The relevance of human rights to the well-being of a healthy local and national society is a paramount objective to undertake, and the support of a citizenry that can think critically, make decisions and take action, is the greatest non-violent defense of freedom and liberty. The success of the United States of America has been due to the freedom and liberties that its people have enjoyed. Such a fought-for reality is taken for granted and weakens in ignorance and the failure of our educational system to train up successive new generations of Americans to not simply be professionals, but renaissance men and women who are active participators of our democratic republic.
It so is that those who are trained to care not just for themselves, but for their country, having been trained to have the necessary skills and tools through which to practice the defense of freedom and liberty are tantamount to being the future true leaders of America. These changes must be led through parent-involvement in schools, and school curriculum itself clearly teaching students the value and pathways on how they can both become professionals and have the training to be mighty citizens who care about the American dream.
Characteristics of critical thinkers include the valuing of intellectual freedom and personal liberty. They understand that the individual’s capacity to affect social change is tremendous, and the intellectual practice of being creative, analyzing, being skeptical, using logic, seeking out inconsistencies, solving problems, thinking rationally, deconstructing and understanding ideologies, all are part of the politically scientific critically thinking mind. This could be taught in our educational system, though it may not be carried out to its complete extent because it would make conservative Republicans and Libertarians out of many people.
- Ordinary people can become extraordinary in the practice of defending freedom and liberty. Teaching ourselves to be staunch non-violent patriots who use intellect to speak and write on the fundamental human right to freedom and liberty through our educational system and in the family home safeguards the foundation of why the country was founded in the first place.
- Maintaining a democratic republic cannot be a spectator sport that we relegate to established corporate media or elected officials who are beholden to seeking re-election. Nor can the democratic republic be defended uniformly through the U.S. Armed Forces. Those men and women, who oft times give their lives in the service to our country are not being trained to be intellectual powerhouses with the freedom to speak on issues of importance, but are trained to go into present danger and hunt down enemies. These are patriots and the ‘picture’ of patriots, for they give their lives, but we need additional men and women who can deconstruct attacks on the second amendment.
- Such as Dana Loesch, spokeswoman for the National Rifle Association. We need men and women who can take on the corporatized, federally-funded abortion industry (it’s not a movement, it is a business with an advertising wing), like Lila Grace Rose and her pro-life Live Action organization.
“Ordinary people can become extraordinary in the practice of defending freedom and liberty. Teaching ourselves to be staunch non-violent patriots who use their intellect to speak and write on the fundamental human right to freedom and liberty …safeguards the foundation of why the country was founded in the first place.”
In the absence of a country’s Bill of Rights, government grows powerful at the expense of the people’s power to self-govern, and its intelligence organizations and corporate intelligence data-gathering companies assume great power due to their warehousing of information-gathering on civilians.
As we have been seeing in the media, our information is politicized and used against us by political organizations on the right and left, ( Facebook, Google, the Koch brothers). The level of how advanced technological information-gathering has become on every segment of the average civilian life renders the 4th Amendment null and void, and has led to a silent coup de etat by governmental and corporatized technology systems. Our Presidents and congressional leaders simply preside as general managers, whereas the real power is in the information-gathering. President Eisenhower and Kennedy warned us about this. Eisenhower waited for the end of his tenure to tell us. Kennedy didn’t last long thereafter. Both were patriots in those moments. Anyone who speaks out on such a level is mischaracterized and thrown to the lions, having their persona be brought to financial ruin and occasions be created to have them fall in all kinds of pits.
In holy scripture, in the book of Romans, God says to respect the powers that be, but in the U.S.A. the working narrative is that power rests in the people. Should we play along with the parade that power rests in the people, while it actually rests in the military/ intelligence organization? How much power does the average American citizen have if they are not trained to be outspoken critical thinkers?
What we have completed going through is a re-engineering of the power structure in the United States of America. What we have left is the second amendment. The right to bear arms. What we have to get back is being a citizenry that participates, leads, and defends freedom and liberty. We have to be trained to search out were the grievances against personal freedom and liberty are, and we have to do this on a grand scale.
The following introduction and story provides a window into how two worlds collided almost seamlessly. One enjoyed a great amount of freedom and liberty, whereas the other has had such personal freedoms and liberties drastically abridged:
The balance of global power in the 1980s was in many ways pitched as an ideological and military rivalry between the two biggest remaining superpowers burgeoning from the aftermath of the second world war. The military industrial complex’s of Russia and the United States had reached a level of nuclear hostility that was only eclipsed by their cloak and dagger operations in the underworld of national intelligence and its proxy wars around the world. As we see it now though, Soviet Russia’s economy had been brought to a near halt through its narrow-focus on building up military strength at the expense of having a social and vibrant society, whereas the American economy and culture enjoyed the capital power of having an established educated middle class with a purchasing magnitude power many more times that of United Soviet Socialist Republic, allowing it to outlive the Soviet military buildup.
