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demos.txt

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-The nature of Athenian democracy
-
-Direct, not representative
-
-The biggest difference between Athenian democracy and almost all subsequent democracies is that the Athenian version was remarkably direct rather than being representative. With a few exceptions, Athenians didn't vote for politicians to represent them; all Athenians voted on just about every law or policy the city was to adopt. Shall we fight the Spartans? The people vote and decide. Raise taxes? Build a navy? The people decide.
-
-A limited role for officials
-
-To make the government run, the Athenians did have to have public officials, of course. But they took radical measures to limit their power. Most public offices in the developed Athenian democracy were chose by lot, i.e., were chosen randomly. All those citizens willing to serve in a certain office put their names forward, and the winner was chosen rather like we choose lottery numbers. The Greeks considered this the most democratic way of choosing officials, for it ensured that all citizens, whether prominent, popular, rich, or not, had an equal chance to serve. (It may also have been considered a way of letting the gods pick the right people for the right jobs.) There were thousands of public offices chosen this way; and in almost all cases, an individual could hold a given office only once. Most offices were relatively unimportant, and far from full time work. But the sheer number of offices ensured that not only did the Athenians vote directly on most issues of state; most of them served many times during their lives as public officials.
-
-It would be very hard indeed for an Athenian to speak of the government as "them" or speak of the bureaucrats off in Washington or "Inside the Beltway." The Athenians were their government: there was no "us" versus "them." And the Athenians were, in fact, remarkably satisfied with their government; there was little of the alienation many Americans today feel about our rather different form of democracy.
-
-The problem of stability
-
-Athens was a state run almost entirely by amateurs. There were no professional politicians; no professional lawyers or judges, no professional civil service. The people could do what they pleased and, during much of Athenian history, whenever they wanted to do it. The Athenian people could vote one day to raise taxes by 50%, one day to cut them by that much; they could outlaw something one day, approve it the next; give citizens of Athens a right one day, take it away the next. This all must have been terribly inefficient. There was no constitution to keep them in check, and no lifetime judges to tell them what to do: a right you had one day could be taken away tomorrow. All this resulted in certain problems of stability; and, as we will see, the Athenians themselves took certain steps to limit the instability of their government without compromising its direct connection with the people. We can learn something from the strain between direct citizen involvement, on the one hand, and stability on the other. Americans today often feel that the government is a big them off in DC; we often think that the cure is more citizen involvement, and this must be right in an important sense. But a more direct form of democracy--even if it were possible in a country as large and diverse as our own--would also bring along problems not unlike those faced by Athens.
-
-By, for, and of male citizens
-
-But the greatest flaw with Athenian democracy, from our prospective, is the fact that while it was remarkably direct, it was also limited: no women could vote; nor could the large number of slaves in Attica, of course, have any say; and, by the middle of the 400's, no one moving to Athens could hope to ever gain citizen rights: you had to be born both to an Athenian father and an Athenian mother. So there is a sense in which Athens was both more and less democratic than our government is. It was, arguably, more democratic if you were lucky enough to be a male citizen; it wasn't democratic at all if you weren't.
-
-From Solon to Cleisthenes
-
-Solon's reforms of 594 BC may have helped; but for the middle years of the 500's Athens was torn by civic strife which led to the tyranny of Peisistratus and then his son Hippias. The Peisistratid tyranny may have allowed Athens to make economic progress; but it became increasingly unpopular and when Hippias was deposed on 510 BC the old problems of faction in unrest among the citizens resurfaced.
-
-Cleisthenes
-
-Alcmaeonid: Pericles; Alcibiades
-
-Cleisthenes was a member of the most famous political family in Athens, the Alcmaeonids. Pericles, the most famous leader of Athens, we will meet later, as we will Alcibiades, the most controversial Athenian leader of all time: both were Alcmaeonids. Note, then, that powerful families continue to count even in a more democratic society, and that the most prominent democrats are themselves members of a prominent aristocratic family. Compare, perhaps, the Kennedy family, which, like the Alcmaeonids, is rich, controversial, and liberal.
