Bill of Duties Revisited

Fellow blogger John A invited me to respond to the Bill of Rights with a corresponding Bill of Duties. I started to write up some legaleze-sounding gibberish that directly responded to the first two ammendments to the Constitution. As I was explaining the verbage, I quickly realized that I was trying to write something that told people to just behave themselves, for crying out loud.

But what qualifies as good behavior? As a Catholic, the answer popped into my head immediately: the ten Judeo-Christian commandments. A quick check on the web tells me that Islam also adheres to the essential points of the ten commandments. I was happy to see mention of things in the Qur'an such as "Keep one's promises" and "Be honest and fair". Those sorts of things are described in the Judeo-Christian Bible as well, just not as part of the ten commandments. These are our duties as citizens of a community.

If I had responded to the Bill of Rights point by point, I would have established limits on freedoms with the intent of avoiding social damage produced by excessive use of those freedoms. Such statements would originate in a desire to have citizens do no harm. That's known as the Silver Rule: Commit No Harm. A nation with the potential of America must rely on a finer, more demanding metric, the Golden Rule: Do Good Works.

It's not enough to say that what you're doing isn't hurting anyone. You must do things that help the community. A community only operates while its members are committed to the community above themselves. Look to anyone in your community who builds that community and you'll find someone who acts for the improvement of the community. They spend their time on the well-being of the community instead of spending it on themselves. Alas, we were given the Bill of Rights, which emphasized self without an equal or greater emphasis on the health of the community. That encouraged Americans to think in terms of personal freedoms and liberties without a commensurate consideration of the needs of the community.

So if I were making ammendments that were needed to establish a bill of duties, it would include things like telling the truth, respecting others, taking care of one's own health, pursuing one's own maturation, participation in community, etc, etc, etc. All the things that we were taught in kindergarten, before we got so clever and decided to focus on pursuing our civil liberties to extremes.

Ultimately, the founding fathers missed the mark. They believed that people were fundamentally Christian in demeanor, and that liberties could be granted to them without fear of an erosion of the society. Ultimately, society has flexed and twisted so much over the past 200 years that our freedoms have burdened us as terribly as the overbearing rule of a monarch.

Dollar Voting

In the days of the big corporate trusts, such as John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, men were concentrating so much power in their own hands that they were rivaling the power of the federal government. They could make decisions that affected the lives of so many people that they were the equivalent of elected representatives. Even to the point of influencing the laws of the land, whether through straight lobbying or through bribery and other illegal means.

The men who controlled those trusts were voted in by America by virtue of what products and services we bought. Those men were also very aggressive individuals who pushed hard to get the money and power that they wanted, but Americans were complicit in the whole affair. Innocently so, but we were part of it all.

These days, we still have problems with large corporations that hold immense power. We keep buying their products and services, and they keep getting more and more money. That money is used to impact society. Given that a company's claimed first responsibility is towards its shareholders, that suggests that being a financially successful company is the top priority. Therefore, the impact on society is going to be colored by that priority.

In contrast, companies that are dominated by a single individual tend to operate along the lines of the ethics of that individual. Ted Turner is liberally-minded, so his media company is liberally-minded. Warren Buffett is mid-western straightforward, so his conglomerate is straightforward.

No matter the formation of the company or its reason for its behavior, all companies have an agenda that they are pursuing, and that agenda will have an impact on the society in which they operate. As shown by the years of the corporate trusts, that impact can rival or exceed the impact of the elected officials. This is where dollar voting comes in.

Each time we spend money, we are empowering someone to pursue their agenda. In fact, when you get your paycheck, you are being empowered to pursue your agenda. The issue comes in when individuals hold so much power that their agenda can be realized. Yet nobody ever voted for that agenda. Except through their purchases.

Consider J.K. Rowling's wealth. She has around a billion dollars as a result of writing the extraordinarily successful Harry Potter series. She possesses enough personal power to effect significant change in society. She can give massive amounts of money to any number of companies, charities and organizations that can accomplish any number of things. But nobody voted for her. Except when they bought the books, saw the movies, etc. Her ability to write books has endowed her with the power to affect social change.