The United States of America enjoyed the capital effect of having a population of citizens with economic spending liberty large enough to house what became the rise of commercial and industrial technology as a business spanning basic consumer services, financial services, goods, and streamlined methods of commercial and governmental intelligence-data gathering. In effect, America’s capitalistic economy had the advantage of a populace with greater access to education, and the means to freely grow its economy with the innovation of technology. The United Soviet Socialist Republic, however, placed such focus on military defense spending and a government-stifling of the natural social and economic growth of its people; placing government as supreme, that it ultimately led to its economic demise in its current state. Mikhael Gorbachev, the USSR’s leader through much of the 1980’s recognized this, and in a decisive manner, separated himself from the stoic, guarded, isolationist Communist ideology of past Russian leaders, and instead, embracing a balance between the Politburo (Soviet equivalent to U.S. Congress), and striking an increasing conciliatory tone with the ‘Western World,’ even creating a friendship of sorts with American President, Ronald Reagan.
It is now evident that Gorbachev seemed to help bring a soft end to his countries current social-economic ideology: moving it towards a freer-market system, albeit, adverting a complete melt-down of Soviet Russia’s government and singular economy. In retrospect, the seeds of a new relationship between the world under communist rule and that of the democracies of the ‘Western World’ were exemplified best in the personal relationship between Reagan and Gorbachev, and amongst representatives of each other’s cultures.
Do you remember, American tap dancer, Gregory Hines and the world-renown Russian ballet dancer Mikhael Baryshnikov? Mr. Hines was an African-American street-artist who’s ‘very American’ tap dancing was brought together with Russia’s Baryshnikov, a professional ballet artist trained in the world’s best ballet schools. Together they made a few films. Mr. Hines character roles typified the street-smart American spirit and Mr. Baryshnikov, the refined and polished ballet dancer who carried the pride of Russia on his shoulders. The takeaway in their films, like ‘White Nights,’ was that each could learn from each other, and perhaps take on some of each others qualities. Could a middle ground between their two cultures be found? The answer is left to the audience, but the strategic goal of the film evidently underlined a real move towards greater peace through cultural collaboration from the real Russian and American governments.
These undertakings were seldom followed up. The power of individual collaborations, if allowed to be prolonged, threatens to become a positively disruptive political chess move with the power to outflank the theater of politics.
Being consistent enough with the ground-level collaborations that relational ‘webs’ begin to strengthen based on individual relationships across time makes a difference. Scaled and repeated over time, like a mathematical formula, the bonds created directly between the people begin to undermine the conversations and political stances being had at the higher governmental levels. A country that controls the people’s lives… is a country that controls the conversations its people have and its actions. Such an unfortunate development disallows the organic interaction of people across time and space, directly hindering freedom and liberty, both of which are required for a free-market system to function at some level of proficiency. To the extent that political, military, and economic power is with the people of a country, personal freedoms and liberties rise and fall.
“Scaled and repeated over time, like a mathematical formula, the bonds created directly between the people begin to undermine the conversations and political stances being had at the higher governmental levels.”
Russia did not become a country that placed the personal freedom and protection of personal liberties of its citizens first though. It is a command and control economy that merely had its military/ intelligence apparatus become the leadership of the country after discarding the Communist doctrines. ‘The United States of America’ also has a very powerful military/ intelligence apparatus with a technological corporate structure which together have become a formidable presence in the lives of everyday Americans. Even so, the average American citizen enjoys greater freedom and liberty than any other citizen in the world.
Increasing the ground-level training of a citizenry that values critical thinking and civic participation begins to create a bulwark defense protecting our civil liberties and freedoms.
For America, a prioritization of how to put its strengthening first can be a discussion which yields a very different list of priorities according to whom you ask. Making cultural ties with other nations may serve unique purposes in specific times. What is evident is that the level of personal freedom and liberty for an individual to live at peace, educate self, grow professionally and be a critically thinking steward of their community is a needful requisite to the health of local and national community. It makes America ‘great.’
America itself is in continual flux with competing narratives on how to make it better. In many ways, we are on the ground-floor because of the disregard to our human rights at the most basic standpoint, human conception. Truly, freedom and liberty in the U.S.A. is an issue that can be approached from a number of perspectives, and yet, the right to life is the most pressing. After that, the right to growing up with a healthy brain and body. With one’s life protected at conception and one’s brain and body legally protected from anything that may degrade the mind’s ability to think critically enough to defend itself, all other human rights can be defended thereafter, and all manner of undertaking to protect our democratic republic can be done. Otherwise, we are left with the marriage of political organizations, deep intelligence state information-gathering agencies & technology companies operating their command and control agenda through censorship, targeting and identity politics as a form of social engineering.
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