We, the People!
What does that even mean?
Of, By, and For the People?
President Lincoln said what it means very succinctly in his Gettysburg Address: It means our government is Of the People, By the People, and For the People!
What it does not mean is that we should be governed by the people who can raise the most money from the special interests that have captured our government. See the Princeton Study.
It does mean that we have to take a fresh look at what would be necessary for We, the People to govern ourselves.
We, the People, Govern?
What we do know is that we, the people, could get together to discuss the world we know in our hearts we desire with the power to fund what we agree would be good!
We have an absolute right to assemble (first amendment), so we could assemble with the intention of creating together the world we know we desire!
Can you think of anyone you know who might desire to join you in sharing their ideals and the transcendent purpose they are serving or would like to serve?
What questions should we ask?
Asking who desires to join us in sharing their ideals and the transcendent purpose they are serving or would like to serve is the first and perhaps the most important question.
We will also need to share with one another the questions that are working for us in gathering people together to form self-governing Jural Assembly Communities.
For example:
Do you vote? What do you make of the fact that voting creates winners and losers?
Why do Democratic and Republican administrations have different philosophies but similar policies? Why do people like Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich not get elected, even though they raise as much money as the official candidates?
What of the promise of the Declaration of Independence to establish self-governance of the people, by the people, and for the people? Do we have governance of, by, and for the people? Why not?
Questions? Questions about the questions?
The rest of this presentation is all questions. Each question has an obvious answer. If the implied answer is not obvious to you, please object or ask a clarifying question.
If you object, but don’t speak up, is it because you think that your voice is not important?
Is silence consent? Will we all think you agree if you are silent?
What is your commitment and obligation as a participant in the Seminar?
Questions about our history
Do you think we have the government that we deserve?
Are we living up to the promise of the Declaration of Independence?
Do you know why we have a Bill of Rights?
Did you know that the Populists thought they had restored sovereign money with the establishment of the Federal Reserve, but it turned out that that is how the banks defeated the Populists?
Do you know why American companies outsourced their manufacturing to China?
Questions about Law
Do you know what constitutes a lawful contract?
Do you know what would make a contract adhesive and/or unconscionable?
Do you know the difference between Common Law and the Uniform Commercial Code?
Do you know what “color of law” means?
Do you know that Grand Juries traditionally, but no longer, issued presentments when they suspected Government wrongdoing?
Do you know what Jury nullification is?
More Sample Questions
Do you ever think about what you would do if you won the lottery?
Do you ever wish that the Government would spend money on something you believe in?
Do you ever wonder what you would issue money for? If not, why not?
Do you ever wonder why there isn’t enough money to do all the things we could all agree would be good?
Do you believe that the poor people of the world are poor because they are “ignorant” and “complacent” and there are no natural resources where they live? Would they be poor if they could issue the money they need to convert natural resources into goods and services?
Do you know who issues the money, how it is issued, and what it is issued for? If not, why not?
Even More Sample Questions
What would life be like if we met together to share our thoughts about Freedom, Justice, and Community with the power to fund what we decided would be good?
Would you like to participate in creating a community, - an assembly of We, the People - to create the Governance that we deserve?
What would you advocate for?
How would we govern?
What are some of the important ideas that would make it possible for us to govern ourselves successfully and fulfill the promise of the Declaration of Independence?
How about the venerable tradition of Common Law which comes to us from England going back to the Middle Ages and the Magna Carta, which is referenced in the Bill of Rights?
How about governing out of our common sense of Justice? Can we come up with Just solutions for all the injustices we see?
Could we create a society with liberty and justice for all if we knew how to issue money?
The Declaration of Independence as our guide!
What does the Declaration of Independence say? (Look at the copy you always keep handy.)
Is the current course of human events making it necessary for us to dissolve the political bands which connect us to the powers that be and business as usual?
Shall we assume among the powers of earthly civilization the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle us?
Do we respect the opinions of our fellow humans sufficiently to declare the causes which impel us to the separation from the powers that be and business as usual?
The Declaration updated but unchanged
Is it true that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, among them are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness?
Is it true that our inherent rights are inherent in our nature as human beings?
Do you agree that to secure our life so we are at liberty to pursue happiness, we have an inherent right to an equitable distribution of the wealth we all create together?
Do you agree that one of the only things that makes us truly happy is succeeding in accomplishing the transcendent purpose we feel called to serve?
Shall we grant each other the right to the capital our capacities warrant?
