The “one big system” (OBS) and its one-size-fits-all approach is bad for society, bad for the economy, and bad for individual freedom. It also undermines the social fabric by atomizing individuals and replacing faith, family, and community with corporate monopolies, social media, and the state. It’s time we all, left and right, commit to preserving our Union and reaffirming our pluralistic and free society through a deliberate devolution of political and economic power.
Devolution means local and county governments, private people, free associations, private enterprises, and free associations like churches and clubs are where most resources flow and the most important decisions impacting your life are made, with your active participation. Devolution does not require a Constitutional amendment because it is actually already built into our Union of free and sovereign, and separate, republics.
Everyone clamoring for the kind of world they want to live in should take a step back and realize that, for most people, there is far more that unites us than divides us but some of the things that divide us are really things you should have the most say in at the most local and accessible level. The problem is that the pols and corpos, politicians and corporate shot-callers, need and want badly for us to focus on this all-or-nothing conflict over issues private groups and every local to county level jurisdiction SHOULD have power over through a consensual democracy, as opposed to indirectly throughout corruptible “leaders.”
As with Canadians voting back in a deranged Caesarist, most people in the Western world deplore and run away from freedom. They are coddled, babied, and neutered specimens, mostly without a single moral conviction deeper and dearer than base carnal pleasures. Most of the citizenry are not only happy to vote away their humanity, dignity, and liberty, but they are more than willing to vote away yours as well.
This happens because the way we do politics is on emotional issues and soundbites. We don’t do them on the basis of substance, process, or meaty matters that everyone SHOULD care about. If we focus on process and the processes that work we can, we should, see that if people in their own local to county level could freely and actively decide the rules and norms of their society then we could see real change. We could see where things were good and bad. We could compare and not run massive social experiments on the whole population that, if they fail, could crater our entire country.
If you can’t stomach the idea the community in the next county won’t adopt your pet ideology and make it a law, well, you are literally a symptom of a dying civilization that seeks universal sameness without change. The aim of a springtime civilization is to constantly seek the ideals of a good society through experimentation and competition, hence the decentralized nature of every early civilization in its zenith of creativity and spiritual energy.
If your vision for society is driven by what some see as a woke cancel culture extremism, what you might sincerely see as social justice and forward societal evolution, but you cannot brook the idea not every private community of people or every locality might adopt, then your deeper ideology is just plain old nasty Caesarism. Likewise if your ideology is what some see as right-wing backwardness, what you may sincerely see as proudly maintaining the best traditions and values for an advanced civilization, and you cannot brook the notion not every private community of people or locality adopts your ideology, then you too are just a Caesarist.
Freedomists tend more toward the social conservative spectrum in that we feel that civic and moral virtue based on Judeo-Christian values is one of the three core elements of freedom, which include a balance of virtue, liberty, and independence. But our view of freedom is that it must be adopted through a combination of freewill participation by private persons and it must be adopted in each locality through some sort of consensual decision-making process that is inclusive and that also tends toward promoting a free and pluralistic society of equals.
And ideology based on OBS and a one-size-fits-all approach instead of mostly through freewill participation by private persons and through some form of consensual decision-making processes at the local level is perfectly and utterly useless. It is but a veneer for Caesarism. Caesarism is in point of fact an archaic and barbaric approach by a civilization that has lost its creativity and spiritual life-force, a dying civilization no more advanced than a band of barbaric savages.
The devolution of political and economic power from the federal and state governments as well as the near-monopoly mega corporations is a radical necessity if we as Americans want our civilization to become a new, springtime civilization with a whole bright future as opposed to being dragged into the cesspool of history by a dying and decadent civilization.
We do not live in a dictatorship, but the spirit and nature, as well as the long-term potential outcome of all this authoritarian conduct and political intolerance toward their opponents, cannot be thought to be anything less than a march toward the demise of freedom at the expense of human dignity and human flourishing. Undermining the freedom of some undermines the freedom of all and without freedom any notion of justice, equity, and basic human dignity is a sham.
The radical left in America today conduct constant authoritarian and reactionary disruptions of normal social life. They impose fantastical and experimental theories of alt-gendered social justice. They do all this at the expense of freewill and freedom of conscience and association. This is destroying the social fabric. This lays the groundwork for a right-wing reaction that will likely be even more authoritarian and popular, which is very dangerous to the cause of freedom.
It is too easy to see the left as the bad guys and assume the right are the good guys, or the other way, without being critical of their means and processes as to whether they are organic, natural, and emergent or whether they are imposed artificially, unnatural, and dictated from the top and center. No ends, whether social justice or social cohesion are the aims, justify the use of things like OBS and one-size-fits-all approaches, or Caesarism.
Devolution of political and economic power from the top and center to the people in their private lives, free associations, and local autonomous communities, is the only way to reclaim our entire civilization from the clutches of a depraved and corrupt ruling class who are dragging civilization into a cesspool.
How can we fight back?
We suggest the following steps:
1. Becoming truly informed by choosing the support a fair and honest people-centered free press operation, such as The Freedomist
2. Rebuilding the social fabric of our own lives through intentionally rekindling our friendships and marriage, our faith through active engagement in religious communities, our marriages and family, and deliberately rebuilding the structures of extended family and kinship communities
3. Finding personal gaps for freedom by learning laws and methods that grow you preparedness and material independency from the ruling class
4. Intentionally creating islands of freedom by means of things like mutual benefit societies, mutual benefit corporations, clustered living cohabitations, and virtual-to-local networks for larger scale mutual support
5. Transforming counties into freedom shires through creating a local free press, creating local freedom clubs for mutual support, creating a parallel town meeting system to hold officials accountable, gaining the majority support of voters through a Bill of Rights Pledge, and securing the creation of local ordinances in defense of the Bill of Rights
6. Working at the state and federal level to promote an agenda based on the devolution of economic and political power in favor of the people instead of monopoly corporations and the political class
7. Using a Constitutional convention if need be for restoring the sanctity of the original spirit and intent of the US Bill of Rights to preserve our Union
These are the roadmarks we must reach on the path to creating a free and pluralistic society that is proof against the authoritarian overreach. This is a process and just as it took years to build the framework of authoritarianism, it will take time, intentionality, sacrifice, and hard work to roll back the advancing forces of totalitarianism in this land.
