Forum Post: Toward a Unification of Variant Ideals (Part II)

Those who occupy the political system have ago long abandoned and betrayed the oaths of service sworn to the bulk of the citizenry in exchange for a dissolute union with the private sector - a union explicitly warned against during the development of the governing documents of this country.  Those who use the apparatus of state governance to thwart market enterprise in their favor, or those who have altered the legal landscape to escape the responsibility of contract have violated their standing as market actors and no longer posses legitimate claim to property they have seized.  The consolidation of military and business interests and governance, otherwise known as Fascism, has wreaked incalculable damage to the lives, civil liberties, and economic well being of the overwhelming mass of our society.  It is destructive of civilization itself, and must be ended efficiently, justly and without pause. 

As those who laid the foundation for this movement – Étienne deLa Boétie, Michel de Montaigne, David Hume, Ludwig von Mises, et al – long ago explained, the will to change society lies upon the fundamental non-violent refusal to obey.  They understood rightly that all institutions exact their power from the ability to maintain obedience.  Consider this our first act of disobedience.         The strategy of divide et impera has long been the basic clarion call of the ruling class, from Gabinius to Caesar to Napoleon to Sykes and Picot (and far beyond).  By keeping those who do not fully comprehend the capabilities of unified disobedience disabled, disorganized, and distrustful of each other, all points of opposition become trapped in ineffective, solitary antipathy or circulatory infighting, which prevents alliance or fosters dissolution of a po,tential alliance; those divided either shrink powerless, or misapply enemy status to each other rather than to their common enemy – their ruler(s).  In a democracy there are many rulers wearing many cloaks.  Since this can be understood as a primary tactic of those who wish to remain in power, and its effectiveness is quite obvious, we should attempt to reverse the tactic.  History tells us that empires do not fall as a unified structures.  They must be dismantled piece by piece.  A trenchant and cogent program of divide et vincas princeps must be applied using the division of labor to utilize the creative and intellectual prowess of our unity.  This is, and should be, an organic process.  Everyone has something to offer, but there must be solidarity in a commitment to action.  We must be willing to learn and teach each other from a variety of perspectives.

Demonstrations express political ambitions before the political means necessary to realize them have been created.  But such as necessity is the mother of invention, the path forward, as the French thinker Benjamin Constant saw, is to carefully examine human liberty not solely as an ancient relic of hyperbolic sentimentality, but as it actually exists, in all of it's possibility.  This is where a “United Front” with a baseline commitment to the long term attainment of liberty must merge with variant conceptions of political ideology (those which urge immediate revolution) to purge the system of unwanted, illegal and immoral corruption together.  If poise is maintained on this fundamental first principle, a creative approach to liberty for all can transcend the petty partisan isolation and derision that has up until now divided us irreconcilably.  

We must take great pains in these tumultuous times to not, as did Rousseau, Abbé de Malby, Robespierre, and many others in similar times, mistake authority for liberty in the name of goodness.  There are recalcitrant abuses of our enemy which need to be given due justice in an open forum, not a fanatical mob lynching; that has been their modus operandi.  It cannot not be ours.  

Liberty is our objective; peace and nonviolence are our most potent tactics; reason is our strongest leader. If we are divided, we will fall into history’s largest and oldest predictability – a wilted and ineffective mass of subjects; if we are united around this common cause together, now – there is practically nothing we cannot achieve.