Take part in a tried-and-true plan to better America
 
Unite and cooperate in a common cause to fight and defeat the enemy hurting us, like we did to create America, and rebuild and grow our principled self-governance and bountiful common well-being today under mounting assault by an enemy more unjust and dangerous than the enemy of 1776

by Dan Ruuska     revision 07.24.05

This document, an introduction to America's big-picture problem and its full solution by We the People, is a result more than two years of steady civic effort in the public interest. Which began by accident: on March-20-2003 our older daughter e-mailed from work to ask, "Dad, why are we bombing Iraq?" I couldn't tell from our leaders or from the news either. While searching out the war's big-picture reason why, urges from inside me and from humankind drove me to look for a sure-fire solution to the entire problem. As the illuminations dawned and the synthesis materialized, I wrote it up. In January-2005 it became CivicPowerUSA.org, a big-picture full-solution democracy weapon and tool.

The problem in brief: America is under attack from within. Consolidated wealth and power -- and their media machine -- subvert our self-governance and hurt our common well-being. Today's White House and Congress serve wealth-corporate and Christian-Right clients in return for their cash and votes -- at the economic, social, and bodily expense of We the People and our posterity. Their news and entertainment industries aid and abet. Working as a team, they disabled our democracy and at an escalating pace they freely harm our justice, unity and cooperation, national security, general welfare, liberty, the world and its people, the environment, and our posterity. They violate our Constitution -- Preamble, Articles, Amendments, separation of powers, separation of church and state -- to the core. They altered America into a far lesser country that is not at all what our Flag stands for: principled self-governance providing bountiful common well-being. With their news-and-entertainment media machine they manufacture our democratic support, neuter opposition, and hide-and-spin so skillfully that most Americans have no idea all this is happening to them. This political disease, flaring up since 1980, has advanced to a stage so dangerous that our current forms of good citizenship and civic-and-political action cannot possibly stop the unlawfulness and inhumanity from growing worse. Communism within was nothing compared to the subversion and harm by the consolidated wealth and power and media machine of today, the worst-ever threat to America's national security. The Framers foresaw -- and feared -- such an enemy within (and wisely wrote into our Constitution how to fight it).

The enemy -- the disease -- in brief: The founders of America fully understood the harmful nature of the enemy of 1776, an earlier strain of the very same wealth-and-power disease that infects America today. It is an ancient political disease that causes common well-being to suffer, is either dormant or active in communities and nations everywhere, is best kept dormant through vigilant preventions that restrain wealth-and-power, and when it flares up active it has to be forced back into its dormant state through corrective revolution by its victims.

Two strategies in brief: 1) Instead of continuing to react to the symptoms -- the myriad escalating injustices -- with fragmented, aimless, incomplete, and weak civic-and-political efforts like we do today in response to the disease's truth-purging and divide-and-conquer manipulations skillfully designed to cripple our civic power -- a horrific injustice in itself -- we must open our eyes to see the disease and its trickery, and then attack its very heart with broad-based collaborative effort to neutralize the disease causing the injustices. That is, we must defend and fix America like we created America. 2) "Conservatives" and "liberals," 90% of the public, unite and cooperate against the loud but small "right wing" hurting them both.

The solution in brief: We the People wake up, rise up, unite and cooperate, join and coordinate all our separate forces, and defend America and win against the enemy within and their media machine. We restore our self-governance -- our representative governance, our democratic processes -- as well as all five classes of common well-being listed in the first sentence of our Constitution. We drive the wealth-and-power disease back into remission, and vigilantly keep it there with several national-defense / national-security reforms that would protect America against future wealth-and-power threats from within our homeland. We follow the examples of Paul Revere, our Declaration of Independence, the Continental Congress -- warn the public about the enemy, issue a list of injustices and violations of law, declare redress, form a national organization to build and direct citizen power to defeat the enemy -- and we polish and wield the many supreme-law weapons the Framers provided for us in our Constitution. Odds of landslide victories during national elections? The enemy within is 10% of our population -- their wealth-corporate core is 0.15% of the public, their Christian-Right base is 10% of the public -- and those being controlled, exploited, and harmed by that small enemy are the 90% majority. Tomorrow's America CAN again be everything our Flag stands for: principled self-governance providing bountiful common well-being.

