Living Outside The Dialectic: communitarianism

A friend of ours wrote this speech to testify publicly to her opposition to Common Core. Very concise rebuttal that shows the level of comprehension many American parents have. Common Core is an important Communitarian educational program that will serve our children to Pachamama on a silver platter.

Speech to Independent Regulatory Review Commission in opposition to Common Core

Our kids deserve better than to be treated like a hunk of iron passively waiting to be mined, melted, and molded into finely tuned cogs- by the corporate-state, for the corporate-state. The corporate wing of this beast wants to grind our kids into plug and play parts to install in their widget companies. The state wing of this beast wants to use our kids as the currency in what amounts to a giant corporate welfare bonanza. Together, they treat our kids like a commodity to be bought, sold, and harnessed for their benefit.

Common Core is an industrial model that grooms students into compliant servants who won't have the audacity to question, experiment, innovate, and compete against their generous benefactors who cling to their buggy whips, bureaucratic temples, and smoke-filled back rooms. We can no longer allow our kids to be treated like some form of property to be exploited by this beast. No one is the property of another to be treated this way and to think otherwise is to accept slavery.

I am commenting for the purpose of stopping the final adoption of Common Core Standards but more than that I am commenting to offer alternative ideas for improving education. Effective education does not require massive amounts of money and there is certainly evidence to back this up. (Attachment 1. "How a Radical New Teaching Method Could Unleash a Generation of Geniuses" *Hint- it's not that new.) America was built on the efforts of individuals with eight grade, one room schoolhouse educations. Often less! (Attachment 2. "Advantages of the One-room Schoolhouse Approach to Teaching") And those individuals were empowered by being taught HOW to learn, instead of just being fed what to learn because it's on "the test". (Attachment 3. "Trivium 5-page Summary")

I realize it's pretty late in the game since this is the final vote but I truly hope our kids, and our teachers, will be spared this corporate-state conscription. Our kids are not robots, our teachers are not robots, and none of them deserve to be treated like they are.

Our kids are creative, innovative, bundles of potential. Teach them how to learn then get out of their way while they create their futures.

If Common Core is given final authorization I predict you'll start feeling serious blow-back from the public. There is already a national movement to opt-out of high-stakes testing. Our family may very well join.

I WILL not allow my kids to be guinea pigs for this latest round of educational experimentation. I WILL not allow my kids to be herded into corporate-state servitude.

If things become less than tolerable? I would fully support my kids dropping out of school, for the purpose of continuing their education free from the corporate-state. and, I would gladly support others and organize with them to turn that into a movement.

Ps. I don't want my kids to be "college and career ready", I want my kids to be entrepreneurs who EAT those guys for breakfast!

Thank you for your time and consideration,

Zandra Bishop

Attachment 1-

http://www.wired.com/business/2013/10/free-thinkers/all/

Attachment 2-

http://www.abacus-es.com/journal/education-theory/advantages-of-the-one-room-schoolhouse-approach-to-teaching/

Attachment 3-

https://www.tragedyandhope.com/trivium/5-page-summary/

Attachment 4-

http://stopccssinnys.com/uploads/Al_Graf_-_Mary_Calamia_full_text.pdf

Ten years ago we cited the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy in our antithesis against communitarianiam, mainly as proof that it even existed. Their first entry for Communitarianism was added in 2001, and in 2002 most people were still telling us it wasn't a "real" philosophy. The reference to our work is at the bottom under "Other Internet Resources". It goes to Berit Kjos's reposting of one of my articles. But we're in the book, our "school of thought" officially exists.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/communitarianism/

This article has been re-posted all over the internet in the past 2 days. I've looked at about 10 pages of search returns, and only one I opened so far added anything original to the Rebel Pundit's story.

Reading the comments from various sites shows how many people think Van Jones made the term up, and how most say it's just another word for communism. (Exactly what happened when Bill Clinton used the word in Montreal. Nobody there knew what it is either and the reporter said Clinton "coined the phrase"). Only one website that reposted Pundit's article had a link to the ACL, and that was onlysecond hand via democratsagainstunagenda21.

Really interesting is Van Jones' description of it..... and his telling Breibart there's really no way to look it up. Our anti communitarian research has been on the internet for ten years, we're on the wiki "communitarian" page, but for some reason readers never did a keyword search that would lead to us, or to Etzioni, nor did Jones obviously.

Is this a great way to further confuse the American people, or what?

"Jones compared the president’s address to that of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984 and recommended that the theater full of college students read Reagan’s “powerful” and “strong,” inaugurals, which he said were “rooted in American tradition and values,” but “unabashedly” and “unapologetically conservative.”'

Following Jones's comparison of President Obama to Ronald Reagan, the “unabashedly conservative” president, I pressed Jones further for some insight into what and who President Obama really is.

