Open Letter To Paul--Unity Of, By, And For The People

Dr. Paul Hein's essay on the elities' use of unity has been recently published at both LewRockwell.com and the Populist Party site. On LewRockwell.com, the essay is titled, "The Abnormality of Unity". On the PPA site, it's titled, "The Evil of Unity".

The essay's worth to centrist and progressive politics is its showing of how predator elites have used their unifying of the people for their own, anti-people purposes. However, it also gives unity itself a black eye that is undeserved. The shiner needs an ice pack to help it heal.

Paul Hein --

Enjoyed your perspectives on the historical downsides of predator elitism's work with unity.

There is, of course, at least one upside -- and then the upside's lopside.

When the elites bring the people together into a civil society, they can't always keep the people divided among themselves effectively. Sometimes the civil society believes the hype that brought them together longer and with more passion than the elites expected. When that happens, the civil society can go lopsided to the elites' original intention. The people can go into a great democratic movement and subsequent democratic republic, leaving the elites out on the margins with restricted profits and power.

Makes the elites crazy. Just the threat of a democracy movement makes them liars, corruption pushers, and constitutional criminals.

In 1913, our governing elite became so crazy with fear of the Reform Era's democracy-driven lopside that they treasonously ignored the Constitution and the sovereign people's rights -- and gave away the store. The international cabal of central bankers was brought in, in blatant violation of the Constitution, to make sure that the people would not control government. That control was handed off to the central bankers and their monetary system, proven to be beyond the people's ability to understand.

Your conclusions in "The Abnormality of Unity", concerning the central bankers and their capture of American sovereignty, seem self-evident. However, like so many of our perceptive thinkers/writers, you offer no solution, no remedy. And, in a left-handed, one-eyed way, you tear down the unity that must surely be at the core of every possible remedy.

Breaking the historical ignorance of the American people must be done before any remedy makes sense to them. Reversing historical ignorance is done with history. Facts, related truth statements, and sound arguments based on both are the key.

So off we go, in pursuit of unity's upside and lopside.

Republican Rome

The ancient Roman Republic started it all, of course. Patricians pulled everyone together about 510 BCE to fight the King. In about fifty years, when pleb fighters rose to be generals, the plebs wanted their promised piece of the pie. Killing plebs on the streets because they owed a patrician money was unaceptable to plebs.

Oh, no problem, said the patricians -- we'll get you codified law that will end your abuses by the greedy elites. (Sound familiar?)

So the patricians put together a blue-ribbon commission of predator elitists and produced the Twelve Tables about 451 BCE.

The plebs thought about the over-vague Twelve Tables and watched them in action for about three years. Clearly, there was nothing there that was useful in limiting the greedy elites. The judges arbitrarily interpreted every vague little thing in favor of the greedy elites. (Sound familiar?)

About 449 BCE, the plebs revolted, setting up overnight a carefully crafted, turn-key system of citizen institutions. It was, said the elites, a revolting state within the state. But the plebs were the bulk of the army, so the patricians griped a lot, but did nothing overt.

Steadily gaining power, citizen lawmaking in the Council of Plebs (Concilium Plebis Tributum) combined with the representative government under the Senate and people, and, in 287 BCE, became the sovereign lawgiver of the Republic. In that year, the Centuriate Assembly (Comitia Centuriata) -- whose citizen membership was a mix of patricians, middle classes, and plebs -- ended the Senate's right to veto citizen-made law coming from any citizen institution.

There are solid reasons why the resulting Greco-Roman culture was the preeminent pre-modern culture and still teaches us worthy lessons today. For about 300 years, before the corruptions of the elites overwhelmed citizen lawmaking, Republican Rome had as many potential problem-solvers as it had citizens. Most of the incredible accomplishments of the army and the Greco-Roman culture under the Republic are direct consequents of citzen equality and citizen lawmaking.

Switzerland

And then Switzerland did the upside/lopside in a constitutional renewal that sputtered on from the 1847 civil war to 1891, ending with the Swiss people gaining fully independent, sovereign citizen lawmaking at every jurisdictional level.

