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.01% always devolve republics into oligarchies, co-opt all revolutions; so how can this coming revolution create lasting victory of virtue?
PuppetGov’s 6-minute video, We are the ones we’ve been waiting for:
I keep three coins in my pocket: a US silver Half-Dollar from 1839 that my grandfather also kept in his pocket, an American colonial copper Halfpenny from 1749, and a Roman Republic bronze Triens from 211/210 BC.
I carry them to connect me to family (biological and spiritual), and to the work of realizing Enlightenment and US founding ideals of truth, technology, and love.
Those ideals have never been realized on Earth for long. Human status of having every revolution and movement co-opted/recuperated by our .01% oligarchs is important to consider in light of Earth’s status of ending today’s .01% Emperor’s New Clothes obvious crimes centering in war, money, and lies.
I’ll use these three coins to illustrate status, and consider areas of strength for lasting victory of virtue.
1839: This coin was struck just 13 years after the death of Thomas Jefferson, when Abe Lincoln was 20, and seven years before Lincoln would prove US President Polk was a war-mongering and treaty-violating liar to steal half of Mexico in 1846. My grandfather who carried this coin told the story that as a boy he would shake hands with the old-timer who told stories of shaking Lincoln’s hand. Both of my grandfathers were lied-into WW1, which had nothing to do with promises of another US President to “make the world safe for democracy,” and a “war to end all wars.” In connection to wars for every generation, my father, father-in-law, and only uncle experienced horrific “war service” in WW2. My older brother would have been drafted into the illegal and lie-started Vietnam War had it continued another year.
So, my grandfather “PaPa” carrying a coin struck 52 years before his birth would not make this an “old coin” to him, my having him in my life until my age of 19 deeply connects his life to mine, and my family is common for every US generation to experience wars for empire.
1749: Ninety years before 1839, this coin was struck. Ninety years ago from the present, my mother was born, so 90 years is easily imaginable for humans. In 1749, George Washington was 19, and Thomas Jefferson was 6. It was struck seven years before the “Seven Years’ War” that decided America was to remain British. 1749 is 26 years before the British attempted to take American weapons from them, starting the US War for Independence at Lexington and Concord. The 1776 Declaration of Independence is rich with ideals Americans hold dearly today. This said, if you’re reading this article you know those ideals have been co-opted/recuperated by American oligarchs for ongoing illegal Wars of Aggression, bankster looting, and lying corporate media. Perhaps the US devolution to tragic-comic oligarchy would be the worst imaginable, if not for the example of Rome
I purchased this American colonial coin in Boston for $10 in 1999.
211/210 BC: I bought this coin last year to remind me that the Roman Republic, the foundation of American Founders to create our promise of limited government, was also recuperated, and reaches to the limits of “Western Civilization.” The Roman Republic was the upgrade from failed Greek democracy; failure that devolved into Athenian empire, then civil war with Sparta less than 200 years before this coin was created. The ideals of Roman virtue became inverted, and documented by their own historians just as alternative media documents US .01% criminality and hypocrisy today.
I recommend the few minutes to compare documented Roman “leader” vices to US “leaders” today to appreciate the historical task of lasting human freedom from parasitic tyranny.
Contemporary to Julius Caesar, Roman historian and government insider Sallust blasted the decline of virtue in government:
“To those who had easily endured toils, dangers, and doubtful and difficult circumstances, ease and wealth, the objects of desire to others, became a burden and a trouble. At first the love of money, and then that of power, began to prevail, and these became, as it were, the sources of every evil. For avarice subverted honesty, integrity, and other honorable principles, and, in their stead, inculcated pride, inhumanity, contempt of religion, and general venality. Ambition prompted many to become deceitful; to keep one thing concealed in the breast, and another ready on the tongue; to estimate friendships and enmities, not by their worth, but according to interest; and to carry rather a specious countenance than an honest heart. These vices at first advanced but slowly, and were sometimes restrained by correction; but afterwards, when their infection had spread like a pestilence, the state was entirely changed, and the government, from being the most equitable and praiseworthy, became rapacious and insupportable.” – Conspiracy of Catiline, The Argument
Tacitus wrote ~ 100 AD, a century into empire. Emperors proclaimed to the public that their government still upheld the highest ideals of their Republic, claiming expanding empire was only and always in “self-defense.” Tacitus wrote The Agricola, a biographical text of his father-in-law contrasting claimed virtue of Roman military and citizenry with the emperor’s utterly corrupt despotism.
