Just an Ordinary Joe Against Violence and for Persuasion

Please note that NOTHING on this web site should be misconstrued as advocating or calling for any unlawful violence against anyone, even those we wish to see punished to the full extent of the law for their treason.

I'm an ordinary common man. Ironically, I've found that each ordinary man and woman is extraordinary in various ways. To help you better understand the extraordinary thing I am trying to do with this web site, I must share with you some of my background.

After 15 years of college education and intelligence training and work, I left a budding career teaching philosophy in college (for a few years in the early seventies). I had been teaching graduate courses in the philosophies of education. That was when I wrote my Education on the Medical Analogy. Such concerns led me to teach in an innovative alternative school for several years until I decided to work as a visual artist.

Perhaps that dropping out was a reaction to feeling dishonest and guilty as a Republican for my support of Nixon and Republicans, members of Teddy Roosevelt's and my Grandfather's Grand Old Party, who I could not believe could have been involved in the Watergate break-in until long after I should have repudiated them. In any case, I wanted to do more honest work and philosophizing than was possible in the then politicized academia. I wanted to do work whose success would depend only on my talent-only to find that my success in art was more a matter of marketing than talent.

Although I did take a couple graduate art courses at Florida State where I did graduate study of theater arts, I had already developed whatever artistic capabilities I could through study. That was during years of interaction (in the seventies) with Korean born, Cranbrook trained, Ohm Joo-Yon Cederburg. He taught and painted in South Georgia in the early seventies. During that time, I developed and exhibited my art.

I reached the zenith of my art career almost immediately, profitable doors being opened by my exhibition in the American Painters in Paris Bicentennial Exhibition in 1976. My immensely more talented and well-trained mentor was excluded from that juried exhibition. I suspected that was probably because he was born a North Korean. However, Ohm's story of resistence, revolution and fighting the Communists with the South Koreans was far more representative of the spirit of the American Revolution than was all my intelligence work.

I went on from disillusionment with the art world to study, practice and teach theater arts (including directing) in colleges for many years. That work was interspersed with professional gigs for Studio E'lan and others. I designed theater sets, lights, and costumes. Later my computer-assisted designs were offered by Panache' Ink of Studio E'lan. I retired a decade ago to raise my daughter who is now a Senior at Swarthmore College in Philly, to serve as a community gad fly, and to pursue philosophical, political, Constitutional and historical studies, and to write novels.

I began my web site in 1997 as my personal home page while studying and writing about matters for the sake of which I had retired. My web page quickly became the venue to promote the Bull Moose National Progressive Party politics of Teddy Roosevelt in a futile attempt to influence the GOP to turn back from its suicidal embrace of the racist Dixiecrats, the fundamentalists and other Theocrats, and the sycophants of the Fat Cats.

I had written my A Bull Moose in the Age of Aquarius: An Old Conscience for New Conservatives during the 1996 election to protest the pseudo Republicans lack of knowledge of what the Party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt (its only two great heros) and my Grandfather (who had served them) had been about. I posted the first few chapters here in case anyone would be helped by them. But I paid little attention to the site. Eventually political opponents pretty much tore it up.

Several years ago, I suffered through the politicized abuse of the impeachment process by those who had taken over our GOP. The Grand Old Party had once been embraced by my Grandfather during the Civil War (in which he served Lincoln). His faith in the Grand Old Party had been revived by Teddy Roosevelt's leading the party back to Lincoln's progressive populist reform politics. He had raised me to love the GOP and died in 1948 after over a hundred years, much spent in the service of our country, the last serving TR in the Spanish-American War.

By the last election, I was appalled at what the GOP had become. So was Barry Goldwater for whom I had campaigned in '64, although he was unintentionally to blame for the GOP's early misdirection toward the politics of Lott, Armey and DeLay. So I made one last lurch to reform the GOP: Since those who had taken over the GOP were making monkeys of the rest of us by acting like Bonzos (as well as Bozos) themselves, I ran an internet campaign for a cyber Ape who I gave one of my internet monikers, edromar. After all, I was his political "handler."

Unfortunately, he could not distinguish himself from the crowd of candidates making monkeys of themselves and us by aping each other. Edromar did not have the corporate funding needed to succeed at such politics as usual. I had not yet realized the possible political power of my web site.

