Press Release for White House “We the People” petition

New White House Petition: Confirm investigation of Donald Trump for colluding with Russia, charge with treason if investigation warrants

Petition based on numerous reports of Trump ties to Russia

 San Francisco, California November 11, 2016—A San Francisco man has placed a new petition on the White House’s “We the People” petition service calling upon President Obama to confirm an investigation of Donald Trump for conspiring with the Russian government to win the 2016 presidential election race. The petition is based on numerous news reports indicating a possible collusion between the Trump campaign, the Russian government, and WikiLeaks.

“Reading Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov’s statement to the Interfax news agency that “There were contacts” between the Russian government and ‘a whole array’ of Trump campaign officials during the campaign, and pro-Kremlin analyst Sergei Markov’s admission that ‘maybe’ the Kremlin ‘helped a bit with WikiLeaks’ has compelled me to post this petition. Donald Trump showed little regard for the United States Constitution during his campaign, so it has not surprised me in the least to learn that his pathological narcissism, or his already being “turned” by the Kremlin, may have taken him down the road to treason.”

The White House petition also cites Mother Jones reporter David Corn’s October 31 story about a “senior Western intelligence officer” who sent a report to the FBI stating that the “Russian regime has been cultivating, supporting/assisting TRUMP for at least 5 years. Aim, endorsed by PUTIN, has been to encourage splits and divisions in western alliance.” Corn reports the officer also told the FBI that Russian intelligence had “compromised” Trump during his visits to Moscow and could “blackmail him”—if they have not done so already.

The White House’s online “We the People” petitions require 100,000 signatures within 30 days to get a response from the White House.

Petition link: https://wh.gov/iekyr

Contact:

Alex Reyes

American citizen

415-216-3626

Reyesanfrancisco@yahoo.com

 

###

Conservatism is killing democracy in America

The Republican Party is doing its damnedest to destroy the democratic spirit of the American people.

The Republican Party’s war on democracy is being staged on many fronts.  Republican presidential candidate frontrunner Donald Trump’s campaign is based on his hysterical take on Mexicans entering the United States illegally in search of a better life, on Middle Eastern refugees who are fleeing certain death in their war-torn countries, and on hurling personal insults at anybody who dares to challenge his antidemocratic bluster. In the Republican-controlled United States Congress, the “Grand Old Party’s” rabid hatred of President Barack Obama has led to the party’s knee-jerk opposition to virtually everything the president proposes, including his signature Affordable Care Act of 2010, and his support for significant gun control legislation. The party continues its opposition to such policies even though both policies have been shown to save American lives. The party is also continuing its efforts to deny the right to vote to as many Americans as possible who are members of groups that do not tend to vote for Republican Party candidates. American conservatism has devolved into a nightmarish antidemocratic, antisocial and inhumane philosophy that is dangerous to the wellbeing of the American people.

It is conservatism’s warped ideological opposition to government being used to advance the public good that places it in opposition to the philosophical foundation upon which the United States of America is based. The Preamble to the United States Constitution represents the social agenda of America’s federal government. It begins, “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union … “ This first intention of the new nation’s Founding Fathers, to form a government that would help to create a human society better than the one they represented in the second half of the Eighteenth Century, is an expression of hope, an expression of a humane human aspiration. To form more perfect human unions, and to “promote the General welfare,” another social goal enumerated in the American government’s constitutional preamble, are goals of democratic philosophy. They are not goals of conservative philosophy.

Conservatism and liberalism became the two dominant political convictions of the American people by the second half of the 20th century. The American Heritage Dictionary defines conservatism as a “political philosophy or attitude that emphasizes respect for traditional institutions and opposes the attempt to achieve social change though legislation or publicly funded programs.” American Heritage defines liberalism as a “political theory founded on the natural goodness of humans and the autonomy of the individual and favoring civil and political liberties, government by law with the consent of the governed, and protection from arbitrary authority.” Liberalism first became the dominant governing principle at the federal level of the United States during the Great Depression, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt expanded the federal government to meet the extreme deprivation of the American people caused by the collapse of their capitalist economic system.