I hope this document will help launch the tried-and-true cure for America's illegal and exploitive and deadly wealth-and-power disease. As history teaches, wealth and power tend to consolidate and then go berserk and exploit and harm both within and outside of its national borders -- the ancient wealth-and-power disease. In 1776, Colonial America revolted against it. In 1787, the Framers -- who understood key history: keep wealth and power in careful check or else suffer the dire consequences -- designed our Constitution to prevent the disease from ever flaring up inside America and hurting us from within. Into our Constitution they wrote multiple national defenses against the disease: "We, the People . . . insure domestic Tranquility [vital for unity and cooperation]," "no religious Test[s]," trial by jury, separation of powers, separation of church and state, and "We, the People . . . provide for the common defence" against unbridled wealth and power that threatens America from within. Around 1980, the disease began to manipulate We the People to drop our guard and has since flared up with harmful consequences to America's democracy and well-being. Humankind since the dawn of our species, however, has employed a natural method of making things right. The disease's powerful cure, which traveled down through tens of millennia of human history and entered the soul of our nation during birth, today shouts out from our Declaration of Independence, Flag, and Constitution: moral outrage, in response to injustice, triggers unity and cooperation that ends the injustice. This cure seems to be innate human behavior embedded in our DNA: modern science has observed it among chimpanzees. When the entire public learns the full extent of how America is duped, exploited, and hurt by a recently-formed enemy within and media machine who are worse in moral character than the Enemy of 1776 -- such as from a modern version of our Declaration of Independence that details all the injustices they commit (this is part of Element 1 of the four-element major maintenance and tune-up of our democracy summarized herein) -- moral outrage, and unity and cooperation, will automatically unleash to stop and reverse the injustices. This cure works so well it produced America. It's time to fire it up again to defend and fix America, and wave our Flag with true meaning in the process.

Three of the disease's many symptoms? 1) A weakened We the People, civilians and troops, dangerously purged of civic understanding and civic power: manipulated by America's consolidated wealth and power to be deaf and blind to the disease and cure, to be unable to self-govern America and provide common well-being in accordance with our Constitution, to be helpless to defend America against dangers from within as required by supreme law. 2) Islamic terrorism and 9/11: in Afghanistan and Pakistan in the 1980s, America's right wing (strongly backed by the Christian Right) in partnership with Saudi Arabia (and its equivalent of the Christian Right, Wahabiism) bred and armed and trained militant Islam into a proxy US military weapon to fight the Cold War, then abruptly discarded those jihad services when no longer needed; the CIA-trained Islamic force, some leaders were trained in Virginia, tentacled and grew worldwide and is lashing back at its two creators and their allies. 3) The war on Iraq: its decade-long premeditation, its carnage by America and plunder by America in the name of defending our homeland and bestowing democracy abroad, its violations of the Preamble and Articles 1, 2, and 6 of our Constitution, all hidden by our leaders and media.

How completely has our civic understanding been purged? So completely most citizens today don't know that by law We the People self-govern America: that We the People are the government and supreme rulers, not the White House and Congress and Supreme Court who are the help we hire. So completely most Americans today cannot recite or explain the five major kinds of common well-being that We the People have a duty to provide to ourselves and our posterity (they are listed in the first sentence of our Constitution, as well as ten paragraphs below). Principled self-governance by We the People, and five major kinds of common good provided by We the People, are the goals of our country -- the actual meaning of our Flag -- that many patriots died for during the American Revolution. Today's America no longer knows any of this. The enemy within, and their media machine, skillfully erased it from America to make it easy to take over and exploit America.

As you examine what's happening to our country, and to other nations including by the World Bank / IMF headquartered here in America, you see the same pattern everywhere: control and exploitation and harm by America's unbridled right-wing power, including their relentless assault on all types of government-provided public good, hidden under a PR-designed guise of doing good laid down by their media machine. You see that War-on-Iraq pattern everywhere -- especially right here in our homeland.

When you study how they manipulate, you see another clear pattern: they manipulate our thinking away from the concept of citizen self-governance, away from the concept of government providing common well-being to citizens including how Colonial Americans taxed themselves to provide public-good benefits to themselves, and thus away from the whole concept of America.

For example, have you noticed how we are made to think that the White House, Congress, and Judiciary govern us -- that citizens are not the government? More and more in the press, have you noticed how government-provided water, power, transportation, healthcare, and education are considered "bad" and how it's "good" to have the free market provide those public services instead -- here in America and in other nations? They manipulate us to think like this: "Be patriotic and support your President no matter what, for he is the righteous and resolute leader of America." "Initiative and fortitude, family and church, and the free market can provide the well-being people need much better than government can." "Government mustn't tax and spend for public good, or interfere with corporate operation of the free market."