-
-Cleisthenes' reforms (507)
-
-In 510 Cleisthenes had managed to get the sons of Peisistratus kicked out of Athens with Spartan help. But now the old internal divisions which had plagued Athens since Solon's time reasserted themselves. Cleisthenes found himself faced by an internal rival who had the backing of most Athenian aristocrats. Cleisthenes, the historian Herodotus tells us, decided to turn to the people. Perhaps he did so solely out of practical political reasons: he needed a powerful force on his side now that the Spartans were against him. But this, I think, probably sells Cleisthenes short. I suspect that his major motivation was more a matter of principle. I'm not certain, though, that his idea, at least at the outset, was to produce a full-fledged fully democratic society. My guess is that he was acting to produce a government that would unify Athenians by giving all, rich and poor alike, some say in how the government worked. Unity, perhaps, rather than democracy, was his immediate goal. But it was democracy that he would prove to be the means to the unification of the people of Athens.
-
-Reorganization
-
-Deme, Trittys, Tribe
-
-Athens, like most Greek cities, had been divided into tribes based on descent. This gave aristocratic families a natural way of securing influence, because relatives tended to stick together. The people of Attica had also often clumped in regional groupings, as in the days of Peisistratus, and this had let to dangerous internal disorder, with people from one part of Attica set against those from another. Cleisthenes completely reorganized the Athenian state into a new, artificial, and rather complicated system. In his system the basic unit was the deme, the village or neighborhood in which one lived. These demes when then put together into 30 somewhat larger units called trittyes. Cleisthenes then formed his 10 new tribes by combining one trittyes from different parts of Attica, one from the coastal region, one from the city, and one from inland. These tribes would form the units in the Athenian army, and the Athenian Council. The result was to put Athenians from different parts of Attica together into the same political units; it's a bit like having some people from Alaska and some from Alabama belong to the same congressional district.
-
-Council
-
-Solon may already have set up a council: but we know nothing about it. It is under Cleisthenes that the Council or Boule (sometimes translated by it's Latin equivalent and called a Senate) became important. It would consist of 50 members chosen by lot from each of the 10 tribes. The Council would thus be a geographically balanced body, one of whose functions was to tie Athenians together regardless of where they lived or who they were related to. The Council's main task was to prepare legislation for the Athenian Assembly, but it also had certain functions we would associate with the executive branch of government. Each tribe's group of 50 would be on duty for one tenth of the year to oversee any business that needed immediate attention.
-
-Assembly
-
-The most important body in the Athenian democracy was the popular assembly, in which all male citizens could participate. The Assembly would meet a number of times each month, and the first 6000 or so Athenians citizens to arrive (all that could fit in the meeting place of the Assembly) would deliberate and vote on all important state actions. The assembly had the powers of our congress, and was not checked by any powerful executive or judicial branches, for public officials became progressively less important at Athens, and the judicial branch consisted of large juries of citizens who had interests similar to those of the members of the Assembly. Cleisthenes increased the power of the Assembly largely by making use of it to push through his reforms. By this precedent he ensured that all important laws had to be passed by a vote of the people as a whole. It is now fair to call Athens a democracy--so long as we note that women, slaves, and immigrants were not allowed to vote.
-
-Note that the two political bodies of Athens, the Assembly and the Council, had rather different roles: the Council made proposals which the Assembly could vote upon and amend. They also may have had somewhat different memberships. To get to the Assembly meeting you would have to come to Athens; as many Athenians lived 15 or 20 miles out in the countryside, this would have been quite a burden, and so it is possible that city-folks were over-represented (rather the opposite of today). The Council, though, was automatically geographically diversified by Cleisthenes' play, which ensured that people from the countryside at least had some say at that stage of the deliberations.
-
-Ostracism
-
-Cleisthenes may also have been responsible for the curious Athenian procedure known as ostracism. Under this procedure the Athenians would vote once a year in a sort of negative election: the unlucky winner, assuming a minimum of 6000 votes had been cast, was sent into exile for 10 years. His property was not confiscated, and he was not convicted of any crime; when the 10 years were up he was free to return. Apparently the procedure was designed to prevent any one man from becoming too powerful. As a matter of practice it seems sometimes to have cost the Athenians some of their best leaders. But it also produced a long term conclusion to what otherwise might be a prolonged debate between two leaders. The Athenians, one suspects, would have ostracized both Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton: we only managed to get rid of one of them.