Faced with the near-virtual collapse of American capitalism, President Roosevelt used the federal government to fulfill its pledge to “promote the general Welfare” of the American people. Roosevelt’s “New Deal” programs, which included the Civil Works Administration, Federal Emergency Relief Administration, Tennessee Valley Authority, Works Progress Administration, and Social Security, saved tens of millions of American from starvation. Roosevelt’s humanitarian actions during the worst economic period in American history set the stage for the modern American “welfare state.”

Remarkably, many powerful Americans, primarily from the ranks of the U.S. capitalist class whose financial greed and speculation played a major role in causing the Great Depression, strongly disagreed on conservative political grounds with Franklin Roosevelt’s humanitarian actions. To them, it seemed, capitalism and capitalism alone should elevate the human condition—even in times when capitalism degrades the human condition. In their reaction to Roosevelt’s democratic efforts was born the modern American conservative political movement. Despite the ensuing liberal bent of American governance at the national level, conservative Republicans and Southern Democrats controlled the United States Congress for much of the period between Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency and 1964.

Racist Southern Democrats left the Democratic Party in droves and joined the Republican Party beginning in 1964, during the period of time in which Democratic Party President Lyndon Baines Johnson pushed through Congress historic civil rights and voting rights legislation. Enraged by Washington’s efforts to raise African Americans to a position of full social equality within the United States, these former Democrats injected the Republican Party with the vicious racist spirit that had practiced first human slavery and then the racial segregation of African Americans for almost 200 years. Although many Republican Party establishment figures are fearful of a Trump nomination, their leading candidate’s “fear and loathing” political strategy is in line with the strategy prior Republican Party presidential candidates have used successfully in the past half-century.

The Republican Party has become a clear and present danger to the wellbeing of the American people and to the human democratic experience in the United States of America. Any American who still believes in the liberating promise to humanity of human democracy should not support the party in any way, including voting for its candidates for public office.

Republican Party policies are complicit in the killing of Americans

The Republican Party is a national health hazard.  The party’s hysterical response to the Barack Obama presidency has resulted in a political and social war on gun control legislation and health care expansion for the American people.  The Republicans’ conservative social agenda is not social.  It is antisocial, antidemocratic and inhumane.

His desire to reduce gun violence in the United States largely stymied by a National Rifle Association-controlled United States Congress, President Barack Obama announced on Tuesday a set of new executive actions designed to reinforce existing federal gun control legislation. President Obama’s orders, described by the New York Times as “modest” and by a former Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Special Agent as containing “nothing there. This is just a restatement of existing law,” include requiring self-described “hobbyists” who are in the business of selling firearms at guns shows and online websites to be licensed and to conduct criminal background checks of their prospective customers; requiring trusts and corporations established to sell firearms to conduct background checks before doing so; ordering the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which receives 63,000 criminal background checks each day, to increase the number of employees who process the checks to 230 people; asking Congress for funding to hire 200 new Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to better enforce existing gun control laws (the bureau, a favorite target of the N.R.A., has the same level of staffing now that it had in 1971), and announcing a modernization of the computer systems that the United States government uses to process criminal background checks.

In announcing these new actions, President Obama reiterated for the umpteenth time that he supports the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, that his goal is not to take arms away from law-abiding American citizens, and that the attempt by the president and others to pass “common-sense” gun control legislation will not occur during his presidency. “I believe in the Second Amendment,” the president said in announcing his new actions. “It’s there written (in the Constitution). It guarantees a right to bear arms. … But I also believe that we can find ways to reduce gun violence consistent with the Second Amendment.”

President Obama’s heartfelt action was taken as part of a process to end the tyranny of “the Gun Lobby Era” in American politics, and was met by the usual scathing denunciations of his actions by a Republican Party that has been dedicated to a negation of his presidency since the night of his first inauguration in January 2009.

“From Day 1,” Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said in a statement issued by his office, “the president has never respected the right to safe and legal gun ownership that our nation has valued since its founding. … His words and actions amount to a form of intimidation that undermines liberty. … His executive order will no doubt be challenged in the courts. Ultimately, everything the president has done can be overturned by a Republican president, which is another reason we must win in November.”

