Three Principles of The Coming Global Democratic Revolution
A terrible irony is that George W. Bush held truth in his hands and besmirched it to the point that we now face backlash against the very principles he seemed to espouse. I am talking about global democratic revolution.
Putin and Trump are on the wrong side of history and W betrayed it.
The betrayal of democracy is violence. This has always been true. Even the American Revolution, which is held up to justify violence, would have benefited from a nonviolent strategy.
Violence attacks freedom where it resides — in the individual. It is doomed to be ineffective. Any past effort involving the betterment of life would have benefited by the elimination of violence as a stratagem. This applies to policing, mob control, conflicts of all kinds and to wars between states.
The first principle of the coming global democratic revolution will be the nonviolence at its heart.
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Both communism and capitalism have made violence necessary to their survival. Both are inherently anti-democratic.
Only when the individual is seen as universally precious and spared the reification enabled by these two binary ideologies will a way be cleared for a triadic resolution.
We do not have a name yet for this resolution. That fact alone shows we are at a dead end if we make a binary choice between communism and capitalism.
Capitalism leads to continued economic polarization and the ruination of the globe.
Communism leads to the wresting of freedom from its roots in the individual and relying on violence, as does capitalism, as enforcer.
The second principle of global democratic revolution is that it move beyond both communism and capitalism to enabling a world where all people are both free and entitled to a fair share of the world’s prosperity.
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The third element of global democratic revolution rests on an evolution of existing democracies to a common affirmation of tolerance, helpfulness, democracy and non-idolatry.
Tolerance includes affirmation of the right of all individuals to the nonviolent practice of spirituality as they they freely deem.
Helpfulness includes basic health and education as lifelong rights to which all are entitled. It also creates a culture of neighborliness.
Democracy is not mob rule. It is best developed as a constitutional, representative system that serves all fairly and is not dominated or controlled by special interests.
Non-idolatry means scientific method should be brought to bear in providing fair and honest indications of what helps and what harms. It sets goodness truth and beauty as the ideals that should inspire the allegiance of all.
