What we are about is a very old story. The struggle of common people against tyranny and corruption is as old as mankind, and its cost has left millions upon millions of parents in sorrow through the ages.
Where do you think it ends when people no longer trust their leaders or their government? When two equal factions of a society no longer trust each other? When both sides absolutely believe that they exclusively own the moral imperative? When more money than any of us can dream stands in the balance? And where do you think it ends when either side is willing to do absolutely anything for power?
When people can no longer find common ground or common purpose, the lessons of history are all too clear. We know how it has ended.
But there is a way forward. There is still a path back to democracy. Though it has been largely ignored, our Founding Fathers left us a clear blueprint, and our history has prepared us for a peaceful revolution. There is a way to fit it – fix it all. To succeed, there are several things we must do together:
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Jettison our hatred and open our hearts we have to start trusting immediately. What it means is that we have to first demand virtue of ourselves and live in the whole truth. Then, we will have to start trying to see into the hearts and minds of those with whom we disagree and try to understand the foundation of what they believe. If we can go that far, we can start rebuilding our trust.
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Convince the overwhelming majority of Americans to follow us – not just 50 percent, but 70, 80 percent, or more. We cannot be about petty partisan or ideological goals, no matter how much we believe in them, but instead focus on the fundamental requirements of our republic – tenets on which we all agree. If we can accomplish this, we will find a vast and level field of common ground on which to build.
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Craft a vehicle, a message that is simple, clear, and direct – something around which we can rally. As God as our witness, we can do this, and bring about a rebirth of democracy in the United States of America!
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Conquer the fear that we are too small and insignificant to take on the Establishment. We will have to reign in our preconceptions of what is possible. If we can do that, our creativity will shine through, and we will make the amazing happen. We have all the power we need. Start expanding what you believe is possible.
As a people and as a government, we’ve lost our virtue and our truth, and as a result, there is no trust. Our elected representatives no longer serve the people. They serve the Establishment that gets them elected. The Establishment is driven solely by an insatiable thirst for power and financial gain.
To correct these failures and in the doing fix our system of government, we must begin with a legal foundation. To do that we need look no further than the Declaration of Independence. Our Founding Fathers anticipated such a situation as we are in right now. They understood human weakness and the creeping influences of corruption.
“To secure our rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers, from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem the most likely to affect their Safety and Happiness.” – Thomas Jefferson
It’s time to apply them as intended. It is clear to at least 90% of us that our system of government is broken. Therefore, it is our legal and God-given right to alter our present system and create one that will work in our best interests.
The solution is simple. Take the money out of politics. The only people who don’t want to take the money out of politics are the ones getting rich from it.
Our government is based on laws, and these laws create the system. Our system is broken, so we need to change the laws to fix the system. However, statutory law cannot fix the problem. It has repeatedly been tried and failed – probably even made the situation worse. To fix our system we need a Constitutional Amendment to override all of those Supreme Court cases aligned against us. And we can start the whole deal, right here, right now by simply convincing 33 Nebraska State Senators to ratify our amendment.
What if, we can write an amendment so dramatically straight-forward that almost every one of us agrees it should be ratified? Then, we take this wildly popular Amendment, and we ratify it in the Nebraska Unicameral with the affirmative vote of only 33 State Senators. Without the quest, the audacity of the move would light up our prairie sky with a media frenzy we can only imagine. Overnight, state legislators and governors nationwide would be thrust into the debate. Hundreds of millions of Americans will have already read and reread the Amendment on every media platform out there. By sheer weight of its honesty and popular support, state legislatures across the nation follow Nebraska in ratifying the Amendment, and before anyone can spell “Establishment,” the requisite 38 states have voted for ratification. Some even go so far as to call special sessions to challenge the amendment because the requirements of Article V have not been met, but the will of the people is clear. The Supreme Court will declare the Amendment valid. It will become the law and our nation will be saved.
Article V of the Constitution of the United States says that two-thirds of both houses of Congress or a two-thirds majority of a States Convention are required to propose amendments to the Constitution. The word ‘required’ or anything like it does not appear in Article V, and legal scholars for many years have argued that there are other methods of introducing amendments to the Constitution available to the will of the people – other methods like the Nebraska Strategy. Further, scholars point out that the Founding Fathers themselves used the same logic to ratify our Constitution in the first place. They bypassed the procedures established by the Articles of Confederation and succeeded in ratification through the popular support of the people – exactly what we are planning to do.