Jones replied: “He is a communitarian.” He then elaborated briefly: “I mean you always have individualism, communitarianism, as a part of the, American story, and I think we’ve overbalanced the individualistic direction and I think he’s trying to rebalance toward communitarianism.”

Later, when asked (off tape) to define "communitarian," Jones was unable to answer or to point toward any source for a definition. He said there wasn’t really a way to look up “communitarianism.”

He did reiterate, however, that he saw communitarianism as a counterbalance to libertarianism, which he equated to “individualism.”

Jones declined an interview with Breitbart News following the lecture.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/01/24/Van-Jones-Obama-is-an-unabashed-Communitarian

My article about Pachamama, The Green Virgin, is in the winter 2012-2013 edition of Paranoia Magazine.

"Niki Raapana teases out just what Communitarianism is in her article,“Between Common Law & The Law of Mother Nature.” The reinstatement ...of the Goddess at Rio+20 Earth Summit is good, right? King Cocaine Bolivian President Evo Morales said so, the UN said so—or could this be the one-world religion that G8 has been contriving for the 99 percent? Not to mention when Occupy Wall Street became Occupy the Earth . . ."

My first time published in a paper magazine. Thanks for asking me to submit Ron Patton!

http://paranoiamagazine.com/

I spent hours last night working out a new article for the Tea Party, but I just couldn't find the tone I wanted to set. So I'm on a borrowed pc looking for articles to inspire me and ended up back at this article by Ross. I hope he doesn't mind that I'm reposting the beginning here.

Rights, Responsibilities, and Communitarianism
http://www.friesian.com/rights.htm
For the wages of sin is death.
Romans 6:23
From wealth (khrémata) does not come virtue (areté), but from virtue comes wealth and the whole of other goods (agathá) for men, private (ídios) and public (demósios).
Socrates, Plato's Apology of Socrates, 30b
We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness -- That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it...
Thomas Jefferson, "The Declaration of Independence," 1776
Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now [i.e. under a State religion 1]. Thus in France the emetic was once forbidden as medicine, the potato as an article of food.
Thomas Jefferson, "Notes on Virginia," 1784
A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded....Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to
control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes.
Abraham Lincoln
Everybody has asked the question. . ."What shall we do with the Negro?" I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are wormeaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! I am not for tying or fastening them on the tree in any way, except by nature's plan, and if they will not stay there, let them fall. And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone!
Frederick Douglass, "What the Black Man Wants"
The State...stands between me and my body, and tells me what kind of doctor I
must employ. When my soul is sick, unlimited spiritual liberty is given me by the State [2]. Now then, it doesn't seem logical that the State shall depart from this great policy...and take the other position in the matter of smaller consequences -- the health of the body....Whose property is my body? Probably mine....If I experiment with it, who must be answerable? I, not the State. If I choose injudiciously, does the State die? Oh, no.
Mark Twain, in "Osteopathy," 1901
While the Opium Registration Act of December 17, 1914, may have a moral end, as well as revenue, the court, in view of grave doubt as to its constitutionality except as a revenue measure, construes it as such.
United States Supreme Court, United States v. Jin Fuey Moy, 1915
Against individualism, the Fascist conception is for the State; and it is for the individual in so far as he coincides with the State.... Liberalism denied the State in the interests of the particular individual; Fascism reaffirms the State as the true reality of the individual. Benito Mussolini, Fascism: Fundamental Ideas
The greater the readiness to subordinate purely personal interests, the higher rises the ability to establish comprehensive communities.... This state of mind, which subordinates the interests of the ego to the conservation of the community, is really the first premise of every truly human culture. (emphasis mine)
Adolf Hilter, Mein Kampf, Chapter 11, Ralph Manheim translation
What matters is to emphasize the fundamental idea in my party's economic program clearly -- the idea of authority. I want the authority; I want everyone to keep the property he has acquired for himself according to the priniciple: benefit to the community precedes benefit to the individual. But the state should retain supervision and each property owner should consider himself appointed by the state. It is his duty not to use his property against the interests of others among his own people. This is the crucial matter. The Third Reich will always retain its right to control the owners of property. Adolf Hilter, 1931
If we are to go forward we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline, because, without such discipline, no progress is made, no leadership becomes effective. We are, I know, ready and willing to submit our lives and property to such discipline because it makes possible a leadership which aims at a larger good. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address, 1933
When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving [sic] a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans, it was assumed that the Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly... that they would work for the common good, as well as for the individual welfare... However, now there's a lot of irresponsibility. And so a lot of people say there's too much freedom. When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it.
Bill Clinton, April 19, 1995,after the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, two years after the massacre of the Branch Davidians at Waco
A decent society is not based on rights; it is based on duty....Our duty to one another...To all should be given opportunity; from all, responsibility demanded.
Labor Party Prime Minister Tony Blair, elected 1997[Washington Post, November 9, 1997]
The aim of untold millions is to be free to do exactly as they choose and for someone else to pay when things go wrong. In the past few decades, a peculiar and distinctive psychology has emerged in England. Gone are the civility, sturdy independence, and admirable stoicism that carried the English through the war years. It has been replaced by a constant whine of excuses, complaints, and special pleading. The collapse of the British character has been as swift and complete as the collapse of British power. Theodore Dalrymple, Life at the Bottom, The Worldview That Makes the Underclass [Ivan R. Dee, Chicago, 2001], p.5
Sometimes so many people seem to be screaming about their rights, while neglecting to answer to their responsibilities, that many of us may become completely disgusted with the whole discourse of "rights." A whole movement exists, billing itself as "Communitarianism," that promotes an effort to restore the notion of responsibility and to establish a balance both between rights and responsibilities and between individuality and community. There has actually been talk of building a "Statue of Responsibility" on the West Coast as the counterpart of the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor. The movement is spearheaded by sociology professors Robert Bellah, in Habits of the Heart, and Amitai Etzioni, in The Spirit of Community. Their viewpoint is shared by many others, including historian Garry Wills; and it is reflected in the title of Hillary Clinton's book on the responsibilities of government in child rearing, It Takes a Village. Communitarians, however, promote a certain view of rights and responsibilities that is quite different from that of John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, etc. It is more in the tradition of G.W.F. Hegel, where the community, or the state, is more real than the individual and the individual who does not fit in with the social norms or the law is objectively irrational. Hegel has been regarded, justly, as the father of modern totalitarianism. How different these attitudes are comes out in the Communitarian treatment of things like seat-belt and motorcycle helmet laws. Etzioni would deny to the automobile or motorcycle rider the right to decide for themselves whether to wear seat-belts or motorcycle helmets because, if they are injured, the public is liable to end up paying for their injuries. Thus the riders have a duty to protect themselves in such a way as to not impose a burden on the public through their injuries.
This is interesting reasoning, for the denial of the right of choice about seat-belts and motorcycle helmets is really predicated on the concession of another right: that the injured riders have the right to be treated at public expense. The claim of that right is then used to deny the other [3]. The question is not even asked: do those who don't want to use seat-belts or motorcycle helmets really want their liberty curtailed for the privilege of their injuries being treated at public expense? Evidently they are not even asked. The consequence, then, is not that Communitarians want to balance rights and responsibilities; it is that they want to deny certain rights in favor of certain other ones, without asking whether that is the particular choice other people really want to make. The rights that Communitarians seem to prefer curtailing are what traditionally are called "liberties," and the rights they seem willing to sacrifice those to are what traditionally are called "powers" or "privileges." A "right" can mean a number of things.