The highest-ranking Republican Party elected official in American politics, Paul Ryan’s politically calculated condemnation of the straw man Republicans have constructed in support of their seven-year long effort to assassinate the character of Barack Obama were quickly echoed by most of the Republican Party’s presidential candidates, and by the rest of the other congressmen and Conservative American Talking Heads who dominate most national discussions in the “liberal” mainstream media. But when the Republican Party acts on behalf of the National Rifle Association to successfully thwart common sense gun control legislation, lives are lost.

“Each time (mass shootings occur),” President Obama said on Tuesday, “we are fed the excuse that common-sense reforms like background checks might not have stopped the last massacre, or the one before that, or the one before that, so why bother trying. … In fact, we know that background checks make a difference. After Connecticut passed a law requiring background checks and gun safety courses, gun deaths decreased by 40% … . Meanwhile, since Missouri repealed a law requiring comprehensive background checks and purchase permits, gun deaths have increased to an almost 50% higher (level) than the national average. … the evidence tells us that in states that require background checks, law-abiding Americans don’t find it any harder to purchase guns whatsoever. Their guns have not been confiscated. Their rights have not been infringed.” The president’s statistics are drawn from two studies conducted by the Schools of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University and the University of California at Berkeley.

President Obama’s measured thinking in support of his gun control measures do indeed appear to be little more than simple common sense. But the Republican Party has a long history of keeping American political discourse at a hysterical, irrational pitch. The Republican Party’s ideological war against the Affordable Care Act of 2010 is but one of many example of how the Republican Party’s self-described conservative political ideology is resulting in innocent American lives being lost.

Various studies have measured the cost in American lives lost due to a lack of healthcare coverage, and the gains Americans have made in securing healthcare coverage since the passage of the Affordable Care Act. A 2009 study conducted by the Harvard University Medical School-affiliated Cambridge Health Alliance estimated that over 44,000 Americans died due to a lack of health coverage in 2005. In June 2012, a study released by Families USA showed that 26,100 Americans died in 2010 due to the same lack of coverage. The Department of Health and Human Services reports that an estimated 17.6 million Americans who did not have healthcare before the Affordable Care Act of 2010 became law now do have coverage. The uninsured rate for Americans has dropped from 18% to 9.2% in 2015, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics. With the uninsured rate nearly halved by the end of 2015 since the implementation of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, we can estimate that a minimum of slightly over 13,000 Americans are less likely to die each year due to their having gained health care coverage.

The health benefit to the American people who have gained health care coverage under true Affordable Care Act are skewed nationally, due to the resistance of Republican Party governors to extend Affordable Care Act coverage to its citizens. An October 2015 Kaiser Family Foundation study has determined that 10% of the 32,339,000 non-elderly Americans who still do not have health care coverage cannot gain coverage because they live in one of the 19 states with Republican Party governors who refuse to offer the program to their citizens. The percentages of Americans by state who fall into this “coverage gap” range from 33% of Alabama’s uninsured to 12% of Utah’s 337,000 uninsured. The failure of the Republican governors of these 19 states to offer their citizens the benefit of health care coverage offered by the Affordable Care Act means that more Americans have already died since the 2010 passage of “Obamacare” due to their states’ governors’ conservatism.

Republican Party ideology is complicit in the deaths of an as yet untold number of American men, women and children. The Republican Party is a clear and present threat to a democratic society in the United States.

 

Works Cited

“Cavanagh: ‘This doesn’t really change anything.’” Jan. 5, 2016. MSNBC.com. Video.

“Dying for Coverage: The Deadly Consequences of Being Uninsured.” June 2012. Families USA. Online.

“Moving Toward a Better, Smarter Healthcare System with an Engaged and Empowered Consumer at the Center.” Oct. 9, 2015. Department of Health and Human Services. United States Government. Online.

Rudolph, Kara E., Elizabeth A. Stuart, Jon S. Vernick, and Daniel W. Webster.  “Association Between Connecticut’s Permit-to-Purchase Handgun Law and Homicides.” American Journal of Public Health: August 2015, Vol. 105, No. 8, pp. e49-e54.  Online.

Webster, Daniel W., Cassandra Kercher, Crifasi and Jon S. Vernick. Feb. 17, 2014 with May 15, 2014 Update. “Repeal of Missouri’s Background Check Law Associated With Increase in State’s Murders.” Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Online.