Our Assertion on behalf of we, the people
Are we clear that the causes that impel us to the separation can be summed up as undue government authority, debt and wage slavery, and the technocratic transhumanist totalitarian tiptoe?
Do we assert that it is our absolute right and obligation to institute new governance and lay its foundation on such principles and organize its powers in such form, as to us shall seem most likely to affect our Safety and Happiness?
Are we clear that the governance we will establish derives its just powers from the ongoing active consent of the governed?
What does the Declaration of Independence promise?
What does government of the people, by the people, and for the people look like?
What does governance deriving its just powers from the consent of the governed look like?
What does consent-based self-governance look like?
What does bottom-up consent-based self-governance look like?
What are Jeffersonian Ward Republics?
Assembling!
Shall we invite everyone we know to assemble on a regular basis to imagine together our vision for a just and regenerative society?
Shall we consider that issuing the currency is our most productive opportunity to create what we desire?
Shall we assert that we need to hear from everyone?
Shall we establish that everyone is free to do as they please as long as they do no harm?
Questions about Governing
Shall we engage one another in learning what it means to actively consent?
Shall we educate ourselves about alternatives to voting?
Shall we practice selecting the best person for a role?
Shall we determine the criteria whereby we evaluate performance, a decision, or a project, and when we will evaluate it?
Shall we treat objections as prompts to improve our proposals and performance?
Who should decide?
Can you imagine how the world would be if the people doing the work decided the best way to do it?
How would you feel about your work if the aim were your boss and not a person?
What happens to our inspiration when we are guided by our common aim?
Does an aim have to be lofty and big to be inspiring? What of the mundane?
Meeting Process
What do we need to have successful, efficient, and inspiring meetings?
Would it help to have a leader whose focus is to keep us on track to accomplishing our aim?
Have you experienced a good facilitator whose focus is to make sure that everyone is participating and the process is efficient and satisfying?
Will we need a scribe or secretary to make sure we all know what we have consented to and when we need to evaluate our decisions?
Continued
Will we need a Delegate to represent us in the wider community?
Should our leader participate in the wider community so as to represent the needs of the wider community to us?
Will we need to learn how to make sure that we are genuinely consenting to the proposals we come up with and that come to us?
Will we need to become very good at identifying possible unintended consequences and include them in our evaluation criteria?
More on Meetings
If our aim is to be our leader, is it important that we are all clear about our aim?
Shall we be sure to determine the aim and scope of a proposal or policy before we develop it?
Shall we avail ourselves of all the techniques for coming up with good ideas and formulating them so we all understand them, such as clarifying questions, a quick reaction round, a debate, a Bohm dialog, etc.
Shall we include in the proposal or policy how much money to issue?
Celebrating the differences between us
What would happen if we adopted the attitude that we honor our equivalence by recognizing and appreciating the differences between us?
What if we were to meet together with the attitude that we are to empower one another to accomplish our mission in life?
What if we took the time on a regular basis to help one another clarify what our mission in life is?
What if everything were a matter of a voluntary initiative to accomplish an aspect of one’s life work?
Is it True?
What if we always desired to know whether or not the ideas we accept from the culture are in fact true?
What if we were to seek to verify the official story in our quest for what is true?
What if we always strive to understand ourselves and one another as we and one another desire to be understood?
What if we were always aware that we are creating our story not “his story” or “the official story”?
Is it Beautiful?
What if we were to agree that we can use our feeling for what is beautiful as a guide in our deliberations?
What if we always considered the aesthetics of what we are conceiving?
What if all the artists among us were empowered to enrich our lives?
What if we included in all our evaluations “Is it beautiful”?
Do we need to share with one another what strikes us as beautiful?
Is it Good?
“And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was good.”
“This line from the Bible made a big impression on me when I was in Sunday school because it occurred to me that we also should see to it that everything that we make is good!” - John
Can we learn how to make sure that everything we do is good?
Can we use our relationship to Truth and Beauty to help us determine and do the Good?
Truth, Beauty, and Goodness
Shall we adopt the attitude in our Jural Assembly Communities that if we cultivate our ability to discern the truth and educate our feeling as to what is beautiful, we will be increasingly able to do the good?
The Quechua language does not have a word for ‘sacred’ because everything is sacred. Can we cultivate the attitude that we desire to create a culture wherein everything is sacred and deserving of our utmost care?
