Common Sense REVISITED - (Part Four)

A Sequel to "The Law - 2024"

Continuing from Part Three - Part Two - Part One

The job of getting this publication on here has been a bit tedious but I believe the information that it has to offer is well worth my time and effort if the end result is that minds are fed a new way to look at a subject that is timely. As we enter a fourth turning, I’m hoping that the end result will be beneficial to mankind. It was an interesting video that I watched to day with Jimmy Dore where a Haitian lady was on their saying that what needs to be done with Haiti is for them to be left alone. That they will work it out themselves which just happens to be the major theme behind this post. One of my commenters mentioned that he was sure I was a person that needed a leader. Anyone that knows me knows that to be total nonsense. Anyone who reads my personal posts, comments and other writers that I post knows that to be false. Who needs a leader? Maybe as a child, but as an adult? If you still need one by then, you need to grow up.

I remember reading somewhere that if the SHTF, watch to see who remains calm and collected and follow them. Well, if you just have to do it that way… expect to be following me. And for all of you out there looking for those of us who aren’t going along with your plan… listen very carefully… I am not the droid you are looking for.

Now let’s get into Part Four of this series. I expect it to be most likely a five part series and I will have put up four parts in the past two days. C.L.

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Renewing American Compassion, by Marvin Olasky, provides historic evidence that the welfare system in this country before the federal government became involved was far more effective in improving the lives of those who needed help. This book also outlines workable and realistic plans for transitioning from the current top-down, wasteful, ineffective welfare system to a bottom-up system that will work.

For example, as unconstitutional and wasteful federal programs are being phased out, every county could find volunteers to take part in mentor/sponsor teams for people in need. The teams’ priority would be to help individuals who cannot support themselves find work in the community so that they do not have to go on welfare. Those who are already in the system would work with their mentor/sponsor team to develop a plan to get off of welfare as soon as possible.

This type of solution is based on natural human compassion, which drives the desire to help others. The meaning of compassion is “to suffer with.” Compassion is a personal response to another being’s situation. It is a voluntary action and cannot be forced. This is the essence of why government- driven welfare, charity, or compassion will never work.

There are many people in every community who would be willing to take on these challenges, and they would do it for free out of the goodness of their hearts. Just consider the success of Habitat for Humanity, a private volunteer organization that has built over 300,000 houses around the world, providing more than 1.5 million people in 3,000 communities with safe, decent, affordable shelter. (I was involved in the plumbing installation in two of them when I lived in Washington. And yet, I myself was unable to afford a home! C.L.) People in every community are willing to voluntarily donate time, money, and skills to help others.

The mentor/sponsor team program would draw on community support to keep an individual or family out of the welfare system. As an incentive, the resulting reduction in welfare payments to the county could be matched with a reduction in the county’s state sales tax rate for the following year. The creation of this community-based infrastructure is the first step to eliminating the incredibly wasteful and destructive role of the federal welfare bureaucracy.

To phase out federal programs, the bureaucracy can be cut first, rather than cutting payments to recipients. At the same time, proven community models can be developed. This will save enormous amounts of money for every American family and community, providing more wealth and resources for helping those in need.

The next step would be to phase out unnecessary state programs, which would provide additional savings for the taxpayers and further reduce the number of people who have to experience the vicious cycle of welfare dependency.

The goal of any program created to help people should ultimately be to help individuals and families increase their indigenous power. Dependency increases surrogate power; self-sufficiency increases indigenous power.

Surrogates rarely demonstrate any responsibility for the condition of the environment. In general, the history of government as a protector of the environment is very poor. There is a direct relationship between a citizenry’s indigenous power and a country’s environmental health. The more indigenous power, the less destruction of the environment. You will generally find that those countries where surrogate power has usurped indigenous power have the worst track records for environmental destruction.

The U.S. government has a horrible track record in regard to the environment. However, most of the major environmental organizations in the country raise millions of dollars and spend the vast majority of that money lobbying government, rather than spending it directly on projects that would immediately provide a positive impact on the environment.

It is astonishing that people in America think that the government would be a good protector of the environment when the fact is that the government is the worst polluter in the country!

It is true. Government, both federal and local, is the single greatest polluter in the U.S. The sad reality is that surrogate power is so out of control in this country that this polluter literally gets away with murder because of “sovereign immunity.”

