politics Archives - Free-Man's Perspective

The Mos Maioram And The Barbarians

The mos maiorum, or “way of the old ones” were the traditional principles and practices of public life in ancient Rome. These customs included:

Good faith
Respectfulness
Self-discipline
Virtue
Dignity

I won’t go through a history lesson, but Rome, which had no written constitution, began to degrade as the mos maioram, the ancient ways, were abandoned piece by piece. That’s what was involved in the breakdown of the republic, and it increased until the Western empire was a wreck.

I bring this up because what we’re seeing right now is a breakdown in the mos maioram of Western civilization, and certainly on the ruling level. This will have consequences.

I’m not saying those consequences will be terrible for you and me – I think it will be to the contrary – but to those who still believe in the system and its operators the consequences may be painful.

Politics And Barbarism

Politics is barbaric by nature; at the end of every political process stands a binary choice to either obey or be punished. And that punishment involves violence. Pick whatever law you like and consider what happens if you persistently disobey. At the end of the line stand men armed with clubs, chains and bullets.

Political barbarism, however, used to be cloaked in “statesmanship,” which was simply a version of mos maioram. American and English politicians, among others, were expected to dress well, speak well, and to behave with decorum. In my youth, people looked up to such men and respected them, even when they disagreed. My corner of the world featured Paul Simon and Adlai Stevenson on the left and Everett McKinley Dirksen on the right. Everyone disagreed with one or more of them, but they respected them all.

The last vestiges of that were washed away in 2016. They had been torn and tattered long before, of course, but there was some dignity remaining, at least in some quarters.

Since 2016, we’ve had Mr. Trump on the right, with his crude Twitter rants and schoolyard insults.

On the left, we’ve had a variety of astonishingly bizarre and deranged democrats.

On top of that, we’ve had intelligence agencies simply making things up to “get” the man they hated, along with the FBI trashing its reputation almost completely. People may fear them, but that’s not the same as respect.

Mos maioram, then, has departed, and I don’t see it coming back any time soon. The path to political victory has become “stirring up the base,” and that strategy, combined with social media, is on a direct path to Orwell’s Two Minutes Hate.

Plenty of the same has been going on in the UK, surrounding the Brexit drama. And likewise, British leaders of the past, who labored for dignity and reasonableness, would be horrified.

That said, I’ll stick with the American craziness for today. And today’s craziness is impeachment. But rather than punishing you with the details, I’ll simply refer those of you who are interested to Tom Luongo’s article on the subject and move on to the solution.

The New Opportunities

I’ve said this before, but I think spending time and effort on politics is almost a full waste. And if ever this statement was anything less than true, it is certainly true now: Politics is barbarism.

The system doesn’t deserve our sweat and strain.

I’d rather that we engage in building a better world. The model of the new era is decentralization, and just about everything new and uplifting either supports that model or thrives within it.

Decentralized education (aka, homeschooling and its variants) calls out for advocates and implementations. Decentralized science is a desperate need. Decentralized money is already present and is not only a screaming success but a major opportunity. And I could go on to decentralized communications, decentralized defense and more.

Mos maioram is dead and gone. Rather than pretending otherwise, we should build a better way.

If you want a deeper understanding of these issues, see:

FMP issue #84

FMP issue #75

A Lodging of Wayfaring Men

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com

We Have No Idea How Good We Can Get

I can still remember the first time someone told me that they believed in the Calvinist doctrine of “the depravity of man.” It shocked me. To complain about human behavior I very well understood; there’s plenty of bad behavior in the world. But to flatly call the human species depraved… hopelessly unredeemable… that was, and remains, obscene to me.

The sad truth, however, is that the modern West swims in a sea of Calvinism. The corporate bullhorns feed everyone they can a steady diet of the bad, ugly, and if possible the bloody. Under their influence, we would believe that all is darkness, that truth is illusion, that the human path is ever-downward, and that all professions of goodness are scams.