After the Bush Baby bought selection as the Bastard President by hook and by crook, I sought to protest through groups on the internet. I was quickly disillusioned by the grasp for control of the protestors by representatives of the Democratic party. They used sites funded by the emocrats to try to bring protestors to tow the party line of go along to get along. Not only did they lead in debunking Greens as well as all Republicans, they constantly tried to moderate our protests to accord with their party line that this was politics as usual and that we should et over it, taking their lead from Gore, Looserman and the Senate Democrats.

While we were planning to protest Duh?bya's stealing of the election, most Democrat congress-persons refused to even challenge the illegitimate Texas (in violation of the 12th Amendment) and Florida (in violation of the will of the people expressed in the voting) electoral votes. Not one Democratic Senator would support Rep. Maxine Waters' protests of the Florida electoral vote.

When we were taking our protests to the streets to express our outrage at the illegitimate inaugurations, the Democratic leadership was taking part in them. Rather than leading us in the streets to protest the election being stolen from the people and usurped by the Infamous Five Supreme Injustices, Gore, Looserman, and most Democrat congress-persons participated in, rather than protested, the unconstitutional inauguration.

Of course, the corporate controlled media did everything possible to ignore the protests and have since refused to cover the increasing evidence of what happened in the election. They have constantly spun every development dishonestly. They even covered up the constant attempts by the Bush brothers to stifle all opposition-which most of my readers have never heard about.

For example, when three protestors from the Oral Majority in Florida were arrested and thrown out of a supposedly government sponsored event for carrying placards protesting the stolen election, the media merely reported that some gay protestors had been arrested. There have been a multitude of such incidents in which attempts to protest have been thwarted by Bush and Co.-and the denial of first Amendment rights have been covered up by the corporate media. Most attempts to get Democrat officials to protest the "jack booted thugs" and their creation of a chilling effect among the protestors have fallen on deaf ears and been met with advice that we accept the coup and get over it.

Meanwhile, rather than treat the Bastard President and his illegitimate Veep as the pretenders to the throne that they are, many Democrat officials have actually called the Bush Administration "legitimate" and treated it as such. Instead of refusing to vote for any Bush appointees, and voting as a block to either stop a Bush Bill or to abstain if no Republicans had the guts or honor to vote against it, the Democrat officials have gone along to get along.

As many Democrat officials told me off the record, they had to take that approach since their corporate contributors had made it clear that any "extremist" reactions to the stolen election would be reacted to by denying further contributions to obstructionist Democrats. Rather than respond with outrage, the spineless wimps tried their best to keep our "extremism" under control by the irrelevant protests to which the Democrat leaders of our protests led us.

Consequently, those of us who saw clearly from the git go what was happening, and who had no money for internet operations that could control the protest, silently withdrew. But during this time of protest, I noticed that my web site had been ravaged and crashed and had had over a million hits just from people following up on my protests on the internet. When that overwhelming number of hits had dwindled to about 20,000 a week, I realized that I need to take advantage of the interest to promote our progressive populist reform protests.

Given the number of the curious, I decided it would be worthwhile to give concern to creating a site that will increasingly attract the inquisitive and open minded, and help provide intellectual leadership toward their enlightenment about what has happened, both the treason of Bush and Co., and the active and passive collusion, aiding and abetting, practiced by many Democratic officials. So I have begun to recreate my web site as a progressive populist reform insurgency.

I hope to attract and entertain the politically uncertain and provide clear evidence and leadership toward convincing them that we the people have suffered treason and that only dedication to our progressive populist reform insurgency will save our political power. For that purpose, I seek to entertain and interest as well as educate myvisitors. Our progressive, populist reform objectives begin with convincing people of the need for the impeachment and removal from office-and legal prosecution for Treason-of all involved in the theft of the election.

However, given that there was no solace to be found among Democratic leaders, I concluded that, just as Teddy Roosevelt had concluded in his Bull Moose Manifesto that there was no hope for the people from the bosses of the two major parties of his time, both of the major parties are dead meat in our time-both are in need of resurrection by an insurgency which will make it impossible for one of them to survive without recognizing their responsibility to the people.

I don't care which party responds to the needs of the people. FDR realized that it did not matter whether he carried on TR's progressive populist reform insurgency in the Democratic or Republican Party. All he needed was fertile ground for their ideals to take root. But in what party can we lead to progressive populist reform?

Unfortunately, the Greens relinquished all call to our support. The willingness of the Greens to sacrifice progressive goals to party growth by scuttling Gore's victory, has made it impossible for many progressive Democrats to ever follow them.