Wilper, Andrew P., MD, MPH, Steffie Woolhandler, MD, MPH, Karen E. Lasser, MD, MPH, Danny McCormick, MD, MPH, David H. Bor, MD, and David U. Himmelstein, MD. “Health Insurance and Mortality in US Adults.” Dec. 2009. American Journal of Public Health. Online.

Now is the time for all good people to come to the aid of democracy in America

The history of democracy in the United States of America is a history of both democracy and antidemocracy, a history of both American humanity and American inhumanity.

The Preamble to the Constitution of the United States begins with a soaring democratic hope—“We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union”—and proclaims lofty social goals—“to establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” But the democratic idealism of the Preamble was followed by a “states rights”-driven political system in which only property-owning Anglo Saxon males, for the most part, could participate, and by a social and economic system based, to a significant degree, on the capture, transport and labor of enslaved Africans. The National Archives and Records Administration reports that only six percent of the adults living in the original 13 American states were allowed to vote in state and national elections. African Americans were not allowed to vote until passage of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1870. Despite the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, African Americans were denied the right to vote in Southern states until the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were signed into law. Antidemocratic social forces acting on behalf of the Republican Party  have waged a steady battle against the full enfranchisement of African American and poor Americans in the fifty-plus years since the passage of the historic civil rights legislation.

The often-violent social tension between the humane and the inhumane that has existed in everyday American life since 1789 was on terrifying social display again in 2015, a year marred by 330 mass shootings, according to Gun Violence Archive; a seemingly endless number of African American children and adults who were gunned down, suffocated, or tortured to death by Tasers and other means by police; hate crimes committed against African Americans and their places of religious worship; Muslim Americans and their places of religious worship, and against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender men and women.

In June 2015, a self-proclaimed “White Supremacist” shot and killed nine African Americans at the historic Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C. The shooter of the nine bible study attendees explained before he carried out the murders that he wanted to incite a new civil war in the United States. Fires were set by unknown assailants at six African American churches in five southern states in the wake of the Charleston shootings. The removal of the flag of the Confederate States of America from the grounds of the South Carolina state capitol, and the removal of the Mississippi state flag, the design of which includes a Confederate States flag, from the grounds of the University of Mississippi, and the ongoing debate in other Southern states to remove tributes to those who fought to preserve human slavery in the United States during the American Civil War, are the first such democratic gains to occur in the United States in 110 years.

This bedrock antidemocratic, antisocial and inhumane American racist tradition gained a strong national political candidate in June 2015, with the entrance of Donald Trump into the 2016 race for the Republican Party presidential candidate nomination. Trump, the billionaire American businessman, began his campaign by branding Mexicans crossing the Mexico-U.S. border illegally as being mostly murderers and rapists, and has since waged a campaign of character assassination directed not just at desperate Mexicans seeking a better life in the United States, but against Middle Eastern refugees, women, and anybody—fellow Republican Party presidential contenders included—who dare to call him out for the decidedly non-democratic nature of his attempt to capture the American presidency. Conservative American and Republican Party elders will surely continue to mobilize their efforts in 2016 to block Trump from becoming their party’s nominee to win the presidency from the Democratic Party in November.  But Trump’s full-throated appeal to the worst of the racist and xenophobic instincts of the American people is the clearest manifestation yet of the Republican Party’s racist and xenophobic “Southern strategy,” which was first implemented by Richard Nixon in his successful 1968 bid for the American presidency.

The human democratic experience in the United States has been utterly corrupted since the birth of the nation by American anti democracy, and by the U.S.’s Twentieth Century transformation into an imperial warrior nation whose power has destroyed and helped to destroy other nation’s democratic governments, and has destroyed and helped to destroy democratic social movements at home and abroad. The American people must begin to consciously reject their nation’s antidemocratic past and present if democracy is to ever break free from its spirit-killing shackles in the home of the brave.

How American Democrats gave democracy a bad name

George Washington pledged his allegiance to no political party when he served as the United States of America’s first president.

The revolutionary English colonists’ Continental Congress had appointed Washington their military General and Commander in Chief in 1775. He was elected president of the Constitution Convention held in Philadelphia in 1787, and the new nation’s Electoral College unanimously voted him the first American president in 1789 and 1792.

