America Liberty and Democratic Infrastructures\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/p>
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\r\nAmerican Liberty and Democratic Infrastructures (August 2000)<\/p>\r\n \r\n
CLOSING THE \"VALUES-GAP\":
\r\nAmerican Liberty and Democratic Infrastructures<\/b>\r\nBy Vigdor Schreibman<\/p>\r\n\r\n
One must split apart the twin ideals of freedom and liberty, \r\nwhich are the core tenets of America's promise to itself and the \r\nworld, according to the fictions of \"free market\" capitalism \r\nspinning out of the Library of Congress in a companion book to its \r\nbicentennial celebration now under way. This is the story told in \r\nthe text of Thomas Jefferson: Genius of Liberty<\/i> published \r\nlast March by the Library of Congress under the questionable \r\nleadership of Dr. James H. Billington, Librarian of Congress. An \r\nexplanation given in the book asserts that the ideals of freedom and \r\nliberty are \"logically incompatible\" because the ideal of \"freedom\" \r\nnecessarily leads to \"social and economic inequality.\"<\/p>\r\n\r\n
Thomas Jefferson<\/i>, which was edited by Joseph J. Ellis, \r\nprofessor of history at Mount Holyoke College, is a book \r\npacked with illustrations and reproductions of historical papers \r\n(though many of these are quite illegible), published in full color \r\nby the Library of Congress together with a private publisher who was \r\ngranted equal copyright upon this treasure trove of public documents. \r\nAt face value this publication has the superficial look and feel of \r\nan impressive work by the venerable depository of the largest \r\ncollection of historical documents in the world about American \r\ngovernment. Nevertheless, carefully measured in a frame of social \r\nsystems sciences, those conclusions offered to the world about \r\nMr. Jefferson's contribution to the ideals of freedom and liberty, \r\nare actually without a basis in logic, ethics, or esthetics.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
This is a work written under the guise of historical \r\nanalysis and realism, which does violence to the genius of Thomas \r\nJefferson and the American charter documents -- the Declaration of \r\nIndependence, presumptive foundation for the republican form of \r\ndemocratic government under the Constitution of the United States, \r\nand inspiration for Lincoln at Gettysburg in 1863 and Martin Luther \r\nKing, Jr., a hundred years later. The rationale presented by the \r\nLibrary of Congress for bringing Mr. Jefferson's genius into doubt is \r\nthat, \"restoring a measure of equality means limiting freedom.\"<\/p>\r\n\r\n
In short, it is asserted that the promise of America embodied \r\nin the natural rights section of the Declaration of Independence, \r\nof which Jefferson was the primal source, We hold these truths to \r\nbe self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed \r\nby their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these \r\nare Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness<\/i>, is essentially \r\nmeaningless because those words do no more than \"articulate \r\nirreconcilable human urges at a sufficiently abstract level to mask \r\ntheir mutual exclusiveness.\"<\/p> \r\n\r\n
There is also a personal attack upon the moral character of \r\nMr. Jefferson, in the bicentennial book, charging that the man was\r\ninter alia<\/i>, hypocritical with regard to the burning questions \r\nof slavery, his ownership of slaves, his trading on slave labor for \r\nhis own pursuit of happiness, his having illicit sexual relations \r\nand children by a slave women, Sally Hemings. The charges of illicit \r\nsex by a public official are always sensationalized by the mass media\r\nin this country because, quite simply, its an emotional topic that \r\nsells, but the charges may not be true in this case.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
A comprehensive research report on, \r\n\"The Jeffersonian Perspective,\" has been prepared by\r\nEyler Robert Coates, Sr., an experienced professional librarian \r\nwho has a special passion for better understanding of this topic.\r\nThe Coates Report<\/i> digs deeply into the case and finds only the \r\nmost tenuous evidence to support the charges of illicit sex against \r\nMr. Jefferson.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
Americans have a right to learn the truth of such charges but \r\neven if they were proven to be accurate, a matter brought into\r\nserious dispute by the Coates Report<\/i>, any judgment upon the moral \r\ncharacter of Mr. Jefferson, as messenger, two centuries after he \r\nlived, outside of the actual sociocultural context in which his life \r\nwas nurtured, is unrealistic. The Golden Age of Greek civilization \r\nwas also mired in the slavery question. Would we now trash their \r\ncontribution to the democratic form of government by a sensationalized \r\nslave\/sex scandal involving some leading Greek Statesman? Hardly! \r\nThere is a considerable history of human failings throughout the last \r\nseveral millennium. What we can learn and try to emulate from the solid \r\nachievements of human beings during that long period is, in my opinion, \r\nof overriding importance to this generation of Americans.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
