DEMOCRACY, CONSTITUTIONS, AND PLUTOCRACY

First, some photos from other regulars on the site.

Palooka's mother lode of chanterellas, don't they look tasty.

Baz's bounty, brown sugar and local honey glazed eels. Looks good eating to me.

DEMOCRACY, CONSTITUTIONS, AND PLUTOCRACY
from Murph

In my last post, I started by saying that I was feeling overloaded with information, saturated with the stuff. So let’s start off with a list of stuff I have been perusing lately.

A 500+ page book that is well documented
http://www.scribd.com/doc/20262742/The-Rich-and-the-Super-Rich

New guest post on Charles Smith site from Oct 5 titled Inalienable Rights and the Constitution; http://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html

All of the posts at this site are examinations of how things are currently and their relationship to the constitution; http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwinA.htm

This will get you started on what I am writing about in this post.

I am seeing more and more articles lately that are examining the pact from the 1700’s with the government and the citizens of this country called the U.S. Constitution.

One thing that I find interesting that there is more discussion about this phrase from the constitution;
“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

In other words, the people have the right to revolt and change the government when it no longer serves their interests. I’m sure all of you are now familiar with the quote from Jefferson concerning a revolt every 20 years is necessary;

"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.
The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is
wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions,
it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ...
And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not
warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of
resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as
to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost
in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from
time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
It is its natural manure."

For more writings by Jefferson on the subject see;
http://www.revolt.net/

Now let’s see, revolts against the government in one form or another in the last 20 years or so.
Gorden Kahl in Arkansas in the 80’s. I was living there at the time and the shootout took place a few miles from where I was living.

The CSA revolt in the 80’s in Arkansas. Here is a short quote about it from; http://www.rickross.com/reference/israel/israel6.html This article has a few facts wrong but gives the essence of this group. Good read.
“The Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord, as Ellison's group eventually called itself, would be responsible for a church arson in Springfield and for bombing a Jewish Community Center in Indiana. As early as 1983, it talked of blowing up the federal building in Oklahoma City. Ellison and other members of the group even went to Oklahoma City at one point in the early 1980s to case the federal building, which Timothy McVeigh destroyed on April 19, 1995, killing 168 people. That raid began April 19, 1985 - 10 years to the day before McVeigh's attack.
An accident at the Covenant compound, and then a raid by local, state and federal officers, broke up the group before it carried out any more violent plans, according to Noble, who served more than two years behind bars for possession of unregistered weapons.”
Actually, I was living there then and not far from their compound and had a friend that took part in the raid by local police. What actually happened is a couple of the members of the group got out of control of the leaders and decided to knock off a Brinks truck and killed a couple of guards. They were survivalists and led the feds on a chase through the mountains for over a month before finally walking out and giving themselves up. I had met a few of the members of the group and got along just fine with them. They offered courses in urban and rural warfare but I never had the money to take them up on it. At the time, they sure seemed legit to me.
The Okalahoma city bombing.
Waco Texas
Ruby Ridge
And then there is 9-11. Was this a random terrorist attack, or an external rebellion against American economic dominance and policies, or a manufactured incidence by our government, or some combination?

Well, we sure do know how those actions turned out. Lots of people killed and nothing changed. In fact, the aftermath of all of this was a rabid increase in power of the executive branch of the government that continues today. It is readably apparent that our government is in the hands of bankers and CEO’s with the president as sham head of state.

In any event, one of our most current severe problems in this country is a lack of citizen insistence that the government operate according to the constitution. If we don’t like the constitution, then put together some other form of agreement on how we are to be governed. It seems obvious to me that the government has no intention of adhering to the constitution and its tenants and that we are rapidly sliding into some form of absolute plutocratic control. Our elections are, and have been, shams of the most severe kind. This is not to say that we haven’t been under control of a plutocracy in the past, (just read the economic history from 1870 through the 1920’s) but I can say that the amount of control has gone up exponentially. I can say that our supposedly constitutional guarantees of freedom and rights have been radically diminished and governmental controls at every level of living have increased dramatically, except of course for the plutocracy. When the robber baron in the early 1900’s got so excessive that it could be no longer tolerated, people in government put some brakes on to their excesses. But then they got the Federal Reserve act passed in 1913. The plutocracy consolidated power and it’s been down hill every since for all of us. Our dollars in purchasing power is now 4 cents when compared to 1944. Our supposed inalienable rights and freedoms are being softly taken away without a meaningful peep out of the population. The harsh debasement of the only people in our society that actually produce anything of value, what we call the blue collar worker, is proceeding apace. I’ve gotten arguments about that kind of statement. Oh come on I retort, what does a supervisor produce, or a CEO, or a banker? Unless you want to talk about endless paperwork, they produce nothing. Even the financiers, the investors produce nothing except more hopeful profits for themselves.

