Notes Towards a New Age, Volume 2

By Ed Ramsey

Ed Ramsey lives his blue collar philosophy, which he refers to as Mavellonialism. It is his cherished hope that inviting people to immerse themselves in the ideas presented throughout the chapters listed in Volume 2, will open the eyes of the reader to the immense , invaluable and satisfying opportunity given them to come to live as mavericks, in accordance with God's fervent hope for humanity.

Ed's ambition is to share his philosophy about becoming an advanced maverick with others.

Spiritual goodness, self-love, freedom and moderation are the first principles underpinning this philosophy. Read, enjoy and share your readings with Ed and others.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ed Ramsey
• Release date: Sep 8, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301941629

Ed Ramsey

I grew up on a family farm in northeastern North Dakota. We were a lower middle class family, struggling to make it on a small farm. My folks were honest, church-going, decent, hardworking folk that kept struggling to feed their large brood, and make their farm business succeed. All things considered, they did pretty well for us. They are both gone now, but I can never repay them for what they did provide. For the last 32 years my family and I have lived in worked in the Twin Cities area. I have always worked in the facilities field, and have been a building engineer for the last 14 years. God, my wife, my children, work, and writing are the main loves of my life. I hope that I have made them proud. There are thousands of professional thinkers representing academia, governmental agencies and various think tanks. The advantage to being an amateur thinker is that one 's thinking is not distorted by professional or institutional biases. Living and working in the every day world, and in the marketplace, have allowed me to see the world from a more practical, free market perspective. As the years pass, and Mavellonialist thought becomes accepted, mainstream and popular, please remember that this outlook grew out of battling hostility, poverty, hardship, ridicule and indifference to bring this wonderful, God-derived philosophy to the world. All in all, so striving has been a joy, honor and privilege. Enjoy everyday, and grow in every way! Ideas have always been a passion of mine. For 39 years I have been jotting down my ideas, and these three books are the first fruits of that labor and refinement. More books are forthcoming.

Book preview

Politics I

1

A democratic institution is superior to a hierarchical organization. But even within the democratic framework, ability is uneven, and a natural elite easily and often emerges to usurp power. They justify their power grab as well grounded in their being actually superior in some ways (smarter, more clever, more dedicated, working harder and being more energetic) to the oppressed. The elite may scornfully label the oppressed as inferior to themselves in all ways. This is obviously untrue. The dilemma to be resolved is how to let all be free to actualize their unequal abilities as individuals while allowing not to come about unequal and undemocratic social, political and economic results. This balance will be difficult to maintain, but there is no substitute for trying perpetually to maintain it. 1-19-2015: if all are in liberty and individuating, disparity of outcome is mostly irrelevant.

Huge, centralized, ossified, cartel-like, regulation-obsessed, hidebound institutions are centers of groupist non-accomplishment.

What becomes uniform is dead and inferior, and the higher emphasis must be on decentralized, personal pursuits with local, small polities, not on huge, centralized, uniform extremely dehumanizing institutions. This back and forth struggle will go on against the backdrop of eternal and natural cycle of rise and fall, life and death, birth, death and rebirth.

We need institutional variety. Where everyone lives the same, staleness sets in.

Where institutions vary, different models for tackling problems present themselves. Good ideas will be faster to circulate everywhere, but so will bad ones too. But they will be coolly received, limiting the fallout inflicted.

Bureaucracies are inherently evil and should be minimized.

Institutions inevitably smash the individual. Its hierarchical setup breeds anonymous, bloodless characters. Its instantaneously recognizes the individual as an affront to its model of its ideal employee, so the individual is to be reduced, remade, killed or tossed out into the cold and dark.

She will recoil against this if she wishes to preserve her individuality. She must learn to welcome rapidly changing conditions, remaining versatile, taking risks and thinking independently. She must refuse to know her place in its internal not-so-great-chain-of-bare-existing.

The real jungle is found in the institution, the quagmire of pure evil. The institution itself is the primary fault. Satan invented bureaucracy. We must get rid of or severely downsize the reorganized institution, as the first meaningful step towards reform.

Institutions cannot be reformed from within. Lasting reform must be carried out from without. She must learn to live without bureaucratic others.

From within they will burn reformist her out, wear her down or break her. She must reform through external revolt by starting separate anarchist parallel functions in her personal mini-mini-state.

Were we to enjoin our theorists to come up with visions of political utopia, unavoidably the element of anarchism included must be major if the model constructed was to bear wholesome fruit. To anarchize society is to de-institutionalize it. But let us proceed with this caveat: all abstractions envisioned decay into obstructionist organizations bloated, inept, sans focus and mission, dehumanizing, change-resistant and anti-progressive.

Each member of an organization must act centrifugally, and, paradoxically, cooperatively with the whole for the common good. Each of us must realize that we can only rely on ourselves, and that allegiance to the whole saps our vitality more than it benefits us. With passing time every organization parasitizes and enslaves those whom it was to nurture, protect and serve.

Those running the organization run it like ward politicians. They side with society's elite (Whom they crave to imitate and be regarded by as haves and insiders.) running society against the little people they control and feed off of.

Members of the aging organization stagnate, as its masters become dictatorial about their privileges and stratified rank. Those with creative approaches to existing problems are ignored, demoted or even run out. Those supportive of the status quo and the hacks running it are promoted and brought forward. The organization and all its members pay a steep price for this crippling management style.

Anarchist elements should not be fenced out of inner circles. They are the people with the new ideas. They are the merchants of the most radical, egalitarian demonstration of democracy conceivable. Their knack for upsetting the apple cart, for bringing intellectual rigor, fire in the belly, a rich provocative agenda—these gifts must be gratefully received by leaders of the organization if it is to remain relevant.

Bureaucrats have eyes but they do not see. They have ears but they do not hear. They tune out the customers that they are supposed to work for. They sneer at the little people as inferior sub-humans who know nothing, who must be guided in everything with their lives run for them, and to be punished severely if they resist centralized compliance efforts.

To be a practitioner of idealism is wonderful, but what must be considered is how easily and invariably bad means taint noble ends. Far too often idealists are ignorant in their arrogance. Implementing the vision often becomes a quagmire and cruel nightmare on the ground.

Reform works best where it is voluntary and self-imposed. This is slow, permanent improving to be proselytized by reformers one person at a time.

