A THOUGHT ON THE THINKING CITIZEN AND GOVERNMENT
By Publius II
Humorist Don Marquis said, “If you make people think they’re thinking, they’ll love you — but if you really make them think they’ll hate you.” Publius II is willing, — nay, eager, to assume the risk. “Hate me if you must, friends, but do accept to mind and heart my thinking.”
Begin with a strong education system. An educated citizen who practices continuing learning could learn about — and thus become comfortable with —him/herself.
A person who knows him/herself finds it easy to reach out and get to know another. As he comes to love himself (self-esteem, not narcissism) he finds it easier to love another. Should good education become widely available the subsequent impact on rates of divorce, juvenile delinquency, incarceration and suicide can only be imagined. (See the essay on education.)
Self-love enables self-discipline. One key benefit of self-discipline is that marital arguments do not descend to negative passions and marriage-destroying fights. An intriguing speculation: Might this notion apply as well to nation-destroying wars? See the essay on futility of war.
Another important benefit has a citizen combining efforts with other thinking citizens to discipline their government. In this way it could become their government, accountable those who are paying for it. This new society would pay the piper and call the tune.
But the genius of such a society would not stop there. An amazing paradox would be revealed. That is the greater the discipline, the greater the personal freedom earned by these active citizens.
Such citizens would feel comfortable in accepting as fellow citizens those of different appearance, heritage, speech, manners and beliefs. A common interest in good government would bring all together.
This citizen-created political environment would support the democratic process. This process includes formation, operation, and continuing improvement of the institutions of civic and personal life, including education.
The collective wisdom of the community would mix these ingredients properly to create a moral society. Sandra Carey said, “Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life.”
The huge advantage of print over voice lies in its capacity to develop both knowledge and wisdom: the first directly and the second indirectly. A thinking person can read thru a passage, pause, and reflect on it.
He/she can agree, disagree or simply assimilate the thought or a piece of it before proceeding. In this way he prepares for discussion and debate with other thinking citizens as they build and enhance democracy. Publius II would like to have his writing read in this way because he freely admits there is lots of room for disagreement and improvement.
However, there is a kicker here. William Gavin: “Reason requires a high degree of discipline, of concentration; impression is easier. Reason pushes the viewer back, it assaults him, it demands that he agree or disagree; impression can envelop him, invite him in, without making an intellectual demand.”
Political speeches and television communicate impressions. No need to think; just relax and vote/buy. The essay on education explains why career politicians don’t want thinking citizens.
In a moral society nearly every citizen would see the good in people. He/she would help others to bring forth the good in themselves thru reaching out in friendship. He would look forward to reciprocal actions from others because he knows that a self-created moral environment would encourage this type of behavior among nearly all.
In such a surrounding the ancient principle of receiving thru giving would spread thru society. Pocket Gofer 2 elaborates. Furthermore this principle could extend outward to relations with other nations. Friendship Force International (friendshipforce.org) has a slogan: “A world of friendship is a world of peace.”
Today’s top public officials subscribe to the PANG principle: People Are No Good. Therefore they must be ruled by an overbearing and paternalistic government.
But the “nanny state” does not want its children to become fully adult. Fully adult citizens are much more likely to be thinkers. They are far more likely to believe in the notion that man/woman is by nature free. In her tough book The Discovery of Freedom Rose Wilder Lane beautifully underscores this point.
Such people would question the PANG principle and a government that is guided by it. Because they love their taxpayer-financed posh lifestyle top public officials would not like this.
Thomas Paine wrote that wisdom lies dormant in everyone and often “descends with him to the grave” unless aroused thru some outside impetus. Paine believed that lack of formal education does not prohibit growth of wisdom in a citizen.
That impetus exists within political meetings created by citizens who are guided by democracy. Discussions and debates bring forth that which would otherwise remain dormant. Frank Clark said, “We find comfort among those who agree with us; growth among those who don’t.” But this can’t work in the absence of self-discipline: Disagree with some folks and get clobbered.
Old folks who have stopped thinking tend to look backward instead of forward. Society moves on without them and so they become grouchy. Alienated children banish them to retirement facilities.
Seniors are often the keepers of great wisdom. Contributing to the enhancement of democracy thru participating in political meetings would enable them to again look forward. The good feelings that result would overwhelm the grouch.
Citizens would elect public-spirited public servants to coordinate their efforts, and they would hold these servants’ feet to the fire. Due to human nature accountability is paramount.
Somewhere around 70 BC Cicero said “The more laws, the less justice.” Today’s career politicians often intentionally make issues overly complex. Citizens then get fooled into believing that they cannot deal with them, so they give up and let government handle them.
This gift suits career politicians just fine. Here comes another batch of laws favoring politicians and lawyers while the rhetoric emphasizes the appearance of favoring citizens. This is why making issues complex is by design.
E.F. Schumacher: “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.” (Emphasis added.)
Civic morality works to limit harmful behavior. Citizens would make only very few laws. They would obey these laws because people support what they help to create. And perhaps 80 percent of today’s politicians and lawyers would find themselves looking for productive work. Like prisoners, today most of these people are a drag on society.
