Is it true or not? That seems to be the most asked question in politics. One party says one thing the other says the opposite. Both accuse the other of lying. The truth is all that matters.
I dare to say that all of us realize that politics is riddled with untrustworthy people. I tell you it goes far beyond politics. Our world is riddled with people who could not be trusted with power but have lots of it.
Our nation was “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” There is a lot in those few words. I fear they have become lost to more people all the time. Many cannot site the source of the quote and have even less knowledge of what they mean. It is not contained verbatim in the words, but they contain the idea that the government of the United States of America is meant by the founders and those who ratified the Constitution to be something that exists only to guard the people and only by our willing and expressed consent to permit it. “Conceived in liberty” tells us that the founders wanted the new government to protect our liberty. Our liberty is our natural rights abridged only by our willing consent and only to make our lives better than they could be out there alone or in a tribe. The founders new that people could strike out into the wilderness and be totally at liberty to live their lives any way the saw fit. That is liberty. To create a government, some of that liberty must be sacrificed, for laws limit liberty and subject members to judgment and consequences of the law. Who would do so that knew they would be worse off? That question has lost it popularity in the thoughts of Americans today. That is the factor that caused the founders to attempt to create a new form of government that would cause people to choose to be part of it. More liberty that all other known governments, but also equality.
The founders knew that people disagree. They fought over the form of government we have as it was being designed and after. But they also knew that there are certain truths that apply to all; “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” The self-evidence has been lost to the people, and we are living in the aftermath.
It was a long time ago when the self-evident truths left the hearts and minds of mankind. The reasons are more than time permits expounding, but the results are all around you. What happens when truth is lost? Controversy. Division. Discord. Factions. But reality becomes lost, too. People are living in illusions today.
The illusions do not diminish self-confidence, however. Passion flame around lies and false data. Who can untangle the mess? Only you. It is us to you and me to find the facts and truth. Our failures are amplified by society until we are where we are today with tomorrow in doubt.
We all have a right to our opinions, but we have a duty to the truth. The right to be wrong does not come with the right to our own truths. Relativity has been brought up to dispute even the existence of truth, but relativity is the infinite applications and combination of the truth that is common to all. We see it in the laws of physics. Nature is full of truth waiting for all to conceive. That was what the brave people who tried to help us intended when they created this United States of America.
Even in court, motives are important. Intentions help us understand behavior. The USA was the first nation conceived and created. It was built from scratch, to use the vernacular. Their intentions were laudable. This is the truth that is self-evident yet assailed today. They wanted to create a great nation built around the philosophy of men like John Locke and others. They “conceived” this nation in a world where all other nations were the result of astonishing events that transpired over many centuries. None were created from scratch. Wars and conquest played a larger part than planning. Our nation, the USA, was planned. I was a bold and beautiful plan, but it needed a lot of tweaking and time to evolve.
This nation is new. At about 230, it stands as a baby compared to others. Much has gone wrong with the baby’s maturation. It has been attacked from all sides and is now being bombarded from within by people who have lost site of the self-evident truths that must be learned now. The further away from the truth we have gone, the more problems we have had, and the more we have been delayed on the road to unfathomable beauty. The founding principles were revolutionary and, because they were revolutionary, they have been assaulted and mistakes have been made. It must be admitted that even the conception had its flaws.
How do you create something beautiful and lasting in a world populated heavily with people who live primarily to serve themselves? The founders had ideas and included them in the government they created. But they were unable to check the many levels of government other than the one created by the Constitution. States had rights and they were protected by the Constitution. Federal law claimed the rights delimited in the Constitution leaving to the states all those not delimited by it. Since then, the federal government has taken many rights that were originally left to the states, but this has not caused the states to conform to the law of the land. They do what they want, and the federal government lets them. Now we live in a land where the truth is a constant argument. It was unlikely that the founders could have conceived the future as it has become. They would not have understood how various individuals, parties, and factions could stand in polar opposites regarding so many things. They thought the truth was easier and often self-evident. We have been born into the discord that followed from failures to understand what could happen. Primarily, they failed to look in the mirror and see some self-evident truths they were living in opposition to. Real equality.