Life as Sacred
“Life is sacred, that is to say, it is the supreme value, to which all other values are subordinate.” - Albert Einstein
“There are two ways to live your life. One is as if nothing is a miracle. The other way is as if everything is a miracle.” - Albert Einstein
“The sacred is found in the spaces of everyday living.” – Judy Royster
“There is no language of the holy. The sacred lies in the ordinary.” - Deng Ming-Dao
“Infuse every moment with purpose and potential--no matter how ‘ordinary’ the moment may seem to be.” - Jean Houston
“One’s purpose is to live in a manner that is consistent with one’s spiritual ideals, to live the Golden Rule every moment of one’s life, and to live every thought as a sacred prayer.” – Anatomy of The Spirit, by Caroline Myss, Ph.D.
“In past ages, they (“healers or spiritual teachers, that is to say, teachers of Being”) would probably have been called contemplatives. There is no place for them, it seems, in our contemporary civilization. On the arising new earth, however, their role is just as vital as that of the creators, the doers, the reformers. Their function is to anchor the frequency of the new consciousness on this planet. I call them the frequency-holders. They are here to generate consciousness through the activities of daily life, through their interactions with others as well as through ‘just being.’
In this way, they endow the seemingly insignificant with profound meaning. Their task is to bring spacious stillness into this world by being absolutely present in whatever they do. There is consciousness and therefore quality in what they do, even the simplest task. Their purpose is to do everything in a sacred manner. As each human being is an integral part of the collective human consciousness, they affect the world much more deeply than is visible on the surface of their lives.”
- A New Earth, Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, by Eckhart Tolle
Governance of, by, and for the people?
What will we, the people, need to govern ourselves?
Is it necessary to meet face to face in the Wards or Precincts where we live?
Do the people who meet face to face need to share their understanding of what is true, beautiful, and good?
Is it necessary to come up with a common set of values out of which to govern with integrity?
Do No Harm
What if we were to agree that we are all at liberty to do everything we consider worthwhile, voluntarily, as inspired, as long as we do no harm?
Is that a common value that we could use to govern?
What if someone complains about being harmed?
Shall we have a policy about how we handle complaints that we all agree is just?
Shall we use the venerable tradition of Common Law?
The Grand Jury
If you were selected to sit on a Grand Jury, would you want to be told by an Attorney General what you must do or would you want to be educated by someone who is learned in the Common law of the land?
If you were selected to serve on a Grand Jury, would you feel that you were responsible to the Prosecutor, Judge, and Lawyers, or would you feel that you were responsible to the people at large?
Do you know why I assert that Cheney assassinated Scalia? (John)
Presentments
The supreme court justice Antonin Scalia advocated for an understanding of the Grand Jury as independent of the courts and an organ of we, the people.
Do you agree that the people can organize a Grand Jury to make a presentment whenever they suspect their government of malfeasance?
Would it be necessary for the people to be familiar with the Maxims of Law and the Maxims of Equity in order to participate responsibly in a Grand Jury?
Might it be necessary for there to be an oath or affirmation to participate in a Grand Jury?
The Petit Jury
Do you agree that a Jury of your peers means people who know you or at least know of you, or who have a basis for assessing your character?
Are you aware that the archaic meaning of peer is companion? Might that be closer to our meaning of peer, than the de Facto meaning?
Could it be that people who know us should be determining the facts of a case?
Would you consider it a good idea for a petit jury to determine the just remedy after determining the facts, evidence, and law?
What shall the law be?
What is law if not to secure and protect our unalienable rights, ensure do no harm, ensure the right to due process, and adjudicate harm?
How do we determine whether or not this is assured if not by our common sense and our common sense of justice?
What is the Common law of the land if not our common sense and common sense of justice, as explained by Thomas Paine in his pamphlets Common Sense (1776) and The American Crisis (1776–1783)?
Has Common Law been hijacked by our current justice system?
How has the moral and good qualities of human nature been distorted by our dependency and codependency on scarce money?
Jury Nullification
What should the Jury do if they determine that the accused violated the law but that the law is unjust?
Do you agree that a Jury of one's peers should acquit the guilty party if the law is unjust or being misapplied?
Are you aware that this is Jury Nullification?
Are you aware that Jury Nullification is an expression of the will of the people?
Did you know that Jury Nullification ended slavery and ended prohibition?
How shall we govern ourselves?
Can we rely on a written document to secure our rights? Shall we appoint nine men in black robes to interpret it so as to overrule the will of the people?
How shall we determine what the will of the people is?
Shall we meet on a regular basis to share with one another what we see needs doing?
