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OpEdNews Op Eds    H2'ed 9/20/19

Libertarian Socialism Can Build Community, Communalism, and Communism

Message Roger Copple
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We must be open, honest, and transparent if we want to build community, communalism, and communism from the bottom-up, from the ground-up, from the local to the global. To create peace, happiness, and joy in all the world--we need a network of communes interconnected and integrated in love--attaining and sharing higher and higher levels of love-- eternal love with peace on earth. Empower every local community to the maximum degree possible. Let the whole world vote together. Let the whole world sing with unity, harmony, and oneness. That can be our long-term goal.


Would a Libertarian Socialist support compulsory public schooling? No. Would a libertarian socialist support the public schools? Only if they are built from the bottom-up, not from the top-down. Enable every neighborhood elementary school district to become completely autonomous and self-determined. To provide the best education to students, to bring out the creative genius in everyone, we need to help students understand themselves and guide them to study what is important to them. We each have something unique to give to the world. If we don't each come into this world with a unique purpose, then we have to create one. Students working with their mentors can design their own curriculums, from the elementary level through the college level. Here are some references to the websites of well-known educators John Taylor Gatto, Paulo Freire, Diane Ravitch, and E.D. Hirsch.


To be voted Teacher of the Year of NYC and the state of New York, Libertarian John Taylor Gatto had to break all the school rules. Essentially he was turning high school students loose from school traveling all over Manhattan, each doing individualized research projects. I find it is very refreshing to listen to John Taylor Gatto even though before he died, he was writing letters to Trump, giving him advice on how to become president. I think Gatto was successful because he taught students how to succeed in the world of capitalism. His research into the history of public schooling in the United States reveals that the original purposes of public schooling were all about social engineering and social control by the powers-that-be. Totalitarian capitalism is just as bad as totalitarian socialism. John Taylor Gatto shared that what the most elite schools in the nation have in common is an emphasis on active literacy--writing and speaking--in addition to passive literacy--reading.


Neighborhood elementary school districts may choose to use public money to maintain their currently existing school buildings, and they may also support homeschooling, house schools, and more tutoring provided by adults who live in the elementary school district who want to improve their intentional community. Some parents, preferring vouchers and tax credits, may use the marketplace to find schools outside of the neighborhood. But ideally and ecologically-speaking, parents should build community with other parents and residents closest to home, and those parents attempting to achieve that can be allotted more public funds than the parents who show no loyalty or commitment to the neighborhood school. Here is a five-paragraph summary entitled Neighborhood Control of Public Elementary Schools that I wrote a few months ago.


With more children attending neighborhood schools, we will need fewer school buses. However, in the nation on the whole, we need to use more buses and trains, and we should drastically reduce the number of cars on our roads and highways--which are becoming more and more dangerous everyday. We don't have to live this way.


Would a Libertarian Socialist support the military? No. I can't speak for every libertarian socialist, but I would recommend that we reduce the military by 90 percent, close down our military bases around the world and bring all the troops home as soon as possible, and work to dismantle all nuclear weapons and land mines. When other nations reciprocate, military spending can be reduced even more. Military personnel may still keep their jobs if they want to provide the resources to help create self-determined and self-sufficient local communities around the world in the places that need it the most. That is how we can be a nation that has true global security.


We must create a world in which everyone is concerned about biodegradability, ecology, biodiversity, no-fossil-fuels-for-energy, voluntary simplicity, permaculture, and drastically reducing trash and landfills. The wealthy class must start living simply so that others in the world can simply live.


What building practices are sustainable for future generations? Now that hemp is legal once again (surely you know the real reason it was made illegal), there are many advantages of a hemp-built home. According to hempwood.com, it is more comfortable, provides cleaner indoor air and energy efficiency, has a luxury look and feel, has less mold and mildews, less pest infestation, is more fire resistant, has low maintenance, and provides long term durability. Hemp can be grown without the use of herbicides and insecticides.


The Hemp-Cannabis-Marijuana plant may be the most valuable and versatile plant on earth, considering its many industrial, agricultural, medical, and recreational uses. Do you want world peace? Then let's enable every family in every community of the world in need of a home to live in a hemp and solar home with all the things that we enjoy. It is only fair. We should all reduce our consumption together if needed. We need Johnny Appleseed to plant hemp seeds this time around. Hemp wood is the most eco-friendly lumber product on earth. Hemp wood is made without destroying trees. Hemp is being welcomed back to humanity. Hemp, Hemp, Hooray! Many people have known for a long time that hemp can play a very important role in saving the environment and the world.


Moreover, we need a Medicare-for-All system in every nation. Here is an article by Ralph Nader entitled 25 Ways the Canadian Health Care System is Better than Obamacare. We also need public banking for all in every country. Eliminate the private central banking system.


Democratic world law for Democratic World Government with the participation of every world citizen is what we need. True spirituality is the universal love for humanity, the Earth, and the divine ground of our being. That love must be institutionalized through democratic world law. The Earth Constitution is the best model available for democratic world law.


We can build community if we learn nonviolent communication, assertiveness training, if we study psychology, depth psychology, transpersonal psychology, philosophy, history, geography, the sciences and arts, the world's major world religions, and higher states of consciousness through nondual awareness. As mentioned above, it is very important that we strive to be open, honest, and transparent--the world needs it. Self-awareness is also important: we must constantly ask ourselves, what are my motives, what are my intentions, how do I feel right now. Face-to-face participatory and consensus democracy can be encouraged in every family, in every local community.


