Holte's corner

Peace, Security and Enlightenment

"If the nation is destroyed and people's homes are wiped out, then where can one flee for safety? If you care anything about your personal security, you should first of all pray for order and tranquility throughout the four quarters of the land, should you not?"

(WND, 24)
On Establishing the correct Teaching for the Peace of the Land
Submitted to Hojo Tokiyori on July 16, 1260

The thing I admire about Nichiren, and the thing I don't admire about many spiritual leaders before and after him, was that he made the connection between public ethics and spiritual salvation. The fact is that the two are linked. Spiritual corruption and political corruption are linked. And counterfeit religion and counterfeit politics and political advertizing (otherwise known as propaganda) go hand in hand. The word "con" isn't in "neo-con" for nothing.

Great religious leaders sometimes seem naive as political leaders. But that is not always a truth so much as a cynical and degraded view of the truth. When Nichiren moved to Kamakura he was engaging in creating a political religion. The idea that politics is an evil thing is bogus. Politics is imply the art of getting things done and defining boundaries between people and rules for crossing those boundaries.

As long as there is more than one person interracting in a society there is politics. Politics, good and evil, religion and survival, are all tied up and interpolated. The first act of good and evil was also political. When the bible depicts Eve and Adam eating the apple, they are depicting a political act, with political consequences.

Law is politics codified. Law, politics, without justice is naked tyranny, and it is also politics. When a politician says "politics should have nothing to do with it" that politician is stating an absurdity. I know what he means; Corruption, self interest, "realpolitik", "idealism", all are political. When one works for an employer, 50% of one's work is usually political, and that is if one works on a factory floor. For management, the entire work is political. The notion that somehow corporations are different from "governance" is absurd. Corporations are a way of Governing a business. Corporate Government was created to imitate military and executive Governments. What libertarians mean when they say "get Government off my back" is "let me be the Government of my own roost." Different things.

One can have Aristocrats in a Republic. They are the ones who are allowed to vote when the franchise is denied to everyone else. They are the ones who can pretend to be virtuous because they have enough power, money and influence, so that they can corrupt others. Government is the exercise of power. Democracy is when power is well enough distributed so that people have to consult with one another, or get coalitions in order to oppress people.

Government is always a fight between Aristocrats, wannabe Aristocrats, and other people, generally the aristocrats and wannabe aristocrats are the most loud and obnoxious. Aristocrats because they already govern considerable portions of the commons, have arrogated properties to themselves, and they want the right to oppress people with impunity. Wannabe aristocrats because they often prey on people's sense of justice so they can acquire property through political means and oppress people -- often including the aristocrats they are fighting.

Adjudicating claims and counter claims on the common good is the function of Government at all levels. Claims that there is an automatic and rigid separation between, say, the tenth amendment "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people," forget that the people own this country and if they select delegates, and can get enough consensus on a thing than that thing is perfectly constitutional. The Government doesn't own our rights, it is a trustee of them.

For example, If we create a National Health System that is not an abrogation of the people's right, but the people deciding to put their trust in a National Health System. It is by its very nature constitutional, especially if the creators of such a system (As Bernie Sanders would do) put the execution of the system in the hands of State Branches, constituent members, or in the hands of the State Governments. Politics is about misreading a law conveniently, and then arguing that someone is violating it -- because such a law if enacted would create inconvenience for the few opposing the law.

It's just politics, but it is spiritual too. If we lived only for our selfish gratification, if there were any truth to the notion that we all should be islands to ourselves, then perhaps right wing propaganda and libertarian economics would make some kind of selfish sense, but even then it would fail, because working for the common good is in the common good, and not working for it simply gambling on not being a victim of the gamble. Fibbertarianism is based on the notion that "greed is good" "selfishness is good" and the common good is bad. All that is deluded thinking. There is no good that comes out of greed, and very little good that comes from selfish thinking.

So when you hear a libertarian pontificating about how having single payer health care is "nanny state" and "unconstitutional" or calling people who advocate such "statists" just remember that
a; they are silent when it comes to torture, to legal oppression, and
b; see it as a good thing when Corporations are allowed to exercise rights denied to living person citizens.

Governance is also ownership, so transfering ownership from States and Federal Government to Corporations is just giving over power to the Corporate State -- it isn't really freeing anybody except the executives of those companies. So when economic aristocrats want to do away with Nanny State, it is so they can exercise baronial corporate state powers locally and do away with "nanny" provisions such as 5 day work-weeks or statutory vacations.

It's all POV. I guess there is nothing wrong with oppressing employees if one is a corporate baron (or baronette in some cases) or one of his retainers. If you don't believe me just follow the logic over a period of time of so called "libertarians" and you'll see them come out and rant about how mandating a weeks vacation is tyranny. Just follow the logic, follow the money, and deconstruct the logic, and the truth becomes clear.

The welfare of the nation depends on us looking out for the common welfare and not giving in to economic royalists and

Chris