Likewise, the failure of the New Democrats to provide a progressive campaign and leadership in protesting the treason of the last election, and in resisting the right wing agenda, will make it very difficult for most true progressive populists reformers to give allegiance to that party as long as the New Democrats continue to lead it into the maws of the global corporations. It will require a complete change of direction of one of the two main parties for it to be worthwhile for progressives to work within either.

So what do we do to achieve our political goals? We must create a political insurgency that will clearly define a path to a progressive future and develop the political means to achieve that unless and until the threat of that possibility brings one of the major party to heel and to follow in our footsteps. So I have begun such an insurgency of one. If it merely inspires others to find their own way, to form their own insurgencies, fine. If they want to join with me, or support me, fine.

But I think it is time to admit that the professional politicians have mucked it up, and that it is up to us citizens to create a new politics that does not rely on money but on networks of communicating citizens. The internet makes that easier than it was for the colonists during their war for independence, the last time when such networking was the common means of campaigning for heads and hearts, for ideas and loyalties.

I can not condone any longer voting for the lesser of the devils except to avoid endangering our country and progressive ideals. I realized that most sensible Americans independent of corporate pressures and partisan mythologies could do a better job running our country than the guys who are screwing up right now. I know, for instance, that I could do a better job as President than Duh?bya ever could. And it is not because he is dumb (as he is) but because he is dishonest with himself as well as with the people. So, I encourage all of us progressive populist reformers to present ourselves for consideration by our fellows, to let us find the best among us to seek to serve in a novel political leadership.

Thus, this time I will reluctantly run myself rather than some other hominid for President on my web site until I find someone who would make a better president than myself, and who will be willing to so serve the people. I have no doubt that there are people better suited to be President than me, someone who the people will, and should, endorse when we find some such a person who is willing to expose his or her abilities, feelings, and very life in service of the people.

Meanwhile, it is up to me to present all I can about myself to enable all those disillusioned with politics as usual to recognize that they really need a to educate them and fully reveal my qualifications for the Preside and ideas, as a challenge to others better prepared to be president than me to reveal themselves and assume the responsibility to use their talents. Presidency is a dirty job which only a fool could want. For although the role offers possibilities to do great good, conditions generally lead Presidents to do great ill-or at least to fail to realize potentials-in the midst of great personal danger from a lot of sick institutions and the sick puppies who serve them. But many persons have died in order to preserve our country. We can be willing to do no less if required by its enemies.

To convince you that I have a clear and well-founded vision toward which to lead our people, I will, at various places and at various times, throughout the growth and life of this web site, present many proposals. My central proposal is the immediate creation of a self-renewing, no-interest "birthright" loan fund from which students can borrow money toward education and workers can borrow money toward their ownership of their own means of production in individual businesses or in capitalist cooperatives, whether as small business partnerships, or as large corporate partnerships. My more general committment is the fostering of cooperative capitalism in place of the robber-baron capitalism that is now a global force.

That "birthright" fund could be created with savings from stopping corporate welfare and current "small business" support of individual's businesses which hire and make money off the labor of other workers. Our government should encourage groups of workers to join together in mutual enterprises in which all share the risks and the rewards, but which recognize the market value of labor and goods. All, not just the boss, should have an opportunity to operate on the principles of entrepreneural capitalism. This is no more socialism than was the distribution of homesteads to farmers throughout our country in the last century. Then, all they had to do was work the land to own it. This proposal is to create a loan fund for all in need to get ahead.

Our government should support cooperative capitalism with a policy whereby all productive businesses will eventually come to be owned by the workers (including managers) creating their own products of goods and services. All purely financial services (banking, insurance, stock and bond markets) and other infrastructure services such as a non-commercial internet as well as mail should be provided at cost without profit or interest charges by the government. Note that no citizen should be denied the right to compete with the government's financial and other infrastructure services-for such potential competition is essential to keeping our bureaucracies efficient.

But that is just a small sample of the progressive populist reforms for which our insurgency must agitate. We should move our country towards a single system of laws and courts whereby all citizens have the same rights regardless of where they live, what state they live in, and face the same standards and processes of justice. Justice should be made equal for all-where the defense is funded as fully as the prosecution, and lawyers are appointed by random chance and paid for by the state, and supervising judges should be involved in the details of each case, on both sides, to assure that all essential facts and possibilities are presented to the juries. Juries should have independent subpoena and questioning powers. Grand juries should be run by judges, not by prosecutors, under a supervised adversarial system.