Idealists from the left and right seeking to legislate morality need to acknowledge their real feelings about people. They hate the common people, contemptuously disbelieve that the little people are capable of running their own affairs. These idealists crave power over the little people to control their lives utterly. Reestablishing moral standards is their battle cry, but they wish to pass as many laws as possible to enslave average people with a ruling elite of bureaucrats to micromanage their lives for them. We should legislate morality to a minimum, not a maximum.

I too advocate the highest moral standards possible but effective moral allegiance is a choice, not a mandated, statutory obligation.

Finally, I wish to point out that creeping socialism destroying our bourgeois democracy is but one way to enslave little people. Ecclesiastical, military, corporate, educational and other non-governmental institutions are other hierarchies out to control the lives of their members to the utmost degree possible.

Some idealists know what they are talking about. I am one of them. Though I was long been a janitor by profession, I should have been nature-incongruously--a philosopher king—at least over my own affairs. It is often a morally superior, wise elite--few in number, unheeded and unpopular—that knows what is best for the common people.

This is so because being good, thinking wisely and rationally, living by higher moral standards, seeing things as they are, refusing to be swayed by emotional appeals or popular opinion and doing things in a superior way are ways that we conduct ourselves as isolated individualists, not as tight-knit group members. Belonging actively brings out the worst in anyone, lowering his standards to the minimum, and makes him stupid.

Put an individuator in a group that he conforms to and he lives in inferior ways. Take a belonger out of the pack, and she miraculously becomes bright, decent, insightful and superior. It is no miracle, but the predictable result of the way she lives. Therefore, the idealist out to change the world must let people choose to think smarter and live better, and socially reward them for so volunteering to live as individuators. There can be no coercion or threatening. This is the key to lasting reform.

In every institution there are regular lines of communication, but for more sensitive information, alternative means are used.

We want the heads of no institution, public or private, practicing its brand of social engineering on society at large.

2

People revolt since they do not feel allegiance to the status quo. Things distill out this way not so much because the people have been exploited or oppressed. The latter ills suffered by the masses only become intolerable when they are symptomatic of a collapse of the traditional way of life. The people join a revolution not for idealistic reasons; instead, they seek replacement hegemony imposed on them by intellectuals and bureaucrats. They want to be told what to do and to fall back to sleep.

Through the years following their successful revolt, empowered idealists may foment revolution again just to keep it in its active phase. This is a near impossibility. Mao tried to keep the revolution from getting stale, and he inevitably failed.

Revolutions are bloody, extreme, forceful social upheavals imposed upon the resistant sleepy. As the revolutionary fires start to wane, the somnolent return to their dogmatic slumbers—with one or two new ideas.

The moral of this story is that unending revolution will not happen and does not exist. What may come in the future is unending reform. That is perpetual, and in that a way is quite revolutionary.

The revolutionary loathes him self utterly. He exports this loathing to the modernizing world that he utterly despises and can not adapt to, and whose members he can not mix with or relate to. He mis-characterizes this modernizing world as foul, soulless and without redeeming features. From this premise it is a short step to inferring that he is to save the world by destroying it. This spawn of Hell feels all morally superior while unleashing his fury upon the world, enslaving or killings millions of innocents.

To liberate by force is to bring totalitarianism down upon the heads of the people. The forces of reaction from the left or the right will deny democracy to the people. It will take time to make stable democracy work for the people and it cannot be constructed from the barrel of a gun.

Fabian-anarihism (I define Fabian as any gradual political reform, not the classical socialist brand espoused by Bernard Shaw.) and gradualist democrats see the democratic system as essentially workable with some changes made. They reject the pessimistic declarations of extremists, left and right, totalitarian and dangerous, who see the status quo as irremediably flawed and in immediate need of drastic, heartless, bloodthirsty and centralized replacement. Gradualists retain some optimism, are mature and are the only really effective change-agents in the long run. Political extremists hate such moderates far more than these extremists hate each other, and rightly so, since moderates are good, the real enemy. They are loathed by these evil ultraists vying to impose their own brand of wickedness upon the masses that these extremists hate but say they love for their (the masses) own good--all in the name of ideology.

Fabian-anarchism/reformism, in an industrial democracy, is the only fruitful way to reform things, gradually and constantly promoting and keeping steady pressure on the powers that be to keep things progressing steadily and gently.

Change is eternal, pressing and unstoppable. The point then is to change steadily, rationally and calmly to minimize social upheaval. Hoffer recommends we should not modernize in a state of frenzied anticipation, leading to the rise of mass movements and revolution.

Moderate changes as gradual reform are the only lasting, deep, profound revolutionary changes. These transitional forces must proceed unobtrusively, but their impact will be felt. They have little to do with violent demonstrations, flamboyant coups d'état, bloodbaths, street violence, mobs and excessive switches driven by a frenzied ideological climate.

The Fabian-anarchist reformer is patient, temperate. This moderate as meliorist is more of an incrementalist than an ultraist.

Political movements in full vogue—even minor, shallow fads—are irresistible while their proponents hurl them onto the scene. You must deal with what is: If the change is benign, absorb it. If it is harmful, survive it, even if its adherents defeat you. Some day it will be overturned too, so your opposition to this destructive change may just suffice to wear down the movement, minimizing its permanent damage to society.

The established order will always and causally give rise to avant garde movements predictably in opposition to it and dedicated to overthrowing its parents. The trick is blend the status quo with the new, creating a new synthesis.

People do have a right to overthrow their government—but if it is a democracy, they must do so within the system peacefully and gradually. Violently overthrowing the oppressive status quo rarely improves anything. Far too often the masters of the new system subjugate the masses even more cruelly than did the old guard.

Total change right now that is pushed by the fanatic is superficial, fleeting change.

Incremental change advocated by the moderate is deep, subtle, slow and lasting change.

Radicals exert themselves overthrowing the old while embracing the new without discrimination or hesitation.

By contrast, the wise revolutionary, the conservative revolutionary, is a nonviolent gradualist, mixing together both the old and the new; holding onto what is good and true from both, plus rejecting what is negative and false from both.

Movements and the reformers propelling them forward are mature and moderate when they are ambitiously focused and committed to long-term gain. They operate without rigid idealism or virulent enthusiasm. Their quiet persistence chasing after reform goals in a steady, purposive manner should draw support, gratitude and affection from the masses.

