Great post! We could include keeping the two silos of government and education separate, also. (So the government may not instruct children to support government at any cost, for instance.)
Over here (I'm sure the same would apply over there) I would prohibit all politicians and senior civil servants from ever working for any commercial interest, either while in parliament/government or afterwards, on pain of imprisonment and forfeiture of pension.
If we have to pay them extra and keep on paying MPs (senators and congressmen) after they lose their seats, fine.
I would make it law that all official internal communications were public, including that pertaining to 'national security'. This might make it hard for us to interfere in other countries - good.
I would prohibit all government spending with media. No ads, sponsorships, grants etc.
I would take us out of the WHO, UN and IMF (for starters).
I would prohibit any state employee from earning more than the prime minister, and I'd set that figure at £150k, with annual increase in line with inflation. For every percentage point that inflation goes above 5% the PM would lose 1%, so that inflation of 11% would see his salary (and all salaries pegged to it) fall by 1%.
But the sad truth - shown by the pandemic - is that people like us are in the minority. Most people are credulous fools who like the illusion of comfort and safety provided by government.
They don't want to take responsibility for their own lives, especially not their failings, and for that reason I think we're doomed.
First: destroy corporate personhood. A company has no soul, and therefore cannot be a good moral actor. Therefore any rights they have tend to be abused. So stop giving them rights like they were a person. The laws of the state that allow corporations should make it clear that such bodies are not people, and do not have the same rights. To expound: when a business is more than one man can handle, and incorporation happens, he gives up the natural right to have sole control. Because the corporate body is no longer in control by one person, it should not be treated like a person.
A good start sir! We know the problems. Substackers list them - in thousands. Daily. So, how to put an updated Omaha Platform into a positive context? We could start with the basic freedoms: speech, assembly, association, movement, and religion. And place significant limits on government. Seems to me there was a document, a couple of centuries ago, that pretty clearly set forth a comprehensive set of standards we could use to govern ourselves. Add in the amendments, throw out 200 years of lawyerly bullshit, incorporate some of the common sense rationale from the Federalist Papers and we'd be well on the way to creating a set of rules we could actually live by.
Did I mention placing limits on government? When I studied economics, (over half a century ago), 'government' constituted around 30% of the economy. Now, the bureaucracy gobbles up over 60% of everything you and I produce. For which they in turn produce nothing. Sadly, governments seem no longer able to build anything. At all. And bureaucratic obstructionism is endemic. Private entities are prevented from building anything either. Looking forward to the commentariat's answers to your question.
This is how we negotiate business deals: Make three lists, 1. Issues we totally agree on. 2. Issues we are willing to negotiate on. 3. Issues that we disagree with and are non-negotiable. If list #3 becomes longer than #1 or #2, the negotiations end and the deal is off. I ask you all to make a similar list between the Right (which includes conservatives and libertarians) and the Left (which includes liberals and progressives). We did; and it's not pretty.
May 21, 2022·edited May 21, 2022Liked by Chris Bray
Hey Chris and readers. As an Australian it saddens me to see America being torn apart from within. Admittedly I haven't always felt this way because I haven't liked the way America meddled in other countries. These days I realise more the positive role America has played in promoting freedom. I'm currently reading a critique of ideologies and I acknowledge there is no perfect system. They all eventually fail but America has had arguably one of the best. As John Adams famously said, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people it is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
Your request for suggestions has not gone unnoticed, I'm just not sure what to say. It's a big ask, I feel wholly unqualified.
How about a Bill Gates rule, that aging oligarchs can play with their money buying paintings and houses they can wander through for days lost while they plan on what to buy to fill the house with, but they and private Institutions like them can no longer plow their money into making human misery they profit by?
I'd like anything that would break the power of the administrative state. I guess a quick and dirty rule would be something like: No executive department may make any rule that deprives a citizen of his money, rights, or livelihood. In practice, this would mean that state departments of education could not require shots for school, state departments of health could not close businesses for violating mask rules they that themselves just made up, etc. You want to force something on all citizens? Go through the legislature, where you'll be compelled to debate it in public, and maybe we'll still end up seeing you in court, but you can't back-door it in through "administration."
A weaker version would be that no executive branch rule created by the federal government can go into effect without 80 percent of Americans at least viewing it during the "notice and comment" period, which would never be waived or abridged.
Americans need to familiarize themselves with the concept of ptydepe so they can call it out when they see it, and put an end to it.
What will I not stand for? At least these two things that I’ve always stood for:
I will not stand for allowing myself to be affected by attempted categorizations, name-callings, smears, etc. by any individual or entity. I will go about my business regardless of what is said of me, without feeling the need to defend myself to anyone.
I will not stand for allowing myself to consider myself a victim of any individual or entity. I have choices, no matter what.
