RFK Jr.

RFK Jr.: Experienced, intelligent, patriot, and well educated; he has a deep love for our country, has a deep understanding of republicanism and democracy, and who understands the difficulty of mixing imperialism with republicanism and democracy.

                                                                                                    RCS

From Peon, to Pawn, to Active citizen?

We can still learn from the Russian revolution:

                    The Russian revolt of 1905 included mass political unrest. That is there was wide consideration of  the nature of Russian governance. It also included terrorism, strikes, military mutinies, and urban demonstrations. Republicanism and democracy were designed to limit the worst of these happening. Republicanism and democracy both demand considerable practice by a wide spectrum of practice by the citizenry. The overwhelming majority of the Russian people had very little of such practice. The revolt did lead the tzarist government to establish, on paper, a limited constitutional monarchy including a duma. A duma is a parliament. Most Russians did not see these changes as being helpful to them. A great many Russians did not see them at all.

Republic, Democracy, and Governance

                        The use of democracy was designed to prevent the worst of the above. Many Europeans, Americans, and others saw republicanism as an important step toward democracy. Many saw democracy, probably correctly, as beyond the ability of most citizens and prospective citizens. It was hoped that more widespread education and the wide participation in managing a republic would lead to the development of a wide swath of populations with the ability to govern themselves. I have believed that the educated practice of democracy was able to maintain a stable, practical, and adaptable form of governance. In the last several decades I have seen populations less and less ready, willing, or able to maintain their republics.

Tsar Nicolas II and Sergei Witte

                    The October manifesto of 1905 was issued by Nicolas II. Sergei Witte was influential in its production. It pledged to grant civil liberties to the people including: freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and provide broad participation in the duma. No law could come into force without the consent of the Duma. The Tsar retained veto power. Good for Witte. This aimed for much improvement.

                      However, the Russian people had not participated in this development. The were not ready for this particular change. They not been party to a conversation, to a dialogue. The change was both to early and too late. To early for the people's state of readiness, and too late to stop their revolt. 

                    Nicolas II was, Nicolai Alexandrovich Romanov. He was the last Tsar of the nearly 400 years of the Romanov dynasty rule of russia. Sergei Witte was a Russian statesman who served as the first prime minister of the Russian empire, replacing the Tsar as head of government. Witte had a good understanding of the use of republicanism, but may have lacked enough understanding of all the powers extent in Russia at that time.

Imperialism, capitalism, republicanism, and democracy

                    As time went on imperialism and capitalism did not seem to work for them and they had not learned to work republicanism or democracy. They did call democracy social democracy in an effort to assure that it was meant for all. A nice step. Citizens of the USA have had many good historical reasons for abdicating republican and democratic responsibilities, duties, practices, and rights. People elsewhere such as those of the rest of the Americas and much of Europe have done some abdicating of their own for reasons of their own. May republican and democratic practices continue.

                    The still well organized powers in Russia brutally suppressed constitutional law, congressional power, freedom of religion, assembly, speech and participation in duma/congress and other such leftist movements.  

                    Tsar Nicolas II abdicated in 1917. The Russian people were unprepared to govern, governance was collapsing. Powerful people tried to use war to pull the country together. They failed. The people began, it is said, began to look to the far right and the far left for working governance. The happy medium, the golden mean was lost. The they knew too little of governance.

                    The Bolsheviks, a small well organized group of persons with some thoughts of governance, took over. They were mostly a small faction of the Marxist Russian Democratic Worker Party. They were well organized and founded the Soviet Union.

                    The Russians had a lot to learn about self-governance and still do. We to still do. Our will to practice being a republic a democracy or anything n between. We seem to lack the will to practice any sort of governance or to even speak of it.

                Still the Russians were a Russian enough people to withstand counter revolution, experimental economic policy, rapid expansion, war, Stalin, and more war. It was brutal. Not everything has been always brutal, but so far war has. Ignorance itself  very often seems brutal. 

                    The great mass of the Russian people seemed to move from being peons to being pawns. Oh, when will the ever learn. When will we ever learn to play our own game? When will we ever learn to take care of ourselves. When will we learn to govern ourselves?

                    There is a lot for all of us to learn and remember. We do not have to make ourselves learn and remember. Practice can do us very well. When we practice being a peon we can become a very good peon. When we practice being a pawn we can become a better pawn. When we practice being a republican we can become a good republican; that is if we remember what a republican is and have learned the nature of a republican. 

                    There is a lot for all of us to do. Thank goodness there are plenty of us to do that which needs doing. We still have memories of co-operation. We also have some knowledge of practice. With a bit more practice in citizenship we can be more effective citizens. We could even practice democracy together so as to learn how to better do democracy. 

                    I could use a good editor.  I could use some good help from you. I could also use a million dollars or even a hundred thousand. Maybe a good night's sleep would do me well. Bye for now.

                    Thank you for reading!

                                                                                        rcs

Europeans, Vampires, Republicans, and Democrats.

                     Perhaps we are at the point of losing our right to take care of ourselves, which is our right to self-governance, because we do not know who we are. We do not know each other because we do not practice good organization and communication. While we do not talk among our selves well a co-operate well, how are we to know who we are? While we did not do well together that which we were doing together 40 years ago, and do not remember much of what we were doing 300 years ago, and practically less what was happening to us only 2,000 years ago, and are not even sure how we nearly lost it all, what Have we decided to do to take care of ourselves tomorrow? How do we intend to send to participate in our governance to give our next generation a good chance of surviving and thriving? Are we acting like we don't care or pleading ignorance?  I think that most of us do care most of the time. Ignorance is not an excuse. We mostly learn by doing and paying attention to that which we do. Let's do something now. We can attend to or doing and to the results and then use our observations to make our doings good. You and I do not have too much to do because their are millions to help us. We are the people. Even just you and I personally co-operating with 30 or 40 need not have much to do.