Furthermore potential violators would think long and hard before they commit a crime. Should someone do so anyway, everyone in the neighborhood and most in the community would be outraged. How dare this bloke violate one of our laws?!
They would immediately turn out, work with the police to find the criminal and bring him/her to account. In a moral society punishment would be swift, light, sure, just, and fit the nature of the offense. While paying his/her debt to the victim or to society the offender would receive counseling to help him get his life together.
Debts to society suggest criminal law, and here is an important point to be made. Long ago most societal problems were disputes between people or groups. Civil law was created to resolve these difficulties. Penalties most often consisted of the offender ordered to make amends to the injured party.
Gradually over centuries top-down governments emphasized criminal law (offenses against the state) over civil law. This trend enabled personal power seekers and holders in government to decrease civil liberties in favor of greater power. Make enough laws and people will be afraid to crawl out of the sack.
Pro football player Michael Vick was sent to prison for violating a law against dog fighting. It seems that a stiff fine would have been more fitting, possibly combined with, say, 100 hours of unpaid service at an SPCA shelter. He would then have been able to continue without interruption a lucrative career that lasts a maximum of only a few years.
Lawyers and prisons gradually proliferated. Today some thinking citizens wonder if the government will eventually create a police state. If this should happen citizens will be paying more for greater abuse by government and nothing could be done about it. Today the US has five percent of the world’s population and 25 percent of the world’s inmates in its prisons.
It is human nature to seek power over others. If public officials are not accountable to citizens they will act on this impulse and get away with it.
Adolf Hitler understood this. Fellow Austrian Friedrich von Hayek said, “Few are ready to recognize that the rise of fascism and naziism was not a reaction against the socialist trends of the preceding period but a necessary outcome of those tendencies.”
To explain, socialism works against human nature in two ways. It forcibly takes from productive people by taxing the fruits of their efforts. It also gives to those who don’t work, thus robbing them of their self-esteem. Both groups are thus made unhappy. Therefore socialism can persist only with an immense, powerful, overbearing and expensive bureaucracy enforcing it. Unless arrested, this condition leads directly to fascism. (The truly handicapped is another story. (See PG2.)
Hitler wrote a book called Mein Kampf (My Struggle). “The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous.
“In consequence of these facts all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand.”
For all his faults Hitler understood human nature and thru his struggle became one of history’s most talented salesmen. Publius II wonders if variations on a very popular but false advertising guide — you save by spending — has thru constant reinforcement fooled millions of today’s unthinking consumers in this country. Until very recently the rate of household saving was close to negative.
Benjamin Franklin said, “When you spend less than you take in, you have the philosopher’s stone.” Only thinking citizens understand that managing money consists of both offense, what is taken in, and defense, what is spent. The key to wealth that can finance children’s educations and a comfortable retirement consists not in what is earned but in what is accumulated. Offense less defense equals accumulation. Finally, a thinking citizen knows better than to depend on government for his/her future.
Discussion now continues with citizen-made law. With the “nanny state” kept in check citizens could become fully adult. Quieting down a screaming child by giving him what he/she wants is no way to manage a family. It is also no way to run a government.
Citizens could make decisions and do things themselves instead of looking to BIG GOVERNMENT for solutions to problems and challenges. They would willingly assume responsibility for their actions instead of looking for scapegoats.
Democracy creates a virtuous cycle as citizens debating relevant issues continue to improve their civic and personal lives. But democracy is also a delicate flower that can wilt when neglected. It can continue to bloom only when thinking, concerned, and active citizens keep feeding it the right political mix of sun, soil, and rain.
Whoever said eternal vigilance is the price of liberty got it right. There is always someone nibbling away at that vital commodity.
The environment described above is a direct democracy. This form of government has never before existed. (Ancient Greek city-states permitted only property-owning men to participate in government.) As indicated above, the driving force consists of groups of educated and thinking citizens.
As an 82-year-old student of human nature, Benjamin Franklin anticipated today’s tragic situation during the final meeting of the constitutional convention in September 1787. He said, “—- and there is no form of government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be ——— for a course of years and can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other.” Thus a wise old man issued a stern warning to all thinking citizens.
Put into practice in 1789 the Constitution specifies a republic, also called a representative democracy. Therefore it is indirect.
The theory has people making their wishes known to their elected public servants, who go to Washington and debate issues on behalf of their masters (citizens). In this way most of the dynamics of governing take place at the grass roots in what is truthfully called the democratic process.
That is the theory. Today there are too few thinking citizens who see that reality has strayed far from theory. Citizens’ trust in their public servants has been betrayed.
Politicians’ pound on in front of the cameras about “defending democracy.” Thinking citizens don’t believe a word of this baloney. Government is in effect a single-party, authoritarian regime, not a republic.
George Bush and Dick Cheney bought into this deception when they spent years arrogating more and more personal power in the executive branch. The losers were the Congress, the citizens and the Constitution. See PG19.
On most issues the two major parties have combined to rip the public. Publius II calls this single party the “repdem” party. Each faction slices it slightly differently than the other, but in truth it is all the same baloney. In the late 18th century Thomas Paine said “While they appear to quarrel they agree to plunder.” He understood human nature fully as well as did Franklin.