In other words, the minds of millions of people (billions, probably), are continually pushed to imagine that human depravity is a fact. That strategy is terribly effective – there’s no better tool for manipulating humans than fear – but it is no less than obscene and evil.

And it’s false. Humans are amazing creatures, and very often kind, gracious and loving creatures.

The Real Revolutionaries

I’ve used this passage from G.K. Chesterton’s The Defendant before, but it’s so important that I could use it once a month and feel fine about it:

Every one of the great revolutionists, from Isaiah to Shelly, have been optimists. They have been indignant, not about the badness of existence, but about the slowness of men in realizing its goodness.

The popular image of a revolutionary is of someone railing against the rulers of their place and leading a mob against them to bring in a new political regime. Notwithstanding the ridiculous notion of politics saving us from politics, this has always been a fantasy. It’s very dramatic of course, which is why it remains, but in real life it simply doesn’t happen((It’s probably worth adding that the American Revolution wasn’t a revolution per se. Rather, it was a new society, on a new continent, that grew in a condition of “salutary neglect,” after which the Crown attempted to drag it into submission. The Americans of 1776 fought to be left alone rather than to bring down the Crown.)).

The real revolution, certainly in our time, is not to bring anything down, but simply to realize that we’ve outgrown a dark and manipulative public order, and that it’s fit for no more than to be tossed aside, like the worn-out clothing of our youth.

Real revolutionaries don’t want to take over an outmoded and abusive status quo, but to transcend it… to leave it behind and build better things. Behind such a belief, as Chesterton noted, will stand a realization of the goodness of existence.

How Good Can We Get?

Consider the millions of hours… billions of hours… wasted every year fighting the mostly-imaginary evils pumped through television, radio and social media. Then, please, consider that the problems so terrifyingly portrayed are seldom really solved.

So, what if we spent that time (and energy and money) to improve ourselves instead?

How silly is it to spend our time and treasure fighting within a system that can never allow its problems to be solved – if the system solved them it would have no reason to exist – when we are quite able to improve ourselves instead?

Consider, please: We have no real idea of how good we can get, because we’ve never seriously focused on making ourselves better.

Or, said differently: Instead of endlessly imagining human evil, what if we started imagining human greatness? One is just as possible as the other. So why shouldn’t we take the bright path instead of the permanently dark path that’s proven not to work?

And I will add that the progress we have seen in the world… science, medicine and the like… has mainly come from people who imagined better ways, better things, and better lives.

This, then, is the radical and revolutionary belief that stands before us: That mankind is far better than we’ve imagined… that human life can be satisfying and rewarding… that we are capable of being far more than we’ve imagined. All we have to do is to lift up our eyes and start trying.

* * * * *

A book that generates comments like these, from actual readers, might be worth your time:

I just finished reading The Breaking Dawn and found it to be one of the most thought-provoking, amazing books I have ever read… It will be hard to read another book now that I’ve read this book… I want everyone to read it.
Such a tour de force, so many ideas. And I am amazed at the courage to write such a book, that challenges so many people’s conceptions.
There were so many points where it was hard to read, I was so choked up.
Holy moly! I was familiar with most of the themes presented in A Lodging of Wayfaring Men, but I am still trying to wrap my head around the concepts you presented at the end of this one.
Get it at Amazon or on Kindle.

* * * * *

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com

Our Moment at the Crossroads

Earlier this year I wrote an email to several friends, describing my feelings upon arriving at a crossroads for myself and my work. Surprisingly, nearly all of them wrote back that they were feeling the same thing. And so I think a lot of us have arrived at some type of crossroads lately.

Why Now?

How and why we feel to be at a crossroads is a very personal thing of course, but I think I see two reasons that have gotten under our collective skin, so to speak.

1. Saying goodbye to the 20^th century.

Many of us are recognizing that the 20^th century – the era in which we formed our images of the world as well as our strategies for dealing with the world – is inevitably vanishing.