                    The more we are careless of ourselves the more we are likely to become slaves of a new kind. The kind that are not valued, even as slaves, because most no longer have any use for slaves. They become almost at type of sub-human who have not practiced self-governance and cannot even imagine self-governance, much less than practice it. I am talking about us. I still have some memory of an us which practiced much more civic organization and who, at least practiced local self governance, and some organization to protect ourselves from some of the natural depredations from farther afield. 

                    When we care so little for ourselves that we seem careless of ourselves, might not others finally take advantage of us, or just push aside from the goods of this world and Earth. We remembered ideas of fairness and justice and concepts of governance to support fairness and justice among us. We called those ideas republicanism and democracy and loved them enough to pay dearly for them. Many of us did much toward the development of democratic republics.

                    We had a good game going. It has a kind of great rally. Then, often real reasons, we dropped the ball, then lost it, and then forgot it. Some of our great grandfathers did not learn about about self-governance well. A look at history can tell you why.  Our grandfathers learned a bit about it, but began to see it as something in the hands of others and did not support their schools in teaching its nature and practice. Our parents scarcely imagined supporting our schools in teaching us our history or that which once seemed to be our birth rights. Some us are learning some of our history now, and perhaps a few more are remembering that we are collectively responsible for taking care of ourselves. Some say it is never to late to learn and never to late to value our responsibly. I wonder if one dinosaur ever told another dinosaur that they would never lose their position and perhaps their very being. 

                    Some learned that Vlad was bad vampire. It seems that the truth of the matter is, he represents an example of the best of many of, perhaps all, of us of European extraction. He did much to save Europeans from invasions from the East. But more importantly he represented those Europeans who were not crushed by Greco-Roman culture of classical times after the fall of the Late Bronze Age, but learned from it and learned to adapt it to their own benefit. A part of that new culture to which they adapted seemed congenial to many of them. It came with the name "democracy." "Democracy" gathered and named a whole little bundle of ideas and values they already had, and clarified them. Vlad may have never been a republican or democrat, but he was one of those who adapted Greco-Roman culture to greater Europe. He even came to speak a Latinized language.

                The classical culture of the longish Greco-Roman have been heading toward Vlad by 2,000 BC or not long after the fall of the Late Bronze Age cultures. It continued to reach him and beyond to as recently as the recent 1400s! That culture touches us less, but still with some meaning to this very day. It seems we have had to reclarify the meaning of democracy a couple of time since Vlad's time. Maybe we can revivify it again today. We need to take up our responsibility in some way soon, or it is likely that we will believe that we no longer deserve the power of responsibility and freedom. Our continued loss of the "weness," which we have called unity, will, for a time, be more unpleasant than that we have already begun to experience.

                When we fail to enjoy our responsibility we lose our civic strength, energy, and power and finally our being. We could lose our all, even with good use of our power of responsibility, but with responsibility our power to survive and thrive is strongly supported. 

                Please help me to proof read this piece.

               Let hear from you. I love to hear comments on content.

               Thank you for reading!

                                                                                                                            rcs

            

Whose History?

Howard Zinn ant the University of California and a lesson in history. 

Experience, learning, practice, understanding, showing up, co-coperating, organizing, and succeeding in the doing of governance. Aware obsevation can be useful. Large differences in power, wealth, and health, then and now.

                                                                                                                        RCS

Free, Democratic, and Inclusive

 History With RCS: Cossack, Ukrainian, and Free

 

                Cossacks have been free men and democratic. They have only been known to history since about 650 AD. They have been active in self-governing communities for well over a thousand years. They have been open, inclusive, with a Slavic bent. They knew a world from Siberia to Lithuania and up and down for many years, but were drawn to a certain land.

                The Ukrainian Cossack State was formed in about 1650 in what is now central Ukraine. Their leaders were elected.

                Through the years they have been few. Democracy is not easy. They experienced much, and stayed free among strong neighbors such as Poland, Russia, and Lithuania. Among such neighbors they continued to show a strong will for self-governance.

                They formed the Ukrainian Peoples Republic in 1917 to 1921, the western Ukrainian Peoples Republic 1918 to 1919, and the Ukrainian Peoples Republic in exile  from 1920 to 1992.

                They were among the very first members of the Soviet Union with its promise of self-governing citizens. They may have been the first to leave that Union when it showed little will to self-governing citizenship.

                They were among the charter members of the United Nations with its promise of a chance for peace and freedom. They have not given up on their fellow members yet. 

                Ah, yes, I believe that at the breakup of the Soviet Union the were left with one of the greatest stock of atomic weapons on Earth and gave up that stock to the U.N.

                They have been few and still are. They are still a mixture of races, nationalities, and religions. They are a free democratic people self selected from that mixture.

                We might mention that while all this was going on they, with the help of a few viking Norsemen, created Russia. Oh, and they had a modern republic type written constitution in 1710.

                I believe that a history of the cultures most effecting these people could be traced back another 4,000 years. However, before about 650 AD they were little recognized in history as a discrete people. Throughout perhaps a thousand years of their history they stayed freer, more democratic, and inclusive than most. They have had to defend themselves and they have. They have also kept the hope and faith that they could live a free people among free people. They have  seen inclusiveness, freedom, and democracy disappear like smoke again and again. Still they hold a vision of that freedom and self governance closer and dearer than do most.

               Please feel free to correct this work or add to it in the "comments" section below or just to click on a social media button just below.

                Ukraine. Ukraine. Ukraine.

                Thank you for reading.

 

                                                                                    rcs