Things are going to have to get worse before they get better. The other side knows this. They are creating the worse conditions and they already have the liberty crushing solutions ready for a populace who will beg for somebody to "just do something" when the shit hits the fan. Their vision of the better after the worse is a whole lot different than ours and it looks a lot like the U.S.S.R.'s great utopia. We need to organize and be ready with our own solutions to the problems that they are creating.
We know food shortages are coming. Why wouldn't they? How else would a totalitarian government subjugate a people who own more firearms than the governments standing army?
Their plandamic fear campaign didn't do the trick so now it's on to Plan B. Stock up, plant a garden, be ready to watch your leftist neighbor starve to death if he can't shake the brainwashing his clueless parents paid $500,000 for. Be ready to shoot him if he tries to steal food from your children. Be ready to feed him if he does see the error of his ways but don't give him so much as a table scrap unless he abandons his communist ideals.
The people pushing the Great Reset want to obliterate private property and personal liberty from the human conciesness. They don't want to just take your things and subjugate you. They want to take your children and reeducate them to erase those ideals of liberty as a possibility of human thought for them and all future generations. We need to hate tyranny more than they hate freedom.
This is a good start. We need to pick the hills we are prepared to die on or prepare to die in the gulags Klause Schwab and Bill Gates are building for us.
Those suggestions are good starts. I'd include stronger anti-discrimination laws, in particular regarding viewpoint discrimination. Eliminating affirmative action is very important in the long run but I'm skeptical that support for that could be found across identity lines.
The single biggest problem though, in my opinion, is micromanagement. The single-use condiments resolution passed by your city council is a case in point. Like, just, what? This is what they're worried about? It isn't only that it's a deck chairs on the Titanic kind of thing, it's also the mindset that offends me: this assumption by elected officials and unelected bureaucrats that it is their place to tell the rest of us what we can and cannot do, down to the smallest details of our lives.
I think the best way to deal with that could be something like a Constitutional amendment. As currently written, the Constitution delineates certain rights that are not to be infringed. The work-around the managerial state has developed is to regulate the hell out of everything not specifically mentioned in the Constitution. By doing so, they've been able to ring-fence human liberty without (from a legal perspective) technically infringing it.
So, in addition to specifying the rights of citizens, the document should also be very clear: any field of human life not specifically mentioned as a domain of state power, the state is absolutely forbidden from regulating.
Now, a constitutional convention is a high bar. Another way of achieving a similar end would be a law to the effect that the number of laws, and the number of government agencies, are not to exceed a certain fixed threshold. When that threshold is reached, the passage of a new law or formation of a new agency requires that a previous law be repealed or an existing agency be dissolved. By introducing scarcity into the legal code, governments would be dissuaded from ridiculous trivialities such as telling everyone how many packets of ketchup they can get with their fries. Micromanagement would become prohibitively expensive in terms of potential loss of more important regulations.
Good luck ever codifying, let alone enforcing, any set of rules to right this ocean of abject corruption that engulfs virtually the entirety of humanity. Most men now live lives of near total deceit. Call out and confront the lies with truth; be they big or small, professional, governmental or personal.
I like yours, Chris. I’d thoroughly support them. I’d add a couple more. For every new law that is passed, two more that are currently on the books must be deleted. We have way too many laws and some serious editing is in order. Also, all language used to create laws, contracts, rules and regulations must be PLAINLY stated. No more legalese. In fact, for every lawyer who is awarded a law degree one must be officially retired. There are too many lawyers in this country, and too many phony baloney documents created by lawyers.
I suppose it would be a call to abondon the universities and let the corpses decompose. Defund the public school system, make education primarily a private family matter.
The internet has rendered the current model of schools unnecessary, unneeded & corrupt.
(full disclosure - I am inspired by the spirit of Don Quixote to write out this platform - he wanted to include a restoration of the laws of coveture. But it's a stretch to far)
Love that you're going actionable! Have you heard of Agenda Setters by Downsizedc.org?
They have 5 bills that are nonpartisan and you can support just those that you agree with. They are working toward 300 people signed on in each congressional district. Read the Bills - makes legislators read the bills entirely into the record. One Subject at a Time - limits the scope of any bill to one issue. Write the Bills - ends unelected bureaucrats from enacting laws without congressional approval. End Judicial Findings, and Restore Parole. Once there are 300 people in a district they will be asked to contact their Representative in swarms to pressure them into supporting the bills.
What I want is radically smaller government.
I personally am aging closer to the horrors of Medicare and would love to opt-out. Top issues are accountability so I am in favor of term limits and getting rid of the overwhelming power the Speakers of the House have possessed for decades, and cut way down on use of Executive orders. I'd love to cut ties with the UN, and WHO. We need to stop our war mongering for the profit of some American businesses/people. We need to streamline the criminal code so that people of similar bad actions have similar sentencing, and victimless crimes are not on the books.