The 20^th century model of almost everything held on for a long time after the year 2000. Much of that can be blamed on the 9/11 event, which froze the previous era’s assumptions inside a wild array of institutions. But that is finally fading, and the 21^st century, especially to us of a certain age, is the stuff of fiction… except that it’s here. It will be different, and the assumptions that work within it will be different.

Even for young people, the assumptions of the 20^th century ruled entertainment, politics, and much more… and those are starting to fade as well.

2. An improved world may finally be possible.

The children of the 1960s and 1970s saw the need for a better way, but attaining such a thing was beyond their grasp. The communes failed. Drugs were of temporary benefit at best. And if sex could have solved humanity’s problems, it would have done so thousands of years ago. The system won, and they needed jobs. They lost faith that politics could be transcended.

And now… hesitatingly, almost grudgingly… we’re seeing that we may not have to continue pretending the system is the best of all possible worlds.

Almost impossibly, we see the pieces of a new world replacing the old. Politicians are recognized everywhere as liars and thieves, and monetary systems are broadly recognized as a social control. Political orders are fraying, European democracy is turning ugly, free speech is being overtaken by mega-corporations married to political power.

But more than all that, the Internet connected billions of us to a common medium. I don’t think we’ve remotely felt all the effects of that. On top of that, we got encryption, impregnable defensive walls for a new era. Then we were gifted decentralized currencies (which are actually much more than currencies), new models of organization, a new era of biology, a new era in education (homeschooling, Kahn, etc.), with something new arriving every year.

Yes, Bitcoin and all it spawned are portrayed almost as wrongly as possible, but they don’t go away.

The Silk Road was taken down. Ross Ulbricht was given a show trial and condemned to death in prison. Charlie Shrem spent a couple of years in prison for almost nothing at all. And the result of all this was that the new economy… the new world… did not lay down and die. Bitcoin continues, new currencies abound, new markets and better markets abound, and almost no one ran away in fear.

Furthermore, the new way already has its first heroes and martyrs: Assange, Manning, Ulbricht, and Snowden, all punished by a corrupt old regime for crimes like telling the truth and promoting voluntary commerce. They even have a legendary figure in Satoshi Nakamoto.

The Challenge to Us

Shocking though it may be, the famed “long run” may actually be arriving, and the page may in fact be turning. And that is troubling. Talking about it is one thing; facing it in the real world is something else.

And if the page really is turning, we’re the people who’ll have to write that new page… with our actions. That’s a very good reason to feel like you’re at a crossroads, and I think that explains a good deal of what so many of us are feeling.

But if that’s what’s happening, let’s rise to the occasion and make it something great.

Excelsior!

* * * * *

The 20^th century, for better or worse, is over. This book was written from the trenches of the new data wars. It offers a raw, apolitical view of what is happening and where the practice of intelligence is headed.

Comments from readers:

“Be warned; this book is not rainbows and butterflies. This book is a hard look at a future that can be avoided only through vigilance and dedication. At only 55 pages, I read it in one sitting and agree with every word. If I had the resources I would buy hundreds of these books and distribute them to people freely.”

“Right on the money. What’s described so aptly in this book is happening now and it’s only going to get worse.”

“A must read for everyone. As terrifying as The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

If you have a glimpse of the whole picture of history and where we can head (or are heading) as a civilization, you should come away from this read with new insights.”

Get it at Amazon or on Kindle.

* * * * *

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com

The Separation of Righteousness and Politics

“Righteousness” is a seldom heard word in modern life, but the concept is still very much with us. In fact, political arguments all through the West focus on shows of righteousness.

So, how does someone show themself to be righteous without ever coming near the word? It’s done with a simple trick that you’ll recognize immediately:

Rather than declaring ourselves righteous, we show ourselves to be the enemy of unrighteousness, gaining the same result without ever having to utter the R-word.