Moreover, one must not confuse questions raised about the \r\nmessenger with an understanding of his message. The Jeffersonian \r\nslave\/sex scandal, is really not the issue of primary significance in \r\nthe bicentennial book published by the Library of Congress. \r\nMr. Jefferson's heroic message about the charter of the nation is!\r\n\r\n<\/p>
The shocking challenge offered in the latter respect by the \r\nbicentennial book is simply nonsense. The ideas that cast doubt on\r\nMr. Jefferson's vision of freedom and liberty are, rather, mere \r\ncapitalist fetish , without principled moral, systemic, or \r\nscientific weight.\r\n\r\n<\/p>
The capitalist morality of the marketplace, which is the\r\ndominant alternative paradigm to the Jeffersonian pursuit of freedom \r\nand liberty, has produced an ever widening gap in \r\nincome inequities in the United States, with admittedly rising \r\nlevels of \r\nabsolute poverty in the world, and these \"afflictions of \r\ninequality\" lead to \r\nunhealthy societies, which cannot be sustained. This condition is \r\ncaused by the driving forces of the philosophy of greed upon which the \r\ncapitalist marketplace is predicated, not by the intrinsic nature of \r\nhuman society.<\/p> \r\n\r\n
Money-driven politics has erected \r\n\"a great stone wall ... between the people and their representatives,\" \r\nas reported by former Senator Bill Bradley (D-NJ). The rigged and \r\nlopsided legislative process imposed by capitalist greed, has produced \r\nan \r\nOrwellian technological infrastructure,, as reported by Senator \r\nJohn McCain (R-AZ). The idea of the market, as applied to pay, is an\r\nanalytical tyranny, which has produced a \"catastrophic crisis of inequity,\" described in the book, Created Unequal<\/i>\r\n(1998), by James K. Galbraith, professor at the LBJ School of \r\nPublic Affairs, University of Texas at Austin.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
The practical efficiencies attributed to \"free market\" theory, \r\nwhich are derived from capitalist greed, is a perception founded upon \r\nignorance. Individual market transactions, which disregard the goals \r\nof social equity and ecological integrity, which are essential to \r\nthe well being of \"the People\" and survival of the biosphere of the \r\nPlanet Earth are, as I have previously described: \r\na formula for death. Indeed, except by the entirely discredited \r\n19th-century economic theory of laissez faire<\/i> capitalism, \r\nwhich has no credible intellectual foundation, and is otherwise \r\nwithout a mandate in the American Constitution as Mr. Justice Holmes \r\nexplained in his famous dissent in Lochner v. New York, 198 US 45, 74-76 \r\n(1904), there can be no freedom without liberty in any community, \r\ncertainly not in a community organized under the republican (i.e<\/b>., \r\ndemocratic) form of government guaranteed by the American charter, see generally<\/b>\r\nCity of Eastlake v. Forest City Enterprises, Inc<\/u>., 426 US 668, 672 (1976), \r\nciting<\/b> The Federalist<\/i> No. 39 (J. Madison). Citizens of \r\na democratic community cannot live together freely in a state of \r\nbondage by the few over the many guided by no principle but the \r\n\"survival of the fittest,\" which capitalism imposes!<\/u><\/p>\r\n\r\n
Practical actions in the market without normative ends, based \r\non a philosophy of greed, \"could not produce anything but the most \r\ndire consequences\" according to the commentaries of Charles S. Peirce \r\n(1839-1914), American philosopher and polymath, reviewed in<\/b> V.G. \r\nPotter, On Norms & Ideals<\/i> 176 (1997). Peirce's treatise on \r\n\"Pragmatism and the Normative Sciences,\" and his analysis of the \r\nevolutionary theory of \"Social Darwinism\" Id.<\/b>, at 52, 175-176, \r\nfor which he has earned internationally acclaim, was a devastating \r\nrepudiation of the capitalist philosophy. Indeed, capitalist \"free \r\nmarket\" theory has been debunked by American sociologist James Coleman\r\n(1990), as no more than \r\n\"a broadly perpetrated fiction\". <\/p>\r\n\r\n
What one is prompted to recognize by the challenge of the\r\nbicentennial book produced by the Library of Congress, is not that \r\nthe ideals of freedom and liberty are \"logically incompatible\" but \r\nthat the fictions of savage capitalism weighed against the fundamental \r\npromise of democracy in the America charter, are mutually exclusive.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
For one to be free all must be equally free. These are not\r\n\"mutually exclusive\" ideas, but rather, mutually interdependent \r\nprinciples to be learned, and to encourage and facilitate such \r\nknowledge a democratic infrastructure and educational system must be \r\ndesigned and constructed by \"government of the people, by the people, \r\nfor the people.\" It is predicated on just such pragmatic social ideals \r\nthat global citizens are now engaged in the design and development of \r\npostcapitalist, democratic, value-driven infrastructures.<\/p>
The articulation of mutually interdependent principles for\r\nguidance of the American civilization by the genius of Thomas \r\nJefferson, provided no mask of abstractions cloaking \"irreconcilable \r\nhuman urges.\" The principles of freedom and liberty for all \r\nestablished the spiritual foundations of democracy in the new world, \r\nwhich have fueled the everlasting aspirations of the American people,\r\nand the global people, as well.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