Our government of, by, and for We the People -- and all five classes of common well-being that We the People, the government of America, are bound by our Constitution to provide to ourselves and our posterity -- are under attack from within. We seem powerless to stop it. Our acts of good citizenship -- reading and watching the news to stay informed, individuals and organizations supporting just causes and working on vital civic issues and participating in political campaigns, independent media reporting case after case of lawbreaking and inhumanity by those who abuse power (events that America's newspapers and talking heads typically cover up or spin into goodness), dissenting against wrongdoing, whistleblowing for the public good, writing to our Senators and Congressman, voting in every election -- barely work anymore. Because an enemy within took over our mass media, stealthily neutered our democracy, and gained freedom to control and exploit as they please. In the process they hurt the common well-being of America, they hurt the world and environment we depend on, and they hurt our posterity. This is the problem, the disease.

Worry not. Take part in the tried-and-true solution: unite and cooperate in a common cause against the common enemy hurting us -- like we did to create America. The common enemy this time? America's right wing and their media machine (the enemy within) who hurt conservatives and liberals alike (We the People). The common cause today? Defend America against the right-wing enemy within, and rebuild our attacked and damaged democracy and well-being. A first step like before? Form a national civic-action congress -- similar to the Continental Congress of the American Revolution -- to amass We-the-People civic power and direct this needful and lawful civic revolt. The odds? The enemy within -- the consolidation of executive/legislative/judicial federal powers, wealth-corporate power, Christian-Right religious power, and mass-media power into the unbridled right-wing power of today -- is comprised of a relatively small number of people: 10% of the public. We the People, the victims of the enemy within, are the vast 90% majority. Our weapon? Our supreme Law of the Land -- all of it, not just the First Amendment. Our product? Solid heartland patriotism: "Principled Self-Governance and Bountiful Common Well-Being," the whole point of America and the meaning of our Flag. Heavily promote it. And endlessly compare it with the right-wing's product, a dangerous fake patriotism: symbols of God and Country, Family Values, American Pride, A Safer America, all skillfully PR-designed to hide how their actual product -- domination and exploitation of America by their consolidated right-wing power and media machine -- is destroying America's system of self-governance and all five types of common well-being. The battleground? Fully-democratic, honest elections. Huge turnouts, and big wins for We the People, would be a snap. This is the solution, the cure.

Each and every civic-minded individual and group in our nation has a vital role to play in this. As you study Elements 1-4 of the big-picture full solution -- "How to UNITE and COOPERATE to Defend and Fix America" (civicpowerusa.org/fix.htm) -- you can readily see the far-reaching good that you and your group can do.

Instead of fragmenting ourselves and working aimlessly and incompletely and weakly, like we do today, to expose and decry and fight the many worsening injustices -- subversions of our democracy, assaults on all five categories of common well-being listed in the first sentence of our Constitution, harm to other nations, harm to the environment, harm to our posterity, inflicted by America's right wing and their media machine who hurt conservatives and liberals alike -- team up and plan and execute the sure-fire total solution required by our Constitution that would STOP and REVERSE those injustices: defend America and win against the small but destructive right-wing enemy within, and rebuild our self-governance and common well-being. Create a national civic-action congress, modeled after the Continental Congress of the American Revolution, to grow our nation's civic power and direct this nationwide civic revolt. A first order of business for the congress? Issue a list of injustices and a call for action, modeled after our Declaration of Independence, to morally-outrage the public to rise up and join the revolt; this is part of Element 1.

The national civic-action congress, made up of conservatives and liberals, could springboard a new political party committed A) to serve We the People instead of consolidated wealth and power, B) to follow our nation's supreme law instead of wealth-corporate and Christian-Right dictates, C) to restore and grow and protect the principled self-governance and bountiful common well-being enshrined in our Constitution and symbolized by our Flag, D) to undertake court reform to remove pro-enemy-within federal judges in order to accomplish A-C (a pro-We-the-People Congress could abolish lower courts that have such judges then re-create them and appoint pro-We-the-People judges, and could reduce the size of the Supreme Court to eliminate as many pro-enemy-within judges as possible then increase the Court's size and appoint pro-We-the-People judges to assure a majority that's safe for America), and E) to enact national-defense / national-security reforms to protect America against the enemy within: campaign-finance reform, mass-media reform, political-advertising reform, political-favor reform, judge-selection reform needed for court reform, corporate-law reform to disable corporate personhood, civics-education reform, reforms to safeguard separation of powers and separation of corporation and state and separation of church and state, and other reforms vital to prevent wealth and power from subverting and hurting America's self-governance and common well-being in the future. Such a party could overwhelmingly defeat today's red and blue parties who lavishly service the right wing, willfully and thus treasonously at the economic and social and bodily expense of We the People and our posterity, as repayment for billions in cash from wealth-corporate donors and millions of votes from the Christian-Right bloc. This is Element 4.

