You can govern yourself. You can govern with others. You can learn about political planks and political platforms, how to do governance, and about political organization. It's about active citizenship, civics, a more perfect union, and we the people. It's about participation. So, the focus of these many posts is on democracy, justice, citizenship, governance, co-operation, and democracy.
The name of the the report sounds dishonest to me. Democracy points to our participation in our governance. That is what democracy is, right? We must learn to govern so that we may have income, honor, freedom, dignity, and understanding. and understanding. This a very young Chomsky!
rcs
Perhaps we are at the point of losing our right to take care of ourselves, which is our right to self-governance, because we do not know who we are. We do not know each other because we do not practice good organization and communication. While we do not talk among our selves well a co-operate well, how are we to know who we are? While we did not do well together that which we were doing together 40 years ago, and do not remember much of what we were doing 300 years ago, and practically less what was happening to us only 2,000 years ago, and are not even sure how we nearly lost it all, what Have we decided to do to take care of ourselves tomorrow? How do we intend to send to participate in our governance to give our next generation a good chance of surviving and thriving? Are we acting like we don't care or pleading ignorance? I think that most of us do care most of the time. Ignorance is not an excuse. We mostly learn by doing and paying attention to that which we do. Let's do something now. We can attend to or doing and to the results and then use our observations to make our doings good. You and I do not have too much to do because their are millions to help us. We are the people. Even just you and I personally co-operating with 30 or 40 need not have much to do.
The more we are careless of ourselves the more we are likely to become slaves of a new kind. The kind that are not valued, even as slaves, because most no longer have any use for slaves. They become almost at type of sub-human who have not practiced self-governance and cannot even imagine self-governance, much less than practice it. I am talking about us. I still have some memory of an us which practiced much more civic organization and who, at least practiced local self governance, and some organization to protect ourselves from some of the natural depredations from farther afield.
When we care so little for ourselves that we seem careless of ourselves, might not others finally take advantage of us, or just push aside from the goods of this world and Earth. We remembered ideas of fairness and justice and concepts of governance to support fairness and justice among us. We called those ideas republicanism and democracy and loved them enough to pay dearly for them. Many of us did much toward the development of democratic republics.
We had a good game going. It has a kind of great rally. Then, often real reasons, we dropped the ball, then lost it, and then forgot it. Some of our great grandfathers did not learn about about self-governance well. A look at history can tell you why. Our grandfathers learned a bit about it, but began to see it as something in the hands of others and did not support their schools in teaching its nature and practice. Our parents scarcely imagined supporting our schools in teaching us our history or that which once seemed to be our birth rights. Some us are learning some of our history now, and perhaps a few more are remembering that we are collectively responsible for taking care of ourselves. Some say it is never to late to learn and never to late to value our responsibly. I wonder if one dinosaur ever told another dinosaur that they would never lose their position and perhaps their very being.
Some learned that Vlad was bad vampire. It seems that the truth of the matter is, he represents an example of the best of many of, perhaps all, of us of European extraction. He did much to save Europeans from invasions from the East. But more importantly he represented those Europeans who were not crushed by Greco-Roman culture of classical times after the fall of the Late Bronze Age, but learned from it and learned to adapt it to their own benefit. A part of that new culture to which they adapted seemed congenial to many of them. It came with the name "democracy." "Democracy" gathered and named a whole little bundle of ideas and values they already had, and clarified them. Vlad may have never been a republican or democrat, but he was one of those who adapted Greco-Roman culture to greater Europe. He even came to speak a Latinized language.
The classical culture of the longish Greco-Roman have been heading toward Vlad by 2,000 BC or not long after the fall of the Late Bronze Age cultures. It continued to reach him and beyond to as recently as the recent 1400s! That culture touches us less, but still with some meaning to this very day. It seems we have had to reclarify the meaning of democracy a couple of time since Vlad's time. Maybe we can revivify it again today. We need to take up our responsibility in some way soon, or it is likely that we will believe that we no longer deserve the power of responsibility and freedom. Our continued loss of the "weness," which we have called unity, will, for a time, be more unpleasant than that we have already begun to experience.
When we fail to enjoy our responsibility we lose our civic strength, energy, and power and finally our being. We could lose our all, even with good use of our power of responsibility, but with responsibility our power to survive and thrive is strongly supported.
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It seems that someone belives we are not all ready to practice self-governance. They are probably right.
Cossacks have been free men and democratic. They have only been known to history since about 650 AD. They have been active in self-governing communities for well over a thousand years. They have been open, inclusive, with a Slavic bent. They knew a world from Siberia to Lithuania and up and down for many years, but were drawn to a certain land.
The Ukrainian Cossack State was formed in about 1650 in what is now central Ukraine. Their leaders were elected.
Through the years they have been few. Democracy is not easy. They experienced much, and stayed free among strong neighbors such as Poland, Russia, and Lithuania. Among such neighbors they continued to show a strong will for self-governance.
They formed the Ukrainian Peoples Republic in 1917 to 1921, the western Ukrainian Peoples Republic 1918 to 1919, and the Ukrainian Peoples Republic in exile from 1920 to 1992.
They were among the very first members of the Soviet Union with its promise of self-governing citizens. They may have been the first to leave that Union when it showed little will to self-governing citizenship.
They were among the charter members of the United Nations with its promise of a chance for peace and freedom. They have not given up on their fellow members yet.
Ah, yes, I believe that at the breakup of the Soviet Union the were left with one of the greatest stock of atomic weapons on Earth and gave up that stock to the U.N.
They have been few and still are. They are still a mixture of races, nationalities, and religions. They are a free democratic people self selected from that mixture.
We might mention that while all this was going on they, with the help of a few viking Norsemen, created Russia. Oh, and they had a modern republic type written constitution in 1710.
I believe that a history of the cultures most effecting these people could be traced back another 4,000 years. However, before about 650 AD they were little recognized in history as a discrete people. Throughout perhaps a thousand years of their history they stayed freer, more democratic, and inclusive than most. They have had to defend themselves and they have. They have also kept the hope and faith that they could live a free people among free people. They have seen inclusiveness, freedom, and democracy disappear like smoke again and again. Still they hold a vision of that freedom and self governance closer and dearer than do most.
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Ukraine.
Thank you for reading.
rcs