Chapter 2
A Proposal for Action

Chapter 2a
What Is To Be Done?
How can we act in the face of cynicism and despair?



There are many among us who are mired in cynicism or despair. It is all well and good to cry out that “we must do something”, they would say, but what can we do? What can we do in the face of these immense powers arrayed against us? How can we possibly hope to reclaim our nation from the clutches of the obscenely rich and unjustly powerful? With these powers in such firm control of all the levers of our social and political institutions, how can we, as ‘mere’ citizens, fulfill the proud legacy of Democracy, Justice, and Equality that has been the inspiring ideal of ‘America’ for over two hundred years?

We cannot allow cynicism and despair to overwhelm our moral sense of responsibility to ourselves, to each other, to our innocent and trusting children, and to generations yet unborn. We cannot allow this proud American ideal of Justice and Equality for ALL, that so many have struggled for so long, and even died, to develop, defend, and protect, to be relegated to the dustbin of History. We cannot allow cynicism or hopelessness to make us believe that America will never fully realize the ideal that has animated our convictions for over two centuries. We cannot allow ourselves to believe that this nation will never become a nation “of the people, by the people, and FOR the people”.

‘We The People’ cannot ignore the legacy of our ancestors. Though we can see, from the perspective of more than two centuries of often painful experience, that our American ancestors were woefully imperfect themselves, we must remain thankful that they handed down to us the opportunity to develop and perfect a heroic democratic ideal that transcended their own human imperfections.

Humankind has struggled toward this noble ideal of Equality, Justice, and Democracy for thousands of years. America, through the inspiration of its founding ideals, and the documents that proclaimed them so boldly, has been instrumental in furthering Humankind’s halting march toward human freedom. We have not yet nearly made this democratic ideal into the reality that guides our nation, but we have made steady progress, even as those who would destroy the ideal have enjoyed the success that they now do.

Will we turn away from this legacy without mounting a struggle to defend it? Will we sacrifice all the struggles, and the progress that has been made, to cynicism or despair? Will we allow this tyranny that serves only selfish greed to enjoy its ascendance unhindered? Will we pretend that a ‘savior’ can save us, while we do nothing but wait, acquiescing all the while as advancing tyranny surrounds us?

The common people have only one means to reclaim our legacy of Democracy. There is only one means through which we can reclaim our American social legacy to forge Justice, Equality, and Freedom for ALL. We cannot wait while tyranny ascends, nor can we expect that a ‘savior’ can avert it. We must organize ourselves in some fashion, so that we can put our shoulders to the wheel of History, in a united push to reclaim what is OURS by inalienable right.

As unconnected individual citizens, we have little effective power. Even as citizens formed up into small affinity groups, our power pales in comparison to the highly organized powers arrayed against us. When we satisfy ourselves with small degrees of organization, we can sometimes cause trouble, or at least inconvenience, for those who have seized control of our nation away from us, but through these measures alone, we cannot get back the power we have lost.

Only by organizing ourselves on a scale that has never yet been seen, only by finding the means to unite our energies and resources, only by creating the means to pull together in a united effort, can ‘We The People’ reclaim our just and rightful power over our nation.


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