Moderate, civilized, peaceful, anarchists want things to be cool, calm, changing, not disastrous or emergency-state prone and panicky, followed by then listless lulls of social stagnation. Rather, they want things to be gently run in an efficient, organized, progressive fashion.

It is futile to contradict Hoffer's thesis that affluence is a powerful change agent that is very dangerous in undermining, destroying even sweeping aside as irrelevant traditional structures and institutions. Having in mind the unjustified authoritarian regime at work in the Saudi monarchy, the ruling family would be well counseled to introduce democracy to the masses. In that country there must be a wise blending of parliamentary democracy with the existing monarchal order. Political empowerment as well as affluence must reach the masses at the same time.

Americans too can learn from this gradualist example of proceeding apace within the framework of tradition and custom. There will be social stability only when and where ceaseless striving and adapting is rewarded and incorporated by upholders of the status quo.

Any revolutionary who resorts to violence to gain his goal is no friend of humanity. Ever the rigid idealist, he will bend people out of shape—in effect crippling them—to force them to fit the mold of his expectations for them, rather than allow them to take his principles, and apply them in novel ways out of his control.

Where he praises not what they have always done well, he the distorter is throwing out the baby with the bath water.

He must be content to lay out his ideas clearly, brilliantly and cogently. Then he must proselytize with endless self-encouragement, realizing it may take 100 years for his ideas to catch on. Once the common people incorporate his platform into their mass culture, he has made it post mortem. His years of sufferance, of stubborn but uncomplaining application, of still, peaceful pressure have all paid off. He is to be commended for his mature, beneficial approach.

Significant, lasting change is not instantaneously achieved. And the newly acquired level of excellence is quickly reversible if that level of existence is not constantly reinforced.

Real change is steadily pursued and embraced by the people. Transformations never quit coming, so the populace must be conditioned to living that way, never again feeling alienated, or needing to adjust convulsively to radical change. Forbearance and optimism help folks embrace not fear but substantive, continuous change, a social norm.

The reforming idealist should hesitate at the portal of change, taking time out to reflect upon what he is about to unleash. His keen observations of people's lives coupled with his shrewd and exercised powers of inductive reasoning have led him to generalize brilliantly about existent, accidental patterns of evolved, beneficial communal practices needing upgrading into universal, established and formal programs of reform.

In his hour of hesitation, he will warn himself and his audience that history remains open-ended. How this influences his reform platform is that he urges restraint in imposing it on a population who are not to be ordered to follow it without deviation. Where people are left free to experiment and try new things, new patterns of behavior will accidentally become common enough and discoverable by the next, awake, social scientist.

Political and social problems are deep-rooted and are not amenable to Johnny-one-note, sophomoric bromides, nor by imposing punitive, fascist solutions upon unfortunate others.

Change is often the convenient cover for people to attack victims against whom they were looking for such an excuse to destroy these enemies. Change is a chance to gain unfair advantage. The rogue, that uses change as weapon for power grabbing, is one doing much damage to the cause of progress. His abuse of change tends to push his victims to associate change with hurt. As a result, they resist changing, and that is damaging to the common good.

So, the rogue, on some level, was planning to fight progress all along.

The hustle and bustle of modern life overwhelms people. Utopia requires a solid material, affluent base. The trick may be to pursue our dreams without hurrying so much or acquiring so much.

There is no advantage to throwing us back to the Stone Age, a tribal lifestyle without any of the modern conveniences. Yes, then there was less pollution, no strip malls, only natural sounds and an alluring rural peace and quiet. Today we offer careers, possessions, mass luxury and leisure previously unheard of, medical care, self-realization theory, and liberation through rootlessness unfettered by extended family or community. Congestion, noise, crime and interference from others are issues that will be dealt with to the satisfaction of most people.

For the back-to-rudimentary-nature buffs, more power to them. Still we must not forget that only apart from nature do humans come alive, acquire the things necessary to help them develop, find depth, knit together out of atavistic fragmentation the holistic self and establish personal release from the community.

The new is not always best or most advanced, but ordinarily change is good and is more in line with reason and human welfare, whereas the emotional rationale that that is how we have always done it usually is pernicious to logic, advancement and the common good.

It is a historical necessity that some change is always occurring.

Humans cannot effectively resist this force. Instead they can take control of the process by intelligently managing it. They can induce desirable changes that are not naturally underway. They can speed up the rates of change of useful transformations, and remake and slow down and sidetrack less beneficial changes.

Change, their permanent reality, can become an ever-present boon.

Activists can be too pushy, hurting others and themselves by working volunteers much too hard, creating hardcore stress and unhappiness for all involved. No one takes this undue pressure very well.

The stages of the process must be sequentially, fully honored, but then activists should move on presently as the stage is complete. Unless this steady pace of change is sustained, their process of growth remains incomplete, immature, and mired in the present phase, alternating with bloody, violent upheavals of social revolution. Let people grow towards their societal goals in the vein of peaceful, lucrative, incessant and gradual historic change.

Change makes people uneasy, so they search for and select a target to blame their problems upon, and who is to be attacked.

It is dangerous to make people feel inadequate, ashamed about what they are, believe, have and like to do. Reform should build on what they have, think, like and do in order that zealots not wreck society.

From my studies of Eric Hoffer's works it has become ingrained in me to worry about every new introduced reform. Change is inevitable, desirable and beneficial if managed carefully. It is as destructive as nitroglycerine when it is mishandled--as it usually is.

In summary, let the changes continue as we work to blend new theories with old customs, teach each person to love herself as she experiences upsetting discomfort, while she accommodates change into her life in her own way, to a degree preferable for her and at a rate that she can absorb. The reformer must shoulder his grave duty to compromise by leaving much of the traditions he loathes not attacked and in place. The reformer must accept his responsibility to bring changes forward in a patient, gentle and dispassionate manner so as not to stampede the populace into joining a ruinous mass movement.

We at heart are fatalists and conservatives. Social inertia in society is a natural, matter of fact, prized condition. Change is neither desired nor championed. It is unnatural, brutal, upsetting, invigorating, beneficial, painful and problematic.