See how "unite and cooperate" could achieve landslide victories and a better America?

"Unite and cooperate" has been a key and successful weapon against injustice throughout the ages. See why the Framers placed "insure domestic Tranquility" -- essential for citizens to unite and cooperate -- so high in our nation's list of five common-well-being goals? "We, the People" -- the government of America, the supreme power in America -- "establish Justice [1], insure domestic Tranquility [2], provide for the common defence [3], promote the general Welfare [4], and secure the Blessings of Liberty [5] to ourselves and our Posterity;" "Justice," "domestic Tranquility," "the common defence," "the general Welfare," and "Liberty" "to ourselves and our Posterity" are the attributes of the overall goal of America -- "a more perfect Union" -- listed first in the Preamble.

Who crippled America's representative governance and democratic processes? Who's hurting our justice, unity and cooperation, national security, general welfare, liberty, the world and its people we depend on, the environment, and our posterity? Who's violating our Law of the Land -- Preamble, Articles, Amendments, separation of powers, separation of church and state -- in technicality and spirit to the core? America's consolidated wealth and power and their news-and-entertainment media machine. That consolidation of executive/legislative/judicial federal powers, wealth-corporate power, Christian-Right religious power, and mass-media power -- into the unbridled right-wing state power that exploits and harms America and other nations today -- began around 1980. That right-wing enemy within -- disguised, protected, and served by their print/radio/TV/film mass media -- grows stronger, more illegal, and more dangerous day by day.

They want us to pit conservatives and liberals against each other -- to "insure domestic Discord" and thus violate our Constitution. That is, they want Americans to help the right wing divide and conquer America. Instead, rally conservatives and liberals to assail the right wing hurting them both.

The right-wing core is 10% of the public, 30 million voters. Their wealth-corporate base is 0.15% of the public, a half-million voters, 2% of the right-wing core; the other 98% is their Christian-Right base, a bloc of 30-million radical-Christian voters the wealth-corporate base wooed and won over to boost their voter clout 50-fold. The victims of the right wing -- conservatives and liberals and their families -- are 90% of the public, perhaps 200 million potential voters. True conservatives and true liberals have much in common: they both revere our Constitution's Preamble, Articles, Amendments, separation of powers, and separation of church and state; the right wing violates them including our true American values -- the self-governance and well-being values enshrined in our Constitution -- clear evidence of how they sympathize with the unjust consolidated wealth and power we revolted against in moral outrage to create America. True conservatives and right-wingers are as different as night and day, as are "Evangelical Christians" and the "Christian Right" (see below). Conservatives and liberals CAN work together as a united civic power to fight their common, and rather small, right-wing enemy. Promote this civic empowerment to assure success of Elements 3-4.

Deception is a weapon used to control and exploit and hurt people, and the right wing has mastered its design and use. They hijacked and hide behind Flag, Bible, Values, Compassion, Conservative, and other symbols and labels of good character. The Christian Right's radical new brand of Christianity, born-again Christian Zionism that emerged in the late 1800s -- a century after our nation was founded -- is so heartlessly at odds with the mortal humanity required by our Constitution it isn't morally Christian (study CivicPowerUSA.org); they hide their inhumane religion behind Evangelical Christianity, another label they hijacked (I should know: I was an Evangelical-Christian alter boy). The right wing's Patriotism, Piety, and Moral Goodness are disguises that conceal unlawfulness and inhumanity. Teach America how to see through their dangerous PR-designed deceptions including through Ownership Society, Free Market, and Liberal Media; this is part of Elements 1-2.

To cripple our civic power, the right wing blocked and erased knowledge of history, law, and duty from our public schools and public mind. They blocked and erased how "corporate personhood," today's belief that corporations were created equal to people and possess inalienable rights like people do, was preposterous and anathema to America's founders -- and how today's system of corporate law, that gives personal rights to corporations, is an illegal house-of-cards that We the People are obligated to blow down and rebuild justly (the 1886 Supreme Court decision that granted corporate-personhood rights was not an actual court decision: it was an assertion by one judge and not deliberated by the court, was falsely entered into the summary record as a real court decision, which became a foundation of modern corporate law that is illegal in technicality and spirit). They blocked and erased how We the People, as members of a jury, have a supreme duty to judge the justness of the law itself, including corporate law, as a direct citizen check on unjust power. They blocked and erased how "[T]he government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion" became supreme law equal in weight to our Constitution when it was written into the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli (US Constitution, Article 6: "all Treaties [are] supreme Law of the Land" wrote the Framers a decade earlier) -- and how that affirmation of secularism and separation-of-church-and-state, written and approved by the White House and Congress and publicized by the press, was so uncontroversial no one objected. And so on. The erasure is so complete our public mind no longer knows that the main purpose of American Democracy, or that the foremost duty of We the People as the government of America, is to provide five major kinds of common good to ourselves and our posterity. Restore our disallowed and purged Civics 101, our civic empowerment and hope, back into America; this is part of Elements 1-2.