• In 1988 the EPA demanded that the Departments of Energy and Defense clean up 17 of their weapons plants, which were leaking radioactive and toxic chemicals, causing enough contamination to cost $100 billion in clean-up costs over 50 years! No bureaucrats went to jail or were sued for damages. Government departments have sovereign immunity.

• In 1984, a Utah court ruled that the U.S. military was negligent in its nuclear testing, causing serious health problems (e.g., death) for the people exposed to radioactive fallout. The U.S. Court of Appeals dismissed the claims of the victims because government employees have sovereign immunity.

• Hooker Chemical begged the Niagara Falls School Board not to excavate the land where Hooker had safely stored toxic chemical waste. The school board ignored these warnings and taxpayers had to foot a $30 million relocation bill when health problems arose. The EPA filed suit, not against the reckless school board, but against Hooker Chemical! Government officials have sovereign immunity.

Unfortunately, there are many, many examples like these. It is simply common sense not to rely on the fox to protect the hen house.

Currently, government employees and government contractors have immunity from liability for the environmental damage they create. It is absolutely crucial that this immunity be eliminated.

There is no question that the Founders would have required the originators of environmental damage, regardless of who they were, to pay for the costs of correcting that damage. After all, why should individuals who work on behalf of governments or corporations be allowed greater rights than other individuals? Restorative justice—making full use of civil law and civil courts—would do more to restore the environment than any federal government program ever devised.

Changing government from a top-down to a bottom-up system will play a critical part in eliminating institutional resistance to environmentally friendly technologies. Indigenous power and environmental protection are not only compatible, they are essential to each other. The fundamental principles of a free society are based on an understanding of natural law. That understanding provides a model for restructuring institutions for maximum personal evolution, as well as resolving environmental problems.

It is already happening without the help of the government. Buildings are now being built according to natural principles that do not create pollution. Farming methods that mimic nature allow crops to be profitably grown without damaging the environment. Manufacturing processes based on observing natural processes are already gaining acceptance.

Moving away from a top-down system will also result in the elimination of government subsidies, which are destructive to the environment. Federal subsidies to the oil, gas, and coal industries have kept fossil fuel prices low, discouraging the development of cleaner alternatives. Federal subsidies to agriculture encourage farmers to cultivate their lands to the hilt. This has resulted in larger farms and more intense applications of fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides, with sometimes disastrous results for neighbors downstream. Therefore, the elimination of all agricultural subsidies as well as all government subsidies to the oil, gas, and coal industries is essential to preserving the environment.

At the same time, it is up to each individual to make environmentally sound decisions. Everything makes a difference, from what light bulbs you use to how well insulated your home is to what vehicle you choose to drive. Fortunately, in almost every instance there is an economic incentive already built into being environmentally aware. For example, insulation retrofits on homes usually pay for themselves within 18 months. After that, it is pure profit.

If properly done, community-based financial incentives that encourage individuals to be more environmentally conscious can have wide community support and foster good relations among people who are working together to improve the quality of their community. For instance, in 2007 National Public Radio (NPR) reported that over 600 communities are taking it upon themselves to reduce pollution on their own.

These individuals and communities are doing exactly what they should be doing: cleaning up their environment from the bottom up. Unfortunately, the report insinuates that the federal government should be taking the initiative. Grand schemes from the top down, however, just don’t work and in many cases create more damage to the environment.

The involvement of world government in the management of environmental issues, including global warming, will be even more counterproductive than relying on the federal government. The Kyoto Protocol, for example, results in a loss of money and sovereignty for all the so-called developed nations that participate, while giving incentives to the worst polluters to do nothing to improve.

So what is it really about? At this level, it’s always about money. The Kyoto plan will require developing nations to pay potentially hundreds of billions of dollars to underdeveloped nations by means of purchasing excess carbon credits. Those credits are not to be paid or bought directly from one nation to another. Powerful financial institutions will facilitate the exchange process and extend additional carbon credit loans to developing countries. This serves as yet another way for countries o remain indebted to the central banks.

Top-down, command-and-control, force-based schemes, politically and financially motivated by the special interests who control political entities like the EPA, FDA, and the U.N., will never accomplish their altruistic stated goals. They will, in fact, just make matters worse.