-
-From thesmos to nomos
-
+The nature of Athenian democracy
+
+Direct, not representative
+
+The biggest difference between Athenian democracy and almost all subsequent democracies is that the Athenian version was remarkably direct rather than being representative. With a few exceptions, Athenians didn't vote for politicians to represent them; all Athenians voted on just about every law or policy the city was to adopt. Shall we fight the Spartans? The people vote and decide. Raise taxes? Build a navy? The people decide.
+
+A limited role for officials
+
+To make the government run, the Athenians did have to have public officials, of course. But they took radical measures to limit their power. Most public offices in the developed Athenian democracy were chose by lot, i.e., were chosen randomly. All those citizens willing to serve in a certain office put their names forward, and the winner was chosen rather like we choose lottery numbers. The Greeks considered this the most democratic way of choosing officials, for it ensured that all citizens, whether prominent, popular, rich, or not, had an equal chance to serve. (It may also have been considered a way of letting the gods pick the right people for the right jobs.) There were thousands of public offices chosen this way; and in almost all cases, an individual could hold a given office only once. Most offices were relatively unimportant, and far from full time work. But the sheer number of offices ensured that not only did the Athenians vote directly on most issues of state; most of them served many times during their lives as public officials.
+
+It would be very hard indeed for an Athenian to speak of the government as "them" or speak of the bureaucrats off in Washington or "Inside the Beltway." The Athenians were their government: there was no "us" versus "them." And the Athenians were, in fact, remarkably satisfied with their government; there was little of the alienation many Americans today feel about our rather different form of democracy.
+
+The problem of stability
+
+Athens was a state run almost entirely by amateurs. There were no professional politicians; no professional lawyers or judges, no professional civil service. The people could do what they pleased and, during much of Athenian history, whenever they wanted to do it. The Athenian people could vote one day to raise taxes by 50%, one day to cut them by that much; they could outlaw something one day, approve it the next; give citizens of Athens a right one day, take it away the next. This all must have been terribly inefficient. There was no constitution to keep them in check, and no lifetime judges to tell them what to do: a right you had one day could be taken away tomorrow. All this resulted in certain problems of stability; and, as we will see, the Athenians themselves took certain steps to limit the instability of their government without compromising its direct connection with the people. We can learn something from the strain between direct citizen involvement, on the one hand, and stability on the other. Americans today often feel that the government is a big them off in DC; we often think that the cure is more citizen involvement, and this must be right in an important sense. But a more direct form of democracy--even if it were possible in a country as large and diverse as our own--would also bring along problems not unlike those faced by Athens.
+
+By, for, and of male citizens
+
+But the greatest flaw with Athenian democracy, from our prospective, is the fact that while it was remarkably direct, it was also limited: no women could vote; nor could the large number of slaves in Attica, of course, have any say; and, by the middle of the 400's, no one moving to Athens could hope to ever gain citizen rights: you had to be born both to an Athenian father and an Athenian mother. So there is a sense in which Athens was both more and less democratic than our government is. It was, arguably, more democratic if you were lucky enough to be a male citizen; it wasn't democratic at all if you weren't.
+
+From Solon to Cleisthenes
+
+Solon's reforms of 594 BC may have helped; but for the middle years of the 500's Athens was torn by civic strife which led to the tyranny of Peisistratus and then his son Hippias. The Peisistratid tyranny may have allowed Athens to make economic progress; but it became increasingly unpopular and when Hippias was deposed on 510 BC the old problems of faction in unrest among the citizens resurfaced.
+
+Cleisthenes
+
+Alcmaeonid: Pericles; Alcibiades
+
+Cleisthenes was a member of the most famous political family in Athens, the Alcmaeonids. Pericles, the most famous leader of Athens, we will meet later, as we will Alcibiades, the most controversial Athenian leader of all time: both were Alcmaeonids. Note, then, that powerful families continue to count even in a more democratic society, and that the most prominent democrats are themselves members of a prominent aristocratic family. Compare, perhaps, the Kennedy family, which, like the Alcmaeonids, is rich, controversial, and liberal.