The NYT, the Boston Globe, the LA Times, CNN, CBS, NBC and ALL political talk show hosts are ignoring what Clinton revealed in Montreal. Why can't Americans be TOLD YET?

Bill Clinton praises Canadian unity, the Globe and Mail: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/bill-clinton-praises-canadian-unity/article1326579/ Interesting how the word "communitarianism is mentioned only once in this article, buried in the 10th graph. Compare this to the article in the Suburban News.

Why wasn't this news repeated by the US Press? Shouldn't Americans be told about communitarianism too?

The Star's article follwed the Suburban article: http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/711404--clinton-glad-95-quebec-referendum-didn-t-lead-to-canadian-divorce but focuses on the failed Canadian "divorce". Kathleen at Habeas Corpus Canada explains why the failure was necessary in order to establish a communitarian regional government in Canada.

So what's more important, as in what's "hard news" as opposed to "fluff?" I studied journalism at UMass, Amherst under profs who also sat on city desks. I think Professor Howard Ziff would have flunked me for sure if I'd have chosen Bill's opinion of the Canadian referendum over his call for communitarian consciousness. Such an unfamiliar term gives it a higher placement in the story, but hmm. Did Clinton's speechwriters include the "joke" about separation to give the Canadian press something to write about other than his communitarian "call"?

So where's the US Press coverage of this historical speech? Notta. Zip. Zero. As far as the American press, BOTH RIGHT and LEFT, is concerned, this is NOT NEWS. But as we know, most Americans have never even heard of it. What is news in America nowadays anyway?

It was important enough for the ecofriendlymind.com to post it (along with a whole bunch of other topics related to communitarianism) http://www.ecofriendlymind.com/eco-news/news/Communitarianism.html. They have a link to an article at prison planet where a commentor brings up communitarianism: http://www.prisonplanet.com/russia%E2%80%99s-leaders-see-china-as-template-for-ruling.html

So here's Makegood blog about what else was going on at McGill University when Clinton was there telling us about our shared communitarian consciounsess:

"I chaired two sessions titled “Engaging the Next Generation of Volunteers” at the McGill Leadership Summit on Thursday, October 15th in Montreal. McGill is in the midst of a $750 million capital campaign; they recently passed the $500 million mark. The Leadership Summit is a gathering of campaign volunteers from far-flung committee outposts throughout Canada, the US and beyond."