In his 1796 presidential Farewell Address, which was a written statement delivered to Congress and never delivered as a speech, George Washington said that the American people should “(o)bserve good faith and justice tow(ar)ds all Nations,” and that “permanent inveterate antipathies against particular Nations and passionate attachments for others should be excluded.” Washington also, “in the most solemn manner,” warned his fellow citizens about “the baneful effects of the Spirit of the Party,” in reference to the democratically corrupting influence of political parties. “This Spirit, unfortunately,” Washington wrote, “is inseperable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human Mind. It exists under different shapes in all Governments … but in those of the popular form it is seen in its greatest rankness and is truly their worst enemy.”

Washington’s wise counsel to those he had served as president went unheeded: John Adams, the United States’ second president, did not follow up on Washington’s caution, nor did any other ensuing American president. John Adams was a member of the Federalist Party, the new nation’s first political party. The Federalist Party dissolved upon merging with the National Republicans political party in 1824, the National Republicans merged into the Whig Party in 1833, and, in 1854, the Whig Party dissolved upon merging with the new Republican Party. The new Republican Party was formed on March 20, 1854, in response to the federal government’s passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of the same year, which allowed white male settlers in new American territories to decide for themselves whether or not to expand slavery in the still-developing country. The first Republican Party consisted of three Whigs, one “Free Soiler”— named after the Free Soil Party, a short-lived, single-issue Northern group opposed to slavery and the expansion of slavery—and a member of the Democratic Party. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 is considered to be one of the key events in United States history leading to the start of the Civil War six years later.

Former members of the Democratic Republican Party founded the Democratic Party in 1828. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, the third and fourth American presidents, respectively, had co-founded the Democratic Republican Party in 1791. Although James Monroe and John Quincy Adams, the fifth and sixth presidents, respectively, were also Democratic Republicans, the party dissolved in 1825. The Democratic Party was founded three years later to support Andrew Jackson, a hero of the War of 1812 and the United States’ seventh president. Jackson was also a slave-owning Southern plantation owner in Tennessee, and his Democrats became the primary political voice in support of slavery in the United States.

The contradiction between the individual human rights and social equality proclaimed by the English colonists in their 1776 Declaration of Independence, and the practice of human slavery in the new country, was obvious to many Americans. The Free Soil Party’s actual name was the Free Democracy of the United States party. In their 1852 political platform statement, party members declared that “the true mission of American Democracy is to maintain the liberties of people … by the impartial application to public affairs, without sectional discrimination, of the fundamental principles of human rights, strict justice, and an economical administration.” The Free Soilers used the words “impartial application” and “without sectional discrimination” to contrast their beliefs with the partial application of democratic rights, if any, that were meted out by Southern slave owners to African slaves.

The Democratic Party served as the “loyal voice” within the United States government throughout the Civil War for those who opposed both the Union’s waging of war against the secessionist Confederate states and the granting of freedom to enslaved African Americans. In 1864, the Republican Party selected Southern Democrat Andrew Johnson, who was opposed to secession, to be Abraham Lincoln’s second vice president. Johnson proved himself unwilling to fully enforce a race-neutral Reconstruction upon the defeated Southern states after Lincoln’s assassination resulted in Johnson becoming president. After Johnson lost his bid to become an elected president in 1868, the Democratic Party also lost enough national support to become nearly a regional, Southern party only. The Republican Party held the White House for 48 of the next 64 years.

In 1964, another Southern Democratic Party president, Lyndon Baines Johnson, reversed his party’s 140-year history of supporting the racist suppression of African Americans. Johnson and a Democratic Party-led Congress won passage of the Civil Rights Act, which outlawed discrimination based on color, national origin, religion, or sex. In 1965, the Voting Rights Act was enacted, a bill that reinforced the Civil Rights Act ban on voting discrimination.

These federal acts, and other federal legislation intended to provide full democratic rights to African Americans, led to Southern racists fleeing the Democratic Party for the Republican Party. The Republican Party, the Party of Lincoln that was created to oppose racial discrimination in the United States, turned on its historical reason for being and welcomed the unrepentant “sons and daughters of the Confederacy” into their fold. Fifty years later, the Republican Party has become the major political force in the United States intent on rolling back the democratic rights African Americans gained in the 1960s. Democracy in America continues to suffer as an antidemocratic Republican Party maintains its political power at the heart of American governance and society.