Here are a couple of examples:

If you’re an American left-winger, you talk about the monsters who tear children from their parents, who collude with enemies to steal elections, and who’d support the KKK if they could.
If you’re an American right-winger, you talk about the insane defenders of cop-killers who want to destroy our civilization and who violently attack anyone voicing a contrary opinion.

By raging against the evil of your adversary, you take on the gleam of righteousness – you’re defending the world from evil, after all – but you stay far from religion or even an obligation to behave well.

The trick has worked exceptionally well, and the voting public sees politicians as agents of righteousness, even if the word is never used.

The Decider of All Moral Questions

Can you think of any area of life that isn’t impacted by politics these days? Everything from what you know to how you raise your children to how you die is affected by politics, which is the true god of the age. This is something Peter Drucker noted as it was forming:

Increasingly, politics is not about “who gets what, when, how” but about values, each of them considered to be absolute. Politics is about “the right to life”… It is about the environment. It is about gaining equality for groups alleged to be oppressed… None of these issues is economic. All are fundamentally moral.

Politics, to put it simply, has overtaken society. In eras past, politics was limited mainly to the realm of the external. Ruling types would tell you how property would be bought and sold, where soldiers would be sent, and how much of your money would be taken… but they seldom told you what to think or how to speak. However, once they got into the habit of telling every child in their domain how to think and speak and run or walk – as they did with government-operated schools – they found one way after another to expand that dominance (which is like crack cocaine to ruling types) throughout the whole of the civilization.

And that’s where we stand now: Politicians feel confident inserting themselves into any and every area of life. And they do precisely that, expecting to be thanked for it as well. (And there are always enough sycophants to do so.)

Politicians of course are anything but righteous. Their work involves two fully amoral activities:

Say whatever is required to get votes.
Do whatever is required to get donations.

And since #2 turns #1 into lies, we can confidently say that politics is the practice of unrighteousness. And in fact, nearly all modern people will admit that politicians are liars and thieves.

Still, the well-trained politician can use the trick we opened with and suck the populace into a moral drama that pays them off with feelings of righteousness. More than that, the people can feel righteous nearly for free; all they have to do is support a slayer of iniquity.

At the same time – and all of us have noticed this to one extent or another – politics has also overtaken big business, as Frederick C. Howe wrote back in 1906:

These are the rules of big business. They have superseded the teachings of our parents and are reducible to a simple maxim: Get a monopoly; let Society work for you: and remember that the best of all business is politics, for a legislative grant, franchise, subsidy or tax exemption is worth more than a Kimberly or Comstock lode, since it does not require any labor, either mental or physical, for its exploitation.

The Fate of the Populace

Honestly, I think it’s a good thing that the Western populace is still committed to righteousness, even if they don’t realize it. That’s a characteristic that may be engaged positively in the future.

But right now, the people of the West are massively manipulated by their instinct for righteousness. Still, I don’t think this condition will endure forever. All things change, and the dream of righteousness through politics disappoints endlessly. At some point, people will choose to see it.

Until then, a lot of disappointment, confusion, and suffering awaits. To put it bluntly, so long as the Western public believes in the union of righteousness and politics, it will be strip-mined without mercy and without end. There is nothing to stop it, and more is never enough for ruling or strip-mining types.

But once they do start to call things by their true names and stop playing political make-believe, great things await the people of the West.

May it be soon.

* * * * *

As it turns out, history was never too hard to understand; they just told you the wrong story.

Comments from readers:

“This is the most amazing little book I have read on history in 36 years of reading history.”

“It will change the way you look at nearly everything.”

“I will flat out say that this is the best history book I have ever read… I am fairly well read, but I learned a tremendous amount that I hadn’t known before or hadn’t aligned so that it made sense.”

“This is the best and clearest description of the history of Western civilization I have ever read.”

“Packed with insights on every page concerning how the world came to be the way it is and what we might expect in the future.”

Get it at Amazon or on Kindle.