So others attended from the US and beyond (as Buzz Lightyear says, to infinity.. and beyond!). Why didn't ONE of the attendees from the US send a news story or something to an American newspaper about it? Do they all sign non disclosure agreements like that Ophra class at Northwestern or lke what the reporters sign who attend Bilderberg meetings?

Here's Makegood (who apparently likes the idea) quoting a summary of Bill's speech :

"Clinton concluded by cautioning that an unequal world is not a sustainable world and it is not a safe world. He suggested that it is only by addressing these global inequities, and creating a great balance through the world, and spreading hope for a better future, that the challenges of the 21st century will be met. He believes a communitarian consciousness will be build hope in the world."

Now we're "building hope" too. Great. I'm on a budget here. How much does that cost?

Does it matter to the American "anti" LA-21 programme for sustainable development crowd that Bill made the EXACT same connection I made, and Bill said the EXACT same thing I said?

Bill Clinton just told the world that communitarians are building a sustainable world, and nobody in America needs to be told what that means or that he said it at all?

And yes it sounds perfect, beyond religion, beyond mere spirituality. It's so profound only a few special people understand it, and they are the leaders training NOW to show the rest of us sinners the path to communitarian freedom (which only looks like slavery to the unenlightened). How many suckers worldwide are convinced they are more spiritually evolved and now happily consider themselves communitarians, without the first clue communitarians are liars, thieves and murderers? And I'll just bet the faithful will deny it, no matter how much evidence they see that proves the concept of sustainability is a total lie. Once we come to believe in a power greater than ourselves that can heal the world...we just don't let go of that power very easily.

Just stumbled on this long, referenced academic article by Menno R. Kamminga (International Relations and International Organization, University of Groningen) article that argues:

"Sociologist Amitai Etzioni has gained much attention for his communitarian realist theory of foreign politics. Etzioni’s conception of an adequate, principled and pragmatic, foreign politics emphasizes both empirical and moral factors. This article analyses Etzioni’s foreign politics view from a political-ethical perspective. It claims that Etzioni’s view lacks an adequate ethical and policy foundation and thus falls short political-ethically. Etzioni’s communitarian realism fails to offer proper guidance to foreign politics." http://philica.com/display_article.php?article_id=158

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43zQ2luyUto

Chris Bieber just sent this link out and I had to post it before I log off today.

For some reason now I feel like writing a letter to Dear Dr. Etzioni, and asking, "Please Sir. When are Americans going to be told what Obama means by "responsibilty?" Does it mean this: http://www.gwu.edu/~icps/rights.html

Who can/will/wants to explain explain to our citizens HOW is it possible that Obama's meaning is the same one "that belonged to outgoing President Bush, who in his 2000 campaign talked about ushering in a "responsibility era."?"

Are Americans asking what these boys mean by "more responsibility?" No? Bummer.

From this morning's Washington Post:

Obama will talk about restoring a sense of responsibility in the country, Gibbs said, conveying his belief that "we need more responsibility and accountability, certainly, in the way our government acts."

"We have to have it, certainly, within many of our financial institutions that sort of have gotten us to where we are in this economic crisis today," Gibbs said on "Fox News Sunday." "Obviously, the American people are going to have to give some."

Rahm Emanuel, the incoming chief of staff, said the "culture of responsibility" would be sought for American leaders as well as the population at large. "We need that culture of responsibility, not just to be asked of the American people, but its leaders must also lead by example," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press." In Obama Remarks, Theme Of 'Responsibility' Emerges Advisers Say Inaugural Address Will Also Stress Accountability, By Anne E. Kornblut Washington Post Staff Writer, Monday, January 19, 2009; Page A04

Whatever happened to the "Culture of Protected Individual Enterprise"? Did it ever exist? How obvious to you is it that we "have to give more?" More of what, exactly?

From the Harvard Educational Review of The Spirit of Community: Rights, Responsibilities, and the Communitarian Agenda, By Amitai Etzioni, New York: Crown, 1993. 323 pp. $22.00. http://www.hepg.org/her/abstract/249

"Etzioni demonstrates the value of reframing policy discussions and moral discourse around the connection between rights and responsibilities."

"Although Etzioni's communitarian message is apparent, the normative choices embedded in his plan are not. Specifically, issues of social and cultural diversity, the need to protect the voices of a society's marginal thinkers, and the importance of reflective and critical dialogues are noted by Etzioni in The Spirit of Community, but the challenges they imply for his agenda are never fully explored. When one assesses his broad vision and his educational plan as outlined in chapter three, "The Communitarian School," his inattention to democratic goals becomes clear."