It remains the responsibility of the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, and all Americans to forsake the “baneful effects of the spirit of the Party” that George Washington forewarned his fellow citizens about, and to recommit ourselves, our political parties (if any are needed, heeding Washington), and our country to the democratic social principles upon which “the leader of the free world” was founded.

Conservative/liberal, left/right—what is the American spirit?

Democracy

1. Government by the people, exercised either directly or through elected representatives.
2. A political or social unit that has such a government.
3. The common people, considered as the primary source of political power.
4. Majority rule.
5. The principles of social equality and respect for the individual within a community.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Online)

Democracy is more than just a form of government: democracy is humanity’s humane philosophy. As the American Heritage Dictionary and a library of other published works tell us, democratic philosophy argues that human conduct be based upon a recognition of and respect for the individual human rights and social equality of all people, and that governments should be elected by all free adult citizens. Democratic philosophy applies to people at the individual level as well: Every person should treat oneself with the same dignity and respect that one should extend to every other person. In this light, democracy can be seen as a secular expression of the “Golden Rule” or “ethic of reciprocity“ (for example, “Do unto others as you would have them to do unto you.”[1]) shared by 11 world religions.[2] Democracy is indeed humanity’s humane philosophy.

When the leaders of the English people living in Great Britain’s thirteen North American colonies felt compelled to justify their break with the British throne and fight to establish an independent country, they published their “unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America” on July 4, 1776. “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” the American revolutionists declared, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The English colonists’ appeal to a watchful world was neither conservative nor liberal in nature, nor was it “left,” “right” or “middle of the road,” nor was it a call for any specific economic system or religious belief. The American colonists appealed instead to the democratic spirit of their fellow human beings. This humane spirit to which the “Founding Fathers” appealed is the spiritual center, the sweet spot, of not just the colonists, but of all human beings.

Because the American declaration in 1776 was limited in the drafters’ minds to the rights of men only (and thus, the phrasing of “all men are created equal”), their statement suffered from the same male-dominant shortcoming that had existed in other societies dating back to ancient Greece and Rome that practiced limited democracy. And the nascent North American society suffered as well from the inhumane racism that justified the enslavement of captured African people. But as Great Britain and France also practiced human slavery in the late eighteenth century, and as the nations of Europe were also patriarchal in social structure, the social slight of women and the New World slave trade were not in the minds of those who understood the American declaration to be a revolutionary human rights statement.

The same rhetorical high regard for human life found in the American Declaration of Independence is found in the social compact that is the Preamble to the United States Constitution: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence (sic), promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

These democratic goals and obligations are idealistic (“a more perfect Union,”), humane (“establish justice, insure domestic Tranquility, promote the general Welfare”), realistic (“Provide for the common defence”) and forward-looking (“secure the Blessings ofLiberty to ourselves and our Posterity”). Despite their own inhumane flaws, the Founding Fathers’ appeal to the democratic spirit within all human life was inspired.

The American Declaration of Independence in 1776 has provided a voice to millions of people throughout the world since who have proclaimed their own independence from aristocracies, monarchies, despotisms, oligarchies, and other inhumane regimes. The Preamble to the United States Constitution remains the same divine insight into what human societies should commit themselves to as on the day the United States Constitution was ratified on June 21, 1788.

Such is the rich human democratic foundation upon which the United States of America was established.

[1] New International Version of the Holy Bible, Luke 6:31

[2] Baha’i Faith, Brahmanism, Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, Taoism, Zoroastrianism. See: The “Golden Rule (a.k.a Ethics of Reciprocity).” Religious Tolerance.org. Online.

Democracy vs. the Republican Party of the United States of America

Human democracy is under attack in the United States of America by maddened political conservative ideologues within the Republican Party. These self-professed “sons and daughters of liberty” are possessed by an hysterical and irrational mix of political, religious and oftentimes racist rage, which they direct against having to coexist in a democratic society with a non-conservative, non-Republican Party American president and a majority non-conservative democratic body politic.