* * * * *

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com

Back to the Crime Scene

Now that the Great Distraction of 2016/2017 (“The Russians hacked the election!” “Fake news!”) may be winding down, we should return to the things that the news media, politicians, and the entire deep state wanted us to forget. In other words, we need to get back to the crime scene and take a good look at it.

The WikiLeaks emails were our peek behind the curtain to see what’s really going on in the overlord class. They stripped away the fake reality of Big Media, Hollywood, and Washington. These emails let us see what is real, not what elites want us to think is real… which is why they’ve worked so hard to distract us.

So, truth sits openly in front of the public. The question is how many people will pick it up and look at it, and how many will scurry off, not wanting to see.

What We Know

There’s too much to cover in one column – there were tens of thousands of leaked emails, after all – but we’ll take a good stab at it. I’ll describe emails and link to their sources, showing actual text in italics.

These people are knowingly cultivating an unaware and compliant populace:

[W]e’ve all been quite content to demean government, drop civics and in general conspire to produce an unaware and compliant citizenry. (source)

Let no one pretend that things get done the way we were taught in school. That has been established as a delusion. Things are not done via official channels – they are done from behind the scenes. For example:

The chairman of a presidential campaign had dinner with a top official at the Department of Justice… the day after a major congressional hearing. That official got his son a job working for the campaign… and led the effort to nominate an attorney general who was – by any measure – extremely kind to the presidential campaign. (source)

A fact that may shock a lot of people is that Google is doing clandestine work that used to be done through official channels, as seen in this email from a former State Dept. security official:

Google is getting WH [White House] and State Dept. support & air cover. In reality they are doing things the CIA cannot do. (source)

On top of that, the head of the NSA was on a first name basis with the bosses of Google and called one of them “a key member of the Defense Industrial Base.” (source)

We also know that politicians control newspapers and television broadcasters. For instance:

A prominent commentator working for a major news outlet provided debate questions – in advance of that debate – to a presidential contender, making the debate a farce (though it looked ever so dignified to the public). The commentator, shortly thereafter, was made head of the presidential campaign. (source)

Dozens of major media figures met “off the record” with the staff of a presidential campaign to coordinate strategies. There is even a list of their media “surrogates.” (source)

We have has [sic] a very good relationship with Maggie Haberman of Politico over the last year. We have had her tee up stories for us before and have never been disappointed. (source)

A major news outlet’s chief political correspondent sent a new article to the head of a presidential campaign, for approval prior to publishing. “Please don’t share or tell anyone I did this,” he wrote, doubly condemning himself. (source)

Politicians are selling influence profligately:

All of us who are paying attention already knew politicians sold their influence over national policies, but the recent emails show international influence being bought and sold by the highest officials, both current and former. (source) (source) (source)

Major officials are reporting to meddling billionaires. In fact, they checked in with one for consultation:

Ambassador: Secretary Kerry would be interested to hear GS’s [George Soros’s] views on the situation directly, upon return from his trip. (source)

What This Means

It is now certain that the US government is a corrupt front… a type of Potemkin Village. Behind the facades, it sells influence and revels in power, all the while blathering in public about “checks and balances” and a dozen other feel-good slogans we learned in school. These are sucker-bait and mean almost nothing.

All of the emails we’ve seen recently address the Democratic party, but please understand that the Republicans do the same things. Politicians of both parties created the current mess, and they often defend one another. Politicians of both parties sell their votes to donors, take orders from unelected party officials, and spend billions of dollars to instill fear in voters. They operate in almost exactly the same ways, and are members of the same elite class.

The question now, it seems to me, is why any sane person would take this class of people seriously.

To see or not to see, that is the question.