Importantly, this text describes the problem of virtuous Romans within a psychopathic government. Tacitus describes Agricola attempting to uphold virtue; but without recognition of any evil in serving an expanding dictatorial empire. Tacitus seems to assume the ideal of mos maiorum, “custom/virtue of Roman forefathers” will eventually triumph over the evil of present “leadership.”
In Agricola’s campaign as military and political leader of Roman Britain to expand the empire to modern Scotland from 78 – 84 AD, Tacitus recorded a speech he attributes to Scottish rebel-leader, Calgacus, to voice how those of virtue characterized Roman empire under corrupt emperors:
“It is no use trying to escape their arrogance by submission or good behavior. Robbers of the world, having by universal plunder exhausted the land, their drive is greed. If the enemy be rich, they are rapacious; if poor, they lust for domination. Neither rule of the East nor West can satisfy them. Alone among men, they crave with equal eagerness poverty and riches. To plunder, slaughter, seize with false pretenses, they give the lying name ‘empire.’ And where nothing remains but a desert, they call that ‘peace.’ ” – Tacitus, The Agricola and the Germania (analyses here, here)
2016: Today we live with US-led Emperor’s New Clothes obvious crimes centering in war, money, and lies. Polling data are overwhelming that Americans sense something criminally wrong in political “leadership,” and with corporate media lies.
Short-term victory seems inevitable from this awakening, but uncertain how peaceful transition will be, or how long it would last.
So what to do to best assist the historical breakthrough of lasting human virtue? How can we work to realize the amazingly beautiful home Earth can be to all inhabitants?
I offer 2 points for respectful consideration:
- We contribute as best we can imagine, while at peace with our place as guests on this beautiful and dominated planet. We are guests, not management (by all appearances), so our self-expression is all we need concern ourselves with. What others find attractive and important is up to them.
- With what is in our control, we reorientate education (in all senses for all ages) and media to best communicate truth, technology, and love. Truth alone may be enough to unleash full expression and experience of virtues, if humans can train themselves to discern objective and independently verifiable facts from spin. Historically, humans have failed this test of intellectual integrity and moral courage.
Perhaps what’s been accomplished so far with Internet education for Truth is enough to initiate our long-term victory.
We’ll discover what develops together.
Act well your part; it’s all you have.
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Note: I make all factual assertions as a National Board Certified Teacher of US Government, Economics, and History, with all economics factual claims receiving zero refutation since I began writing in 2008among Advanced Placement Macroeconomics teachers on our discussion board, public audiences of these articles, and international conferences. I invite readers to empower their civic voices with the strongest comprehensive facts most important to building a brighter future. I challenge professionals, academics, and citizens to add their voices for the benefit of all Earth’s inhabitants.
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Carl Herman is a National Board Certified Teacher of US Government, Economics, and History; also credentialed in Mathematics. He worked with both US political parties over 18 years and two UN Summits with the citizen’s lobby, RESULTS, for US domestic and foreign policy to end poverty. He can be reached at [email protected]
Note: Examiner.com has blocked public access to my articles on their site (and from other whistleblowers), so some links in my previous work are blocked. If you’d like to search for those articles other sites may have republished, use words from the article title within the blocked link. Or, go to http://archive.org/web/, paste the expired link into the box, click “Browse history,” then click onto the screenshots of that page for each time it was screen-shot and uploaded to webarchive. I’ll update as “hobby time” allows; including my earliest work from 2009 to 2011 (blocked author pages: here, here).
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.01% always devolve republics into oligarchies, co-opt all revolutions; so how can this coming revolution create lasting victory of virtue? was originally published on Washington's Blog
Source: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2016/02/01-always-devolve-republics-oligarchies-co-opt-revolutions-can-coming-revolution-create-lasting-victory-virtue.html
