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In the first week of this year, we saw just how fragile even a mature, constitutionally grounded democratic republic can be. As we reached out to family, friends, and colleagues, we got the sense that we, as individuals, are just as siloed as our media. We finally came to realize how about six hundred billionaires control the information flow for a country of three-hundred and thirty-one million citizens within the United States. And to our dismay, it was revealed, that the most privileged among us have become even more enriched, while the marginalized and powerless are dead, dying, or stewing in hormones of stress.

For years we’ve watched helplessly as a sociopathic few presume to speak for a world population that is fast approaching eight billion human beings. And now we are witnessing an abrupt shift as the most inauthentic, shell like corporations have found that, despite all the deceptive practices, the public’s perception of their corrupt political influence is now more acute than ever. The dark money is now front and center and so, supporting the most integrity challenged politicians is therefore, no longer convenient. 

We have long been told that the natural world’s response to overpopulation is through war, famine, and pestilence. And when we’ve witnessed behaviors of elected representatives willing to write off entire swaths of humanity in the name of “culling the herd” and “herd immunity, we are somehow expected to adopt the same kind of calloused world view, together with the depraved heart indifference they have shown towards the people we care about. 

The thin vernier of religiosity, that is now on full display in the realm of religion and politics, has failed to conceal the moral cowardice of those prostituting themselves for forces intent on undermining our constitutional republic. Their corrosive influence, on the democracy underpinnings of our nation, is a clear betrayal of the oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Standing in stark contrast to those who have disgraced themselves are the heroes, the steadfast healthcare workers that have held the line while those sworn to provide for the common defense were AWOL. The coronavirus pandemic infected more than 80 million people and killed more than 1.8 million globally over the course of just it’s first year. While microscopic foes have proven to be just as deadly as political adversaries, our conventional definitions of what it means to “provide for the common defense” are clearly inadequate.

We’ve seen some supremely heroic and some truly pathetic responses to the global pandemic and, while we have also listened as some claimed the economy will come “roaring back,” others don’t want to rebuild the economy in the same old way. These opposing forces have very different ways of experiencing the economy. While one group holds that the stock market is the leading indicator of economic health, others have noticed that this particular market tends to rise in tandem with the human misery index.

The question before 331 million of us affecting the eight billion of us is this: If we are to “build back better,” just how will that be achieved? Some would undoubtedly like to see us rebuild on the same old rotting foundation of baser instincts and moral bankruptcy. People of true integrity would prefer to build upon a culture of benevolence.

The United States fought a revolutionary war to throw off the yoke of what the founders called “foreign potentates.” Then, in less than 250 years, the arch-typical democracy devolved into a feudalistic corporatocracy. One that is controlled by other, more brutal, foreign potentates.

There are those among us that are entirely ok within a world where the rich get richer and the poor die. That form of fascism that is often seen wrapped in the flag, while carrying a cross, is fooling a group that is getting smaller and smaller every day. The year 2020 was a defining moment for them. Those elected officials that were once engaged in a masquerade as constitutional conservatives, have been exposed as anything but.

Likewise, Justices on The Supreme Court of the United States that have long been masquerading as originalists and textualists while ignoring the entire Preamble to the Constitution, have demonstrated a lack of intellectual rigor. They have clearly dishonored themselves and the institution as they capped off a long series of cases advancing a counterfeit corporate personhood, with the case Citizens United.

They have failed to differentiate between those inauthentic corporations that are controlled by foreign potentates, shells with no affinity for company or the people they claim to represent; as opposed to those authentic corporations composed of people in good company, choosing, associating, and operating for a common purpose, real people who are acting corporately.

In contrast to counterfeit corporations that enrich only the few, Employee Owned Benefit Corporations are of, by, and for We the People.

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A deeply resonant CSN song began with the lyric “You, who are on the road, must have a code that you can live by.” While this is likely true, one would hope the rest of us don’t need an Ovaltine Decoder Ring to figure out what it is. Many singers, composers, authors, parents, pastors, and elected representatives each have some power to sway in a way that can help insure our ultimate survival or destruction as a species. And yet, trying to decipher the values proposition such people put forth is often a matter of guesswork.

Throughout the history of our planet, there have been people, at the commanding heights, who are unable to differentiate between true and false liberty. The bully pulpit is, as often as not, occupied by people that can’t seem to balance freedom with self-control. Many of us, as parents, have had to contend with one or more children that don’t think the rules apply to them. Our responses range from an off the shelf “cause I said so,” to a dissertation on the golden rule that can be procured from any major religious tradition on earth.

Today we find ourselves and our fellow human beings situated somewhere between a Luciferian license and a Jesusonian form of self mastery. Politicians can spend lots of their constituent’s money on media to rile us. When we are on an even keel, it doesn’t serve the interests of political operatives intent on leveraging FIBS, the Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear that are in every dirty trickster’s toolkit.

They want us to hate the Chinese, Iranians, Russians, Hebrews, Palestinians , and Arabs when the real, most objectionable conduct is usually traceable to the egomaniacal leaders of those nations. They have encouraged us to view anyone that doesn’t exhibit a complexion exactly like ours, as somehow less than human to perpetually justify man’s inhumanity to man through international or internecine, hot or cold warfare. And, as they do, they often characterize themselves as liberty loving freedom fighters.