There are solid reasons why Switzerland is one of the most successful nations both economically and socially -- echoing the Roman Republic in many ways. The Swiss Confederation has as many potential problem-solvers as it has citizens.

The tandem of economic and social success is difficult to do well. The US pales in comparison. Contrary to popular belief, we do not have democracy right. The Swiss have democracy right.

The Swiss democracy is probably the most elites-proof polity on the planet. Makes elites crazy around the world. Anti-Swiss machinations flow from every media propaganda machine that the global elites own. Watch for elites propaganda and corruptions landing on every facet of the Swiss people and their culture, economy, and governance.

United States of America

Unfortunately, we in the US have not been as determined or as lucky with our citizen lawmaking as the ancient Romans and modern Swiss. Our 140 years of steadily successful citizen lawmaking melded to rep govt in the New England Town Meetings before the Revolution -- the only truly American governance -- was reversed by our new-nation predator elites. They lived the unexamined life of bigoted predator elitism. Expected the rabble to bow and scrape -- literally. Said that direct democracy was bad for everybody and that they did not want it. Translation: they wanted unlimited profits and power flowing to their class. Alt translation: they did not want a bunch of contemptible rabble restricting their profits and powers with sovereign citizen lawmaking.

The new-nation state constitutions; and then our first constitution, the 1782 Articles of Confederation; and then the 1787 Constitution eliminated citizen lawmaking, leaving us our unAmerican elitist half-republic of pure representative government. Their over-vague Constitution provided the springboard for arbitrary judicial interpretations that would keep the profits and power flowing to the rich and powerful. They had learned the lessons well from the Roman patricians' over-vague Twelve Tables.

But stuck in the middle was the Declaration of Independence. The first part of its second paragraph holds our founding principles -- the implied promises of our fundamental governance rights. At least seven powerful governance rights can be derived from that text. None of those governance rights can be fully delivered by the pure representative government with which our predator elites saddled us. The DOI's promised governance rights require citizen lawmaking combined with representative government. See especially, "Forward, Direct Democracy 2.0", 27 June 2006, on this blog.

The DOI's extraordinary rights of Americans -- far beyond the "traditional rights of Englishmen" -- were what Americans fought, bled, and died for, from Lexington to Yorktown. They did not fight for an elites-controlled, over-vague, pure rep govt. They fought for sovereignty that would allow them to freely alter the details of their governance. They did not fight for consent-of-the-elites. They fought for consent-of-the-governed. They did not fight for a govt of public masters to be above the law and to have sovereignty over the citizens. They fought for a govt of public servants to be under the rule of law and under the people's sovereignty, with all citizens being equal.

Yes, the extraordinary rights of Americans were in play from the Lexinton Green in April 1775 -- before the DOI was written. Jefferson confirmed many times that his write-up in the DOI was nothing original from his mind. It was nothing more or less than what most ordinary Americans had been demanding for years.

However, the DOI's only purpose -- to the controlling majority of 1770s and 1780s elites -- was to bait the people into fighting for the elites' freedom from the English elites. We've no evidence that it was ever viewed in any other way by the majority of American elites.

For the majority of our elites to snap away those fundamental governance rights of Americans in the new-nation state constitutions, Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution was a Machiavellian betrayal of the first order. The elites were true to their class, not to their new nation, and certainly not to their nation's sovereign people.

So the Constitution was illegally ratified in ratifying conventions, instead of in the legislatures as required by the "inviolable" USA constitution, the Articles of Confederation. The elites' majority, with that unconstitutional ratification, proved beyond doubt that no constitution would be allowed to restrict their profits and power. And they've re-proven their anti-constitution convictions hundreds of times since.

Fast forward to the 1898-1918 Reform Era. Seizing on the upside created by the elites' throw-away, bait-and-switch Declaration of Independence, Reform Era citizens argued that the lack of citizen lawmaking had allowed the elitist corruptions that denied the people the strong representative government promised in the Constitution.

The anti-corruption arguments toppled civil society over into the lopside of a direct democracy movement aimed at the governance of citizen lawmaking combined with representative government. DD/rep-govt would eliminate the corruptions and give the people the strong representative government that they wanted.