So where does Bush, Obama's and Emanuel's idea of a culture the requires national volunteer service come from? Near the close of the above review, Kahn explains:

"It frequently seems as though individuals believe it is their right to decide whether or not to be responsible, and Etzioni helps us understand the costs of this orientation. He proposes, for example, that all youth perform a year of national service after high school as an "antidote to the ego-centered mentality," as a means of providing meaningful social service, and as "a grand sociological mixer . . . for developing shared values and bonds among people from different racial, class, and regional backgrounds" (pp. 113–114)."

This is the same requirement of youths living in Etzioni's home, the state of Israel. Of course in Israel, mandatory public service has nothing to do with developing bonds with the Palestinian residents who "share" their homeland with the European Zionists.

And Constance Cumbey just sent this, wow, it appears a lot of us are paying attention to the developments in DC.. not to the celebrations but what they're really celebrating.

"A day away from becoming the nation's 44th president, Obama visited 14 injured vets from Iraq and Afghanistan at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Then he visited Sasha Bruce House, a shelter for homeless teens in the District of Columbia, chatting with volunteers who were helping to repaint rooms and then pitching in himself.

"We can't allow any idle hands. Everybody's got to be involved," Obama said. "I think the American people are ready to do that."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090119/ap_on_go_pr_wh/inauguration_rdp

"The ideals of Zionism have, in the last half century, been endorsed by both parties, and Americans of all ranks and in all sections. Friendship for Israel is not a partisan matter. It is a national commitment.” (President John F. Kennedy, Speech August 25, 1960, http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Quote/jfkq4.html)

As the "debate" rages on over at Constance's blog over whether I am a credible source for information about communitarianism or not, Constance and I will be on the air discussing communitarianism again tomorrow. http://cumbey.blogspot.com/

The accusations expanded to calling my blog a soap opera (which is too funny because all I did was repost what they were saying here!) and also a New Ager because I endorse the Earthing Technology. So all new technology that exists outside the established medical "community" is considered New Age? People are doing searches for "Niki Raapana Stormfront" because they just can't believe I'm not some Aryan white supremacist hiding behind... well I'm still not sure what I'm supposed to be hiding behind. Some people hate it that I use jewishtribalreview as a source, and other people hate it that I use Christians and Jews and Muslims as sources. I'd say what's happening at Constance's blog is a good example of why the topic of communitarianism remains so obscured from the world. Nobody wants to accept their religion or political party's part in establishing a communitarian global order. What a great plan, eh?

Robert Kennedy visited British Palestine in 1948 and wrote several articles for a Boston paper about his experiences there. In the close of this article, posted by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, he suggested the US, "through the UN must take the lead in bringing about peace in the Holy Land." Did Kennedy meet up with Amitai Etzioni when he travelled with the "underground" Haganah?

"The Jews on the other hand believe that in a few more years, if a Jewish state is formed, it will be the only stabilizing factor remaining in the Near and Middle East. The Arab world is made up of many disgruntled factions which would have been at each other's throats long ago if it had not been for the common war against Zionism. The United States and Great Britain before too long a time might well be looking to a Jewish state to preserve a toehold in that part of the world.

"Both sides still hate the British far more deeply than they hate one another. There was a British high commissioner who when attending the opera used to have his car parked directly in front of the main door, a place usually reserved for discharging passengers. An even more unpopular practice was the regulation that at the end of the opera everyone had to remain in their seats until the British high commissioner was out of the opera house and in his car.

"But the British have left - and now the issue is to be resolved in a bitter war between Jew and Arab. I do not think the freedom-loving nations of the world can stand by and see "the sweet water of the River Jordan stained red with the blood of Jews and Arabs." The United States through the United Nations must take the lead in bringing about peace in the Holy Land." http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DBID=1&TMID=111&LNGID=1&FID=376&PID=0&IID=2213

Caroline Kennedy is hoping to take over Hillary Clinton's Senate seat and has reportedly told Press TV she "strongly supports a safe and secure Israel." When asked whether she would support an Israeli air strike on Iran, Kennedy said "Israel's security decisions should be left to Israel."

"Kennedy's stance toward Israel suggests that she has decided not to follow in the footstep of her late father, president John F. Kennedy, who enraged Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion over Tel Aviv's nuclear ambitions.

"Ben-Gurion, who ruled Israel from its inception in 1948 until he resigned on June 16, 1963, was convinced that Tel Aviv needed nuclear weapons to ensure its survival.