Just what is this thing that we call liberty? Is it permissible, in the name of free speech, to yell fire in a crowded theater when there is no fire? And what about truthfulness? Is it ok to mislead someone who may rely upon your word to their detriment?

Liberty that is unintelligent, unconditioned, and uncontrolled is a cruel deception that invariably leads to abject bondage for someone. It may be you; if you should decide to go wilding with the hordes through the hallowed halls of representative government. You could lose your freedom, for life, in accordance with the felony murder rule. You could lose your cherished 2nd Amendment right to own a gun. You could find yourself on a list that forever bars you from boarding a commercial flight.

If your idea of liberty gives you license to rape, pillage, and plunder or engage in human trafficking, you are imposing bondage on someone else. There is a delicate balance between true freedom and self-control. And, while good parents teach it, bad-faith pastors do not. The counterfeit wisdom that flows from many in authority, who are often enjoying excessive prominence, is leading us into an orgy of darkness and death. They often fail to teach that diminishing external restraints are always contingent upon augmenting internal restraints.

If we are to survive as a species, we must turn our attention to those purpose driven leaders that are advancing us towards an era of light and life. They are easy to recognize because their values proposition is crystal clear. They focus us not upon themselves but on our own highest and best understanding of truth, beauty, and goodness as they give creative expression to those qualities. They encourage us to consider just how we can contribute, in an active and spiritually pragmatic way, toward the healing and elevation of life on our planet.

Democracy, throughout the world, is under attack. And, at its most basic level, it is problematic. It can be three wolves and a sheep deciding on dinner. It can lead to the domination of mediocrity. And, every time it stumbles, authoritarian wannabes will say: “You see, it’s messy. It doesn’t work. That’s why to need me.” But in the final analysis, government of, by, and for the people is the only design that is truly sustainable. It is the only one that is spiritually serviceable; as it alone has the power to elicit the enthusiastic consent of the governed.

The choice now before us is autocracy versus democracy. We must learn to recognize any sophistry that has the effect of corroding the democracy underpinnings of our constitutional republic. Long ago, Edmund Burke, in referring to the American colonists, described our ancestors as “able to snuff the approach of tyranny with every tainted breeze.” Today the tainted breezes are delivered by means of powerful airwaves that Burke probably never imagined. And, right now, the most deceptive practices, ones that push fear, ignorance, bigotry, and smear are generating howling winds in contrast to the gentle breezes of true benevolence. The most refreshing breezes are the ones that are spiritually fragrant, the ones where truth, beauty, and goodness are clearly in evidence.

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On January 6th in the year 2021, hoards of emotionally charged, intellectually stunted insurgents breached security and stormed into the United States Capitol building. Elected representatives were evacuated. The traitorous, treasonous, seditionist, insurrectionist authoritarian enablers among them tried to distance themselves from the violence they intentionally fomented. For such unrepresentative elected representatives, statesmanship is an arcane banished idea while its distant cousin, politics, is taken to illogical extremes.

Our country’s organizing principle is the spirit of the law. It is articulated in a carefully crafted Preamble that begins with the words “We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union . . .”

From such a coherent value proposition, one that is often ignored by those occupying the commanding heights of government while masquerading as originalists and textualists, coherent strategies could and should evolve. But there are true enemies, advocating moral anarchy, exerting a corrosive influence on the democracy underpinnings of our constitutional republic, as well as others around the world.

Sun Tzu, in The Art of War, made it abundantly clear that “Supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.” Indeed, to restore the rights of a people as they work, to become the arbiters of their own destiny, appeals to the Spirit within each of us. The only societal arrangement that will ultimately satisfy, perhaps even enthuse such a Spirit activated group is government of, by, and for the people.

John Wycliffe, in the preface to his 14th Century bible translation to Middle English, made it clear that the bible advances “government of, by, and for the people.” The offended priesthood of his day, dug up and burned his bones. It is not unlike the force behind today’s dark money, the gerrymandered maps, assault weapons on full display and all the other means of voter intimidation and suppression. These faux Christian conservatives push incessantly for things antithetical to the biblical principles they claim to represent.

By means of a variety of political sophistries, a few inheritors, skimmers, and hoarders of wealth have routinely thwarted the will of the many. Through a pseudo-religious hucksterism, some have even sacrificed a witness to the kingdom within, while engaged in a masquerade that stands in stark contrast to the cardinal precepts contained in the bible they like to thump.

Marketeers and politicians place great emphasis on what they term key differentiators, or what sets us apart. Today, the divide is dangerously wide. In our supercharged political environment, we tend to view the world through polarized lenses, seeking and seeing only what is pre-packaged to fit our circumscribed world view. It is a mediated world, replete with a tribal epistemology that reduces every value proposition to a binary choice where the question is: “Are they with us or against us?”

We must each ask ourselves: “To which ‘us’ are you referring?” At this juncture we should also pause to consider just how any understanding of the term “us” is ripe for a paradigm shift – a Pareto flip. In the United States, over the past decade, about 600 billionaires have controlled the information flow to 330 million people.