The 9 most egregious social sins that nations have committed are 1) Imperialism 2) Racism 3) Transnational Corporate Capitalism 4) Nationalism 5) Materialism 6) Patriarchalism 7) Anti-Environmentalism 8) Speciesism (species-ism) and 9) the Discrimination against the LGBTQ community.


The two biggest threats to world peace are the United States Government (which really is an empire) and the lifestyles of the rich in the wealthiest countries of the world. During the Age of Imperialism, the wealthy Western nations were in a race to carve up the Americas, Africa, and Asia. They were far more industrialized and had more powerful weapons. In their thinking, they thought they were superior to other peoples of the world, whom they considered to be subhuman or barbarians. They essentially believed that "might makes right." The aristocratic elites exploited other nations as they exploited the workers in their own countries. Now we know who were the true barbarians. Now we understand much better why there is no peace on earth.


As a result of slavery (imagine that) and exploitation on a massive scale, the wealthy Western countries (with their more powerful weapons) got a big advantage over the underdeveloped countries, and this type of unfairness has continued to the present day. When corporations move their factories to underdeveloped countries and pay workers $3.00 an hour, when the workers from developed nations had been getting $30 an hour for doing the same work--how ethical is that? We need not only a political revolution but a collective spiritual cleansing from our historical wrongdoings as a nation. We have committed many social sins, and we need to ask every nation and individual that we have harmed for forgiveness. Many of us have grown up living in a matrix system of many cultural myths, and now it is time to awaken and start a new life. "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow (Isaiah 1:18)." There is healing in forgiveness.


If it currently would take 4 earths for everyone in the world to have the lifestyle of the average American, and half of the world lives on less than $5.50 a day (which is almost $2,008 a year (365 x 5.50)--the highest expression of love and fairness would be to support radical egalitarianism on an international level.


If currently the world is spending almost 2 trillion dollars a year on weapons and war, imagine what it would be like if those resources could be reallocated to building self-determined, self-sufficient, and interdependent local communities all over the world. Imagine what it would be like if we started becoming concerned for the self-actualization of every person on the planet. But we cannot have nations that get away with controlling, dominating, and exploiting other nations for their exclusive gain and greed.


Today on September 20, 2019 over 800 climate strikes are planned in the United States, and there will be global climate strikes taking place in 132 countries. The Green New Deal and the Extinction Rebellion movement are taking us into new directions, and it is an exciting time to be alive. But we must prevent the wealthiest one percent from attempting to co-opt the movement with massive reinvestment of global banking capital into the next big corporate energy heist after coal, oil, and gas. According to Julian Rose, author of the article entitled "Extinction Rebellion, the Green New Deal, and the Rebranding of Capitalism," we should be suspicious if the leaders of various environmental movements such as Extinction Rebellion and the Green New Deal have had previous ties to organizations like the Rockefeller Foundation, Chatham House, The Royal Institute of International Affairs, the National Endowment for Democracy, the Bilderbergers, and the Trilateral Commission.


In the workplace where we spend one third of our lives, we need workplace democracy. We, especially wealthy individuals, must consume far less. Extravagant spending and wastefulness are not ecologically sustainable. We should always encourage veganism. Furthermore, we must dramatically reduce our ecological footprint if we truly care for all sentient beings that occupy this planet. Moreover, if we really really care, we will work to drastically reduce the income gap between the rich and the poor of the world. We are one world, one planet, one humanity. If we cannot form a democratic world government, we are doomed according to Chomsky who quoted Einstein.


Would libertarian socialists encourage other political parties? I certainly would. We could equally empower and give an equal voice to the 7 largest national political parties in every nation. We can even give a public voice to any political party that captures at least one percent of the national vote. In the United States--Libertarians, Republicans, Democrats, and members of the Constitution Party may believe they can create a compassionate capitalism. They have a right to try and prove that to us. But Democratic Socialists, Revolutionary Socialists, the Green Party, the Left Greens, and Libertarian Socialists have other ideas that need to be heard. If we are ever successful in achieving a world government, it is conceivable that we could equally empower the 7 largest international political parties.

Can we humans evolve if we have insane leaders? The answer is no. We are all responsible for the state the world is in, but our leaders must take most of the blame. Now if you don't think our leaders are insane, just look at the conditions of the world. Look at the shape the world is in. Who is responsible? We are all responsible, and we each can play a role in healing this land. We each have a part in the play. We might think that some individuals can evolve, grow, and learn, and reach higher states of consciousness and deeper levels of love in their private lives--but we don't really evolve unless the whole world evolves with us.


Thich Naht Hanh said, "The next Buddha will not take the form of an individual. The next Buddha will take the form of a community; a community practicing understanding and loving kindness, a community practicing mindful living. This may be the most important thing we can do for the survival of the Earth."

(Article changed on September 23, 2019 at 22:04)

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February 11, 2023 I grew up in a church that said you had to speak in tongues to get saved and go to heaven. I often prayed fervently starting at the age of 5 for the experience in the prayer room at church, where people would cry and wail, (more...)
 

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