The Constitution specifies what are called “checks and balances,” which are designed to see that no one branch of government gains disproportionate political power over the other two. Examples include presidential veto of congress-made bills and critical review by the senate of applicants to join the Supreme Court.
In 1787 people and government officials trusted one another. No one (except Franklin?) anticipated that some day the citizens would allow the checks and balances to be ignored while the three branches combined their efforts in order to deceive and rip the public. A lot has changed in the past 230 years. Pocket Gofer 19 elaborates.
Now, during a presidential election campaign the reps and dems really do quarrel. But this is only because huge nondemocratic personal power has been gathered in the White House, beginning long before 9/11 and the Bush administrations.
Once in office, the winner must confront the big money contributors who line up for payback time. Then it’s business/plunder as usual.
Democracy is hard to define in straight terms so distorting its meaning to suit the elite class is easy. The media cooperate of course. They distract citizens from any thinking about retrieving what has been lost over the past 230 years (accelerating during the past 50 or so). Citizens are being ruled as subjects by an elite class in Washington. They are no longer governed.
In 1956 Ayn Rand wrote a novel called Atlas Shrugged. With remarkable prescience she accurately anticipated today’s tragic situation. Over a period of years her imaginary top-down society deteriorated to the point where everything ground to a halt: electric power, transportation, communication, etc. The economy could no longer function and citizens’ very existence was called into question.
Shortly before the lights went out hero John Galt organized a “brain strike.” He gathered the tiny minority of thinkers among the citizens and transported them off to a remote area in the mountains. There he supervised the establishment of a new society. Unthinking people were abandoned and left on their own to survive somehow.
Writing in 1942, Rose Wilder Lane issued the same warning. Altho thinking requires effort it surely seems worthwhile. This observation applies especially to citizens who have children and grandchildren, the latter perhaps yet to be born. The government must be stopped from its massively destructive habit of spending tomorrow’s money today.
“What luck for rulers! That men don’t think.” Adolf Hitler said that. Thinking citizens are the product of a strong education system. But in a politicized system where whom you know outweighs what you know there is no need for a good education system.
Career politicians in Congress see no reason to govern in response to the public will. They know that citizens are not holding them accountable. Whenever lack of accountability combines with human nature it is appalling what man will do to his fellow man. Just a glance around the world reveals this tragic truth. Myanmar, North Korea, Sudan, Venezuela and Zimbabwe are only a few of the many such nations that spring to mind.
Some critics argue that in a democracy with majority rule the minority will be trampled. An accurate interpretation of democracy includes basic human rights for all, including members of the minority who would enjoy the right to speak and be heard.
Every good or great idea that benefits citizens originated in a tiny minority: one thinking citizen with the courage to speak out and advocate it. Edward Snowden springs to mind. With strict majority rule this and other citizens’ ideas would never see the light of day and society could not move forward. Pocket Gofer 13 elaborates.
Young President Bush emphasized loyalty to person over loyalty to principle. His oligarchy was a closed system. Dissenters were either unpatriotic or worse. There was no voice for that tiny minority with a potentially good idea. A 20 percent popularity rating fazed him not at all. He just knew he was right.
During 1787-88 constitutional conventions in each state met to discuss the proposed Constitution of the United States of America. In each case members sought opinions from their citizens and then assembled to debate its merits prior to a vote to ratify or reject.
In Massachusetts a vocal opposition argued strongly against ratification. Delegates in favor listened. Nevertheless, after a fair vote came the decision to ratify.
The leader of the opposition rose to speak. He pledged that his group would support the Constitution “—— just as if we voted in favor.” A finer example of citizenship may not exist.
Why did the forefathers not establish a direct democracy? Travel and communication in the late 18th century were extremely primitive. Presidents had no practical way to travel often enough between Washington and the states, even when there were only 13 of them.
Nevertheless, with no phones, cars, trains or planes congressmen traveled regularly by horse, riverboat and stagecoach back home in order to learn the opinions of their citizens. Then it was back to Washington and debates, only to repeat the arduous (democratic) process time and again.
Congressmen received per diem but no salaries prior to 1816. Then they voted themselves $1,500 per year (current dollars). Back then they perceived themselves as public servants, not career looters.
Today travel and communication have become so sophisticated that they would boggle the minds of any visiting ghosts from the late 18th century. So why do citizens not enjoy the benefits of direct democracy as described above?
Thinking citizens know the answer; it’s the money. In Washington corrupt special-interest dollars outvote citizens roughly 250 times over.
People go to the polls today either out of a sense of civic obligation or simply because career politicians tell them to do so. They are treated like mushrooms by Washington: kept in the dark and fed b-s.
Career politicians love empty elections. While deceptive rhetoric preaches otherwise, they scoop up the money. They grow wealthy at taxpayer, union and shareholder expense.
They call this bribery lobbying, but thinking citizens know it as unconstitutional corruption. Hell will freeze over long before congressmen vote to bring a halt to world history’s biggest bash.
Over to us, friends.