Conservative columnist George Will, in his book Statecraft as Soulcraft examined how the power of the state can create conditions that either foster the growth of blessed souls or the imprisonment of seriously stunted and tortured souls. He admits that his vision may appear to share some traits with totalitarianism. However, like Edmond Burke, Will places great emphasis on the voluntary associations and values that are seen as essential to a fully informed consent of the governed and a functioning free society.

In his own historically rich book; The Soul of America, biographer John Meacham wrote: “in the battle between the impulses of good and of evil in the American soul, what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature” have prevailed just often enough to keep the national enterprise alive.”

Today, win-win is often not perceived to be of value to a taint by numbers politician or any other party trying to differentiate by leveraging fear, ignorance, bigotry, and smear. It is a Joe McCarthy era tactic known by the acronym FIBS. When it is seen as politically expedient, they even divide us on consensus issues. And yet, once we blow through our own politically conditioned understanding, or expand our horizons beyond the Twitter-verse, we find we have far more in common than any self-serving political operative would have us believe.

Our focus must be more about finding our center, our soul, our statesmanship than it is about politics. Because, today’s politics is mostly about opposite poles on a line. We need to be mindful of the fact that: “No bird can soar except by outstretched wings.” And that, as experience has shown; the amount of lift produced at the wingtips is clearly not sufficient to overcome the gravity of our present situation.

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As the clock struck 11 p.m. on New Year’s Eve in 2020, and as the British exit from the European Union was finalized, Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, tweeted: “Scotland will be back soon, Europe. Keep the light on.” The First Minister intends to take an independent Scotland back into the EU. BREXIT is just the latest example of the ongoing struggle between those across the globe that are vested in nationalism, and others who believe the only way to stop the ritualized insanity of perpetual warfare is to somehow unite the world through an inherent desire for global peace and prosperity.

The European Union has, since its founding, been seen as a major though incrementalist milestone in moving the entire world towards an eventual federation of democracies. Many of the foundational principles for organizations such as NATO, as well as the EU, are informed by the work of Clarence K. Streit. As the New York Times correspondent at the League of Nations in Geneva, Streit understood the founding principles as they were articulated through the Treaty of Versailles.

He was impressed by this initiative for international cooperation that was formally established on January 10, 1920. He also saw how the League’s collapse was rooted in its inability to tap the power of individual conscience. Streit believed it was a mistake to identify democracy with either capitalist or socialist economics. His was a spiritual conception, one holding that “no community can live without a conscience, that we must hitch the community directly to the conscience of the individual.”

Streit understood that “whether we are establishing government between tribes, states or nations, the process is the same, the basic unit is still the individual man. The government must operate on him individually and the more directly it depends upon him, and upon his conscience, the more realistic and effective it will be.” He held that for global government to work, international institutions would have to penetrate the shell of national sovereignty and reach the core of each citizen’s loyalty. He presented his revolutionary book during a series of lectures at Swarthmore College in 1938.

Streit’s book, Union Now, is a classic work informing federalist political and constitutional thought. He is widely regarded as the founder of the modern world’s federalist movement. He ventured well beyond the sterile universalism of Geneva. He advanced the political and strategic framework, whereby a small union of democracies could develop peacefully. To this day it remains the most serviceable vision for eventual world peace. Such a nucleic union, by leveraging the dynamic-unifying elements of conscience, by making any authentic regional union the root of an ideological union, could eventually grow to encompass a world union since it would be based on the sharing of a universal value: individual freedom grown into a healthy collective freedom based upon the foundations of a healthy family.

A federation among nations, and the idea of tracing the responsibility for world peace to a group of democratic countries, informed Winston Churchill’s offer of a British union with France on June 16, 1940. Enthusiasts within the Union Movement played leading roles in developing the Marshall Plan and the formation of NATO. It inspired The Anatomy of Peace by Emery Reves in 1945. Streit built upon the logic of a revolutionary concept that extended beyond short sighted nationalism. The sovereignty of the individual citizen could at last be realized through a Federal Union of the Free.

In such a world-wide union, the smallest of nations would be “a part of the world and not a world apart.” They would be just as powerful as the greatest. We have many lessons derived from the American revolutionary experience and that of the early European Union. In the first instance, even though the land mass for the state of Rhode Island is just a little over one thousand square miles, it has two senators in the United States legislature. Alaska encompasses well over five-hundred thousand square miles of land, and it also has two senators. California has a population of about forty million people while Wyoming has about six-hundred thousand. Each of these states also have two senators.

While Brexit may have temporarily retarded the progress of a continent that hosted the planet’s first democracy in Athens, many in Great Britain are now regretting their decision to withdraw from the EU. This regional union is the clearest example to date of the schema described by Streit. Consider certain carefully delineated design imperatives as proposed through Union Now:

Just as local affairs in the United States are typically handled by local governments while national affairs are handled by national governments, an evolving world, such as ours, will one-day see its international affairs administered by a global democratic government. Once we’ve broken the cycle of ritualized insanity, where the answer to every problem is more armaments, each individual will be able to exercise greater liberty under such a global union.