Proposal for an “Addendum” to the American Constitution, To Help the Currently Weak Citizenry
by Mary W Maxwell, PhD, LLB
No one admires the Constitution more than I do. It’s my guess that if that basic law gets overthrown, and someday individuals are asked to come up with a new one, they’ll come up with almost exactly the same thing. Really, it’s that perfect.
In 1787, the thirteen states sent 55 delegates, known today as the Framers of the Constitution, to pen a document that would set limits on what a federal government could do. James Madison and colleagues (don’t forget George Mason) had the works of Hobbes and Locke at hand, questioning absolute rule and seeking justification of government by means of people’s consent.
The Framers also referred to “the Spirit of Laws”, the 1748 treatise by Frenchman Baron de Montesquieu, which claimed that a king should not hold simultaneously the role of lawmaker, executor, and judge. These functions should be broken up: a “separation of powers” is needed. (See Loufisher.org. Professor Fisher is the 21st-century guardian of the Separation of Powers.)
Like the 18th-century science of politics, today’s political science needs to openly acknowledge the tendency for power to accumulate. Today’s power holders act with almost complete impunity. How do they get away with it? A main reason the powerful can do what they like is that it is human-nature for us to let them.
We evolved with a need to obey. The child must obey the parent, and the group must follow a leader. Perhaps it’s too bad the original Constitution did not identify the weakness of human individuals, in this regard. But maybe no one saw the need then. The citizen’s debates, held for ratification of the Constitution in 1788, are amazing proof of the people’s sense of their own strength. (Of course you can read them online.)
Nevertheless, today we are weak. We are ridiculously weak. I believe we need an additional political-philosophy statement. I definitely don’t recommend that we write a constitutional amendment. Article V of the dear parchment says we could do so, but it’s almost guaranteed that the persons who hold power over us now would get into the process and muck it up.
I suggest only that we make an “addendum,” an absolutely informal one, in order to identify new issues of power. We’ve got all the constitutional law we need for limiting the power of government. But since we’re letting the checks and balances lapse, it must be that some other factor is at work. We should look at the power that culture has over us, and even the power of our own biologically evolved brain to control us.
Some of the Furniture in the Proposed Addendum
I do not undertake to draft the recommended addendum. I want only to say that we need to scan the horizon for issues. The biggest two that I see are: the technology of destruction that makes it possible to extinguish the bounty of the Earth, and the presence of a secret World Government that apparently has a grip on every national government.
Our failure to put a check on these forces bespeaks a great fear in the people. Fear is one of the pieces of “furniture” that needs to be discussed. I often see my neighbors recoil from facing crucial issues, such as chemtrails (a.k.a. geo-engineering). I’m not sure whether folks are employing the typical defense mechanism of denial, or if they’ve been “programmed” to think in an illogical way.
Since I don’t know the source of the problem, I cannot offer a solution. The only thing that’s comes to mind is that criminal law does have means of interrogating the possible perpetrators of such programming! The baddies may know of a code that would release people from their hypnotic-like trance. (In some instances they certainly could do this.)
Another psychological issue is our astonishing lack of ability to gather together to draw strength from the group. Surely we were able to do this in the past! It’s the basis of many historic achievements. What was different about the past? I think it may be that we were able to recognize the members our group clearly, and that we are good at identifying outsiders as the enemy.
Gathering
Knowing who is to be trusted and treated kindly is a biological trait of ours. I think World Government deliberately messes up this brain function by using “transmigrasei,” the mixing of many nationalities by migration. But another important problem is that when the real enemy is one of our own, he is hard to notice. And if noticed, he is hard to hate. We are not prepared to treat our own harshly as we do strangers.
Worse, many of the baddies within our society are occupying roles that we think of as go-to positions for sorting out the society’s troubles! Clergy, judges, and intellectuals have always been assumed to be motivated to act on principle for society’s good. Doctors, too, are routinely taken to be acting in the public’s interest. So if they aren’t, it may feel extremely awkward to attack them.
To recap, then, an addendum to the Constitution should, in some way, inventory major issues and should identify the fact that “the old normal” no longer pertains, in terms of people gathering together to increase their strength. (Though presumably this could be revived.)
I haven’t bothered to say that all our communication seems to get taken over by “media” and if it happens that media is controlled by baddies, even the preparation of an addendum may be too difficult to accomplish!
Luckily, though, if there is one thing we need today it is smallness, not bigness. So even if you can communicate only with two or three others, that’s likely to be all that is needed. I mean, of course, that vast numbers of people would have to be talking in small groups like that.
Not knowing how to “gather” is a much greater barrier than most folks realize. So, if you only start by conquering that barrier, you would be making a vital contribution.
Not Panicking in an Emergency
The Powers That Be are assuming that when they give us a sufficient scare (it might not take much – such as cutting off everyone’s electricity), we will collapse. I think that is correct. The human brain does shut down in an emergency. The one way we may get around this is to prepare for it. Rehearse it aplenty now.
My humble suggestion for your small group is that the members choose a far-away case. For example, pretend that the nation of China has hired you to solve its problems (air pollution, overpopulation, rapidly growing disparity between haves and have-nots, persecution of dissidents, etc.), what would you do?
You’d have to start somewhere. Being a Westerner you’d be using the Western legacy, which is no small item! As mentioned above, there are centuries of thought on the subject of how to control the power of the state. Note: your task, even if focused only on China, must include showing how the power of World Government can be controlled. (China, like every nation, is today the plaything of World Government.)
There, too, you must deal with issues of how to get people to unite when they are scared, and how to get people to share resources rather than killing each other for them. We have a legacy for this, too, in psychology and in religion. We are not bereft of ideas. We have ideas galore. That’s quite the ticket for being human, is it not?
It would be wonderful if you were to write an “addendum” to the Constitution that could make that famous document even more of a source of guidance and comfort than it has traditionally been. It won’t pay to chuck out what we’ve got. We’ve got a lot. But we need more.
Please get creative. Do whatever you can, and don’t be put off by the very understandable fear that such “dissidence” may get you in trouble. I suppose it will indeed get you in trouble. I assume I’m already in big trouble myself. But the big baddies are also in major doo-doo, and they know it.
Take advantage of their near-panic. Outwit them. Slay them with your self-confidence. That is usually all it takes in human relations, isn’t it?
-- Mary W Maxwell, PhD, LLB, lost her 2006 bid to get a seat in Congress. (Republican, New Hampshire). Now old, she is looking to help young people get a seat. Minimum age is 25; next election year is 2016. Can you deal?