As seen in their longstanding and ongoing national campaign to deny eligible American citizens of their right to vote in democratic elections; in their longstanding hostility to government programs designed to “promote the general Welfare” of citizens; in their ongoing presidential campaign, which features the most hysterical and irrational of antisocial voices in and out of elective office; and in their disruption of governance in the United States Congress, which has resulted in the party unable to govern the United States House of Representatives, politically conservative America and its Republican Party are guilty of committing antisocial, inhumane crimes against democracy in the United States of America.

How should “We, the people,” respond to the Republican Party’s attack upon democracy in America?

Democracy in America 2014

Democracy is both a form of government and a social philosophy. In a better world, democratic government and democratic philosophy would be self-reinforcing.

Democratic government is best served when its constituents are fully engaged in the social democratic process. Such a society would use all means necessary, including the most modern technology, to ensure full participation in democratic governance. Democratic debate would be based on facts and reason, with no allowance for falsehoods or prejudice. Robust social discussion would result in robust support for government’s decisions.

Democratic philosophy—based on promoting individual human rights, social equality and social tolerance—is best served by a society united in support of all three principles. Individual conduct would be limited only by a healthy social respect for all other members of the society. Social inequality would not exist; there would be no poverty. Social tolerance for all non-violent lifestyles would be the universal cultural norm.

Reality proves there are no perfectly functioning democracies in human society. Such democratic imperfection does not mean, however, that world democracies cannot be measured and judged.

World democratic government

One of the most important measures of a well-functioning democratic government is eligible voter participation in elections. Another is a people’s respect for all eligible citizens’ right to vote.

In 2005, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance published “Turnout in the world – country by country performance 1945-98,” which provides average voter participation rates for all 140 countries that held national elections during those years.

The Economist Intelligence Unit’s “Democracy Index 2011″ lists 25 full democracies in the world.

Combining the two lists shows us the voter participation rates for those countries.

Voter Turnout 1945-1998

(International IDEA)

Iceland                                89.5

New Zealand                     86.2

Austria                                85.1

Belgium                              84.9

Czech Republic                 84.8

Netherlands                      84.8

Australia                            84.4

Denmark                            83.6

Sweden                               83.3

Mauritius                           82.8

Germany                            80.6

Norway                               79.5

Finland                               79.0

Malta                                   77.6

Spain                                   77.0

Ireland                                74.9

United Kingdom               74.9

South Korea                       74.8

Uruguay                             70.3

Japan                                  69.0

Canada                               68.4

Costa Rica                          68.4

Luxembourg                      64.1

Switzerland                       49.3

USA                                     48.3

The American people’s bottom-dwelling participation rate in national elections has improved somewhat since 1998. The Center for the Study of the American Electorate claims that voter turnout rates in the 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2012 national elections were 54.2, 60.4, 62.3 and 57.5 percent, respectively.

This post-1998 estimate of 58.6% electoral participation would move the United States up one place ahead of Switzerland on the list, provided, of course, that Switzerland’s rate during the same time period has not exceeded 58.6%.

The Economist Intelligence Unit’s ranking of world democracies is based on a variety of factors, including their scoring of each country’s electoral process and pluralism, political culture and civil liberties.

The Scandinavian countries of Norway, Iceland, Denmark and Sweden rank the highest.

The United States of America ranks 19th. It is ranked next-to-last in the functionality of its government and is tied with Austria, Germany and the United Kingdom in having the least amount of support for civil liberties.

Democratic government in the United States of America

In their “Democracy index 2011: Democracy under stress,” the Economist Intelligence Unit list seven key factors in making 2011 “an exceptionally turbulent year politically.” Two of the factors cited are “US democracy has been adversely affected by a deepening of the polarisation (sic) of the political scene and political brinksmanship and paralysis” and “(t)he US and the (United Kingdom) remain at the bottom of the full democracy category.”

The Republican Party’s ceaseless attempts to restrict voting in the United States has destabilized democracy throughout the country. Although Republican Party officials attempt to defend their anti-democratic efforts by claiming widespread voter fraud, the reality is that it is Republican Party officials and operatives, far more often than not, who are guilty of such fraud.

When the people of the nation of the generally recognized “leader of the free world” participate in numbers which rank at the bottom of the list of full democracies, the human democratic movement is indeed under stress.