Here's one of their many "anti-America" manipulations enabled by their purging of civic understanding. Dissenters and whistleblowers expose injustice, a vital first step toward achieving justice. In early America, dissent was cherished by leaders and citizens. Our Declaration of Independence is a document of dissent. More than half of the Declaration is a list of injustices committed by Britain's wealth and power against the people of Colonial America -- injustices remarkably similar to those inflicted by America's wealth and power on the people of today's America. That homeland wealth and power, aided and abetted their media machine, manipulates citizens by the millions to join them to pillory dissenters and whistleblowers who expose injustices committed by America's wealth and power. Thus the right-wing enemy within and their media machine, besides violating the dissent-against-injustice spirit of our Declaration of Independence, acts dangerously against the first national goal and first American value listed in our Constitution: "We, the People . . . establish Justice."

Take part in this long-overdue major maintenance and tune-up of our democracy: see Elements 1-4 in How to UNITE and COOPERATE to Defend and Fix America (civicpowerusa.org/fix.htm) and elsewhere in CivicPowerUSA.org.

Element 1? Issue a nationwide Full Red Alert about the enemy within and their media machine, including a full list of their injustices and violations of our Constitution. Issue a nationwide call to Defend and Reclaim America as prescribed by our Constitution. A vital first step is to form a conservative-and-liberal national civic-action congress to grow our civic power and direct our nation's return to the America defined by our Constitution, similar to how the Continental Congress built up citizen forces and oversaw the American Revolution; get together with others to get the ball rolling on this.

Element 2? Restore core civic skills (respect, responsibility, cooperation, critical thinking) and core civic understanding (real Civics 101) to America. The so-called Civics 101 taught and practiced today is a corrupted, watered-down version of the real Civics 101 we had after the American Revolution. Real Civics 101 is as incendiary to the enemy within of today as the Declaration of Independence was to the enemy of 1776. They'll try to shout down and spin away this vital re-education. We mustn't let them: this civics-education reform is a crucial part of national-defense / national-security reform.

Elements 3 and 4? They are the grand-finale 4th-of-July political fireworks where Washington and our mass media switch clients: from serving the wealth-corporate / inhumane-Christian right wing, back to serving We the People and our posterity. During Element 3, they are asked to do it voluntarily. If they don't, we make it happen during Element 4.

During this entire civic process, urge individuals and groups -- conservative and liberal -- to unite and cooperate with many others nationwide into a massive consolidated civic power to overwhelmingly defeat the right-wing enemy within and fix our nation. Sell "Principled Self-Governance and Bountiful Common Well-Being" -- the whole point of America, the true meaning of our Flag -- and warn, like Paul Revere's ride, how the actions of the right wing and their media machine subvert our self-governance and hurt our common well-being. Direct your civic efforts to stop violations of our Constitution and to reverse the injustices, cite the exact violations and injustices, and explain your end-result goals precisely as they relate to our Law of the Land: the specific improvements to America's self-governance and common well-being, and how the world and the environment and our posterity would benefit as well. Teach how We the People have vastly more legal power than we are led to believe, how our nation's supreme law is far more than just the First Amendment, and how the goals and values of America are more wondrous than most people realize. Sow and grow and wield this potent civic power.

At the very least, as part of Element 1, spread this vital democracy weapon/tool all over America: CivicPowerUSA.org.

We the People must unite and cooperate in a common cause against our common enemy as resolutely as we did in 1776. Otherwise say goodbye to more-and-more self-governance and common well-being, including our American-Dream opportunity and wealth, and just give it to the enemy within.

Back to our daughter's question: "Dad, why are we bombing Iraq?" The answer from humankind's ancient past and our Charters of Freedom: As feared by the founders of our nation, we lost sight of the multiple national-security defenses written into our Constitution including the supreme power of "We, the People," we dropped our vigilance for danger arising subversively within our homeland, and we allowed a new strain of the ancient wealth-and-power disease to flare up and hurt America and the world.

We must wield our civic power -- the supreme power of We the People -- to force the wealth-and-power disease back into its safe dormant state, and then keep a tight lid on it. Or else we'll lose our civic power, as well as the five types of public good listed in the first sentence of our Constitution, if we allow America to stay on its present downward course and slip past the point of no return into a totalitarian right-wing Amerika. Use it, or lose it.