The Reform Era was a citizen backlash that became the greatest democracy movement in recorded history. Reaching to fight the Robber Baron corruptions, many tens of millions of Americans had turned back to the direct democracy and representative government combination of our New England Town Meetings, the implied promises of fundamental governance rights set in DD/rep-govt as expressed in the Declaration of Independence, and then outward to the Swiss DD/rep-govt combination.

By Reform Era's end in 1918, citizens in 19 states had forced their politicians to help them put citizen lawmaking's initiative and referendum processes into their respective constitutions. The politicians did not do that willingly, and they stuck in as many loopholes and advantages for themselves as they felt they could get away with. But the core rights for sovereign citizen lawmaking are in there.

Nonetheless, the citizens of the I&R states couldn't keep their winnings. The elites, in their own secret backlash, calmly structured a system of massive unconstitutionalities around state-level citizen lawmaking. Their "separation of powers" and "binding judicial review of proposed law" violations allowed them to delay, alter, and/or reject any citizen-proposed law offensive to money-power. And, as usual, their sophistries, vacuous arguments, convoluted polemics, and outright lies threw up a wall of trickery that the servile had no inclination to confront. Their wall of deceits camouflages their unconstitutionalities so well that now, a hundred years on, the American public are still mostly unaware of what has been done to them.

See especially, "2nd Look--State Govt Unconstitutionalities Against Citizen-Proposed Law", 08 October 2006, on this blog.

The "admin law" that unconstitutinally controls citizen-proposed law in the states is another on-going, well-organized, Machiavellian betrayal of the sovereign people by the American elites. It is another proof that the American superrich and elites will not tolerate the rabble's constitutional law restricting their profits and power.

Regardless of the betrayal of the sovereign people and their constitutional law, we still have the upside created by the Declaration of Independence. Most of our civil society still believes in its founding principles. It's still one of our greatest living documents.

Even when the Constitution's ratifying conventions demanded the quid pro quo of a Bill of Rights, Madison and his fellow predators controlled the situation so that only the "traditional rights of Englishmen" were included. The DOI's extraordinary rights of Americans -- the governance rights that American patriots had fought for from Lexington to Yorktown -- are nowhere to be seen in our Bill of Rights. The elites' betrayal of the American Revolution, begun in the Articles of Confederation, was completed the day the Bill of Rights was ratified.

In the DOI, we still have the upside of the predators' unifying us for their own purposes. And, surprise, through all the hundred years of state-level citizen lawmaking wreckage, we still have our lopside. It's safely locked up in state constitutions where no corrupt politician can meddle with it.

Our citizen lawmaking remains the greatest corruption-fighting machine ever devised by ordinary people, done in the greatest democracy movement in history. Makes no difference that the elites have nearly obliterated that great democratic movement from our history books.

Neo-Lopside

Even in the blackest hours of some near-future, near-annihilation catastrophe, surviving and knowledgable Americans could reach into those state constitutions and re-create our best-ever corruption fighting machine. We need more voices speaking to the potential survivors about what's there.

In combination with a still-strong but effectively regulated representative govt, our corruption-fighting machine also yields a governance that auto-centers on equality, rights, freedoms, liberties, sustainability, and the rule of law. The people check and balance the collusion-prone branches of govt. The people ensure accountability for constitutional and statute criminals. And the regulated representative govt helps protect the people's rights from their zealous, bigoted, ideological pluralities, their corrupting superrich, and their own corrupt politicians.

We know those things are true from the direct democracy of our New England Town Meetings, the 115 years of the Swiss democratic republic, and the first blush of rush into corruption fighting in our Reform Era.

In the best traditions of complex systems theory, our past microshifts have carried Americans very close to the objective of ordinary people freeing themselves from predator elitism's many tyrannies. We're not there yet. And there's nothing inevitable aoout our getting there. But we're closer than most Americans know -- tantalizingly close.

What we need now, more than anything else, is unity of, by, and for the people. A society organized for pro-active action, outside political parties and other citizen-management fronts, is a strong society.

Keep writing your perspectives, Paul. Good luck to us all.

Modified Wed 13 Dec 2006, at 6:10pm CST.

© by Stephen Neitzke, 2006 -- 1950 words