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are taking the money that they accumulated from their businesses and they're starting social programs for education and the treatment of Aids. This isn't a couple million dollars of social programs. This is tens of billions of dollars of social programs. And we voted for those programs when we bought our toothpaste and our PCs. We voted in Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.

Bill of Duties

When our country was founded, some very smart men realized that an important thing needed to be written down: what are the rights that citizens of the new nation possess? The Bill of Rights was born. At the time of its composition, being an American was a very new phenomenon, the nation being only a few years old. The Revolutionary War was rooted in a dissatisfaction with the treatment of the colonists by the British government, and we can see that dissatisfaction reflected in the Bill of Rights, which has a lengthy list of things that a government can't do to its citizens. It's a fine list.

Unfortunately for America, it is a list that is rooted in a reaction to the problems of that time, and there is an implicit assumption that the prevailing social order would remain. That is, America was full of people who were working hard to develop the land, explore, engage in commerce and raise families. People worked for a living, and the gap between the richest and the poorest was fairly narrow, relative to today. Most everyone was still close to the land. The industrial revolution simply hadn't arrived yet. Family was a critical part of life. It was the way it had been for hundreds of years and as far as the founding fathers were concerned, it was going to continue that way.

As a result, the founding fathers felt safe in their metaphorical pushing-away of the known evils of their beloved British Empire. If life had continued close to the land and to family, everything would likely have worked out. Unfortunately, the industrial revolution was soon to arrive.

Most everything that changes causes challenges to the existing social order. Some revel in the changes, while other are terrified by them. Usually, the young embrace the new, because both the old way and the new way are equally 'new'. When the industrial revolution arrived, the world reeled with the changes. Cities expanded and become centers of production of goods. Efficiency of machinery meant that fewer farmers were needed in the fields, and so on. It was a lot of changes, and the existing social order flexed in response to the changes.

This is where the Bill of Rights comes back into the picture. When all those changes were taking place, whether originating in the industrial revolution or in any of a number of other ways, the prevailing social structures constituted the fences and borders that decided how the society would react. The Bill of Rights is one such fence. More accurately, it is the removal of some fences and borders that used to be in place. Governments used to tell people what they could and could not talk about, or what sorts of religious expression were permitted, etc. Those are some serious fences. The Bill of Rights knocked them down.

I know that I wouldn't want to live in a society where the government dictated what I could say in public. I likely couldn't write these articles in the free association style that I use. I'd probably have to have a lawyer look them over to make sure that I wasn't saying anything I shouldn't.

That said, there are limits to all things. It's not legal to threaten the President of the United States. You can't say stuff like that. You also can't slander people or commit libel. So there are at least SOME limits on freedom of speech, contrary to the claims of the Bill of Rights (it does say "no law" after all).

Why do we have these laws? Because it is in the best interest of the nation to have them. Said another way, there is no value to the community to let people threaten the President, nor to commit libel or to slander another person. Those are reflections of the duties of the citizens of the United States.

That brings me to the topic of the article: Bill of Duties. The Bill of Rights opened up new territory of freedom, but without any statement on how much is too much. A Bill of Duties would be a balancing statement to help us figure out where the limits are.

For example, what if the Bill of Duties said that we had a duty to use our skills for the betterment of the community? Smart people would then spend time trying to figure out what "betterment" boiled down to, making laws that were in support of that goal of betterment.

What if the Bill of Duties said that we had a duty to aid in the upbringing of children in our community? Laws would be passed to ensure that many more teachers, mentors and instructors would be available to our children. Those teachers would be mindful of their duties towards those children and would also instill that ethic in those children. They would be dutiful to the children who are younger still.

It would be an interesting experience to collect a bunch of our best and brightest minds, assemble a Bill of Duties, and see where that might lead this country - no matter the curveballs that were thrown at it. We need to be more than just the land of the free. We need to be the land of the dutiful.

