Telling the truth about America

I think it is important to tell the truth about oneself and the truth about the US and the US government, since I'm an American. It brings integrity to any conversation that looks at the state of the world, in terms of governments and economies. Your religious views on this topic are your own, but I think it is important to tell the truth about those that claim to follow the same God as I do.

The truth about the founding of our country: Some white men wanted to improve their lot in life and not have to be governed by the will of a lord or king. This lord or king only has authority because of the family they were born in.

They took the system they knew. A king or queen was in charge and the king or queen had lords or ladies who reported to them. The lord had people under them. It was thought to be an improvement to use this same system, but to have the people in charge be appointed by the People. A great improvement. Add some democracy to a system where most of the work was done by near slave labor and the rewards were reaped by the ruling class. They also thought the President should not be a king and should not be the one in charge...just in charge of one of the three major branches of government. It was agreed that this land should be ruled by laws (fair to everyone) and not be ruled by a specific person.

We are still left with a system where a person is in charge and a winner take all voting system. Our representatives are supposed to act in our interest, but they almost always act in their own, if they want to continue in office. Once elected, they can do what they want and represent the People anyway they see fit. In reality, they hear from corporate lobbyists on a daily basis (and voters once every election) and do the Corporate will more often than the People's will.

Since the founding time, other countries improved on our system and went one step further. They created true democracies, with parliaments and proportional representation. Our founding fathers figured that the People would want improvements over time, so they built that into the Constitution to "...build a more perfect union." I wonder how they would respond to the notion that our system of governance is still based on feudal methods of governing, from a time when people traveled by foot, horse or boat. There were no trains, planes, or automobiles; no phones and no Internet.

But, I digress.

Our founding fathers were made of people that practiced different religions. Some of the People came to this land to be able to practice Christianity as they wished and a few came to be atheist as they wished. Several were deists. They all wanted religious freedom to worship or not as they wished.

In the beginning, only land-owning white men were considered to be the People. Later, others were included in having the rights spelled out. Women and black people took a long time to enter into the equation. It can be argued whether poor people have ever had a voice in the political system of this land. In some ways, the poor are still living in a feudal system.

These white men must not have been brought up well. I mean, I teach my kids to share, to be gentle and to love one another. Many of the people that originally came to this land didn't want to share, they hated other human beings and they took what they wanted. They killed as many as 11 million indigenous people that were already living here. They also owned slaves and helped to destroy the continent of Africa to have cheap labor.

Women and children were considered to be the property of these men...as well as their slaves.

Thank the Goddess that some of these sins are over. Others sins and crimes go on, but the People have aimed to extend the rights of the Constitution to more and more people. Improvement are made and then more improvements are made.

Somewhere along the way, our government threw away the idea of democracy when it came to the US Government's position in the world. Instead of having a vote in global affairs, our government decided to become the controllers of the world. They began a campaign of building an empire. The message from our government became one "do our will or suffer the consequences." The consequences might be economic, or the US Government might invade your country or overthrow your government. It became accepted that it was good if other nations did our will and bad if other nations did not do our will.

Perhaps another improvement is imminent. It has to be in order for this country to continue very far in the future. We seem to be on the verge of the end of an empire. Maybe it is time to really weed out the corruption in our government and to upgrade our government to become a true democracy...with some proportional representation added in...Take the money out of campaigns. Take the bribery out of politics.

I think we act very arrogantly in this world when we continue to claim that we are the chosen ones, the ones appointed by God to determine the outcome of global affairs. I think we eat away at our national soul when we continue to claim that we are the best, we are the best. There was a time when arrogance was thought to be a sin, wasn't there?

Anyway, this is a great land, the People are pretty darn cool. We have many problems. We have many messes to clean up. Our political system has been taken over. The Constitution isn't dead yet though. We can still endeavor to improve upon this experiment started over 200 years ago.