+
+Cleisthenes' reforms (507)
+
+In 510 Cleisthenes had managed to get the sons of Peisistratus kicked out of Athens with Spartan help. But now the old internal divisions which had plagued Athens since Solon's time reasserted themselves. Cleisthenes found himself faced by an internal rival who had the backing of most Athenian aristocrats. Cleisthenes, the historian Herodotus tells us, decided to turn to the people. Perhaps he did so solely out of practical political reasons: he needed a powerful force on his side now that the Spartans were against him. But this, I think, probably sells Cleisthenes short. I suspect that his major motivation was more a matter of principle. I'm not certain, though, that his idea, at least at the outset, was to produce a full-fledged fully democratic society. My guess is that he was acting to produce a government that would unify Athenians by giving all, rich and poor alike, some say in how the government worked. Unity, perhaps, rather than democracy, was his immediate goal. But it was democracy that he would prove to be the means to the unification of the people of Athens.
+
+Reorganization
+
+Deme, Trittys, Tribe
+
+Athens, like most Greek cities, had been divided into tribes based on descent. This gave aristocratic families a natural way of securing influence, because relatives tended to stick together. The people of Attica had also often clumped in regional groupings, as in the days of Peisistratus, and this had let to dangerous internal disorder, with people from one part of Attica set against those from another. Cleisthenes completely reorganized the Athenian state into a new, artificial, and rather complicated system. In his system the basic unit was the deme, the village or neighborhood in which one lived. These demes when then put together into 30 somewhat larger units called trittyes. Cleisthenes then formed his 10 new tribes by combining one trittyes from different parts of Attica, one from the coastal region, one from the city, and one from inland. These tribes would form the units in the Athenian army, and the Athenian Council. The result was to put Athenians from different parts of Attica together into the same political units; it's a bit like having some people from Alaska and some from Alabama belong to the same congressional district.
+
+Council
+
+Solon may already have set up a council: but we know nothing about it. It is under Cleisthenes that the Council or Boule (sometimes translated by it's Latin equivalent and called a Senate) became important. It would consist of 50 members chosen by lot from each of the 10 tribes. The Council would thus be a geographically balanced body, one of whose functions was to tie Athenians together regardless of where they lived or who they were related to. The Council's main task was to prepare legislation for the Athenian Assembly, but it also had certain functions we would associate with the executive branch of government. Each tribe's group of 50 would be on duty for one tenth of the year to oversee any business that needed immediate attention.
+
+Assembly
+
+The most important body in the Athenian democracy was the popular assembly, in which all male citizens could participate. The Assembly would meet a number of times each month, and the first 6000 or so Athenians citizens to arrive (all that could fit in the meeting place of the Assembly) would deliberate and vote on all important state actions. The assembly had the powers of our congress, and was not checked by any powerful executive or judicial branches, for public officials became progressively less important at Athens, and the judicial branch consisted of large juries of citizens who had interests similar to those of the members of the Assembly. Cleisthenes increased the power of the Assembly largely by making use of it to push through his reforms. By this precedent he ensured that all important laws had to be passed by a vote of the people as a whole. It is now fair to call Athens a democracy--so long as we note that women, slaves, and immigrants were not allowed to vote.
+
+Note that the two political bodies of Athens, the Assembly and the Council, had rather different roles: the Council made proposals which the Assembly could vote upon and amend. They also may have had somewhat different memberships. To get to the Assembly meeting you would have to come to Athens; as many Athenians lived 15 or 20 miles out in the countryside, this would have been quite a burden, and so it is possible that city-folks were over-represented (rather the opposite of today). The Council, though, was automatically geographically diversified by Cleisthenes' play, which ensured that people from the countryside at least had some say at that stage of the deliberations.
+
+Ostracism
+
+Cleisthenes may also have been responsible for the curious Athenian procedure known as ostracism. Under this procedure the Athenians would vote once a year in a sort of negative election: the unlucky winner, assuming a minimum of 6000 votes had been cast, was sent into exile for 10 years. His property was not confiscated, and he was not convicted of any crime; when the 10 years were up he was free to return. Apparently the procedure was designed to prevent any one man from becoming too powerful. As a matter of practice it seems sometimes to have cost the Athenians some of their best leaders. But it also produced a long term conclusion to what otherwise might be a prolonged debate between two leaders. The Athenians, one suspects, would have ostracized both Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton: we only managed to get rid of one of them.