Democratic social philosophy in the United States of America

In its online “World Factbook,” the Central Intelligence Agency publishes the Gini Index. The index “measures the degree of inequality in the distribution of family income in a country.” The lowest-ranked country represents the most equal distribution of family income.

Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Luxembourg enjoy the most equality of family incomes.

The United States ranks 41st, far from the “we’re number one” position many Americans claim. Other national rankings confirm the less-than-well state of social democracy in the United States.

According to the CIA, the United States life expectancy rate of 78.49 years, and its infant mortality rate of 6 deaths per 1,000 live births, rank it 51st in the world in both categories.

A 2012 U.S. Department of Justice report reveals the United States incarcerates more of its own citizens than any other nation.

And according to the United States Census Bureau, 46.2 million citizens (15%) were living in poverty in 2011.

If there were a stronger social will to end poverty in the United States, our economy could have eradicated the social blight decades ago.

The United States’ failure to maintain a healthy government committed to democratic social principles has failed the promise our country’s Founding Fathers made to humanity in 1789, when the Preamble to the United States Constitution, pledged the people of the new nation “to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility . . . promote the general Welfare, and insure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”

Democracy in the United States of America?

Not enough.

The tragedy of Bob Woodward

Bob Woodward is one of my childhood heroes.

In 1974 or 1975, I joined the Book of the Month Club and received “All the President’s Men” in my first shipment of books.  I revered both Woodward and Carl Bernstein after reading their book.

I’ve been troubled by some of Woodward’s actions since the George W. Bush presidency, but I’ve held firm in feeling nothing but respect for him.

When Woodward joined the bulk of American reporters in falling behind President George W. Bush and all of his men and women in lying our country into war in Iraq, I let it pass.

When Woodward showed himself to be too cozy to power in the form of former CIA Director George Tenet, I let it pass.

When Woodward made it a point last week to argue that the pending blanket federal government budget cut (“sequestration”) was originally President Barack Obama’s idea, as if his assertion matters now that the potentially economically devastating cuts are nigh, I let it pass.

I can do so no longer.

Bob Woodward has become an embarrassing shadow of his Watergate Days self.

In the journalism class I’m now taking, one of the things the instructor has told us is to not become a part of a story.

By crying—falsely—that he has been threatened by Obama administration official Gene Sperling, Woodward has not just become a part of a story, he has become a part of a story in a partisan shill way.

Sadly, I now believe Bob Woodward is just another journalist in a long line of them who have come to represent the dark side of American journalism and society.

I am sure Fox News would love to add Bob Woodward to their stable.

Republican treason on 9/11

On September 11, 2012, Republican Party presidential candidate Mitt Romney accused President Barack Obama of “sympathizing with the enemy” in the midst of ongoing attacks on Americans in Egypt and Libya.  Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus quickly seconded his party’s presidential candidate with his own declaration, which he issued via Twitter.

Let us be perfectly clear:  In the early hours of what became a days-long siege of United States and other nations’ diplomatic missions throughout the Middle East, which resulted in the murder of U.S. Libya ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, the Republican Party’s presidential candidate and chairman accused the President of The United States of committing an act of treason.

The Republican Party representatives based their accusation on a statement that had been issued by the American embassy in Cairo hours before the embassy was attacked.  The Cairo statement was an attempt to dampen Islamic anger over an anti-Islamic film posted on the Internet that had been made in California and translated into Arabic.

It is the U.S. Cairo embassy statement that Mitt Romney and Reince Priebus said was “sympathizing with the enemy.”  The charge of treason issued by both men, then, applies to the representatives of the United States government in Cairo who issued it.

Neither President Obama nor U.S. Cairo personnel committed treason.

Instead it is Mitt Romney, Reince Priebus and the Republican Party who committed an act of treasonous intent when falsely accusing the American president and other U.S. officials of sympathizing with the enemy while The United States of America was under attack on foreign soil.

Will Mitt Romney, Reince Priebus and other members of Romney/Ryan 2012 and the Republican Party ever be tried for their own acts of treasonous libel, either in the American judicial system or in the court of public opinion?

If not, why not?

To do otherwise would be to remain complicit in the Republican Party’s continuing subversion of democracy in The United States of America.