The forest for the trees
By Ian Bruk on November 24, 2004 - 11:37am
I noticed Dave Winer writing about a blogging network. I think he's missing the point. Similar to Sun"s "The Network is the Computer" I believe the "Bloggers are the Government". Is Biology at work here and how they are now designing buildings to put electricity back into the grid. Blogging has created a network and tools that allow citizens to put knowledge into the political grid. The question is not how to apply blogging to the current political system it's how to change the current political system so that Bloggers can easily connect. How to Save the World has an interesting article today questioning the system.
And if a government becomes so dysfunctional that it no longer appears capable of reflecting the will of its constituency (because it tolerates gerrymandering, for example), maybe we need a process to permanently and completely revoke its charter, and simply disband it. That would be an extreme action, I admit, but I'm sure there are lots of other levels of government who could and would step into the void. Why should the institutions of nationhood be prohibited from evolving to meet changing public needs, just like any other public institutions? Such a model might allow political entities to evolve naturally, enable the simple elimination of duplicative levels of government, and for the first time ever, allow the people the true right to self-determination. Why should a community be forced to stay an unwilling part of a state or nation if the large majority of its citizens chooses to secede, establish their own political infrastructure and provide their own public services? Why couldn't communities be allowed to self-manage their political, social and economic affairs? Yes, it's a recipe for anarchy, but the Internet has shown that with some very loose coordination, anarchy works very well indeed.
The New Liberal Critic Party says scare tactics will fail any form of zealotry.
Iranian Shiites have devised the infiltration of Iraq for the purpose of exploiting their democratic elections, in the same way that American leaders and the Council for National Policy have infiltrated the Conservative Party of Canada with their war on drugs, and their war on the LGBT community, and their war on women’s rights and worker’s rights and many other realms of liberation. Fundamentally, it would be safe to call all theocracy activists fundamentalists. As the wise teachers know, it has proven impossible to enforce theocracy without persecution and bloodshed.
As Election Day nears, it is important for Canadians to know what they definitely DO NOT want. The mudslinging that transpires during the heated race for Ottawa will not divide the agenda of the many Canadians who are opposed to Harper’s theocratic leanings. We do not need a repeat of what is taking place in Iraq on this 28th day of December 2005.
Frankly, I wish Mr. Martin would reach out to the NDP for the purpose of sparing our democracy the threat of regressive Conservative theology. Furthermore, with Jack Layton’s stance on accountability and his endorsement by the president of the BC Marijuana Party, a Liberal call to accountability will be far more encompassing than a Conservative call – it might even inspire other nations.
Will we sacrifice our Canadian freedoms for the sake of joining the Conservatives in condemning Paul Martin for some incident that has much less bearing on our civil liberties than a Conservative leader who panders to the likes of the religious conservative Council for National Policy? Because I give my fellow Canadians more credit than Harper does, I suspect the answer will be NO.
Prohibition and Censorship and Propaganda - The Dragon and The Serpent and Babylon.
Conservatives are inherently poised to choose prohibition, through a vote of rich young craftspeople and stuffy old people with stuffy old flat-earth pseudo-scientific values. Also by their spoon-fed biases, they would determine what is not suitable for publication, circumvent the voices of so-called sinners and blasphemers, and push society back into dark times – definitely not the key to the golden age.
(Maybe you think I ought to go smoke another bowl of ‘kaneh-bosm’ and do more writing, or maybe you think I should have a ‘lawful’ drink and dummy-down, or maybe you wish all like-minded people would just disappear behind some veil you would cast.)