Toward an Enlightened Society: National Objectives

By Nikki Alexander - September 30, 2008

Those who have tyrannized humanity throughout the ages have been doggedly obsessed by the same questions: What generates exclusive power in the world? What generates exclusive wealth? What is the most effective way to dominate, manipulate and exploit others? What is the best way to destroy enemies and prevent rivals from arising?

Einstein correctly observed that problems cannot be solved with the same consciousness that produced the problems in the first place. Solving the problems which plague humanity begins with asking the right questions. What generates harmony in the world? What generates beauty? What generates abundance? What inspires cooperation and generosity? What inspires vision and creativity? What generates freedom? What enhances life for others? How can we best protect our planet? Answering these questions will catalyze visions of new social structures grounded in wholesome values that benefit everyone and liberate humanity to fulfill its creative potential without causing harm to other species.

There may always be individuals who seek to dominate, control and exploit others. We cannot change their consciousness. Spiritual evolution is a personal journey. But we can generate cultural conditions that foster social ethics, self-sufficiency, benevolence, interpersonal generosity and economic prosperity to ensure that everyone experiences the security of having enough. This planet is exquisitely designed to provide everything that is needed for all species. Nature seeks not to dominate, destroy and exploit but rather to nourish, enhance and provide. We would be wise to observe and respect the wisdom of Creation, the laws of life that have sustained our beautiful planet for billions of years.

At all times we have the creative capacity to redefine the purpose of government and to redesign its structure accordingly. Historically, our central government has served a small minority devoted to hoarding exclusive power and wealth. Defining our national objectives would reveal the appropriate social architecture to express our collective values. Quite possibly, 285 million people cannot be effectively represented by one centrally-controlled political system. The central government that was conceived two centuries ago may be incapable of serving the needs of five distinctly different geographic and cultural regions. Perhaps we need to conceive smaller, more accountable, regional structures. It is certainly the case that our existing political structure does not serve the needs of our global human family. Those who have exploited government to amass transnational monopolies are enslaving humanity worldwide. They would have us believe that increased centralization, or globalization, is our manifest destiny.   

The greatest danger of centralized power is the ease with which the whole system can be hijacked.

One media monopoly can deceive a whole nation. One agribusiness cartel can starve the world. By merely uttering lies, one cabal of miscreants can drag a nation to war and destroy millions of lives. One fool can unleash a nuclear holocaust. One monopoly on the nation’s credit can collapse our entire financial system, wipe out every citizen’s real estate assets, savings, investments and retirement security and cripple every American for generations to come with trillions of dollars in national debt. Centralized power is an invitation to wholesale catastrophe. Unsavory characters inevitably seize the center of power and set off a chain reaction that destabilizes the whole system. Nature has no headquarters and wisely stores the blueprint for survival in every seed. Diversity and diffusion of resources guarantees that no single entity can threaten the whole web of life. An infinite array of self-sufficient mini-worlds in dynamic exchange with their local environment ensures the continuity of life and survival of the whole.

The Framers of our Constitution were slave owners, wealthy merchants, bankers and aristocrats who feared democracy ~ the “leveling tendencies of the masses.” They structured a central authority to trump state sovereignty and exclude ordinary citizens from decision-making in order to protect their financial empires and preserve unwarranted privilege. Our economic-political system has served those objectives very well. Ultimately, it may not be possible to achieve our national objectives within the existing Federal structure, but for the moment we might begin to envision transitional remedies.

The People’s Legislature: American citizens have very few representatives in Washington who share their values. Congressional legislation, sold to the highest bidder, combined with involuntary confiscation of our wages, forces American citizens to finance war crimes, global fraud, criminal cartels, our own political repression and the enslavement and repression of citizens in other cultures. One possibility for direct public intervention that retains our existing political structure is the “The National Initiative for Democracy” which is made up of two important legislative elements: the Democracy Amendment to the United States Constitution and the Democracy Act, a Federal statute law, the purposes of which are respectively to assert in the Constitution the People's sovereign right as lawmakers and to provide in statute the legislative tools to exercise that right. The National Initiative fashions a formal process that brings the People into the operation of government as lawmakers, creating "A Legislature of the People", while still maintaining the original design of the existing representative government. For details about the mechanics see: www.nationalinitiative.us. The following reforms might be enacted through this process.