Now that change is our tradition, we now fatalistically and ironically cherish it as the way to live and proceed. Woe betides the chances for further human progress should a successful Counter-Reformation take hold in the future. It probably will because human excesses to one extreme breed their doom as a new generation goes to excess in the opposite direction.

The successful reformer is impatient and uncomfortable with quick victories and changes. She works steadily to achieve them. These are morale boosters for the movement. She is also a pragmatist accepting that serious change is pokey. The cause will suffer setbacks, and some problems may be impossible to solve, so she works over time to ameliorate conditions and there is steady but slow success over time.

Peoples do better with great change where the people and their leaders spring from a tradition of gradual reform fostered under a democratic tradition.

This new order must incorporate both liberal and conservative inputs. Steady change is a paradoxical concept, and yet it is the ultimate stabilizing influence. Steady, proceeding political change keeps us utilizing freedom and avoiding slavery, working towards peace not war, promoting nonconformity over conformity, learning from each other. We opposing factions in society must take turns not getting our way. We must share power for these objective, moderate reasons. We must do this rather than to struggle for power and instability for subjective, immoderate, mutually exclusive reasons. We must appeal to people nationally, and work locally inside the system to reform it.

Democracy is the only long-term, enjoyable, workable and peaceful goal politically to be considered. To get and keep it, federal and local police and the military must be reigned in, and forced to stay out of politics. It is dangerous to be impatient with a fledgling democracy and seek authoritarian rule to gain immediate action, decisiveness and to make the trains run on time. Social loyalty and the rule of law allow no quick fixes. Fast, violent solutions sabotage the noble end. The state (or any institution, public, private or religious), when revitalized and reformed, leads to an upswing in goodness, based on a healthy solidarity which is moderate and holistic, centrist tolerance of dissidents and individual search for truth.

And it is perilous not to promote world democracy and political stability elsewhere. Such promoted foreign policy ensures the health of our domestic policy, blending the legitimate needs of internationalism and isolationism.

In my discussion of democracy's advantages, it must be admitted that the democratic process often is sloppy, tedious, cumbersome, unfocused and can lead to ineffectual compromise. The solution is to elect better leaders, not to give up on the democratic model. Many have correctly noted that middling parties and compromise are necessary for democracy to work.

It is easy to point out society's problems and how the regime in charge is inadequately dealing with these problems. The trick is to come up with viable solutions (an almost magical meld of idealism and practical application) to be implemented effectively by a replacement party of leaders touted by the reformist critics. Unless the ancient regime is wholly corrupt, we reformers should be Fabian-anarchists, finding the successful players, practices and institutions to be held over from the old order, and update them as part of the replacement program.

People must have some goals in common to work towards for the sake of the commonweal. It can be done. But, for it to get done, the people must think it is a good idea and is doable. When mixing the old with the new, these aspects must represent a cross section of cultural traits reflecting our pluralistic, huge, complicated society. The many conflicting goals require compromise and harmony to hold the union together, and to get anything significant accomplished.

Just as the active agents in natural drugs are far more concentrated and dangerous to their users who abuse them out of a context of ritual and habit that culturally mitigate the odds of addiction, so too does the death of belief in traditional religion bespeak of a time of great peril for a people. Aberrant and venomous isms and causes sprout and the noxious fumes from nationalism and ethnic militancy rush into the political vacuum left by political and religious disintegration. Totalitarianism, fanaticism, fundamentalist imperialism, cockamamie theocracies, and nationalist and regional warfaring may be the crop of the 90s.

We need gradual and constant improvement in religious and political conditions in a society, and they should be collectively separate but in our isolated hearts they can be mixed. Society needs moderate religion, moderate theologies and isms. Fanatics of any fringe should not be persecuted or ignored, but should be spoken out against.

The politics of moderation is gradualism, change from within a democratic system that can be rehabilitated. It is reform not revolution, and the opposition is a loyal opposition that the majorities in the system not only do not hate, but also desperately needs for their own sake.

We must not quit trying and abandon the process. We must use persuasion and be patient. We must use the ballot box and wait our turn in the democratic unfoldings. Overthrowing a democratic government, using force and violence are very wicked options; they are crimes against God and humans. That only makes things worse. We must be patient and reasonable and use calm, solid arguments even if it takes a hundred years to achieve our dreams. We must try our best and be persistent over years, maybe decades to accomplish our goals of reform. Change comes slowly with reactionary swings inevitable. Even our best, noble efforts will not always win. Bad people win too. And good people with opinions opposing ours win too. Today opportunism, corruptibility and false promises are rife.

From what I have read second hand, Edmund Burke devised standards for determining the legitimacy of a revolution. Conditions must be insufferable, all other remedies must have been tried, and revolutionaries must have a substitute system they intend to replace the one that they overthrow. Sounds reasonable to me.

An idea for reform is partially--maybe fatally--discredited when it is shown a failure upon implementation. Sometimes the idea is a dumb one that is doomed to fail and should be discarded, or severely modified. Or the reason the idea has failed is that it was implemented in its extreme form (guaranteeing long-term failure). Only moderate versions of ideas are permanently successful when not clumsily, fanatically interpreted by its implementers.

The idea appears to flop due to its misapplication and imperfect execution by its incompetent backers ill trained to make it appear successful. We must not totally reject a good idea out of hand because it has failed to work in some instances. A more practical version of it, sensibly altered to meet various people’s particular and complex needs, carefully introduced and efficiently managed, may prevail, and prove to be an important vehicle for working towards humanistic goals.

Hoffer has eloquently alerted us to the dangers of mishandling dramatic change. Chaos renders us all into misfits. We have to put on a new self and fashion new roles equipping us to function on the stage of life upon which there is a new act underway.

When the vessel carrying untrained millions smashes upon the reef of newness, their existent, fragile senses of self-esteem are shattered. Passion, mass movements, global upheaval and war will surely follow. We have to intervene early and thoroughly to embed in people's personalities the fact that they are okay regardless of how much discord and transformation are swirling about them. Then they will survive and readjust without making tough changes even worse. Potential defeat can become a great victory for nimble-witted peoples.

They come to accept that change is a historical, metaphysical, physical, biological and unavoidable destiny that they must live through. They must take the bull by the horns. They have learned to relish change by readjusting constantly, quietly, dispassionately, gradually and voluntarily. They manipulate change to human advantage as they preserve their dignity and tradition while guiding change through the canal of ceaseless progress.

