptions from American leaders. During the 1990's, five hundred thousand children died in Iraq for lack of adequate medical care, due to sanctions by the U.S. Government. During the years 2003 to 2008, over four thousand American soldiers--young men and women--have died in the Iraq War, as have tens or hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, as the result of a purposeful deception by American leaders. And the United States is now also under criticism for the Iraqi displacement crisis: millions of Iraqis, over three million, have fled the country since the March 2003 United States invasion--a deplorable state of affairs. There have obviously been a number of leaders in recent history who have disregarded the restraints of conscience.

Recalling these historical and current events, it occurs to me that politics is an occupation where little to nothing is framed in moral terms, and yet it is the occupation which most requires morality, and deeply-heartfelt compassion, towards our fellow human beings. It is the occupation in which you have the most responsibility, in which the most lives are placed in your hands. Unfortunately, as Mao Tse-tung observed, "Politics is war without bloodshed, while war is politics with bloodshed." Harming your fellow human beings, especially unnecessarily, in warfare and other avenues, seems to me to be the height of immorality in leadership.

Perhaps, we as a country should ask ourselves a few questions regarding this current Iraq War and displacement crisis (though the questions could be just as applicable in other eras of United States history), using advanced interrogation techniques if necessary. We should ask: should we treat our fellow human beings better than this? Should we cause such upheaval and shatter so many lives? I suppose that what we should be asking ourselves, in moral terms, is if, as a country and as a people, we have the right to inflict such pain and suffering upon another people of another country? In my personal opinion, I answer with a resounding NO. I don't believe that we have the right to do these things--rather, I think that we have the responsibility, as the foremost superpower of the world, to refrain from abusing our power by attacking poorer countries than ours. The most powerful country is the one that should govern itself with the most wisdom and restraint, because it has the potential to inflict the most damage upon the earth. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men." In my judgement, that statement, made decades ago, rings true to this day.

I have defined what my idea of moral leadership is, and I have provided examples of leadership which has not been particularly moral during the modern era. What to do now? Well, naturally, I would like to provide my ideas on why leaders are so often tempted to immorality---and I would like to express my ideas on the age-old question of whether humankind is inherently good or inherently evil.

You often hear the argument about whether humankind is inherently good, and moral, or inherently evil. Naturally, when I hear an argument, I can't help but join in and provide my two cents, whether they are two wheat pennies from the 1800's or two old beaten up pennies from the year 2006. As an argumentative creature of the highest order, I feel inclined to assert my belief that, when a person is born, they have a natural tendency towards one side of the spectrum (of good and evil) or the other, but human beings do have both good and bad in them, and their conditions in life, and living in general, determines how exactly these tendencies develop---or if they do. Morality or immorality is not inherent in us--we all are split, we all have to choose according to our own developed characters. Though we may lean greatly towards one or the other, we will always, for the entirety of our lives, have some of both good and evil in us. It seems to me that humanity, fallible and wonderful, is what is truly inherent in us all.

And I am afraid that the leaders of humanity are no exception to this rule (of course; rulers are no less human than the ruled). But, for the leaders, an extra factor is added to how they slide along the good-evil spectrum, a factor which most people living daily life do not have or choose to take part in: power. Leaders of the human race, with great corrupting power in their hands, are very often tempted to the immoral side of themselves. They are tempted to embark upon unjust wars to increase their own power, and other such acts. To resist this, a leader must have extraordinary character, or have constant oversight to ensure that they do not abuse their powers---in many cases, such as initiating an unjust war or secretly torturing people, power abuse can be quite immoral. Leaders who are not provided with oversight very often succumb to their temptations. Power corrupts the fallible human being. The act of having abusable power adds another dimension to the human mind, a dimension in which human morality, and human conscience, is challenged.

