As you might have gathered, today is just pure exasperation. In the US we have been warned of growing threat to our liberty for decades. It's even quite simple to follow the warnings back to before the founding of this nation. While I might be a charter member of the tin foil hat wearing club by many peoples standards. I am not talking about any grand over arching conspiracy, though there are many to go around. Our current scandal over torture is another slide toward the ideals of collective self interest. In almost all of the warnings our leaders have given us, they seem to have this common thread, The instances of, as well as the broad scope lead most to see disparate unrelated causation. Is this really the case or are we looking at a more fundamental challenge to individual expression? To answer this we might need to take a step back at the principals the US government were founded on.
The most basic idea drilled into school children has been the separation of powers, or checks and balances. Three branches, with the press being the public check on the system as a whole. No one branch being afforded a dominate position. Extend this idea to a nation, or the planet, and suddenly a new picture emerges. Oppression, exploitation, and genocide, repeated through history. One groups collective self interest being used to justify all manor of horrors, perpetrated on those perceived as other. Even taken to the scale of humanity as a whole, the dangers of unrestrained collective self interest are apparent. This is something that was well understood by the founders of the US, corporate charters were for short duration, and to be renewed the public benefit had to be shown. The alteration of these ideals was not done in your interest, or mine. Now we have gotten to where corporate entities have become almost super beings. Wielding influence over aspects of everyday life most can scarcely imagine. Enacting policies even to the detriment of those employed by the corporate entity.
A bunch of gobbledygook to get to, the purpose of any governing body is not to govern it's people, It's to protect them from being governed by anyone, or thing aside from their own conscience. To ensure the liberties we all see as our birthright are not infringed.
Is that the government we have?
Jack
aka
PanseyBard
The most basic idea drilled into school children has been the separation of powers, or checks and balances. Three branches, with the press being the public check on the system as a whole. No one branch being afforded a dominate position. Extend this idea to a nation, or the planet, and suddenly a new picture emerges. Oppression, exploitation, and genocide, repeated through history. One groups collective self interest being used to justify all manor of horrors, perpetrated on those perceived as other. Even taken to the scale of humanity as a whole, the dangers of unrestrained collective self interest are apparent. This is something that was well understood by the founders of the US, corporate charters were for short duration, and to be renewed the public benefit had to be shown. The alteration of these ideals was not done in your interest, or mine. Now we have gotten to where corporate entities have become almost super beings. Wielding influence over aspects of everyday life most can scarcely imagine. Enacting policies even to the detriment of those employed by the corporate entity.
A bunch of gobbledygook to get to, the purpose of any governing body is not to govern it's people, It's to protect them from being governed by anyone, or thing aside from their own conscience. To ensure the liberties we all see as our birthright are not infringed.
Is that the government we have?
Jack
aka
PanseyBard
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