What do you think would more clearly establish the will of the people – 535 men and women in Congress who are largely owned by the Establishment elite, or 7,383 state legislators who are in every practical way closer to the people? What’s more, there is precedent. According to the National Archives, ‘In the past, State Legislatures have not waited to receive official notice before taking action on a proposed amendment. They have either supported or rejected amendments before ever having been proposed, and their actions have stood. The bottom line is that in Article V of the Constitution, State Legislatures are singled out as dominant. They and only they can ratify amendments to the Constitution. When three-fourths of them agree, an amendment becomes law. Period.
The 28th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the New Democracy Amendment, will bring about the next step in the evolution of our democratic republic by elevating the power of the people over that of the Establishment.
Section 1. It shall be the duty of the people, the media, and the government of the United States to act in the spirit of the twelve common virtues of citizenship. These virtues are Truth as the path to understanding; Faith in the goodness of humankind; Sacrifice for the greater good; Frugality in the avoidance of waste; Balance to avoid the corruption of extremes; Discipline to search for excellence; Diligence in overcoming adversity; Civility in the preservation of unity; Justice in demonstrating equality under the law; Humility in the control of pride; Courage to stand alone for right; and the Honor to live on principle, even in solitude.
While all these things were clearly in the minds and the writings of our Founding Fathers, there was nowhere in the Founding documents where they were spelled out. Of course, the Federalist Papers include these concepts in context, but nowhere are they written in clear and concise terms for their own sake. Nowhere does it say, that if we don’t live on principle, democracy can’t work. Section 1 does that. And, yes, there are other virtues, like patience, that could have been included, but we believe these twelve capture the essence of the virtues required for democracy to function. After all, most of these concepts are part of the law already, but maybe, just maybe, it will give judges pause to consider a deeper requirement of the law. Having these virtues spelled out as a Constitutional duty of the media, the government and the people certainly would do us no harm.
Section 2. No financial or organizational support, whatsoever, shall move from any organization, interest group, union, or business interest of any kind to support or oppose any candidate for local, state, or federal office. All money contributed to local, state, or federal campaigns for office shall be contributed solely by individual donors with a permanent residence within the specific geographic area to be represented and shall be deposited directly to a respective candidate’s campaign committee. No contribution, including those made by the candidate, shall exceed $2,000 in a primary election and $2,000 in a general election. All campaign contributions must be drawn from personal assets and be publicly recorded with the appropriate oversight body within twenty-four hours of the contribution. The record shall include the date and time, the donor’s name and address, and the amount contributed.
If you contribute to a campaign: you are limited to how much you can give; you can’t contribute out of the geographic area in which you live; and just because you are wealthy does not mean you can exceed the spending limits in your own campaign. No more campaign contributions from political parties. No more campaign contributions from political action committees, or Super PACs. No more contributions from special interest groups or dark money, and just because you are rich, does not mean you can take advantage of the electoral process.
Section 3. All persons employed by the government of the United States, including those serving in elected, appointed, or military positions, shall receive no gifts, compensation, employment, promise of employment, or any other incentive from companies, individuals, or countries doing business with the government of the United States. This prohibition shall continue until a term of two years after the employee, or elected, appointed, or military personnel, leaves government service.
Section 4: All organizations, interest groups, unions, business interests, or individuals desirous of influencing the laws and policies of the United States shall be strictly limited to providing written information to the various government entities.
The definition of lobbyist will change from a boil on the butt of our governmental process to a group of respected academics gathering and publishing information for the good of the union. No longer will lobbying be a corrupt haven for former politicians and military brass looking to exploit the people.
Democracy is not a pure thing. It is based on the premise that people have a say in their future. It presupposes fairness and makes decisions primarily based on the greater good. Along the way, democracies learned that certain individual rights had to be championed in the name of fairness, and democracy evolved. Even so, it is and always has been a constant struggle to get it right. During the Golden Age of Athens, there was a continual fight against greed and oligarchy, as it was in Rome and as it has been in every nation ruled by democracy through the centuries. What the New Democracy Amendment is intended to do is to make it constitutionally unlawful for individuals or groups of powerful people to bend the system to their will. Simply put, it changes the system to make it more democratic while leaving the basic structure envisioned by the Founding Fathers fully intact. It will be the first time in history that the rich and powerful of our nation, those who control the oligarchy under which we live, are constitutionally prohibited from leveraging their economic power over the will of the people.