"President Kennedy, who was assassinated on November 22, 1963, was dead-set against Israel becoming a nuclear power." http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=79142&sectionid=3510203

Congressman Ron Paul disagrees with Caroline's assessment of Israel's security:

"Paul: I don't think there is such a thing as an independent Israel doing anything, because I think no matter what they do its our money, its our weapons, and their not going to do it without us approving it and if they get into trouble we're going to bail them out, so there is no separation between the two." http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=79752&sectionid=3510302

S. posted this link in my comments here and it certainly deserves my attention.

"Troen structures his work chronologically, moving from the earliest Jewish settlements in the last third of the 19th century to the present. He argues that what characterized the early Jewish settlements was their communitarian, anti-individualist impulse. It is this desire to create communities that Troen stresses and analyzes in depth in the first part of his work. He calls these settlements "miniature commonwealths" or, following the Puritans, "covenantal societies." His invocation of the Puritans is not accidental. While he acknowledges that most accounts of early Zionist settlement trace the communitarian impulse back to European socialist or communist roots, Troen argues that Zionist communal thinking had its origins in the "religious experience, imaginations, and predilections of early planners and pioneers"(p. 6)."http://www.shma.com/bookreviews/hart.htm

As another commentor here says, the "Communitarian Party" has a website now. They include many religious views, the UN Declaration of Human Rights, and post things like: "For several years, on many fronts, champions of greater responsibility to the community have become something of a new force in American life. They think of themselves as "communitarians," though so far there is no registry of communitarians and no formal association. Nevertheless, their influence is real enough, and so are their objectives: to evolve public policies, moral norms, and regulatory guidelines that will correct what they perceive as excessive, "radical" individualism." This Christian Democracy Diagram (on the left) was posted by the blog's author as "helpful when trying to explain to people where I stand."

Maybe I need to design a new diagram that helps explain where I stand.

I made this chart called Big Mother's Gameplan: Checkmate sometime back in 2003 (maybe, not sure exactly when). Not that I expect it will help the people who insist on creating their own labels for me. For the record, I'm that little block on the bottom labeled "uncooperatives." Notice how close I am to being stomped on by the faith based initatives.

What's abundantly clear to me now is, according to certain watchdogs, I am not allowed to use any resourses or link to anyone they deem unnaceptable. If I link to someone they mistrust it means they don't have to consider anything else I write. How utterly convienent for the communitarian globalists.

Funny how my British readers never seem to be offended or insist I'm stiring up hate for the English people when I expose the British Empire's role in creating global governance (the new accepted term). Reminds me of when I was told by a Sandanista Nicaraguan in 1984 that he didn't hate the American people, he just hated our imperialist government and their CIA-Mossad mercenary policies in Central America.

As an American who knows virtually nothing about Israeli politics or struggles, this paper provided me with a rare, brief glimpse into the Settlers' war against the Israeli state and the Arab Palestinians. It's also interesting that the "father" of American Communitarianism was a German born immigrant raised and trained as a soldier in an Israeli kibbutz settlement, yet his input into the "moral dialogue" is not included in this paper. This paper focuses on Taylor and MacIntyre and neglects to mention Martin Buber, the Israeli philosopher who coined the modern terms for moral communitarianism and then taught it to his pupils, including Amitai Etzioni.

Community vs. Democracy: Communitarian Theories and the Israeli Settlers Prepared for delivery at the 2003 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, August 28 - August 31, 2003. Copyright by the American Political Science Association. presented by Avia Pasternak, MA The Department of Political Science, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem ## email not listed ##

The communitarian critique of liberal thought, which defied the liberal conception of the autonomous subject and the neutrality of the liberal political sphere, attracted much criticism for its vagueness in what regards the practical implications of communitarian politics. More specifically, critics of communitarianism argue that communitarian philosophers, when shaping their proposed political model around a rather obscure definition of the community, do not consider the possibility that ‘ communities’ may have some negative implications as well, if they impede individual autonomy. Accordingly, these philosophers fail to provide a sufficient explanation as to how the political models they propose can be disassociated from anti-democratic communities. 1 This paper aims at reinforcing such a critique on communitarian thought by comparing the communitarian theory with the praxis of an actual community. Focusing on the thought of Charles Taylor and Alasdair MacIntyre it strives to show that there are distinct similarities between these philosophers’ ontological premises and those of the Israeli Settlers, 2 and that such similarities raise doubts as to level of {2} compatibility between the political solutions suggested by Taylor and MacIntyre and the modern democratic order. The paper begins by analyzing Taylor’s and MacIntyre’s ontological premises and argues that their critiques of liberal thought rest on a similar perception of the modern subject, which consists of two competing manifestations: the Atomist-Self and the Communitarian-Self. Both philosophers condemn the image of the Atomist- Self and the moral neutrality of the liberal political sphere it leads to. They argue that in order to assist the Communitarian-Self in overcoming her deficient rival, modern politics ought to reintroduce fundamental moral questions to the life of the modern individual, and thus reawaken her communitarian qualities. Nevertheless, albeit Taylor and MacIntyre argue that the political remedies they offer will solve the malaise of modern political order, namely its lack of democratic participation, I argue that these political remedies can in fact have some anti- democratic implications as well, when applied to reality. However, since neither philosopher discloses with clarity what real-world communities accommodate his theoretical conjectures, the paper proceeds to examine Taylor’s and MacIntyre’s conjectures by juxtaposing them with the Israeli Settlers’ worldview. This comparison is conducted through a text analysis of the Settlers’ periodical Nekudah. It focuses on the year 1995, in which many of the Settlers openly defied the democratic order in Israel, a defiance which reached its tragic culmination with the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Thus, by comparing the Settlers’ ontological premises to those of Taylor and MacIntyre, the paper discloses the distinct similarity between the communitarian dual image of the subject and the Settlers’ portrayal of the self. However, contrary to MacIntyre’s and Taylor’s predictions, the Settlers draw some {3} clearly anti-democratic conclusions from these very premises, thus attesting to the anti-democratic potential embedded in the communitarian image of the self.