* * * * *

A book that generates comments like these, from actual readers, might be worth your time:

I just finished reading The Breaking Dawn and found it to be one of the most thought-provoking, amazing books I have ever read… It will be hard to read another book now that I’ve read this book… I want everyone to read it.
Such a tour de force, so many ideas. And I am amazed at the courage to write such a book, that challenges so many people’s conceptions.
There were so many points where it was hard to read, I was so choked up.
Holy moly! I was familiar with most of the themes presented in A Lodging of Wayfaring Men, but I am still trying to wrap my head around the concepts you presented at the end of this one.

Get it at Amazon ($18.95) or on Kindle: ($5.99)

* * * * *

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com

So What If It Was the Russians

December 16, 2017

This entire episode is a warning of just how rancid the American over-class has become. Is there no one left in the American elite who has some dignity, some class, some measure of perspective? Have they all descended to the level of drunken brawlers?

American elites are rushing to create a constitutional crisis as I write this, building up an immense head of steam (there was an 8,000 word article in the NY Times, fer goodness’ sake), and all for what?

Stop and think for a moment: The Russians allegedly “intervened” in a US election. But what is it they are supposed to have done?

They spilled the truth.

Yup, that was their unfathomable crime… revealing the truth. That’s not exactly a problem, is it? And if it is, what does that say about the aforementioned American overlords?

This is not a minor or ancillary point: The leaked emails were true! And what they revealed should be dinner-table conversation coast to coast. But instead (perhaps this was the deceitful purpose of this), we’re inundated with a new Red Scare. “Look over there, little girl, there are flashing lights.”

Where is the cool head that says something sensible? Perhaps like this: “Listen boys, this isn’t worth tearing the county apart over. We may not like Trump, but he cares about this country in his own way, and he’ll work four years to reach his goals. He’s not going to sell nukes to terrorists, and he’s not out to conquer the world. Let him have his turn.”

Apparently such people can’t survive in rulership these days.

And where is any honest soul saying, “Wow, I’m really glad those emails came out. This Hillary and her team were out of control. And if she was, who else is? We have some serious problems here.”

Has no one actually read the emails? They were damning… horribly damning. And not only to the politicians, but to the entire elite class, including nearly all major media. Does no one care? Is everyone looking at the flashing lights?

And by the way, if the Russians really did hack everyone under the sun, what about all those hundreds of billions that were supposedly spent on “keeping us safe”? Were they simply wasted? Think about this for a minute. If you were a red, white, and blue (or maybe camo) techno-marine, given those aforesaid hundreds of billions of dollars to protect the good ole USA, mightn’t you start by building systems that filtered Russian connections to Washington, DC?

If the Russians really did hack all these people, then the oceans of money thrown at the intel complex since 9/11 were wasted. Yes, I know things aren’t quite as simple as I’m putting them here, but we’re talking about incredible sums of money, and over 15 years! You’d think a few of the basics would be covered by now, wouldn’t you? And if not, were we just suckers? “Keep the yokels scared, and the money never stops.”?

This entire episode is a massive condemnation of American governance, threatening to turn into violent conflict. The people involved (on both sides of the supposed political divide) are not statesmen, are not leaders, are not even properly developed adults. They more resemble dogs fighting over scraps.

This seems an appropriate time for Americans to reconsider their devotion to this group.

* * * * *

A book that generates comments like these, from actual readers, might be worth your time:

I just finished reading The Breaking Dawn and found it to be one of the most thought-provoking, amazing books I have ever read… It will be hard to read another book now that I’ve read this book… I want everyone to read it.
Such a tour de force, so many ideas. And I am amazed at the courage to write such a book, that challenges so many people’s conceptions.
There were so many points where it was hard to read, I was so choked up.
Holy moly! I was familiar with most of the themes presented in A Lodging of Wayfaring Men, but I am still trying to wrap my head around the concepts you presented at the end of this one.

Get it at Amazon ($18.95) or on Kindle: ($5.99)

* * * * *

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com

Why the Real Founders of Democracy Would Be Pissed if They Saw What We Did…

The word democracy is held in awe these days. Mention it almost anywhere and you’ll get instant nods of approval.