The promise of this effort is beyond any of our imaginations. History has taught us that the people believe we have an equal say in our governance; when we believe our government is protecting our interests; and when we believe they have complete freedom to succeed or fail on their merit, absolutely amazing things can happen. Athens created the foundation of Western Civilization. Rome built the greatest empire in the ancient world. Great Britain created an empire where the sun never set, and the United States of America created a superpower the lies the world has never known. While all are unquestionably imperfect, it is fundamentally clear that the more a government supports the will of the people, the more potential there is for human achievement.
Nothing like this has ever been attempted. While that may scare some people, our uncertain future should scare them a lot more. Our second American Revolution will be fought with revolutionary ideas, and common sense and once again, backed by the dreams of the people. But, to accomplish the task before us, we must begin by thinking about our future and not our past. The old system is corrupt, and we should not judge the path to our future by the broken roads of our past. We have to stop the blame game and assumptions based on old paradigms. When we take away the ability of the Establishment to use their money and power to corrupt the system, then we can look to our future with optimism. Once again, we can be proud of our nation and trust our leaders, our government, and each other.
The ratification of the New Democracy Amendment will change the outlook of America. The people and their representatives will begin to make better choices based on a renewed idealism, and the people will slowly end their apathy and rekindle their passion and commitment to their nation and each other. Representatives will start to make decisions based on their good conscience and the needs of the people over the self-serving desires of their overseers. Extremist voices will gradually grow quiet, as the mainstream of America remerges to take its rightful place, and the media denying the current political excess, will look to the horizon and reinstitute their idealism and sacred duty. The profile of politics in America will recede, and the quiet and thoughtful system our Founding Fathers intended will breed political decisions that make sense for everyone. The dramatic reduction of money in the system will force the political class out of existence. Washington, DC, will return to a quiet collegial city on the Potomac, and the United States of America will be saved for future generations.
While the worst of the Establishment will no doubt fight with all they have to stop this effort, we believe that eventually, most will join us. The overwhelming majority of our elected representatives go into politics for the right reasons, and most are driven by unswerving patriotism. Once they see what is possible, they will stand with us. Fundamentally, they want what we want. We all grew up believing in We the People and what that represents. As a nation, we have always believed in the twelve common virtues outlined in Section 1 and the fundamental fairness they champion. In the end, very few will be against us.
Can you imagine, just like in ancient Athens and the other great democracies, how that could spur technology, industry, economic development, and the arts? Can you imagine this nation without its pessimism and narcissistic outlook? Can you imagine this nation when every child once again believes that they can accomplish anything they dream of? What’s to stop us from creating another Golden Age or Renaissance right here, right now? Have we learned and created everything there is to learn and create? Have we no achievements before us? We have serious problems, but why can’t we do something that has never been done before to solve them? This can be done!
We cannot live as we have. We must stop attacking each other and find common ground. We have to find new ways to make things work. We have to discover the whole truth and live by it. We can’t allow a mindset forged in the corruption of the past to derail a future that is good and true. The past is not our problem. The future is, and if we want a future for our children and our grandchildren, we have to get this right. We have to be positive, forward-looking, and be so much better in character than those who will be against us, the choice will be obvious to everyone.
Above all, we cannot follow this course for personal gain. We must capture the imagination of the people and hold it with hope, opportunity, and dreams. Everyone, and we mean you, must step up to do your part, to organize, and to recapture the spirit of America. As innocent, naïve, and optimistic as this all sounds, it is that simple. We have to be true to each other and the virtues in which we believe.
We must also understand this will be no easy task. It will require every one of us to pitch in. Make no mistake, this will be a real revolution. Those who have the power, money, and influence in our broken system will not give it up without a fight, and what we are about is no less dangerous than what our Founding Fathers contemplated in the summer of 1776. We do not foresee a shooting revolution, but that does not mean those who lead this movement will not be targeted. The Establishment will fight with their money and influence to derail and minimize us. They will lie and cheat in every way possible to degrade us. And they will do so for only one reason – they do not want to give up their power. The New Democracy Amendment will cause some of the most powerful men and women in the world to lose the power to which they have become accustomed. They will do anything to stop us, and all we will have on our side We the People… and the truth… From our perspective, they are hopelessly outnumbered…