+
+From thesmos to nomos
+
 The Athenian vocabulary for "law" changed in an interesting way in Cleisthenes' day, and Cleisthenes himself may have been responsible for the change. Solon's laws were known as "thesmoi"; the word is related to the Greek verb meaning to put or place, and refers to the process by which law is imposed by a law-giver or other authority. Solon was a good and wise man, and was given his power by the people; but he was still imposing laws on the people. Nomos, by contrast, refers to custom and tradition, customs and traditions already present in the society rather than being imposed from on high. Thus by referring to statues as "nomoi" rather than "thesmoi" one gives law an entirely different meaning. No longer are laws imposed on "us" by someone else: "we" make our own laws. Thus the Athenians were beginning to take charge of their own government. And just in time; for they would need all their strength to meet the challenges of the 5th century.

empty.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,36 @@
+The Eternally Empty Cup versus The Over Flowing Chalice?
+Which would you choose?
+People emptily pursue, their isolated, and limited lives. Atomized, demoralized, paralyzed. Worked too hard for too little, and then spending what hard earned lucre they have upon base, empty, and emptying, things which simply do not satisfy, or fill the void.
+The emptiness springs from the sensation that each has been taught from birth, that they need material things, and meaningless pleasures, which in fact bring them only the desire, to have more. Thus the more they have, the more they need, the more they want, in a never ending cycle.
+This need has been conditioned to such an extent that people will trade, all the things worth having in the present and future for needless junk-goods and fad buys right now like dope fiends. They have been conditioned since birth to mindlessly spend until it is blood and tears, they are paying with, for their bobbles and trinkets. Hollowing out the substance to have the appearance.
+Thus slowly but surely most people, and this consumer society as a whole, are being emptied of all things worth possessing, in exchange for useless junk which will never ever satisfy the people, at their most basic level. This leads to further attempts to find happiness by ever more absurd wastes of effort and time upon even more outlandish fadish nonsense that does not leave one feeling sated and full.
+If we are to change this cycle of needful dependence upon junk, we must break this never ending repetition, by frankly telling them the hard truth about their plight, and thus, triggering such an empathetic emotional response that no amount of trinkets will paper over the true needs of those whom we reach.
+We must boldly confront people's false belief, in their needless baseless needs which are purely mindless wants, and break their dependency, upon the false happiness, which the material trinkets bring if fleetingly by exposing them to other options, other ways and means.
+We must also provide ways to potential new sources of happiness, well being, and contentment, which sources of joy will be filling rather than emptying, which will
+bring an expansion of the people's lives rather than a contraction, which will fulfill people's lives and build them up, rather than spoil and tear down lives.
+We shall seek out and cultivate happiness inside the man, rather than from without his person.
+These new happinesses will be internal ideals not external items, thus the people will be brought from living in a spiritual vacuum to a fulfilled life in which their internal status, will count higher with them, then the material goods, which will be seen merely as means to the ends of life. This is life affirming as opposed to the death affirming nature of the empty nothing world about us. This affirmation of life is possible if we those who oppose the empty promises of the death cult, work loyally towards control over the basic instruments of power.
+The first center is in our own soul, then our homes, then our communities.
+The communities in our Nation have been reduced to the level of flop-houses for the world, because our leaders, local and national, are Judas goats who have no loyalty to anything but the money which their hidden masters provide.
+The community is the family home on a large scale: The home must be cleansed of these betrayers' stench. The community must once, and yet again, be a place of Life that promises something worth living for; it must again become a united whole based the on common good over selfish interests.
+If this communal re-alignment of priorities toward life, is to become possible persons loyal to the ideals of life, must gain control over first and foremost the local educational system, then local print and broadcast media, and finally rise to hold economic, social and political sway in the local community as authority figures and leaders, both civic and economic, secular and spiritual. The common persons in these communities must be brought over by early indoctrination of proper values, steady persuasion in the justness of our cause, and the good positive examples of the new leadership, which will all impact positively upon their lives. Then the commons will after seeing the benefits of the Organic Society, willingly abandoned the false cult of materialism and with the fervor of new converts embrace the idealistic values of these leaders.