Regulate Wall Street: The implosion of our current financial system is the result of a quadrillion dollar derivatives bubble created by unsupervised gambling. Reckless speculators are being protected and rewarded by their accomplices at the Federal Reserve who are covering trillions of dollars in failed risky bets with government loans that will cripple American taxpayers for generations to come. Honest citizens who did not participate in this global fraud are being held hostage by the same criminals who have already destroyed our real estate values, savings, pensions and retirement security. Lenders who grossly inflated the interest rate on adjustable rate mortgages and then blamed “sub-prime borrowers” for defaulting on their loans could have renegotiated reasonable fixed rate loans to stabilize financial markets and keep families in their homes. They chose to foreclose, destroying national real estate values and victimizing taxpayers by nationalizing the “bad debts” of Wall Street gambling casinos. With memories of the 1929 stock market crash still fresh, the 1934 Glass-Steagall Act separated commercial banks (checking, savings) from investment banks which engage in speculative trading and mergers. Banking regulations that protect the public from Wall Street speculators have been systematically eroded since 1970. The Glass-Steagall Act must be reinstated and strict regulations imposed on speculators.

Monetary Reform: Our debt-based monetary system serves a private international banking cartel that preys on the public worldwide. The Federal Reserve System is not federal and has no reserves. It is a privately owned bank consortium that creates public debt and feeds on taxpayers ~ a Ponzi scheme. It cyclically engineers bubbles and depressions by arbitrarily expanding and contracting credit and inflating fiat “federal reserve notes.” Abolishing this private monopoly and restoring direct government control of the monetary system is fundamental to our freedom and national sovereignty. The mechanism for creating money and issuing credit rightfully belongs to the citizens of every nation.

Money is a legal fiction which derives its value from social consensus. Legal tender does not require commodity backing, such as gold or silver, but only social agreement that it can be used as a medium of exchange. Publicly-owned credit issuing mechanisms can be created as a non-profit public service or the interest on loans can be used to finance government in lieu of taxes. Publicly-owned mechanisms would keep money circulating as a convenience that facilitates the exchange of goods and services and would reward productivity by making investment capital available to legitimate businesses that serve society.

The People’s Legislature could authorize attorney Ellen Brown and economists Nomi Prins and Michael Hudson to design a public monetary system which defines banking regulations. Congressmen Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) and Ron Paul (R-TX) would introduce The Monetary Reform Act. If Congress fails to comply with public demand, we will enact direct monetary reform through the People’s Legislature.

Exposés and alternatives to the private banking cartel’s monopoly on public money and credit: http://www.webofdebt.com;   http://www.monetary.org;   http://www.michaeljournal.org/myth.htm; 

Public Elections: The Electoral College was contrived two centuries ago to prevent our citizens from directly electing a President. It must be abolished and replaced by genuine popular elections. Instant Runoff Voting would terminate the corporate stranglehold that forces voters to choose between the lesser of two evils by expanding the field of viable candidates to include those selected by a percentage of the popular vote. Elections held on weekends would better accommodate work schedules. All states must provide citizens with guaranteed ballot access and provide auditable paper ballots. Ballot tabulation must be transparent and conducted in public. Computerized election software programs must be publicly owned and open to public inspection. All candidates, from all parties running for public office are entitled to equal and free air time on the public airwaves and all candidates must be included in public debates. When our elections become genuinely democratic our representatives will reflect our social values.

Public Airwaves: The public airwaves and the Internet belong to the social commons and cannot be monopolized or controlled by private owners. Public broadcasting should be used to disseminate information that enhances social well-being and promotes public education. Public funding would make commercial advertising unnecessary and corporate control unlawful. Privately owned television or print media that advocates special interests would thereby be offset by channels of unbiased communication that enhance the public’s capacity to make informed decisions. Pacifica Radio is a shining example of excellent public service programming that has been voluntarily funded by listeners for half a century.

Foreign Policy: Our foreign policy undermines our own national security, the security of other cultures and the earth’s delicately balanced living systems. Policy decisions are driven by the toxic self-interest of individuals who crave financial profit above all else, without regard for the “collateral damage” they cause. Changing administrations has never affected the continuity of pathological policies because those policies are engineered by a predatory network of unelected individuals who control centralized power. As a nation, we need to create a foreign policy mission statement describing our national security objective that would legally require policy compliance regardless of administrations that come and go. This would prevent unsavory individuals from co-opting foreign policy through think tanks and special interest groups such as RAND, AIPAC, the American Enterprise Institute, Wall Street casinos, corporate lobbyists, defense contractors and especially the twin bulldozers of human freedom ~ the Peterson Institute for International Economics and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Our national objectives could be determined by the citizens through the National Initiative process and be enacted into law by The People’s Legislature. For example our statement might be, “We the citizens of the United States declare our national security objective to be the protection of earth’s living systems and the enhancement of social systems that secure the well being of all humanity.” The national security objective would legally supersede the personal choices of individuals or groups and mandate foreign policy compliance with our stated national objectives. Consequently, antisocial behaviors such as pre-emptive war, assassination, militarism, covert interference in other cultures, human rights violations and ecological destruction, would conflict with our national security objective and be deemed unlawful.

