Principles

President Obama has submitted his budget proposal and it is no surprise that the uproar was instantaneous.  These are contentious times and he has had to make difficult decisions.

One item that has caught a lot of attention is his plan to eliminate the continuing manufacture of expensive Cold War-era weapons systems.  One such weapons system is the F-22 Raptor, a fighter plane designed to overtake and outmaneuver other advanced fighter planes.

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In the book, I offered two possible solutions for the conflict between Israel and Palestine.  One possibility I suggested was the complete social and political unification of the entire territory of Israel and Palestine; and the other was the much vaunted “Two State Solution.”

The present military action in the Gaza Strip has forced me to spend some time evaluating my position and as a result I no longer consider one of those ideas to be a viable possibility.

Not A Solution

The “Two State Solution” is not a solution at all. 

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All of us over here at selfdirectedsociety.com were just delighted beyond words at the election of Barack Obama to be the next President of the United States of America. His election not only shattered barriers of racial preconception; it restored the people’s faith in democracy, and gave us hope for the future of humanity.

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I was interested to note how directly the ongoing financial meltdown and the massive federal emergency bailout package were related to a section from my book, which reads:

The economic recession which began slowly with the “dot com bust” in the year 2000 was then exacerbated by many other factors such as spectacular corporate scandals and terrorism.

The Bush administration, eager to look effective, responded to the recession by giving massive tax cuts to the country’s wealthiest people.  At the same time the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates over and over, encouraging people to take out loans.  Essentially the plan was to borrow our way out of a recession.

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The recent turmoil in the stock market was temporarily relieved, for a few days, when the government announced a massive plan for intervention.  President Bush, at the behest of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, has sent Congress a request for $700 billion to buy up devalued mortgage-backed securities and provide liquidity to financial institutions.

What does this mean?  Buried in the technical terms which put off many readers are a few simple facts.

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If you haven’t heard about this, you should.  The inspector-general at the Department of the Interior has delivered a series of scathing reports to Congress in which he found that at least a dozen officials in the Minerals Management Service engaged in unethical and illegal activities directly related to their jobs.
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So much for the theory of “free market capitalism.” As I discuss in chapter 8 “Economic Reform,” the proponents of so-called “free market” ideology seem to flip-flop regularly: To the economic pundits at the Wall Street Journal and the White House, free markets are good as long as they are making a profit, but as soon as they start losing money, suddenly it becomes the taxpayers’ responsibility to bail out financial institutions which made poor decisions.
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I’ve heard this comment several times now: how is society meant to be self-directed if it is expected to adopt the precepts and principles as outlined by a certain Mr. Jesse S. Smith?

The title is intended to contrast with the way, according to the book, society is presently directed: by a small, influential group of wealthy elites. As I argue in the book, our society is not self-directed, and has not been self-directed for thousands of years. Society has been shepherded, led by the nose in the direction decided for it by small groups of influential persons: the nobility and the religious leaders. The masses were told what they needed to be told to keep them in line. This model is changing far too slowly and in some ways we sometimes seem more deeply rooted in it now than ever before.
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In Principles for a Self-Directed Society Chapter 3 "Creating a Lasting Peace," I advocate a revised vision of the role of United Nations peacekeeping forces. There and elsewhere I maintain that the United States is not an appropriate arbiter of international disputes: such conflict resolution is solely the responsibility of the United Nations. To this end I advocate a strategy under which, in times of ongoing strife, U.N. forces should be empowered to intervene, using lethal force when necessary; not in support of any particular faction, but simply to do their best to prevent any continuation of the violence. I developed this position as a response to the horror I have felt at the unchecked genocides which have taken place in recent history and which are ongoing in Sudan. The world community’s shameful failure to respond to such terrible incidents calls into question the very notion that we are indeed a "civilized" society.

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