Consider the difference in environmental quality between West Germany and East Germany before they were united, and between North Korea and South Korea. In North Korea and East Germany, where the people had absolutely no ability to demand anything, environmental damage has been extreme compared to their free counterparts. In a free society, the people have at least some control over the situation and will demand some level of action regarding damage to the environment.

A government that has no accountability to the people is never a good steward of the environment.

Enlivening civil law and recognizing the legal rights of individuals as paramount will provide the best chance to protect against continuing degradation of the environment. Whenever possible, individuals and communities must be given the primary responsibility to make decisions (such as if and where to allow the placement of a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation). Common sense demands that the primacy of individuals and communities be honored over top-down, government-imposed restrictions and exemptions favoring the powerful.

Fortunately, a revolutionary and evolutionary way of approaching environmental problems that is more in tune with the bottom-up approach is beginning to take hold in this country. As people move in this direction, they are finding much more effective solutions to environmental problems. They are coming together in a non-coercive manner to create alternative institutions, rather than relying on regulatory agencies to solve environmental problems.

There are many examples of this new principle in action. One is the Lobster Coalition, which is one of the country’s most interesting experiments in cooperative self government. A coalition of lobster fishermen, restaurant owners, environmentalists, and other interested parties are working together to protect and preserve Maine’s lobster market. Reporter Alan Ehrenhalt described the group’s efforts in Lessons From the Lobster Legislature:

“More than 7,000 individuals are engaged in lobster fishing in Maine. In a good year, they bring in 50 million pounds of crustaceans, worth half a billion dollars—roughly 2 percent of the gross state product. So the health of the industry is central to Maine’s economy. Of course, when things are good in the industry, anyone can enter the business, and that is exactly what has happened in Maine in the past. Before long the number of lobsters begins to dwindle, and there are not enough to support the families who are dependent on that way of life.

“…This is a classic problem of the commons, a situation in which the relentless pursuit of self-interest by members of a community eventually destroys the livelihood of everyone within it. But it is now a different story in Maine. The lobster coalition created local legislative bodies that made regulatory decisions without bureaucratic input from Washington, D.C. The group divided the state into seven lobster-fishing zones. Each zone contains between eight and 14 districts, and every district has 100 licensed fishermen. The job of each of these units is to cooperate in crafting rules that will prevent overfishing and stave off the dreaded intrusion of the federal bureaucrats.

“The first thing the local legislative bodies did was to agree that they wouldn’t put a limit on fish; instead, they would put a limit on the number of traps each fisherman could put in the water. A form of grassroots government created in response to a difficult situation has been able to make hard political choices that have eluded mainstream government.”

This is an example of solving a serious environmental problem without coercion. It represents an incredibly important and positive development for the environment and the people’s freedom. The irrefutable conclusion when comparing top-down coercive environmental programs with these non-coercive bottom-up approaches is that the bottom-up approach is actually more effective at dealing with the environment. The constant struggle between environmentalists on the one side and property owners and freedom lovers on the other side will disappear once there is a paradigm shift to a bottom-up approach to governing.

Individuals are as different as leaves on a tree. Each can do one special thing better and with less effort and more joy than anyone else on the planet. The goal of education should be to help students find out what their unique potential is and then help them develop it.

However, the nation’s federally run schools do not focus on developing individual potential. The result is a deep dissatisfaction among young people, which in turn leads to drug abuse, crime, depression, and societal breakdown. It is vital that education in this country be restructured and that it be done on the local level. The federal government will never create the kind of education needed. Parents must be involved, and local communities must have the freedom to develop education in the way that works best for them.

When it comes to education, look at the motivation of those in charge. At the local level the parents have one primary goal: to see that their children receive a great education that prepares them to be successful, happy, and prosperous human beings who are using their full potential. That is what any parent wants for his or her child.

Government's number one priority is to maintain its own power. The best way to do this is to create citizens who conform. Citizens who are too bright and too well educated may ask too many questions and challenge the accepted order.

So is it any surprise that because the federal government has taken more authority over our education, our education system is now ranked number 21 out of 21 of the developed nations of the world? Or that a huge percentage of young children are placed on psycho-active drugs for an endless number of disorders? Or that children are being dumbed down by the entire experience of public education? Or that they learn that the great presidents were the ones who greatly expanded the federal government and the worst were those who attempted to contain the growth of government?