Trade and Universal Self-Sufficiency: One of our fundamental national objectives is to produce the goods and services which are necessary to maintain our self-sufficiency as a nation. US corporations that have outsourced production to foreign countries have become foreign companies whose products should be subject to tariffs commensurate with protections necessary to protect American jobs and products made in the US for local consumption. It is unethical and inconsistent with our national security objective to market or sell products within the US that are manufactured by slave labor, sweat shops and other forms of human exploitation. Trade with foreign countries should not create a situation of dependency or exploitation but rather voluntary exchange of products between nations should enhance the well-being of all cultures by providing diversity through fair trade. The objective of trade negotiations must be to enhance the well-being of all cultures by encouraging universal self-sufficiency. The unfair trade policies of the World Trade Organization mandate our immediate withdrawal. We must revise our existing trade agreements to conform with our national objective of universal self-sufficiency through fair trade.

Federal Budget: Public funds, derived through taxation, should be used only to implement projects and infrastructure that have social and ecological value. Our national objective should include a stated value for the allocation of public funds that deters antisocial enterprises such as weapons development and militarism from usurping public funds. For example, “Public funds may be used only for life-affirming pursuits which benefit humanity and the earth.” Examples of authorized public spending might be specified as the development of renewable energy resources, environmental protection, public infrastructure, health care, education and investments that create social value.”   

Federal Transparency: All levels of operation within the Federal structure should be made transparent. No departments, agencies, advisory boards or special groups should operate within the Federal structure that preclude or circumvent public oversight. No taxpayer funds should be apportioned to secret budgets, black budgets or any other budgets that circumvent public scrutiny. Public funds are to be used for enterprises which create social value and therefore require no secrecy. Departments within the existing Federal structure that currently operate with secret funds shall be closed and their files transferred to the National Archives for posterity. All funds previously apportioned to foreign enterprises, in any form, shall be made public. A society whose objective is the protection of earth’s life systems and the enhancement of social systems that benefit humanity has no need of government operations that require secrecy.

Corporations: Corporate lawyers, acting as both attorneys and judges, subverted our Bill of Rights in the late 1800's by establishing the doctrine of "corporate personhood" -- the claim that corporations were intended to fully enjoy the legal status and protections created for human beings. Restraining malignant corporations requires correcting this legal fiction. Only conscious, living beings merit constitutional rights. The practice of paying CEOs millions of dollars in annual salary while paying the employees who create their profits an inadequate living wage is a manifestation of antisocial thinking that needs to be corrected. Sharing equity can be encouraged by altering the tax structure, including employees in shareholder dividends, renewing licenses based upon equitable practices and revoking the licenses of corporations that do not meet social standards. Corporations subsidized by the taxpayers should either return a proportionate percentage of profits to the public treasury or reduce consumer prices accordingly.

Privatization: A modern term for piracy, privatization is the confiscation of assets that belong to others. It is generally preceded by deregulation, which is the practice of removing the legal obstacles to crime.  In the domain of government, privatization is a euphemism for theft of public assets, authority, services or infrastructure. Corporate take-over of government functions is a stealth coup d’etat that dismantles the legitimate State and transfers authority to unaccountable private owners who benefit from public taxes without public oversight. Globalization is the systematic dismantling of sovereign states worldwide to transfer power and authority to private corporations. Privatization, deregulation and globalization undermine our collective security. Parks, national forests and wildlife reserves are maintained with public funds to protect the earth’s living systems. The earth cannot be privatized and sold off in pieces to human beings. Rather, it belongs to life itself and deserves our gratitude, protection and wise stewardship. Natural elements such as water, minerals, seeds and genetic codes belong to the whole earth and not to any particular species. A human “ownership society” is a deeply ignorant concept that disrupts the natural harmony of social cooperation and destabilizes the earth’s intricately-balanced living systems.