Lying Isn't Illegal

Hewlett Packard (HP) is in the news right now. They hired investigators who used the technique of "pretexting" to obtain the telephone records of reporters in an effort to discover who it was that leaked information about HP's private discussions. In pretexting, an investigator goes to a company - in this case, a phone company - and identifies themself as someone that they want private information for. For example, I go to Verizon and say that I'm you. Verizon believes me because I have your social security number and other private information that is rather easy to obtain. Now that Verizon believes me, I can ask them to send me a copy of my phone record. That's called "pretexting".

It's also called "lying". And it's not always illegal. The ninth commandment tell us that it is a sin to lie. A sin is something that has a negative consequence for the individuals involved. As a result, it has a negative consequence for their community. Last I heard, that's what laws were about: disallowing things that were damaging to the community.

I suggest that we put "lying" on the books as an illegal act. The penalty is commensurate with the impact of the lie. If I tell you that I'm a lawyer at a party and I'm not, I should be held liable and get smacked upside the head. If I tell you that I'm a lawyer and I'm not, and I offer you legal advice, I should be held liable and fined and tazered for emphasis (I'm a big fan of punishment including something physical). If I'm an advertiser and I say that my product is the finest product in the world, I better be able to prove it or else I'm lying, and I should again be penalized for my lie.

Things get more ticklish if we start saying that lying is sometimes good. We believe that when we are faced with telling a truth that will produce terrible repercussions versus telling a lie which will smoothly get past an unpleasant situation. It's easier to come up with a story for our parents than to confess to having done something seriously wrong. Unfortunately, we let ourselves get into those predicaments because we're willing to lie in the first place. We have learned that there are things that people are content to hear and things that they are not, and that the only thing that ultimately matters is what they end up hearing. So we have become practiced at lying.

A reflection of all this is that we have also mastered the art of the euphemism. When something is unpleasant, we don't talk about it directly. Illegal drugs might be referred to as "product". An unborn child is called a "fetus". Homosexuality is called "being gay". And lying to a company is called "pretexting". Euphemisms themselves are a form of lying because they attempt to perceive something about the world in a way that we are more comfortable with.

Spend some time today thinking about deceptions and untruths that you have either presented or supported. Look hard and you'll find them all over. I know that I have mine, and they are a monkey on my back. How big is your monkey? How big is the collection of monkeys on the backs of those who have lied in the "best interests" of of a company the size of Hewlett Packard?

Small Crimes, Small Punishments

Our prisons are chock full of criminals, and we're busily raising the next generation of criminals. In public schools, teachers are not permitted to physically discipline students. I believe that is the source of so many problems in our society. When a child misbehaves, that child should be physically disciplined. A spanking. A smack on the back of the hand. A firm grip on the shoulder and a steely look in the eye, warning the child not to transgress again.

This can obviously be taken too far, and it can become abusive towards children. That is clearly something to be limited. But we're currently at the other end of the spectrum, where children have an implicit association between getting in trouble and being either talked to death with yet another lecture or bored to death with another simpleminded punishment. These types of feedback for improper behavior work for some large percentage of children, but they don't work for some additional percentage. And those kids are the ones that need to be reminded, physically, that some behaviors are inappropriate.

Talking back to a teacher is serious stuff, and should be treated as such. That child should either be removed from the classroom or physically disciplined on the spot in some appropriate way. But in the spirit of "small crimes, small punishments", students shouldn't even be getting to the point of talking back to a teacher. When a child doesn't follow reasonable instructions in a reasonable way, there should be instant feedback for that child's behavior. If a child doesn't sit, the teacher can make the child sit. Not by talking him or her to death, but by placing a strong hand on the child's shoulder and making him or her sit.

This concept goes beyond school. It applies to all levels of our society. If a teenager commits a small crime, have them get some physical feedback. If a teen steals a car, tazer 'em. Twice, if need be. Public canings sound like a good way to get a message across to a young adult mind that our society will not tolerate vandalism and other petty crimes.