The door to greedy and self-centered people was left unguarded. Feelings of superiority were systemic among the founders. Slavery was all around them, though they wrote of their disapproval of it. Old social habits dominated the lives of the founders. They were unable to rise above them even to the realization that women are just as entitled and capable as men. Thought they included freedom of religion after the failure of the stats to ratify the constitution, they were not really of the opinion that any other religion but Christianity was a true religion. These and other things damaged their ability to create a government that would actually protect the rights of the people and treat them equally. Further failures were born by not anticipating the changing times. Worst of all, one system that were taken for granted was not realized for what it was.
Can you think of any systems that were present during the conception of the USA that are still with us? Of course, you can. You would think politics quickly. I hope the pyramid system would be first to your mind, but I doubt it was. That is the problem the founders had when they sacrificed life and property in an attempt to create a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
The founders new that every human is unique. So, why the word equal? Because they meant equal in rights granted by God and government. They were pious men and women. They looked to Christianity for the laws of God. I say, thank God they did. But they needed to get beyond that body of laws and see further. The laws promulgated in the Bible were too old and confusing to be the limiting factor in understanding the laws of God. They failed to include the other people of the world who did not worship the Bible. Is it any wonder the baby government had trouble? It is no wonder today is what it is. It is absolutely understandable why the rich still get richer and poor remain poor.
There can be no equality in a world or even a micro-society when the work of society is not shared equally. When the things the people working together make is not shared equally, there is much worse than no equality. There is hell on earth.
I think there is no way to understand any of our history without factoring into the understanding the failure to make everyone equal in pay. Pay should be the equal share everyone is entitled to by self-evident truths as members of an organization of people working together in a system designed to protect the equality of everyone.
While we argue and fight over whether or not the USA has systemic racism, the most profound expression of the objectionable aspects of systemic racism dominate the world. Where are the awake people? How is it possible for billions of sentient people to fail to realize that they are being robbed of their inalienable rights to and equal share of the products of society. Pay day should be the day everyone gets their equal share. All men are created equal was the ideology. Except-on-payday was the truth and the failure of the founders. They made no provision for it or mention of it.
People are being subjected to an immense and all-pervasive system of propaganda. It has reached levels Ivan Pavlov would have hung himself for teaching us how to do it. You see it every day right now when you look to see how the 2020 election is going.
One party says one thing and the other the opposite. They hurl calumny at each other, and the people are left to fend for themselves. Trust left the political scene before I was born, and that was seventy years ago. It was long gone when I was born. The founders did not anticipate today, or they would have created a system to guard the equality and rights of the governed. I have no doubt that they would have. They didn’t, and it is up to us, and that is very discouraging.
I would be much more confident if people would stop taking what they are being told on all forms of media and by the people they know and encounter. It is up to each of us to do the work required to know the truth. Instead, a trusted individual, trusted because it is on television and said to be an authority, can say something, and it gets believed. When some other authority appears saying the opposite, there are those who believe it, too, even when it is the totally opposite of what the other authority said. We can put them side-by-side and listen to them controvert each other for all the world to see. When millions, even billions, of people are being confronted by that form of crazy, the world becomes what we see right now, yesterday, and tomorrow unless we do something different. The truth is out there waiting for us. We need but do the right things to come into possession of it. That is almost impossible in a world that ignores equality in the distribution of the products we all work together to create.
We will never possess the truth when all the world’s societies are manifesting the exact same inequality. I’m telling you I don’t care who you are, the inequality is the cause of all our troubles. All of them. Disagree with me if you will, but you have now had a seed planted in your consciousness. I hope it sprouts and takes root. You are just as valuable as everyone else. You deserve love as all do. You do not deserve approval from anyone ever. Approval must be earned and come from people who have the truth. Not their truth. The truth. It avails you naught to be approved by someone living in a fantasy. If their fantasy is one that makes them think that the inequality of the members of society is right, they are the enemies of equality. It is they who run this world. It is they who are using the advanced knowledge of human psychology to keep the people from realizing they are being robbed all day every day all day year after year regardless of all social conceptions and organizations.
When you realize you are being robbed and conditioned to like it, you will not be calm. But you must. Passion has its place and time, but freaking out might get you killed or silenced. The only hope I can muster is in the certainty that life will be so much better for everyone, including the robbers, such as the ones who have seven hundred million-dollar yachts, after equality finally comes to the world. Love will follow quickly. Trust me. The future will make all current vision seem infantile by comparison after love comes to the world. That should be the most self-evident truth of all. So why isn’t it? I’ve already answered that question.