For many years, the United States has operated under the fallacy that the more money spent on education, the better it will get. This just isn’t true. The amount spent per student has continued to increase,103 and yet, the quality of education has declined. In fact, there is increasing evidence that home-schooled students are outperforming all others on tests and in college classrooms.

The politicians who run the public schools keep creating new regulations and mandating new programs. As these are imposed on local schools, there is more bureaucracy and less innovation, more red tape and less creativity, and more resources are spent on regulatory requirements. So the cost of education goes up and the quality of education goes down.

As former Education Secretary Gary Bauer pointed out during his 2000 campaign, more than 75 percent of our tax money that goes to the federal government for education stays in Washington, D.C., to pay bureaucrats.

How could parents believe that those bureaucrats are helping to educate their kids? The bureaucrats spend most of their time thinking about how to increase the size of their department, not about teaching the children.

The U.S. Department of Education should be abolished. No money for education should be given to the federal government. It should have no role whatsoever in educating children. The resulting tax savings would mean more money at the local level to educate children the way parents choose.

Allowing local communities to choose the education model that best fits their situation will dramatically improve the quality of education. Many superb models exist throughout the United States and the world. Every community can choose among the very best programs available, without the federal or state government imposing a system that by its very nature requires uniformity. Educators could attend statewide conferences that focus on the most successful education technologies. By doing so, the state would have a low-cost, minimalist role in facilitating the most intelligent choices for each community. The marketplace of ideas will rule, instead of a centralized government. This will dramatically reduce taxes and allow people’s funds to directly support their local schools.

Charter schools are an excellent example of a bottom up education system. These are publicly funded schools run by parents, educators, and sometimes companies. A 2001 study by the Rand Corporation found that with charter schools, parents are more satisfied, children are well integrated, and academic achievement tends to grow after the child’s first year. The report also suggests that to ensure that an adequate supply of charter schools are available, multiple chartering authorities should exist. The most successful charter schools are generally in states with laws that provide local communities and parents the most freedom.

Charter schools are just one of many models for improving education at the community level. Once the fundamental principle of bottom-up government is reestablished, there will be flexibility to consider the full range of models that have been successfully implemented in communities throughout the world. Local educators, school boards, and especially the parents will create the best educational environment for their students when given the freedom to develop what they feel is the best system. By understanding and implementing the vision of a free society, unencumbered by surrogate power, it is possible to implement an educational system that will be envied and unrivaled throughout the world.

The current educational program run by the federal government has its roots in the General Education Board, which was founded in 1902 by John Rockefeller. The following two quotes shed some light on the process occurring within our government-run schools. From these statements it’s clear that the reason young people are losing sight of the natural law-based concept of indigenous power is because they are purposely being taught the ideology of surrogate power.

From the General Education Board’s first newsletter:

“In our dreams, we have limitless resources and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present education conventions fade from their minds, and unhampered by tradition, we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive rural folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning, or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, editors, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have an ample supply…The task we set before ourselves is very simple as well as a very beautiful one, to train these people as we find them to a perfectly ideal life just where they are. So we will organize our children and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way, in the homes, in the shops and on the farm.”

From The New York Times, regarding the General Education Board’s proposed experimental school at Columbia: “Unblushing materialism finds its crowning triumph in the theory of the modern school. In the whole plan there is not a spiritual thought, not an idea that rises above the need of finding money for the pocket and food for the belly…It is a matter of instant inquiry, for very sober consideration, whether the General Education Board, indeed, may not with the immense funds at its disposal be able to shape to its will practically all the institutions in which the youth of the country are trained.”

PART FIVE

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So what do you think folks? Here I am at the end of Part Four and I’m on page 31 of the 48 page booklet. And it looks like it’s every bit 47 pages. Are you going to be able to make it? I hope so because I’m making the effort. I read this back in 2008 and bought 100 copies that I found in a box never given out or sold. Funny how it happened I found it when I had just finished The Law 2024 and how it seemed to dovetail in with itl It looks like it will probably be a good six part series. And it is jam pack full of reason, logic and common sense. I hope you’ll join me though this journey. I’m going to work on part Five and Six tomorrow. There is an awakening and I’m so happy to be part of it! Thanks for your support. Get your friends and relatives to read some of my rants…C. L.