People actually believe that democracy gives us harmony and peace, not to mention wealth. They are sure that it is the ultimate and inevitable end of human development, created by the wise and noble Greeks and given to us, the enlightened society that took it to the ends of the Earth!

But if the ancient Greeks could see what we call ‘democracy,’ they would spit at it. They’d probably want to burn it down.

As many problems as they had (and they had plenty), they were not fools, and it wouldn’t take them a day to condemn what the West now worships.

Why would the old Greeks be so upset? Let’s take a look at their (Athenian) system and see how our modern form stacks up:

#1: Greek citizen assemblies met 40 times per year in an open, public forum. Any citizen could speak and any citizen could vote. A vote of those present was final.

Contrast that with what passes for (American) democracy now: Only special people are allowed to attend the assemblies. On top of that, there are far, far more meetings than anyone could hope to follow: General sessions, meetings for dozens of committees, party caucuses and more, running at all hours. No one person can come remotely close to keeping up with it all.

The citizen is clearly unable to participate or even to understand what’s going on. Just this fact would cause the “fathers of civilization” to pronounce our system a fraud, and rightly so. The citizens are non-participants.

#2: Laws were inscribed on stone pillars (stelae) and posted in prominent locations so that everyone would see them.

Greek laws were accessible to every Greek. Not only were they required to be posted, but this requirement also guaranteed that there couldn’t be too many of them.

If you were to take an ancient Greek to see “our laws,” they’d be looking at more than 80,000 pages of almost indecipherable language. (And those would be only the Federal laws.)

Because of this, the Greeks would be insulted when you assured them that we have “the rule of law.” They would say that when people can’t know the law, they are living in a tyranny, and no amount of fancy argumentation would convince them otherwise.

And, again, they would be right. If you are ignorant of the law (80,000 pages of government-speak) but are still subject to punishment under the law, you are living in a tyranny. The founders would have no confusion about that.

#3: A Council oversaw the daily affairs of the democracy. Each of ten tribes provided 50 men. But, only one tribe’s men (50 of them) served at any one time, and only for one month. (The Greeks had ten months in their year.) And once any person served as a Councilor, they were forbidden from serving again for ten years.

Under this arrangement, playing tricks became almost impossible: as soon as the first of the month came along, the next tribe could turn your tricks around and do worse to you.

Contrast this with senators and congressmen who stay in office for decades on end, selling all sorts of favors, amassing multi-million dollar campaign funds, and making themselves rich in the process. Most of them never really go away.

At this point, our philosophical forefathers would be looking for places to buy torches… and they would be ready to beat anyone who called a system that supports such shenanigans a democracy.

#4: Citizens chosen for positions like overseer of the marketplace were chosen completely at random.

Imagine choosing the boss of the IRS at random. We all know what would happen: You’d get a housewife from Portland one year and a plumber from Topeka the next. And they’d act like humans, rather than unfeeling automatons. The sanctimonious abuser state would crumble.

#5: At the beginning of their democracy, the citizens of Athens were divided into ten tribes (and NOT along regional or family lines). This was done specifically to break the power of the aristocratic families.

Have you paid attention to the DC crowd lately? Have you noticed that they never leave? Instead, they slide back and forth between congress, commissions, agencies, lobbying firms, mega-corps and media. Have you noticed how often their children marry each other?

Look at the Presidential lineup: Bush – Clinton – Bush – Obama – Clinton? – Bush?

That’s called “aristocracy.” However, people who are emotionally bound to the system can’t see it. The Greeks certainly wouldn’t be fooled.

Losing Our Religion

Do you remember a haunting song from the ’90s called “Losing My Religion“? If so, cue that up in the back of your mind, because that’s what stands in front of the people of the West.

The majestic “Democracy” that was supposed to be our savior is actually an abusive fraud. It’s time to let it go. That’s not easy, I know, but it needs to be done.

Will you take the first step?

Paul Rosenberg
FreemansPerspective.com