1 Buchanan Allen, "Assessing the Communitarian Critique of Liberalism” Ethics, 98(3), 867; Phillips Derek, Looking Backward (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 7-8; Holmes Stephan, The Anatomy of Anti-Liberalism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), 178.

2 The Israeli Settlers are Israeli-Jews who reside in settlements in the occupied territories (Gaza Strip and the West Bank). They are motivated by a strong religious ideology, claiming that the settling of the biblical Land of Israel is a divine commandment; and hence they strongly object any territorial concessions to the Palestinians.

(From pages 14 and 15): The Settlers’ ideology originates in the political and theological premises of their founding movement, Gush Emunim (The Block of the Faithful). In a nutshell, Gush Emunim was the offspring of Rabbi A.Y. Kook’s Religious Zionism, which composed a unique dialectic combination between Zionism and Judaism, claiming that Zionism and the establishment of the State of Israel signified the first stage of the heavenly redemption of the Jewish People. 60 Rabbi Kook’s son, Zvi Yehuda, gave a more radical and material tone to his father’s metaphysical teachings, placing special emphasis on the sanctity of the Land of Israel and preaching for the retrieval of all the ancient Jewish biblical land-patrimonies, then under Egyptian and Jordanian rule. The Israeli dazzling victory of the Six-Days 1967 War, which resulted in the occupation of Eastern-Jerusalem, Sinai, Gaza and the West Bank, conferred a prophetic validity to his preachings. This henceforward led to the establishment of Gush Emunim, whose declared purpose was to hasten the redemption of Israel, via the settling of the Promised Land. 62 Gush Emunim’s principal guidelines were, mainly, the belief in the sanctity of the Land of Israel, the People of Israel and the Torah (Pentateuch); the belief that our age, that of the unification of Israel with its Land, is the age of Messianic redemption; the perceiving of the State of Israel as a sanctified manifestation of Jewish sovereignty over the Land of Israel; and a total refusal to discuss territorial concessions to the Palestinians, together with the denial of Palestinian rights over the land. More generally, Gush Emunim viewed itself as the natural heir of secular Zionism, which had lost its momentum due to its secular flaws.

(Page 25) Yehuda Etzion’s Hai Vekayam 'identity card' reads: "Even 120 Knesset members – as well as elections or referenda – cannot change the People’s truth. The Land is a bequest for the people and its generations. It is a trust in our hands, which one generation does not have the authority to desert and destroy", quoted in: Sprinzak, Brother Against Brother 224. Etzion is a convicted member of the Jewish Underground, which committed terror acts against Palestinians and planned to blow-up the Mosques on Temple Mount in 1984.

Read the whole paper at http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/6/3/6/0/pages63600/p63600-1.php

Henry Lamb continues to include the word communitarian in his articles. Now he calls sustainable development a "socialist, communitarian concept" that nobody noticed in the 1990s. We're in the middle of a blizzard up here, I'm working on the manifesto (it goes to print next week!) and my arctic entryway is only half-finished, so I can't comment about how I feel now that the ACL is being included in Lamb's articles. I can say that I'm happy to see the word getting out there, because it's 2008 and still so few have noticed it. The ACL is getting a lot more EU nation hits searching for "communitarian law." I wish we'd start getting those from America too.

Ultimately, the piper must be paid
By Henry Lamb, web posted September 29, 2008
http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/1008/1008piperpay.htm
{take the direct link to Lamb's article for all his embedded links~ed.}

"The meltdown in the financial markets has caused the finger of blame to spin like a weathervane in a hurricane. The underlying cause of the debacle, however, has been largely ignored. Driven by "progressive" Democrats and Republicans, the cause is the relentless shift from a free market economy to a socialist economy.

"Until the Roosevelt era, the responsibility and privilege of having a home was left solely to the individual. Few people realize that Fannie Mae (Federal National Mortgage Association) was created in 1938 by FDR, to provide a federal guarantee for home loans extended by local banks.