Jeffersonian abstractions are superbly consistent with the \r\nmoral, systemic, and scientific enlightenment of humankind. Where \r\ncapitalism and the pursuit of wealth and power are derived from a \r\nnarrow means-centered psychology without genuine human purpose, \r\nadvocates are largely blind to the value-driven psychology that is \r\nthe real basis of the ideals of freedom and liberty\r\nSee e.g.<\/b> D. Yankelovich, New Rules (1981); A. Maslow, \r\nMotivation and Personality<\/i> (2d ed. 1970). It is this psychological\r\nblindness that drives the deeply flawed bicentennial book. <\/p>\r\n\r\n
The ideal of an \r\n\"orderly and coherent corpus of knowledge,\" as defined by Kenneth \r\nBoulding, was predicated upon the ability made possible by systems \r\nsciences (the discipline that Boulding pioneered) to integrate \r\nincreasingly fragmented disciplines at higher levels of abstraction. \r\nMoreover, in the postmodern, postindustrial, postcapitalist era there \r\nis growing awareness that improvement of the system of human society \r\nand its environment must be predicated upon the ethics of whole \r\nsystems supported by democratic infrastructures. In practical terms, \r\nthese ideas bring into focus the fundamental human right of the people\r\n\"to take part directly in making decisions that affect their lives \r\nand to guide their own destiny.\"<\/i><\/p>\r\n\r\n
The exercise of citizenship and achievement of freedom and \r\nliberty are dependent upon that human right of the people, which is the \r\nbasis of American democracy drawn from the Golden Age of Greek \r\ncivilization. In his remarks about the public interest in democratic \r\npolitics, Pericles (495-429 b.c.), the popular leader in Athens at the \r\nzenith of Greek civilization, observed: \r\nHere each individual is \r\ninterested not only in his own affairs, but in the affairs of the \r\nstate as well ... We do not say that a man who takes no interests in \r\npolitics is a man who minds his own business; we say that he has no \r\nbusiness here at all ... <\/b> Thucydides, from \"Pericles' Funeral \r\nSpeech,\" The Peloponnesian War,<\/i> (R. Warner trans. 1954): p. ii, \r\nquoted in<\/b> N. Davies, Europe, A History<\/i> (Oxford 1996).<\/p>\r\n\r\n
The process of creating such strong commitment to democratic existence \r\nbuilds up the \r\npsychic powers that integrate individuals by \r\nharmonizing of differences through interpenetration of ideas, as\r\nexplained by Mary Parker Follett, the early 20th-century sage of \r\ndemocracy now celebrated as a Prophet of Management<\/i> (1996).\r\nSocial power is, thereby, also created. These are the spiritual conditions\r\nof \"guided evolution\" for \r\nNew Agoras of the 21st Century, the postcapitalist revolution of \r\n\"conscious evolution,\" when it becomes our responsibility to enter \r\ninto the evolutionary design space and guide the evolutionary journey \r\nof our species, see<\/b> \r\nB.H. Banathy, Guided Societal Evolution: A Systems View (2000).<\/p> \r\n\r\n
Breaking away from the ancient patterns that limited individual\r\ninitiative and self-governance, the Jeffersonian ethic of freedom and \r\nliberty, called for \"popular control pushed to the maximum of its \r\npracticable exercise.\" Breaking away from the tyranny of the strong \r\nman, the corrupt party boss, and the arrogant technical expert -- all \r\nseeking to exploit social chaos and assert unilateral power over the \r\ndemocratic assembly -- \"the People\" now have the knowledge and \r\nexperience, and they are discovering the discipline to share social\r\npower with each other facilitated by a \r\n\"technique for democracy\". \r\n\r\n<\/p>
These developments would place the individual citizen and the \r\ngroups and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) through which they \r\nincreasingly function, \r\n\"at the center of authority\" over social change movements, allowing \r\n\"conscious evolution\" to secure a desirable future for their families \r\nand communities. With such adjustments in shared power, a fair\r\ncompetition of ideas may be pursued concerning the forces of \r\nlocalization and globalization. Critical balance of those forces \r\nmust be guided not by raw power and competitive advantage but by an \r\nethic of \r\ndemocratic sustainability, \"based on the advancement of ecological \r\nintegrity, social equity and economic prosperity as mutually \r\nreinforcing goals.\" The well organized citizens' protests against \r\nglobalization have already opened the possibilities for such changes, \r\nbut genuine change must be more than a \r\nnew \"free market\" swan song called \"sustainable development\" used \r\nmerely \"to dress up the failed market system.\"<\/p>\r\n\r\n
Mr. Jefferson's genius is not stuck in a time warp irrelevant \r\nto contemporary America, as suggested by the Library of Congress \r\nbicentennial book. Rather, he was more than two centuries ahead of \r\nhis time. By pursuit of the abstractions of freedom and liberty as \r\na dynamic social aspiration of everyone, the whole global civilization \r\nis called upon to bring their awesome creative efforts into \r\nharmonious relations. Those who would supplant the pursuit of such a \r\ndemocracy for a \"free market\" philosophy of greed, which, like \r\na cancer, would kill the host body that gives it life, have \"no \r\nbusiness here at all.\" <\/p>\r\n\r\n
Federal Information News Syndicate, Vigdor Schreibman, Editor & Publisher,
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