The National Initiative for Democracy

The National Initiative for Democracy was first proposed by Former Alaskan Senator Mike Gravel, who served in the Senate from 1969 to 1981 and who later ran for the 2008 presidential nominations of the Democratic and Libertarian parties. I first learned of the National Initiative for Democracy during Gravel’s 2008 presidential campaign. This proposal will, in short, empower the American people as lawmakers in partnership with their elected officials, to make laws on all of the issues that affect their lives. The power to make laws will be provided through a national referendum system, the kind of initiative that is currently used statewide in 24 states and which has been used successfully in the country of Switzerland for centuries. I believe that this proposal is necessary in the United States in order to shift power back to American people from who has it now, political and financial elites and their moneyed special interests. I believe that this proposal is necessary to create a more egalitarian and democratic form of government, in which every single citizen in the United States has power in deciding the issues that affect their lives.

Let’s examine a quote from Cicero, the great Roman orator and statesman, “Freedom is participation in power.” Ralph Nader, when I went to an event of his in July 2008, said that he had been to many dictatorships in his life, and that they have nearly as much personal freedom as a democracy—you can live where you want, marry who you would like to, eat what you like, go fishing if you want to—your daily, personal events are not under government scrutiny. What is the difference between a dictatorship and a democracy? Why, in a democracy, you can exercise civic engagement and act freely in the realm of politics—in a dictatorship, you cannot. The real freedom, that differentiates free countries from others, is participation in civics. Participation in power, Nader noted, is the real freedom. If freedom is participation in power, then that leads to the logic that, if you don’t participate in power, then you don’t have any freedom. What is the central power of government in the United States? Some people believe that the exercise of power is when you go to the polls to vote for one candidate or the other on Election Day, but it seems to me that, really, what you are doing is giving your power away to corrupt elected officials who make many promises but keep few of them. The central power of government is not voting—it is law-making—those who make the laws have power over all aspects of the country and system—even over those sacred voters who go to vote on election day—the law-makers can determine where, how, or if you vote. In order to have real participation in the power of government, and some control over their government and lives, the people must exercise the power to make laws, the central power of government.

These laws would be made on a majoritarian basis. Some people have qualms about this because it sounds like a tyranny of the majority over the minority. But, I assure you, there are safeguards to prevent this from being the case. First of all, the people make the laws in partnership with their elected officials—these national ballots initiatives will simply be a fourth, stabilizing leg on the currently three-legged stool. The Supreme Court can check the laws of the people, and declare them unconstitutional if they appear to be unconstitutional and detrimental to the rights of the minority. The minority of the population is still provided with protection. Secondly, it is important to note that, if you aren’t ruled by the majority, then you are ruled by the minority. There is no in-between. Right now, the United States is being ruled by a rich minority that does things that are in their own self-interest, and in the self-interest of other moneyed entities such as corporations. Political elites and financial elites are often the same people, because of how intricately politics and wealth are intertwined. Everyone knows what a corrupting effect that money and special interests have upon our representatives in Washington; this influence, it seems to me, has directed our representatives away from representing their constituents and towards representing the major entities that donate to their campaigns. Is it better for the majority to be governed by the minority, or is it better for the majority to be governed by the majority? It seems to me that, especially considering the vast corruption of modern politics, that it would be better for the majority, rather than the rich and corrupt minority, to govern itself. Those who are affected by the laws should be the ones who make the laws—the people should, by way of the National Initiative, be able to make policy on all of the issues that affect their lives—that power should not be relegated to a minority corrupted by money and power.

Efforts are currently being made to enact the National Initiative for Democracy, this historic proposal to allow the people to have the right to make laws in partnership with their elected officials and change the paradigm of human governance. There is a website for the National Initiative, ni4d.org, where you can vote for its enactment. In order to be enacted, it must receive an affirmative vote of over half of the actively voting population—in other words, over half the number of people who voted in the last presidential election—in other words, the National Initiative requires about sixty million affirmative votes. For those of you wondering whether this process is legal or constitutional, it is founded on the legal basis of the “First Principles”—affirming the constituent sovereign's right and the legislative power of the People to create or alter governments, constitutions, charters, and laws—these principles were what allowed the Founding Fathers to colonize America, declare our independence from Great Britain, and write the Constitution in the first place. I urge you, fellow citizens of the United States, to go the National Initiative’s website, ni4d.org, to explore further the great proposal of the National Initiative for Democracy, and I urge you, my fellow citizens, to vote for the National Initiative. Claim your right as a free citizen of the United States to participate in power.


http://ni4d.org/