Now I suppose it can be argued that an economy can be built on something other than production of useful goods, like the information economy, or the get your degree economy, or the service economy. None of which is really needed unless you are producing something people really do need, in other words, some kind of production of truly useful goods. The essentials are still food, water, clothing and getting out of hostile weather. It appears obvious to me that pre western civilization, pre industrial societies were able to be self sufficient or very nearly so. But the larger the society, the more it depends on a division of labor and disconnect from the social group as a whole to survive. Much smaller societies tend to have a pretty much of a consensus concerning how they will live and the rules to live by within the group. In larger societies, at least over time, consensus becomes impossible, allowing a ruling elite to take charge. As the ruling elite’s power base expands on the promises to the society at large, they become more rapacious and more authoritative (controlling.)

1) All that is just abstraction. Just the creation of Marketing, Business, and Financial Business School creations that have led us to the sorry state that the nation is in.

2) With the constraints of financial and marketing systems that have metastasized and are ready to blow up and kill the host, I’d say hopefully, all this will go the way of the homing pigeon. What we will need more of is trades people who can fix things and manufacture usable items. Cottage industries that produce items vital to the lives of the people close by.

3) It would appear that fighting the government with the weaponry envisioned by our Founding Fathers is, in the end, futile. It may hold them off for awhile, but in the end, armed resistance is futile. They have the clear advantage in terms of firepower, and are just looking for an excuse to demonstrate it. At least that is what the plutocracy is banking on. I will leave the arguments over this for others to expand on.

4) It could be that better tactic would be to assess where their vulnerabilities lie and take advantage of those. A globalist consumer economy requires consumers. Pretty simple. Resist by not consuming anything that isn’t produced here. Of course the problem revolves around what is not produced in country that is truly needed. My observation is that most of what is produced outside of the country is fluff.

5) They manipulate and bombard us with commercials – disconnect from the satellite and cable and stop purchasing objectionable newspapers.

6) Turn the tables on them. Has your boss taken out a “dead peasant’s” insurance policy on you or your co-workers? Then, take out a “dead boss” policy on him and see if that makes him squirm.

7) Observe what other things they are using to damage or destroy us – and turn it back on them. Obviously, one cannot go into detail.

8) Avoid joining groups that can be infiltrated and manipulated, including political parties and protest groups. Random acts of creative resistance are much harder to identify and punish.

9) Become as self-sufficient and sustainable as possible as a community. Reach out to as many neighbors as you can. Nobody can do it alone (unless you are Baz, living in the New Zealand outback or some such thing and even Baz is dependent on the greater society for his life style).

10) Cultivate happiness. Figure out what your passion is and do it. Their whole evil system is based on unhappy people manipulated into buying or doing things to relieve their mental anguish. Freedom and happiness are the anti-dote. Take those seriously and make them a priority. They are our birthright.

What I find immensely interesting is how an elite cast is created in complex societies, and why the population will tolerate them. It seems to have a relationship to ownership and control of resources and the control of the medium of exchange (money in the case of most societies). Take away the elite ownership of resources (in whatever form) and put it into the hands of the general population and the elite caste systems breaks down. It sure enough appears to me that not allowing it to happen in the first place is a bunch easier than to wrest control away from them later. When this control by the elites is allowed to continue, we end up with a plutocracy, where the primary benefit of the arrangement always awards disproportionately the elites in the form of money and privilege. In other words, egalitarianism is never the outcome of this arrangement. Keep this in mind during the next voting cycle.

Our elder, Caroline's spectacular planers filled with flowers and raspberries, strawberries, potatoes, grapes, tomatoes, cauliflowers, chard and beets. WOW!