No act should be punished by law unless there is a clear victim, or at least potential victim, from such behavior-other than the individual doing the act. We must maintain as much liberty as possible, but if a person, who should never be allowed to unilaterally hurt another, can not hurt himself, where is his liberty? Is liberty just in doing what one is supposed to do according to society? I don't think so. It is in having choices not dictated by the preferences of others.

So if it can be shown that smoking, calling or eating anything while driving endangers the lives of pedestrians or other drivers, sure it should be outlawed and punished. But if all it does is give a little private pleasure when used privately and responsibly by consenting adults, it is none of society's business. Most current couples' sexual practices have been made criminal at various times and in various places by well meaning people who tried playing God.

A person merely feeling offense at witnessing a violation in society of his or her or his or her community's private, religious morals does not make him or her a victim. An adult hurt by sticks and stones that break some bones is not the same as one hurt by words and images that hurt purely because of his or her beliefs and values. The victim is the person whose rights are limited by the values of others. at the violation of which they take offense and suppress their neighbor's rights..

Presently, using the model of punishment by incarceration, the primary victims of punishment are criminals' families and society that has to pay in many ways for keeping individuals away from productive work at our great expense and at the criminals' inability to support themselves with honest work after they get out. Society should protect and care for the families, especially the children, of criminals appropriately during punishment so as not to create conditions that will assure a new generation of criminals. The sins of the fathers or mothers should not be visited upon the children to even the next generation.

With our present form of punishment, we are creating a criminal class in this country through a war on drugs created and supported by racist Dixiecrats and Theocrats primarily to offset the progress made by blacks as a result of the civil rights and voter rights bills of the 1960's.

Punishment should generally be, to the extent possible and consistent with not putting dangerous people back on the streets, infliction of as extreme pain as possible for relatively shorter periods of time than people are presently incarcerated. We should use the latest medical technology and psychological studies to find ways consistent with the maintenance of physical and mental health to inflict the greatest amount of physical pain possible for whatever time is necessary to provide deterence. We must inflict the criminal with sufficient pain to give him or her motive enough to avoid such sanctioned behavior in the future at all costs.

Then such individuals should be put through real rehabilitation processes to assure that they learn to deal positively and appropriately with the conditions which led to their crimes. For when we see any person convicted, we must say, "there but for the grace of society goes me." But this is not to be done for the sake of the criminal, but for the sake of society which can not afford to create a criminal class!

Our government should have and use military power and secrecy only as absolutely necessary. That need must be reviewed in detail every year. The Constitutional limits on the creation of standing armies to only short periods of timeare essentials that should not be ignored as they are at present. All citizens should be required to fulfill national guard duties during their productive lives, subject to call as citizen soldiers under a cadre of professional officers under Constitutionally elected civilians. All should constantly train in the highest tech defense systems that can reasonably be provided by our science, technology and industry.

We must remain ready, as the leader of a world revolution toward the pinciples of our Constitution, to strike for the freedom of people threatened and struggling for their freedom everywhere. But it must be clear that we support only people seeking equality and the foundation of a republican democracy, not just classes or groups seeking some religious ideal or economic advantage. We must make sure that all wars are properly supported by a super majority of our people who have been convinced by the evidence to demand that a super majority of their representatives declare any war. Nor are we talking about unilateral, preemptive or unprovoked interference in others' states. Nor are we talking about violating the strict requirements either of the U.S. Constitution or the Charter of the UN, both of which limit aggressive violation of other's peace. Our wars must be explicitly declared wars of defense, and never preemptive strikes.

All our wars must be fought by citizen soldiers under their professional officer corps while all Americans unfit for battle must make similarly extreme sacrifices in working for the war effort even just as janitors in hospitals. No group such as the young must ever be sacrificed more than any other groups. If we are ever to be in a war, all of us must suffer as equally as possible. But we will only remain free to the extent that all men are made free. We must come to recognize the responsibility to export and support the American Revolution to all peoples even when that will be financially detrimental to ourselves.

There are a multitude of other proposals I have regarding campaign finance reform (to get corporations out of politics), education, electoral reform, health care, impeachment, social security, states' rights and many other matters which must be raised and argued at appropriate times and places.

However, this is a sufficient sampling of the ideas I advocate for now. This survey problably, hopefully, raised more questions than it settled, in the minds of many astute readers. It is the purpose of this web site to provide the answers to those questions, and to raise and answer many others in various parts at various times. In a multi-course dinner such as this, we start with only a few appetizers to tease the palate into wanting more meaty stuff. But for any who can not wait for desert, feel free to question me at edromar@hotmail.com <mailto:edromar@hotmail.com>

I will try to answer ASAP!