Public canings may sound medieval and cruel, but I suggest that it is far more cruel to permit young minds to develop with the notion that disrespecting or even violating the rule of law is perfectly reasonable. Such minds are forever handicapped by fundamental beliefs that will impair their ability to function effectively in society.

I'd even apply this to adults. What if driving faster than the speed limit resulted in being tazered instead of paying a small fine? It would wipe out a revenue stream for local governments, but it would also result in quick and simple justice that people would be really sure not to fall into.

The ideal is to have the punishment be applied instantly, as well. Drive too fast in your car, and a special unit arrives immediately that includes a judge and a medical team to apply the punishment right then, right there. Punish someone days or weeks after they commit a crime and the association between crime and punishment is lost. Punish someone in the very instant that they are commiting the crime and their brain will very clearly establish the association between the two events. That simple association is what's needed, and it's why I begin with school-age children.

Ultimately, we have a ponderous system for dealing with criminals and, as a result, we can only go after the most serious crimes. That's a lot like trying to put out too many forest fires with too few fire fighters. Put people on extinguishing fires as soon as they spark and there's much less of a need for putting out the big blazes.

Immigration

Four hundred years ago, Europeans came to America and began a very rare process: the creation of a brand new country from scratch. The existing population of native American tribes were pushed out, and colonists were pushed in. Those colonists weren't just anyone, picked up off the street. They were people who were motivated enough to take a dangerous ocean voyage in small sailing ships to a new land where they were going to have to build most everything they had.

For the next four hundred years, America became progressively easy to enter, but it still remained a nation viewed by much of the world as raw and uncultured. Those who wanted to reach America were interested in the opportunities of having their own land, of starting their own business, of pursuing that American notion of self-determination.

Because America was difficult to reach, only those people with the smarts, talent and determination reached America. The stay-at-home types did just that. They stayed at home. The ones who liked things the way they were in Europe stayed put. Those who were more willing to place their future in their own hands were the ones who chased the possibilities in America.

That has meant that America has been a filter of sorts. Most of the people who came to America were pursuing the future. They had a vision of what they could make out of their lives, and they pursued some dream that they had. Those are the people who made America the great nation that it is today.

There are many footnotes to be added here. America also has a whole culture of African Americans who were dragged into the nation as slaves. They didn't want to be here and now their descendants are with us as Americans. I see a disconnect between the descendants of the African slaves and the descendants of the Europeans who came over voluntarily, pursuing some dream. That same disconnect exists between the descendants of the African slaves and the Africans who came over of their own choice. The culture of America is built from the attitudes of people who are motivated to cross oceans to pursue dreams. The African slaves dragged over here wanted to stay in Africa. The intentions of the two groups is the source of the disconnect.

A similar disconnect exists between the current American culture and the remaining descendants of native Americans. They had a culture that worked for them. The European culture that morphed into the American culture was not their culture. It still isn't.

Such a disconnect will undoubtedly form as a result of the current flood of immigrants coming up from the south. Some number of those people are motivated according to the ethic that made America what it is today. But because of the relative ease of crossing the border, and because it involves breaking the standing laws of the land, the overall ethic of the people coming across the border is not a match with that of the existing population.

Mind you, I have nothing against any specific race. I have problems with those who act in ways that are contrary to the well-being of the community. Living on welfare due to sloth. Not taking full advantage of school. Free schooling, and still many do not take advantage of it. Declaring bankruptcy due to pure and simple overspending on discretionary items.

Those are just some pet peeves, but they represent counter-examples to the general notion that America works because people have been of a mind to make the most of themselves. those are the people that we want in America. Why do we want them? Because America is a kind of crucible of creativity. Great strides in every field of endeavor known to mankind have been made by the people of all the nations of the world who came to America, and those strides can only continue if every American can rely on every other American to do what is right. To do what is helpful and positive to the community.