"Dimply" typo caused by a cat, and subsequently fixed by a human.
Great post! We could include keeping the two silos of government and education separate, also. (So the government may not instruct children to support government at any cost, for instance.)
Over here (I'm sure the same would apply over there) I would prohibit all politicians and senior civil servants from ever working for any commercial interest, either while in parliament/government or afterwards, on pain of imprisonment and forfeiture of pension.
If we have to pay them extra and keep on paying MPs (senators and congressmen) after they lose their seats, fine.
I would make it law that all official internal communications were public, including that pertaining to 'national security'. This might make it hard for us to interfere in other countries - good.
I would prohibit all government spending with media. No ads, sponsorships, grants etc.
I would take us out of the WHO, UN and IMF (for starters).
I would prohibit any state employee from earning more than the prime minister, and I'd set that figure at £150k, with annual increase in line with inflation. For every percentage point that inflation goes above 5% the PM would lose 1%, so that inflation of 11% would see his salary (and all salaries pegged to it) fall by 1%.
But the sad truth - shown by the pandemic - is that people like us are in the minority. Most people are credulous fools who like the illusion of comfort and safety provided by government.
They don't want to take responsibility for their own lives, especially not their failings, and for that reason I think we're doomed.
First: destroy corporate personhood. A company has no soul, and therefore cannot be a good moral actor. Therefore any rights they have tend to be abused. So stop giving them rights like they were a person. The laws of the state that allow corporations should make it clear that such bodies are not people, and do not have the same rights. To expound: when a business is more than one man can handle, and incorporation happens, he gives up the natural right to have sole control. Because the corporate body is no longer in control by one person, it should not be treated like a person.
A good start sir! We know the problems. Substackers list them - in thousands. Daily. So, how to put an updated Omaha Platform into a positive context? We could start with the basic freedoms: speech, assembly, association, movement, and religion. And place significant limits on government. Seems to me there was a document, a couple of centuries ago, that pretty clearly set forth a comprehensive set of standards we could use to govern ourselves. Add in the amendments, throw out 200 years of lawyerly bullshit, incorporate some of the common sense rationale from the Federalist Papers and we'd be well on the way to creating a set of rules we could actually live by.
Did I mention placing limits on government? When I studied economics, (over half a century ago), 'government' constituted around 30% of the economy. Now, the bureaucracy gobbles up over 60% of everything you and I produce. For which they in turn produce nothing. Sadly, governments seem no longer able to build anything. At all. And bureaucratic obstructionism is endemic. Private entities are prevented from building anything either. Looking forward to the commentariat's answers to your question.
This is how we negotiate business deals: Make three lists, 1. Issues we totally agree on. 2. Issues we are willing to negotiate on. 3. Issues that we disagree with and are non-negotiable. If list #3 becomes longer than #1 or #2, the negotiations end and the deal is off. I ask you all to make a similar list between the Right (which includes conservatives and libertarians) and the Left (which includes liberals and progressives). We did; and it's not pretty.
Hey Chris and readers. As an Australian it saddens me to see America being torn apart from within. Admittedly I haven't always felt this way because I haven't liked the way America meddled in other countries. These days I realise more the positive role America has played in promoting freedom. I'm currently reading a critique of ideologies and I acknowledge there is no perfect system. They all eventually fail but America has had arguably one of the best. As John Adams famously said, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people it is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
Your request for suggestions has not gone unnoticed, I'm just not sure what to say. It's a big ask, I feel wholly unqualified.
How about a Bill Gates rule, that aging oligarchs can play with their money buying paintings and houses they can wander through for days lost while they plan on what to buy to fill the house with, but they and private Institutions like them can no longer plow their money into making human misery they profit by?
I'd like anything that would break the power of the administrative state. I guess a quick and dirty rule would be something like: No executive department may make any rule that deprives a citizen of his money, rights, or livelihood. In practice, this would mean that state departments of education could not require shots for school, state departments of health could not close businesses for violating mask rules they that themselves just made up, etc. You want to force something on all citizens? Go through the legislature, where you'll be compelled to debate it in public, and maybe we'll still end up seeing you in court, but you can't back-door it in through "administration."
A weaker version would be that no executive branch rule created by the federal government can go into effect without 80 percent of Americans at least viewing it during the "notice and comment" period, which would never be waived or abridged.
Americans need to familiarize themselves with the concept of ptydepe so they can call it out when they see it, and put an end to it.
Your first few planks are, of course, vital.
What will I not stand for? At least these two things that I’ve always stood for:
I will not stand for allowing myself to be affected by attempted categorizations, name-callings, smears, etc. by any individual or entity. I will go about my business regardless of what is said of me, without feeling the need to defend myself to anyone.
I will not stand for allowing myself to consider myself a victim of any individual or entity. I have choices, no matter what.