To effect change, work to revise the formal legal machinery and statues, but grassroots support-building to organize public pressure favorable to one's reforms is a vital step to achieving reform.

Give me gentle revolution if you want permanent change, and this I avow despite temporary, stiff opposition from reactionaries against this heartfelt change which, though pokily going forward, when underway, will yield solid gains.

The poor and discontented seek reform, even socialist, violent upheaval or revolution to get relief now. But conservative revolution is the only lasting revolution. Otherwise, the overthrow is just the prelude to setting up a new elite, and the masses still suffer. As many experts note, it is far easier (and guaranteed to fail) to overthrow the government violently, then to peacefully and effectively run the government and economy once the revolt is successful. And reform for the ideal and permanent and global goals as well as the concrete, short-term and local needs require fulfilling.

And people must not just demand that society change, but change themselves to work harder, make more money, and offer and work to implement useful solutions. They must politically push for reforms and then do local charity to help the downtrodden. The alternative form of social change, violent reform is pure evil, and this wicked means annuls any nobly sought end, worsening things manifold, bringing in a reign of totalitarian terror and bloodletting, making everyone suffer.

The people end up profoundly unhappy with an even increased level of poverty. Herd robotism and totalitarian control of the masses by a new government aristocracy of the party takes place. Socialists deny this saying Russian socialism does not represent what happens to institutionalized socialism. Baloney! They would deny that socialist revolt has failed before. Through the long centuries of Chinese history, the violent overthrow of the emperor by the masses may have led to temporary prosperity and wealth redistribution for the masses, but somehow the feudal lords and emperors were restored. The pecking order was reinstituted.

Once in power the once-revolutionary status quo refuses to listen, heed or adjust to good advice, not mending their evil ways. So one extreme overthrows the other oppressive extreme, and the people still lose. No one gained and all lost out. True revolution is slow, gradual, peaceful, and moderate so the improvement is win-win.

Change is upon us faster and faster and it is becoming more multifaceted too. It is bewildering even for the nimble of foot and the quick-witted.

In one’s political views, one must not be too reactionary or too radical. One must embrace change leading to progress—progress unfolding as peace, prosperity and continuity.

It is quite difficult to redirect an institution or change significantly its culture. Traditionalists, those entrenched old-timers, will work feverishly to undermine new developments. It may be very hard to exercise much control.

It is wisest not in haste to overthrow and destroy traditional authority. There is no guarantee that the new order of things will be improved.

It is better to gradually change the system from within. Stable, steady change will avoid replacing the traditional system with some untried, more evil replacement plan.

Despite setbacks incurred and the ceaseless effort to expend at repelling the counter-reformationists, the world keeps getting a little better all the time.

Change per se will not upend society where legal authority is grounded in the individual. The individual is the most moderate part of society, and who is moderate best absorbs new ways with the least fallout. The individual is the social unit most readily, steadily adapting. Worries over security and stability then become much more remote possibilities.

3

Police states, of both the left and right persuasion, use the following tactics to gain and keep control. They regularly use spies, and techniques like execution, torture, and endless incarceration without formal accusations and due process. They resort to party-line indoctrination on the streets and in jail. Secular and religious minorities are persecuted. Brutality and terror are employed to keep the masses submissive.

The open and secret police both use sleep deprivation and beatings to extract confessions, to brainwash, to convert and to get information from prisoners.

Political prisoners are often held in prison for months or years on vague or nonexistent charges. They are afflicted with house arrest, not arraigned, tried or released. They may do a stint in their country’s concentration and brainwashing camps.

Censorship of any kind is an abomination. Thought control by the government is execrable.

Dictatorial government officials govern unfairly, reinforcing political and economic inequality. Their oppression of the masses means meddling into the minute, private affairs of each citizen. It means pulling things like curtailing freedom of worship.

Imposing totalitarian rule on every aspect of citizens' lives, through indoctrination, mind control, technology and a pervasive, effective spy system may not be justified as the only way to bring about peace, stability, law and order. The regime is doomed to failure as soon as the elite cadre dies off, or the status quo begins to decay. Of course this decline may last a lifetime.

A cowed, passive, submissive, groupist population allows the imposition upon them of a state of slavery, living under an authoritarian regime. Freedom and self-rule are hallmark political institutions favored by a confident, aggressive, feisty, demanding population of self-starters.

For example, all citizens—even criminals-—have the right and duty to limit police force capacity to become the enforcer of the authoritarian state.

The fascist feels that strong man rule is a necessity mandated by the fact the common people are naughty, foolish, undisciplined children requiring firm, coerced, intrusive, benevolent, wise control from their father figure, the tyrant.

Sadly, billions of people reside under totalitarian governments, living greatly or even utterly controlled lives, ruled by such a self-serving jerk. They are told what to think and how to act. After while they come to accept, expect and maybe even like such mistreatment. For them to be so intellectually manipulated and totally dependent is to demonstrate what he would label exemplary citizenship. Where adults are long treated as if they are children, they come to act like children and believe and act in child-like ways. Their pettiness and submissiveness makes the regime feel justified in oppressing them, but the cowed people are made poor citizens by their suffering and subjugation.

The government must never be allowed to suppress those who express their alternative points of view.

It is the informed citizen’s duty to protest openly against official misconduct and wrongdoing. It may also be perilous to personal safety to serve as a local opposition leader in a repressive regime, because almost certainly the authorities will target such community heads for torture, imprisonment and even liquidation. The officials conduct this harsh campaign for two reasons. First, by making an example out of the leaders of the opposition, they stifle dissent. Second, by taking out these marked persons, it is easier to bring their followers back into line, or at least keep them scattered, off balance and ineffective.

The junta, supported by its secret police, and system of gulags, reigns where the innocent are locked away for years without a chance to defend themselves. The citizens can be maimed, mistreated without protest or resort. They can be made to disappear without a trace for some real or imagined offense.

Members of the junta are but organized thugs that are profoundly anti-democratic, prejudiced, arrogant, intolerant, corrupt and vicious.

Notwithstanding their lame attempt to justify their imperialist designs in the name of ideology or liberation, nationalism, or theocracy, Communist or Fascist adventures into foreign countries are not out to liberate or aid the countries in question. The motive for these naked invasions is extending the empire's borders of the totalitarian nation involved. The desire for world conquest propels them forward. These imperialists may talk peace and play to the international audience that they stand for bringing justice to suffering people everywhere.