+It is absolutely necessary that people who are loyal to the nation take local power in the community back from these traitors, systemically, silently, and with all dispatch. Then and only then will it be possible for the local means of communication, administration, and taxation to be available to those who are loyal to the nation, and to use these to shape events, to the advantage of our People first and foremost.
+These local communities shall be the seed beds from which the nationalist future shall grow. From the bottom up this great rebirth of our nation grow, as a mighty tree.
+Understand this: If this local counter-revolution against the PC world's degradation of all we hold dear, does not happen, then materialism's emptiness, will consume everything and all will be lost. Everything that we hold dear, everything that we value will be consumed as our people mindlessly use up the past to pay for a party, that is killing us, as surely as any executioner, and pay every increasing prices to have ever diminishing returns.
+For PC is the fad of self-destruction, taken to a society wide level.
+A narcissistically suicidal death pact, us to us, that we shall destroy us, in the name of us -- Us being the Left Wing Fanatics, who are perfectly willing to sacrifice everything you have, to their false idols of equality, diversity and tolerance. Their weapons are 'white guilt', ' white privilege' and mass third world immigration which all amount to subversion coupled to an invasion.
+Thus: It is critical that Loyal Son's of the Soil secure these local communities as economic, social and political units. The entire battle against PC, depends upon being able to provide for ourselves, as persons, families and communities so that we can wrestle PC to the ground and triumph.
+Hear this and understand it: We the White Western Peoples are being systemically eliminated, from our own history, lands and more and more mentally, spiritually being castrated to serve as the whipping boys of PC's reformation, of the world as we know, and love it. We must refuse this fate, and resist this foul ending of our great civilization.
+We have an absolute duty, and every just right to fight back against PC because it is anti-popular, anti-Nationalist, and anti-Life. It is simply put a death pact, which was forced upon us, which we want no part of and: We are not alone.
+There are millions of us that simply have not yet had the courage to stand up publicly for their beliefs, but in their hearts they are with us.
+They simply lack a frame work within which to build their ideals into useable tools with which to fight back against the PC media bias, and academic conformity to liberal/egalitarian values.
+The material presented is an attempt to give just these folks a frame work upon which to base their thinking, and from which to formulate their thoughts written and spoken so as to provide a 'united front' for Populists, Conservatives, and Nationalists who dissent from PC and want off this train to the Liberal Land of the Dead.
+There are quite a few seemingly novel ideas, but we assure you that 'Nothing is New Under the Sun' and we have merely found what was good, and woven it into a tapestry useful to our People's ends. The material is based around the English speaking world, from which liberalism sprang, and into which we were born. But the ideas can be applied to the entire West, from the Urals to Australia. Anywhere people are willing to work hard, this material can be used, to direct that work.
+The material presented is based upon the concept that what is founded upon correct principles, grows naturally of its own accord in strength as what has a strong foundation can be built high with confidence.
+Our solid foundation, for the nation, is a unique people, who originate in families.
+These families, have a home, a hearth, and a heritage. It is these family homes, with the mother father bonding pair acting as the primary parts from which all else springs. Thus Our solid foundation is the man woman dichotomy, and the natural complimentary relationship between them. In this relationship is found life; outside of this is death. We firmly embrace Life for our People, and we just as firmly reject the death cult, that is liberal modernity slash political correctness.
+The material presented in the essay is an outline of how we believe our people arrived here, and how we believe they can return to better Lives.
+With that as a counterweight to the death cult that surrounds us, we present The Organic Theory of Society, which is a fully illustrated essay, again intended to fill in the past, sketch out the present, and present before the mind's eye a far better vision of the future. The future, not a but the future, worth working hard, and struggling to build. We embrace our history and our people. These are the path that leads unto life.
+The Organic Society is life based and life affirming. It is everything this death based cult is not and can never be. Embrace Life.
+ A legal lawful doable Plan to really be free of PC's Death Cult. A plan that leads to life and away from death. The Organic Society is based upon Life, family, home, hearth and heritage. The emptiness is based upon nothing.
+Which cup will you choose?