Shall we each be guided in what we do by the transcendent purpose we choose to serve?
Voluntarism
Have you noticed that the prevailing culture represents everything it requires of us as voluntary? If we don’t do it voluntarily, will we just have to accept the consequences? What of: “If you don’t wear a mask, don’t expect to shop here.”
If everything is to be the result of a truly voluntary initiative, how will we know what to volunteer for?
If we attend the meetings of our Jural Assembly Community, are we likely to hear about something that needs doing that we are able and desire to do?
If we do not attend the meetings of our Jural Assembly Community, will we be confident that our initiative is appropriate?
Who are we doing it for?
Our Common Values
How shall we establish the common values whereby we self-govern?
Shall our values embody the principle “do no harm”?
Shall our values embody the idea of voluntarism?
How shall our values express our will as a people?
Thomas Jefferson’s Ward Republic
Did you know that Thomas Jefferson proposed that the people provide the functions of Government to each other in the Wards where they live?
He based his idea on the tithing and the hundred in which common law developed.
Shall we familiarize ourselves with the Ward Republic and come up with our version?
Self-governing communities
Shall we call our Ward Republics, our self-governing communities, Jural Assembly Communities?
Why Jural Assembly Communities?
Do you know of any mention of a Jural Assembly in Common Law or our history? Is it a new term used by the revendicators of the Declaration of Independence?
Wiktionary defines Jural Assembly as “an unincorporated association of people who join together for the purpose of defining and enforcing local law”. Jural means: 1. of or relating to law. 2. of or relating to rights and obligations. https://www.thefreedictionary.com/jural
Shall we establish Jural Assembly Communities as responsible for providing the infrastructure wherein we, the people, thrive and enjoy rising standards of living while cultivating a reverential attitude towards nature?
And shall we establish Jural Assemblies as responsible for carrying out and enforcing the wishes of we, the people, and managing and enforcing the laws we establish in our community, namely securing and protecting our unalienable rights, ensuring “do no harm”, ensuring the right to due process, and adjudicating harm?
Establishing Jural Assembly Communities
If we are to become colleagues and establish Jural Assembly Communities in every County in every Nation State, will we need to come up with an understanding of the organizing principles that assure we are always carrying out the will of the people?
Shall we give in to our desire to be practical and come up with By-Laws or a Constitution for Jural Assembly Communities so as to inspire voluntary involvement?
Shall we always hold present in our minds that we will resist the desire to compel? Shall we always hold as a tenet that governance is the shield (secures and protects), not the crown (asserts undue authority); that governance is to carry out and enforce the wishes of the people?
The next Deep Dive session
On Saturday March 26th we will do our next deep dive. It is planned as a review of the sample Bylaws for a Jural Assembly Community the Union Team came up with to know what we are talking about.
If you read it ahead of time and think about what it says, you will be able to participate in the kind of forum that we hope will model what a Jural Assembly Community could be.
Here is the link: Sample By-Laws for Jural Assembly Communities
What are your questions and ideas?
Please share with us any questions you have.
What from the slideshow resonates with you and/or are you enthusiastic about?
Was there anything in the slideshow that you disagree with or doubt?
What ideas do you have about how to govern ourselves and achieve self-governance in our communities?
Is the way forward becoming clearer?
References
From Mercola.com on Transhumanism - Wednesday, March 16, 2022: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IilZNSLc1RDCmiBBSgofY20jEWba88iJdr0KzhuZflY/edit?usp=sharing
The Princeton Study; Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/peer
It can be helpful to know where I get such weird ideas. Yes, we can give everyone the money they need to live. Indeed we must!
But all external life as it presents itself today is the picture of a social condition which, in its development, has excluded, has indeed refuted, the idea of reincarnation and karma. External life today is organized almost as if there were a deliberate desire to quash any possibility of people being able, through their own inner development, to discover the reality of reincarnation and karma. In point of fact there is, for example, nothing more hostile to a real conviction of reincarnation and karma than the principle that a person must be remunerated, must receive wages corresponding to their actual labor…But people must become alive to the thought that no fundamental conviction of reincarnation can ever flourish in a world order in which it is held that there must be a direct correspondence between wages and labor, in which a person is obliged, through the labor they perform, to obtain the necessities of life.
[Rudolf Steiner, Reincarnation and Karma: Their Significance in Modern Culture (GA 135), Stuttgart, 21 Feb 1912; SteinerBooks, RSArchive.]