However, unless their domestic and foreign policy demonstrate concretely their reverence for peace, prosperity, non-expansionism, no stirring up of ethnic conflicts, no secret police, no subversive intelligence and no counterrevolutionary or revolutionary agencies, no arms buildup, and their active support for global environmental protection, human rights, free press, etc., they are the proverbial cats out to swallow as many canaries as they can.

The corresponding domestic totalitarian environment for empire-builders is evil, non-free with utter conformity demanded and no dissent or eccentricity allowed. Standing up to snitches and backbiters can earn a person an arbitrary visit from the Gestapo. Everyone must be constantly on guard, trusting nobody, avoiding the worst ones who actively elicit information from a person to use against him.

The secret police exploit silence and inconsistent statements from suspects. They love zeroing in on any citizen deviating from the party line to nail enemies and protect friends. There is no freedom of action. All thinking and choice are centrally directed. The central government imposes lots of rules, and urges all to narc on all.

Totalitarian governments deceive and misguide their people. History is rewritten and current events are distorted to match official propaganda. Here is the big lie being practiced. And it works fairly well. The reality around people as painted officially carries sway. This is so especially when backed up by campaigns of terror.

4

As some political pundits have advised after the Bush-Gore fiasco, we should use electronic balloting to allow the people to vote directly on issues at a federal level. Yes, I say but the masses need to become prudent, educated, dispassionate, with-it, self-thinking, kind and moderate. Once they demonstrate common sense and good judgment, they then can be allowed to vote wisely by simple majority vote. Otherwise, the tugs of passion, demagogues and bandwagon appeal might elicit from the majority an unwise and unfair majority vote. Immediacy could easily become the enemy of democracy and the commonweal.

Only a future generation of Americans, of which the majority of citizens ruling this exceptional nation, were calm, cool, informed, responsible, involved individuators, would be able to handle direct elections of the President by the people voting electronically. Demagogues or virulent party politics would not sway individuators. Their civilized civic ruling would allow us constitutionally to alter our built-in system of checks and balances, but not before then. No way.

While majority rule normally is a just and fair way to proceed, the sophisticated, moderate electorate will analyze how things are, and, where minority but unpopular views deserve some legal clout, the majority will compromise through its legislators to allow minorities some say in getting their way. This will occur as long as such a transition is demonstrably harmless to the majority and beneficial to seeking minority.

The majority will authorize that what should be done will be done, knowing full well by sheer majority numbers, they could prevent the minority from ever getting its wishes granted. The majority will grant minority wishes even though granting those wishes conflicts with or at least does not further their own interests.

Far too often wise public policy played second fiddle to majority opinion masquerading as public policy. The republic is best served by an enlightened, alert public aware of and acting upon its obligation to decide its take on fresh events. The public must reach conclusions judiciously to do the least damage possible to individuals and the body politic in general. The public must sway legislators and the executive.

In any given society the majority should not dominate the minorities, and nor should an elite minority dominate other minorities or the majority of citizens.

Under anarchy as well as democracy there needs to be encoded an expanded Bill of Rights and communally installed such social conventions protect individuals and other such tiny minorities from the tyranny of the majority. The will of the majority should be the law of the land, but wherever possible the rights of minorities should go unregulated socially and constitutionally.

In country by country, as it comes to pass that individuals enjoy both constitutional and social rights (respectively, constitutionally and socially protected class rights) that other minorities have, then we will have utopia here on earth.

Victims should not isolate themselves from the persecuting majority. They should verbally and violently if need be fight back. The majority is not civilized till it relinquishes the opportunity to scapegoat upon this defenseless minority.

It is easy to urge differing minorities to assimilate and make themselves more accepted, but still majority hostility, intolerance and persecution towards them will not abate. The majority must no longer work at making life difficult for the citizens of minority persuasion. No more in future generations must minorities be martyred in their drive for justice and equality. It is proper for the majority to exult in its racial and ethnic heritage. Now they must go a step further and channel that pride into esteeming the heritage of their minority brethren.

5

God is an anarchist. God’s representative in this Vale of Tears is the liberated individual. She is not infallible but she is the final arbiter of all things on earth. Where her rules clash with the rules of her neighboring anarchist’s rules, honorable compromise will lead them to reach a serviceable accommodation satisfactory to both. Thus disputes will be resolved.

The individual’s needs are healthy for society; the needs of the institution being met too often destroy society. The conflicts, that will arise among these rulers of their own sovereign states versus the antagonistic, opposing interests, of the various institutions and their guiding officers, will be settled by the chief officer meeting with the individual party to the dispute. A resolution will be worked out between them.

If resolution cannot be reached, the claim of the anarchist shall be granted primacy. There should be no exceptions to this as long as the individual’s demand is a reasonable one. If the definition of reasonable seems murky with plenty of wiggle room, that is as I intended. The definition needs to be open-ended enough to accommodate changing conditions.

As an avowed anarchist it is obvious I think local government should make most of political decisions, including the ones affecting its citizens directly. Local officials should hold most of the political clout in society, not state, federal or international bodies. Smaller, streamlined public bureaucracies and more cost-effective and implementational effectiveness would be gained. But universal standards of human rights and other things would need to be honored by all localities to make decentralization attractive and feasible. Never again can the holy cause of states’ rights be used to shield from criticism or sanctions those regional or local governments practicing from such abhorrent legal practices as slavery.

Anarchists will showcase very local control of culture, legal proceedings and economic decisions, but welcome a universal, cooperative, international consensus on how to approach things together too. Local autonomy and enlightened internationalism would be wedded together at the expense of a powerful, centralized federalism.

We will always require some federalist powers and joint if voluntary international political structures like United Nations. But real power must shift back to the local level where regional values are in force with regional rituals and interests reigning supreme, along side home rule, local color, local language and local religion.

Anarchists only desire to be free to run their own lives and be left alone. They will compromise with their neighbors if different and often conflicting views and priorities.

Anarchists are loath to deprive others of their preferences. They are loath to force others to conform to the majority’s will. Anarchists want their neighbors to be free and happy.