Restore the Constitution: Our Bill of Rights has been systematically dismantled by Congress and the Bush administration. The USA Patriot Act authorizes the government to break into your home and conduct secret searches, to access your records without probable cause ~ medical records, financial records and information about the books you read. The Military Commissions Act gives the president absolute power to designate “enemy combatants” and to set his own definitions for torture. It also suspends habeas corpus, which protects you against unlawful and indefinite imprisonment. The Real ID Act mandates that all US citizens carry a National ID card, without which you will be unable to drive a car, board a plane, train or bus, enter any federal building, open a bank account, or hold a job.  The FISA Amendments Act condones unlawful government surveillance of ordinary citizens without a warrant for probable cause and gives retroactive legal immunity to corporations that conspired with the National Security Agency to spy on Americans. The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act authorizes a National Commission invested with sweeping powers to monitor the political beliefs of American citizens and to enforce political repression using internet surveillance and “vertical intelligence sharing” between federal, state and local law enforcement. Aided by nationwide data-mining Fusion Centers, this Gestapo network will reach into every community and every living room in the country. The Defense Authorization Act circumvents Posse Comitatus restrictions by allowing the president to arbitrarily declare martial law and use the military or National Guard to subjugate the domestic population. Upwards of 750 Presidential Signing Statements have been contrived by the Office of Legal Counsel to overturn laws and concentrate power in the Executive Branch, thereby converting our constitutional system of power-sharing between co-equal branches of government to a dictatorship.

A team of constitutional scholars shall be authorized by the People’s Legislature to review all legislation, every National Security Letter, Executive Order and Presidential Signing Statement and to restore the integrity of our Constitutional Republic by legally nullifying each and every violation of the Constitution. For a current account of threats to our civil liberties see: www.bordc.org

Dismantle the War Machine: The United States “defense” budget is larger than the military budgets of all other nations combined. Prior to the passage of the 1947 National Security Act, the Department of Defense, the National Security Agency and the CIA did not exist. Soldiers were mobilized as needed and government-owned munitions factories were shut down after a war. A for-profit, “war economy” was permanently installed by the beneficiaries of World War II to secure continuous financial profits derived from committing crimes against humanity and crimes against the earth. To keep these profits rolling in, the architects of US foreign policy have instigated continuous international atrocities for six consecutive decades. The terrorism narrative is the new cover story for perpetuating this criminal behavior.

A national referendum shall be conducted by the People’s Legislature to determine whether the citizens of this country are willing to support a militant corporate empire that is bankrupting the nation, destroying millions of human lives, contaminating the earth with radioactive depleted uranium, exterminating precious species and aggravating the global climate crisis. If our citizens do not support these anti-life policies, the US arsenal of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons shall be safely dismantled, the Pentagon shall be dissolved and the 1,000 US military bases now operating in 134 countries shall be closed. Military personnel can be retrained for occupations that support our national objectives.

Trillions of dollars being squandered on death and destruction would thereby be liberated to end our dependency on fossil fuels and create a clean energy economy, develop renewable energy resources, retrofit our buildings for energy efficiency, rebuild our infrastructure, retool our auto industry for electric cars and plug-in hybrids, create efficient public transportation, revive our manufacturing base, create millions of “green” jobs, decontaminate our waterways and soils, and empower farmers and organic growers to nourish our local communities. The billions of tax dollars enriching corporate contractors every month in Afghanistan and Iraq would be better spent on genuine reparations and providing education, scholarships and training for the next generation of students, scientists and entrepreneurs whose energy and talents are urgently needed to meet our collective national security objectives.

Explore the ideas of environmentalists, labor and business leaders and social justice advocates who are envisioning the means of conversion to a clean energy economy: www.apolloalliance.org

This is the Moment

We cannot afford the ethical and financial burdens of a dysfunctional economic-political system that enslaves our citizens with debt and squanders our resources on death and destruction. Our ingenuity, our energy and our resources are urgently needed for worthwhile pursuits that benefit humanity and heal the earth. We have no time to waste placating entrenched individuals with vested interests in anti-life policies. As Cultural Creative Jim Garrison writes: “Nothing is more urgent than a mass mobilization of people and ideas that can compel our governments and international institutions to confront head on the challenge of global warming and the reformation of politics this implies. It is this challenge to which we all must address ourselves. We must become a potent social and political force at a crucial moment in our history when only a strong and global public demand will suffice to wake up our politicians. What we must know is that after building ourselves up through all the social movements that have shaped our social landscapes since the Second World War, we are now at critical mass. We can make a significant difference. We only need become self aware and organized.”

Though the hour is late and the damage significant, at every moment we have the creative potential to release the artifacts of yesterday’s ideas and transform our social institutions to meet the challenges of today. We need only discover the values we share to determine and fulfill our national objectives. Peak Oil, Climate Crisis and the twilight of corporate empire can be enthusiastically embraced as energizing catalysts for revolutionary ideas, visionary transformation and a global renaissance.

Let this be the hour of deliverance.

By Nikki Alexander (Email Nikki at nikki@west.net).