BOTH AND

"We want a society in which all are physically safe, economically secure, properly nourished and adequately sheltered, with access to equal educational opportunities and health care; and in which freedom of expression and assembly and the right to privacy are understood and respected. We want the society articulated in the UN's Universal Declaration of Human rights, the document the US refused to ratify (because of the guarantees of economic rights) and which the USSR likewise refused to ratify (because of the guarantees of individual rights). The time has come for us as human beings to demand that society guarantee both, and to NEVER settle for anything less."

That was the general thesis-type statement with which I concluded my first post.    Here is a link to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights itself.   http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/

It is high time that we all were fed up with the "realism" of leaders who tell us we cannot have BOTH the economic rights AND the individual rights which would be guaranteed in a ratified and legally binding version of this document.    That is not realism; it is blind loyalty to dogmas which only amount to a choice of prisons:   "Which dungeon do you prefer?    That of insecurity, poverty, and being the pawn of fortune?   Or the dungeon of silence, intimidation, and confiscated individuality?"   Human dignity REQUIRES BOTH AND.
Franklin D. Roosevelt understood this, and in 1944 expressed with his usual eloquence a proposal for a second Bill of Rights to the U. S. Constitution, that would have made that document a more complete and perfect guarantee of the rights to which every human being is entitled.   Here is an excerpt from FDR's speech:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmdW3hFPjC0

Here are the President's own typed notes for the 2nd bill of rights section of his speech:
http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/archives/images/exerpt_c.jpg
http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/archives/images/exerpt_d.jpg

Both FDR's speech and the UN Declaration were composed in the 40's at a time when depression and war had ravaged the world, and when it must have been especially clear that something needed to be done, on both the national and international scale, to provide what guarantees could be made to affirm human dignity, and to prevent such massive violations of it as had just occurred.    Sadly, memory is short, and no decisive action was taken with respect to amending the US Constitution, or to ratifying the UN's Declaration.

But it's not too late.    Perhaps now is the time for us to demand BOTH AND.

This blog is my political activity.    I am making it because I don't want to feel helpless and overpowered, and because I don't just want to sit on the sidelines and watch others work.   Its title was discovered by a chance operation in John Cage's text composition How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse).   What is the title's meaning?   Stop putting off political activity, it should happen in the present, not only the future.   What is another meaning?   I believe the best politics is impure politics, inclusive politics, synthetic politics, pragmatic politics, not-only politics, and the more we move toward not-only politics, the brighter our prospects for the future, hence "not-only":  The Future!   If you read other meanings in my title, they are legitmately there;  that is the beauty of chance operations.

I've put together a list of topics that I feel are the most important for me politically.  They are the following:

Anarchism:   I believe with Henry David Thoreau that "That government is best which governs not at all, and when people are ready for it, that is the government they will have."   My understanding of "anarchism" is as a striving towards a balancing of relations of power; moving towards a society not defined  by anyone having power over anyone else.

Abolition of Money:   Money is at best a provisional idea;  at worst it is a genuine evil which reinforces and unbalances power relations, rather than helping us balance them.   How do we move beyond money?

(those are ideals, those things to which we aspire, visions of the future.   but this blog is not only the future.    the following topics are more practical and present)

Get rid of corporate personhood.   Especially since the Citizens United decision, the notion that corporations are legally "persons," a bad idea to begin with has become yet more toxic.   Again the problem is that making corporations persons both significantly unbalances power, and reinforces that unbalance.   Corporate personhood must be abolished in order for real democracy (not corporocracy) to prevail.

Get rid of the two party system.   More voices need to be heard, one, and it needs to be more difficult for the wealthy and powerful to exercise their influences on our representatives.   Making candidacy more wide-openly available accomplishes both.

Re-establish and re-invigorate the labor movement.   Vigorous and powerful unions, and a broadly understood sense of their importance, are crucial to democracy and to real prosperity.   For the same reasons that we value checks and balances in our political system, we must maintain economic checks and balances as well.

(and those are the nitty gritty real world topics.  finally, a broad, thesis-style statement of purpose type topic)

We want a society in which all are physically safe, economically secure, properly nourished and adequately sheltered, with access to equal educational opportunities and health care;  and in which freedom of expression and assembly and the right to privacy are understood and respected.   We want the society articulated in the UN's Universal Declaration of Human rights, the document  the US refused to ratify (because of the guarantees of economic rights) and which the USSR likewise refused to ratify (because of the guarantees of individual rights).   The time has come for us as human beings to demand that society guarantee both, and to NEVER settle for anything less.

Thanks for reading.   Let me know your thoughts.    More to come.