It is true that to deny to inveterate officials, seated on throne and by the altar, their aura of absolute authority and intellectual perfection, traditionally delcared as stemming from and ordained directly from the Divinity, is to damage a people unused to such routine denials. For them, cracks in the aura of infallibility can lead to social disintegration, chaos and negative anarchism. The status quo must be challenged and transformed. Fortunately, few peoples in the 21st century are so awed by their rulers.

It would comfort an alert public to realize that positive anarchists were midwifing the transformation. These relativists are temperate, advanced and civilized. They endure and induce consistent, constant change. They revere the sacredness of society itself by fighting injustice peacefully, lawfully, legislatively, constitutionally.

They gradually overturn the status quo. Then the official loss by the sitting elite to rule by divine right is not dangerous—it is quite beneficial. It was always necessary.

Even the most rudimentary study of history and the simplest understanding of mass psychology lead one to accept that human progress is a faulty process with dramatic and tragic counterreformations ahead. Humans can go from faith in the future to being frightened of everything new. Democracy anywhere can wither and prosperity can degenerate into economic ruination. Totalitarianism, mega-weather catastrophes, world war, militant nationalism, mass movements, dark ages, economic collapse, civil war and ethnic purges are just a few of the possibilities.

People must demand the granting of liberty and power—or take them—nonviolently if possible—from the oppressors. People must use their hard-won liberty and power to fight for, to extend and to champion their civil, constitutional, human and natural rights, or the government will slowly take them away. By repossessing their power and liberty, the people are de-institutionalizing society and the devolution of power to anarchists individuals will set up the penultimate democracy. The most developed, complete state of political freedom is enjoyed in an anarchist state.

Intuitively I know that anarchism is the utopian political system workable and pleasing to humankind.

In a utopian world of individuators' anarchy, people largely must cordon themselves off from each other. The determination to disassociate must not be a mere, temporary, historically cyclical breakdown in traditional tribalism soon to rebound in prominence as new forms of corporatism. Instead, it must be a permanent, liberating shift towards high civilization in which disassociation is the desirable lifestyle and political reality.

The engine of anarchism, fueled by the energy of individualism, will propel the vehicle of society steadily forward to economic good times for all and near perfect political equality. People therein will be secluded from each other much of the time but ironically the sense of community and affinity will never have been greater or more genuine while citizens are apart from each other, or when people come together.

Though the impulse to associate will be reduced, it is unhealthy to seek its obliteration for people still are always if unfortunately hard-wired to be communal creatures. A useful balance could be struck between the advantages of anarchism on the one hand and the need to associate on the other. This could be achieved by limiting the size of communities (offering the best utopian mixture of technology and nature, city and country), and by providing healthy local clubs and activities to meet the human need to affiliate with their own kind. This way a healthy sense of loyalty towards, participation in and ongoing contribution towards civic cohesion can remain forthcoming without damaging each person's Mavellonialist ambitions.

Totalitarian governments, successful in their ambitions or not, strive to conquer other peoples and build a colonial empire. War making between such powers is more likely how they will solve problems because using force to get what they want has been very rewarding for them during previous crises.

If we wish to experience political utopia where all are free from war, oppression, police states and political and economic inequity, it will not come about through a very gentle and civilized one-world government, but through the arising of 100,000 Greek states. Anarchists will set up these anarchies worldwide. They will work to fulfill their mission with a steely determination. They seek to establish and maintain a one-world civilization based in equality, justice, noninterference and nonviolent resolution of problems.

Though anarchism is the ideal, ultimate political state, abrupt and total abandonment of the centralized, nation states system to splinter the world pell-mell into 100,000 mini-states would backfire terribly. The whole world would become an ex-Yugoslavia. The devolution must be slowly, carefully, rationally implemented. Some peoples may even wish to remain within nation states, and that is their right. Most governmental functions would not need to be run by United Nations or its logical replacement. Let the 100,00 nations have representatives at a worldwide legislature and regional armies and navies representing about 10,000 states. All would have to be drafted to serve a 4-year term in the military, Peace Corps, vista etc. Citizen soldier regional armies run by a rotating President of one of the 10,000 states would be a check and balance system on the World Legislature, the UN replacement agency.

How to implement anarchism? It must be instituted as a worldwide, loose United Nations-size confederacy. The population and boundaries should be small, compact, heterogeneous city, rural, or suburban nations of 50,000 running themselves.

Utopia will not occur until all began to harbor the premise that the earth's political reality must be populated by 6 billion anarchist states. There at, the private person is the state and the citizen, the legislator, the law enforcer and law obeyer all rolled into one. This balance keeps freedom free as some rules are promulgated, enforced and abided by to preserve personal freedom, and yet outside (state) interference in her individualized pursuit of happiness is minimized.

Political utopia for individuators would allow for small, decentralized government with some legal, communal, economic and military functions still run by the local and federal government. The idea of legislating morality beyond overt acts of criminality would not be tolerated, since there is no way that a centralized statute would not morally crimp the self-actualizing journey of millions of individuators creatively going their own way, doing their own thing.

Too often in politics our biases govern our appraisal of leaders, factions and parties and their concomitant actions. If our darlings are left wing or right wing, then anyone of the opposite persuasion or advocating the views of the opposition can do no right and our faction members can do no wrong.

An institutional hierarchy, even while its controllers self-congratulate that they uphold high standards, is characterized by plenty of bloat. It has lots of ever extending rules for the correct way to operate with guarantees of low standards and deadening uniformity. This mini-slave-state kills morality, freedom and individualism. Get rid of these 8,000 rules; replace them with guiding rules with little emphasis on credentials--very general ones if at all.

By contrast and in the long run, the anarchist institution will result in higher standards, an explosion of high quality performance through out its reach. Under it the people would limit standards punishment to the social sanction kind, with not much formal, legal redress. Under the auspices of anarchism what would arise would be a class of developed amateurs who are superior to one-dimensional professionals.

Schools, for example, now so bureaucratical need very little structure and quality (methods and materials). They mostly need content (ideas and teachers to be very knowledgeable in subject matter). Then teachers are to let kids be free. To stay in teaching, the teacher must personally like kids, the subject and the learning phenomenon.

In anarchist states, things will be done in government in a swift, careful, fair, legal, methodically and irenic manner. Under utopian anarchism, each citizen will lead herself, conduct her own affairs, and be her own and only faithful disciple.

