Friday, October 26, 2012

Be the change...

Review of Become a Change Agent: Drive the positive change you want for yourself and the world! Originally posted on Amazon.com on October 25
- by Occupy Texas

There are some very interesting positions posted here. Unfortunately, some are posted without reason or explanation. For example, he stated that our founding fathers believed, rightly, that democracy was undesirable. He offers no justification or explanation. What is desirable? A Plutocracy? An oligarchy? Who gets a voice? The rich? The college educated? Who decides who gets a voice, the ones with the largest guns? One aspect of our lack of direct democracy(The author errs in saying that direct democracy is undesirable, not in saying that we lack it.)is the Electoral College, which resulted in a candidate who had received fewer popular votes than his opponent being pronounced president by the Supreme Court. Thanks to that lack of direct democracy, the whole world paid and hundreds of thousands died. The people will make themselves heard, if not through the democratic process, then some other way.

Which brings me to the second disagreement I have with the author. He called the Occupy Movement disorganized and without goals. Like above, the author was partially correct. The Occupy Movement began as a reaction to what the people saw as grievous wrongs and the uprisings in the Middle East and Madison Wisconsin. The resulting anger caused Zucotti Park and the subsequent occupations of 1500 other towns and cities. As the author said, there was no planning or organization before the occupation, just a spontaneous expression of anger and passion.We went on that way for over nine months, but during that time, Occupy Philadelphia was organizing a national gathering in Philly, scheduled for Independence Day. At that gathering, the Visioning Statement was drafted. This was a list of our demands. The top ten demands, which are rank ordered, are (1)clean water, air and food, (2) free education for all, (3) no war, (4)a sustainable human society, (5) a culture of direct democracy, (6)free universal healthcare, (7)local food production, community gardens and permaculture agriculture, (8)economic equality, (9)localized economies and (10) a world where basic needs are met.

1 comment:

  1. My response:

    Thanks for your constructive and civil criticism. I would like to address your points.

    I have been skepictal of pure democracy since reading Plato's apology (the voters of Athens condemned Socrates to death for the "crime" of thinking too much). Any political system I would support must first and foremost protect the rights of all people. There was actually more political discussion in earlier drafts that got edited out in the final version of the book - I intend to cover it in more detail in Part 4.

    I discuss the 2 Laws in the book. Liberty is the state where everyone including the government generally follows the 2 Laws. Tyranny is when the government ignores the 2 Laws and Chaos is when everyone ignores them.

    I am a fan of Liberty and the Bill of Rights. Even with current technology direct democracy (where everyone votes on every issue) is not feasible but there are issues that simply should not be subject to a vote. 2 wolves and a sheep voting on the dinner menu is democracy gone wrong.

    I also admit I wasn't aware of the Occupy Visioning Statement before reading your review but I clearly appreciate the fact is came from Philadelphia! I tried googling it. Opinions about the Visioning Statement dominated the list (Michael Moore's was the first response). I found the text listed in Spanish before finding it in English. I agree with half of the demands, disagree with a couple and think many need clarification.

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