When we consider the topic of immigration, we should be accepting as many top-notch applicants as we can, regardless of world quotas. People who want to help keep America an ethical, innovative and productive country are the people we want. I see hispanic men working their tails off on groundskeeping everywhere I go. I applaud that kind of work ethic, whether they are here illegally or not. Legality is an issue of will, and I have tried to point out that the will of America should be focused on the type of people we want in America - whether they are Americans or not.

For my money, there are a lot of people outside America who should be called Americans, and quite a few American citizens who just don't have the American ethic. Those who don't have the American ethic should go to a country that shares their ethic. They would undoubtedly be happier there. That, or they would change their attitude about the value of being a hard-working and honest American.

When debating the issue of immigration, stay focused on what it is that immigation is all about - finding people who share the traditional American ethic and can help us to be a better nation than we are.

Spending Wisely

In the late 1800s, there were men of such power that they rivalled or exceeded the power of the federal and state governments. The processes and measures of capitalism permitted individuals of sufficient tenacity, skill and perhaps willingness to push laws to the breaking point to assemble single dominant business entities within a number of industries. Sugar, tobacco, steel and, perhaps the most widely-known trust, that of oil; the trust of John D. Rockefeller. Standard Oil.

I did not say that these were men interested in community, health, wisdom and enrichment of their neighbors. They were tough, savvy businessmen who tackled the chore of assembling wealth and of controlling power. Using the techniques available to them, they were able to employ their basic character to amass that wealth and power. The point being that there was no natural feedback mechanism to inhibit greed nor reward any semblance of service to the community. Businessmen pursued business.

The very lack of a feedback mechanism is the focus of my interest here. I've noticed that there seems to be no correlation between the power that we grant people and their role in our society. Consider actors and athletes who make tens of millions of dollars. Because they entertain us, we give them vast sums of money. Because they have vast sums of money, they can contribute their money to (or found) organizations that have an impact on our society. I find that chain astounding; because someone has a talent for entertainment, they are entrusted with an ability to impact our society.

There is nothing at all saying that an actor is any more or less capable or desirous of good for the community than is anyone else. However, there is nothing inherent in being an actor that infuses wisdom for knowing what is good for the community into the actor. The same is true of Bill Gates or Warren Buffett. These men have acquired vast stores of wealth, not unlike the trust barons of the late 1800s. Yet their ability to operate a company gives them no particular insight into proper techniques of social development.

In days gone by, if you disagreed with the social agenda of the corner storekeeper, you didn't buy from his store. That's because you knew who he was and what he stood for. A dollar spent in his store was a dollar that he could use to do something that you disagreed with. Today, corporations and other "entities" accumulate money in the course of thier operation, and that money butresses social agendas of their choosing. We, as consumers are voting for changes to the social agenda of America when we purchase goods and services, yet we have no idea what social agendas we're voting for.

In a similar way, if a large enough group of people with a characteristic trait comes into being, they become a demographic. Businesses market to demographic groups. The newest demographic groups that come to mind for me are the homosexuals and the hispanics. Businesses legitimize demographic groups by catering to their world view. For example, no company in its right mind tells homosexuals that homosexuality is a bad thing. Homosexuals don't buy from companies like that. Companies declare homosexuality a lifestyle, and show advertising and marketing with homosexuals living a happy, well-adjusted life, as American as apple pie and baseball. The same is done for any group that a business targets, whether homosexuals, technophiles, hispanics, or flag-waving gun enthusiasts.

This is done, obviously enough, in order to pursue that most basic of capitalistic goals: having customers and making a profit. That pursuit erodes the social fabric of the nation, as it has been doing since the second world war.

I brought up the disconnect between how money gets into people's hands and how it is then used in our society. In the case of businesses, there is no disconnect at all. Businesses are about making money, and so the actions of their employees are focused on that goal. A marketable demographic comes into existence and companies will market to that demographic. That very marketing alters the social fabric because it plays on the perceptions of people in that demographic. Once a company has money, it then turns around and uses that money to push the lawmakers to structure laws that favor their business plans. The feedback loop is inherently towards greater profit for companies. Any benefit to the community is typically incidental.