An anarchist as institutional critic is a saint recognizing to oppose evil is to prevent it from being politically centralized and absolutely corrupting. He realizes reformers must split up the monopolist louts, decentralize their power conglomeration, and then keep them decentralized.

Bureaucracy cannot be eliminated and to some degree is necessary and beneficial to society. Beyond this moving and flexible boundary, it is one of the chief nemeses to humanity. It functionaries hate individuals and freedom and creativity, and it is Satan's main bulwark of oppression of humanity. Bureaucracy is formal groupism and has a pernicious leveling effect on us all. Conformist rogues are elevated there, and nonconformist heroes are cast out or hounded unmercifully. People are kept small and confined in bureaucracies, and the control over their lives is immense and far-reaching. Anarchists must provide literal economic and political justice for all to avoid reformers looking to institutional bureaucracies to solve social problems, creating more bureaucracy.

I anticipate the powerful criticism from critics, quite opposed to my advocacy of anarchism, that this political theory is unworkable for mass society. There is much truth to this, though I suggest that anarchist input improves considerably the quality of life in any political system. Anarchism will most workable among smaller, libertarian, decentralized groups of people.

Anticipating the above-mentioned, legitimate, critical scolding that I offer no concrete, specific plan for erecting such a decentralized society efficient, convenient, productive and manageable for millions of people, I admit that they are largely correct. To come up with a specific plan (which I have not done) I advise the anarchist planner to study how small and operational were the American federal and state bureaucracy in the 19th century. We can duplicate ancestral simplicity again.

Theorists have at hand archives detailing how such bureaucracies functioned 150 years ago. They also historically have proof that devolving back to what worked in the past is possible as well as desirable. That system was up and running and ran fairly smoothly—questions or economic injustice and robber barons to the contrary.

People must formulate the laws which all must live under.

The right to be self-determining in a polity structured as a political anarchy is a law of divine nature that is eternal and universal and from God; unfortunately, so is the dark law that is its contradiction, the law of totalitarianism and centralized control from Satan. Both natural laws of politics apply and regulate the political affairs of all peoples and in that sense they are trans-cultural.

Simply because the anarchist would be quite unwilling to externalize as legally binding for all more than a necessary few sanctions, her support for private morality does not mean that she is a rebel against external legislating just to rebel or to advocate libertinism or to countenance criminal wrongdoing. Far from it. She would be scandalized by that imputation.

This individuated person is self-legislating, and indeed sinfulness and lawlessness are a group thing most rampant in totalitarian states where every minor detail of life is governmentally, formally subject to regulations.

She would belong to and support a confederation of anarchists annually meeting to discuss what rules they all need to be bound by. They will meet, agree, disagree, compromise, cut deals and then vote into law these agreements approved with majority support, and all or most would then obey without disobedience, lip service or foot-dragging.

All would agree to conform to a law or abolish an inefficient, unjust or dated law. All would demonstrate a rare and admirable loyalty to the community without allowing the community to stifle their freedom or creativity. All would be very patriotic without becoming jingoistic or ethnocentric. They would believe in the system and support the system because it is their system that they crafted and re-craft on an ongoing basis.

To make these political gains possible and permanent, we must recognize and accept that we want to be free and yet we want government regulation encumbered by the inherent incompetence, exploitativeness, authoritarianism and corruption practiced by its functionaries. We must balance these opposing drives.

Politicians must tell people what to do but mostly people must be self-legislating beyond the orders of politicos.

People should run their own lives. Some representative democracy is necessary and desirable. But we need far fewer policy decisions made by bureaucratic, judicial or dictatorial decree. Glorious is the burden of self-regulating.

Communalist political models, both liberal and conservative, do not work in reality. That is because, unless genuine respect and construction of a bill of rights legally exists to protect the zone of privacy and power required by each citizen, each individualist is effected and reduced.

Anarchist political models will work on a small scale, but to work on a large scale in a complex, populous state, individual rights must be granted to all citizens, with some joint function still centrally to be administered by government for the good of all, and obeyed by all.

It is exceedingly difficult to set that exact point at which anarchists should have maximum control of their own lives, their children and their property without the right of government on any level to interfere in their lives.

I will state that such a point does exist and may be identifiable, but up to that point there should not be any government interference in human lives (or they should revolt). People should be able to do their own thing.

Backers of anarchism avow the dignity and esteem allotted to every individual. Each individual has rights and responsibilities. She is to pursue life, fulfillment, and the untrammeled search for meaning, liberty, economic and political justice for all. She is to love and acquire property. Her concentration should be fixated upon self-cultivation, a balance between the development of and avoidance of developing nature's resources. She should work to extend to all peace, harmony, the love of truth, freedoms of assembly, speech, conscience, etc. She would replace the United Nations with 100,00 loose confederations of many billion, anarchist mini-states. Self-lawfulness (We are to do our own thing as long as we hurt no one.) would serve as the guiding principle of this universal government.

The requirements for community and equality would be normative and acceptable as long as the primacy of power emphasis in society remains core adherence to the principle of individual freedom to do, as one will.

The mob piously declaims about the need for imposed socialism, clique-democracy and informed mass uniformity of thought, but once they get the power, they do nothing with it. They feel no guilt over their mediocre thinking and performances, calling their pathetic output impressive.

Any reputable anarchist to a maximum degree must equip herself with the skills and confidence necessary for running her own affairs. Genuine independence comes at the price of a vigorous handling of personal affairs and relations with one's neighbors. Serving, volunteering and participating are her duties rendered for fulfilling the rights that she has earned.

For anarchism to work, people must volunteer in a myriad of ways to run society and meet needs that centralized government used to do.

It is incorrect to say that anarchism is a nice fantasy but will never work where we have billions of people requiring government to guide their affairs. Anarchism is a goal to work towards with little neighborhood kingdoms everywhere for individualist and Hutterite-like communal anarchy for the collectivist minded.

The workplace is authoritarian, based on the fear principle, punishment, conformity, unexceptional standards, criticism, scapegoating and favoritism, when it should be based on fear and criticism and rewards (monetary and a sense of happiness and belonging and money too), personal control and initiative. Earned praise in a democratic system of work should be offered to the grunts, without so much praising of the bosses and leaders of the