Things are going to have to get worse before they get better. The other side knows this. They are creating the worse conditions and they already have the liberty crushing solutions ready for a populace who will beg for somebody to "just do something" when the shit hits the fan. Their vision of the better after the worse is a whole lot different than ours and it looks a lot like the U.S.S.R.'s great utopia. We need to organize and be ready with our own solutions to the problems that they are creating.
We know food shortages are coming. Why wouldn't they? How else would a totalitarian government subjugate a people who own more firearms than the governments standing army?
Their plandamic fear campaign didn't do the trick so now it's on to Plan B. Stock up, plant a garden, be ready to watch your leftist neighbor starve to death if he can't shake the brainwashing his clueless parents paid $500,000 for. Be ready to shoot him if he tries to steal food from your children. Be ready to feed him if he does see the error of his ways but don't give him so much as a table scrap unless he abandons his communist ideals.
The people pushing the Great Reset want to obliterate private property and personal liberty from the human conciesness. They don't want to just take your things and subjugate you. They want to take your children and reeducate them to erase those ideals of liberty as a possibility of human thought for them and all future generations. We need to hate tyranny more than they hate freedom.
This is a good start. We need to pick the hills we are prepared to die on or prepare to die in the gulags Klause Schwab and Bill Gates are building for us.
Those suggestions are good starts. I'd include stronger anti-discrimination laws, in particular regarding viewpoint discrimination. Eliminating affirmative action is very important in the long run but I'm skeptical that support for that could be found across identity lines.
The single biggest problem though, in my opinion, is micromanagement. The single-use condiments resolution passed by your city council is a case in point. Like, just, what? This is what they're worried about? It isn't only that it's a deck chairs on the Titanic kind of thing, it's also the mindset that offends me: this assumption by elected officials and unelected bureaucrats that it is their place to tell the rest of us what we can and cannot do, down to the smallest details of our lives.
I think the best way to deal with that could be something like a Constitutional amendment. As currently written, the Constitution delineates certain rights that are not to be infringed. The work-around the managerial state has developed is to regulate the hell out of everything not specifically mentioned in the Constitution. By doing so, they've been able to ring-fence human liberty without (from a legal perspective) technically infringing it.
So, in addition to specifying the rights of citizens, the document should also be very clear: any field of human life not specifically mentioned as a domain of state power, the state is absolutely forbidden from regulating.
Now, a constitutional convention is a high bar. Another way of achieving a similar end would be a law to the effect that the number of laws, and the number of government agencies, are not to exceed a certain fixed threshold. When that threshold is reached, the passage of a new law or formation of a new agency requires that a previous law be repealed or an existing agency be dissolved. By introducing scarcity into the legal code, governments would be dissuaded from ridiculous trivialities such as telling everyone how many packets of ketchup they can get with their fries. Micromanagement would become prohibitively expensive in terms of potential loss of more important regulations.
Good luck ever codifying, let alone enforcing, any set of rules to right this ocean of abject corruption that engulfs virtually the entirety of humanity. Most men now live lives of near total deceit. Call out and confront the lies with truth; be they big or small, professional, governmental or personal.
I like yours, Chris. I’d thoroughly support them. I’d add a couple more. For every new law that is passed, two more that are currently on the books must be deleted. We have way too many laws and some serious editing is in order. Also, all language used to create laws, contracts, rules and regulations must be PLAINLY stated. No more legalese. In fact, for every lawyer who is awarded a law degree one must be officially retired. There are too many lawyers in this country, and too many phony baloney documents created by lawyers.
I suppose it would be a call to abondon the universities and let the corpses decompose. Defund the public school system, make education primarily a private family matter.
The internet has rendered the current model of schools unnecessary, unneeded & corrupt.
(full disclosure - I am inspired by the spirit of Don Quixote to write out this platform - he wanted to include a restoration of the laws of coveture. But it's a stretch to far)
Love that you're going actionable! Have you heard of Agenda Setters by Downsizedc.org?
They have 5 bills that are nonpartisan and you can support just those that you agree with. They are working toward 300 people signed on in each congressional district. Read the Bills - makes legislators read the bills entirely into the record. One Subject at a Time - limits the scope of any bill to one issue. Write the Bills - ends unelected bureaucrats from enacting laws without congressional approval. End Judicial Findings, and Restore Parole. Once there are 300 people in a district they will be asked to contact their Representative in swarms to pressure them into supporting the bills.
What I want is radically smaller government.
I personally am aging closer to the horrors of Medicare and would love to opt-out. Top issues are accountability so I am in favor of term limits and getting rid of the overwhelming power the Speakers of the House have possessed for decades, and cut way down on use of Executive orders. I'd love to cut ties with the UN, and WHO. We need to stop our war mongering for the profit of some American businesses/people. We need to streamline the criminal code so that people of similar bad actions have similar sentencing, and victimless crimes are not on the books.