This article, sadly, isn't trying to pursue a solution, only to observe the weaknesses. Individuals who have nothing inherent in their lifestyle to make them worthy of altering our social fabric are receiving power when they are handed large amounts of money, to be dispensed as their will and wisdom dictate. Businesses, whose agenda is unrelated to the inherent well-being of the nation or any individual's wisdom, are the custodians of the wealth of the nation, and their agenda will take the nation wherever profit leads them.

America Stumbled

For a very long time, Christianity and Judaism ruled in America. People were indoctrinated into a culture that emphasized Judeo-Christian values, and those values were placed at the forefront of our society from cradle to the grave. It was a very good system that ensured that people behaved themselves, which is a key characteristic to a society that functions well. Not perfectly, but well.

Then came the second world war. An entire generation of Americans went to war, facing a range of experiences that ranged from unpleasant to horrific. Those that returned from battling enemies around the world had a very natural reaction to peacetime: "go for it". I have never experienced war, but I can well imagine that the victors of a war that involved everyone in the nation could well have an attitude of celebration. And celebrate is exactly what America did.

The 1950s were an economic boomtime for America. Material goods flowed from our factories, and wealth was created at an astonishing pace. Conveniences that were unheard of before the war became commonplace. It was truly a time of social upheaval, except that the nation was so busy enjoying the fruits of success that nobody really noticed.

Then came the 1960s, which was when the children of the veterans of the second world war became teenagers. They were born as early as 1945, making them 15 in 1960. They were the vanguard of what we know now as the members of the "baby boom"; all those servicemen full of victory, vitality and that "go fr it" attitude were having babies. But they were so busy either "going for it" or instilling that same attitude in their children that those age-old Judeo-Christian values simply weren't being made the cornerstone of the American ethic.

The final nail in the coffin of the Judeo-Christian ethic in America was the advent of a number of new and dramatic technologies. Perhaps the poster child of these is the computer, which has revolutionized most aspects of life in America. That revolution has taken place so quickly that the elderly have no notion of how life works with the new technologies. Their experience is rendered inconsequential. At the same time, the young are able to adapt to the new technologies without conscious thought.

Now consider the effect of having a large population of young adults who were raised with an attitude of "going for it", living in a society that dramatically changes from decade to decade. That same society is democratic, meaning that that large population of young adults has a significant say in how the society will reward or punish a number of behaviors via the laws and ordinances that structure the society. Unfortunately, the value of the old-fashioned Judeo-Christian ethic to the society was overlooked in all the excitement, and fundamental values were not being instilled in any systematic way.

So the ultimate result of all this is that our society tripped. A generation of parents coming back from the second world war were too much changed by their experiences to have the energy and enthusiasm to sort through the good and bad habits of their children in a dynamically-changing environment. As a result, too many of those children turned to their instincts instead of those Judeo-Christian ethics. That was the point at which America tripped. A healthy stride had been broken.

Today, the children of the baby boom are approaching retirement, perhaps the golden age of their lives, where they have the opportunity to demonstrate their accumulated wisdom from the past 60 years. Unfortunately, the boomers seem to be more focused on remaining young and enjoying their retirement decades as they enjoyed their earlier decades. Viagra, cosmetic surgery and knee replacements may be the focus of that generation.

I like to think that Americans are so blessed that we have the time and resources to become a nation of philosopher kings. A democratic society so capable, so aware of the good and bad points in the nature of humanity that we can offer remarkable insights to others - and govern our own inevitable failings with grace and dignity. I believe that we have been on that path for two hundred years, barring our recent stumble triggered by the events of the second world war.

I look forward to the generations to come to recognize the way that the second world war impacted the development of our society and to put right the wrongs that we have committed to law for our citizens. I hope that we have retined the wisdom to again turn to the path of developing a nation of philosopher kings. As children, we are going to be indoctrinated into some set of values. Why not those of philosopher kings?