"Freddie Mac (Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation) was created in 1970, during Nixon's reign. Both were designed to buy mortgages from local lenders as a way to insure an adequate supply of money for local lenders. These "secondary" mortgages were packaged into "bundles" of securities that were traded among an array of financial institutions.

"During the 1960s, the United Nations produced the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Article V(e)(iii) proclaimed that all people had a "right" to housing. Both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations supported the treaty, but it was not ratified until the Clinton administration, November 20, 1994. No one noticed, or connected the dots to the emerging socialist, communitarian concept called "sustainable development. Grassroots organizations across the nation were deeply involved in preventing ratification of another U.N. treaty, the Convention on Biological Diversity which was also under consideration at the time.

"To meet its obligations under the U.N.'s Racial Discrimination Treaty, the Clinton administration instructed Fannie Mae to expand loans to low-income borrowers, according to Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae's Chairman. Thus, the "sub-prime" market was born, and government guaranteed loans were extended to millions of families who could not qualify for a mortgage in a free market economy, but easily qualified under the new socialist scheme.

"In 2005, Republican Senators saw the danger and tried to reform these institutions with the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulator Reform Act (S-190), but Democrats blocked the bill.

"Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were institutions that were neither purely socialist, nor purely free market – a blend that is best described as communitarian, in that they allowed private investors to buy and hold shares in the corporations, but were also guaranteed by the federal government. That is, until recently, when the federal government took over both institutions. Now, the federal government essentially owns all those properties – a result that is as socialist as had the government nationalized those properties by force.

"AIG, the international insurance giant, and other Wall Street and international financial institutions bought the bundles of mortgage securities that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac offered. Everybody involved made a ton of money, and housing for low income families expanded exponentially – just as the Treaty on Racial Discrimination and the proponents of sustainable development had predicted. With all the new loans being made, the home building industry flourished, the real estate industry flourished, all industries related to housing flourished – until the market became saturated.

"Home values stopped rising. Housing inventories began to rise. Home values began to decline. Foreclosures began to rise. Homebuilding slowed, housing related industries began to lay off workers. Energy prices began to rise. Paychecks fell short of family needs. Foreclosures skyrocketed. Suddenly, there was little or no value in the bundles of security that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had packaged. Financial institutions found themselves in possession of massive "assets" that had no value. Creak, crumble crash! The financial markets came tumbling down.

"The piper must be paid. The question is whether to do it now – and let the chips fall where they may, or, to kick the can down the road, and pay the piper later. The answer, of course, is to kick the can into the next generation, with another leap toward socialism. The bailout plan – whatever the particulars – is nothing short of a government takeover of the financial industry. The next president will have to sort it out and build the road toward future recovery or final disaster.

"Barack Obama's incessant drumbeat about the failure of the economic policies of the last eight years is either gross ignorance or, more likely, political blame-shifting. The cause of the current meltdown is clearly the Democrat's insistence upon giving federally-guaranteed mortgages to people who could not afford them. Even now, Democrats insist, not on the minimum government involvement possible, but on adding all sorts of give-away ornaments on the bailout Christmas tree. Obama is also promising to take over the energy industry, the health industry, and to give tax credits and even refunds to some people with money he shamelessly takes from others. This is redistribution of wealth - pure socialism.

"McCain may be only marginally better, but any deterrent to the Democrat's determined transformation of America to unabashed socialism should be welcomed. Despite the U.N.'s declaration to the contrary, no person has a "right" to housing. If Democrats prevail and continue their pursuit of the U.N'.s goal of universal socialism, America can expect to experience the same total collapse experienced by the Soviet Union.

"Ultimately, the piper must be paid."

Henry Lamb is the executive vice president of the Environmental Conservation Organization (ECO), and chairman of Sovereignty International.

© 1996 - 2008, Enter Stage Right and/or its creators. All rights reserved.

Our work has been recognized by The National Association of Scholars (NAS), "an independent membership association of academics working to foster intellectual freedom and to sustain the tradition of reasoned scholarship and civil debate in America’s colleges and universities."

At first glance I thought this paper was from the No NAIS people, and I was impressed by the author's level of scholarship. Woods' bibliography is a thorough listing of all the major communitarian thinkers. He includes a long list of my anti communitarian works as well, beginning with my first attempt to expose it publically in a speech before the WA State Libertarian Party convention in 2001.

I wondered how long it would take before upper academia took critical notice of communitarianism. Now that they have and we are included, I wonder how long it will be before we are invited to defend our thesis before an academic review board. I've been asked many times to leave my Alaskan sanctuary and make myself more accessible to the American public. If I am ever invited to debate the communitarians, I will come. If I receive adequate funding for the expenses, I will travel the country as a speaker. I don't live in rural Alaska because I'm "hiding." I live here because it's cheap and my gertee lifestyle allows me to write and study.

This has been a very difficult summer and I'm not even sure I will survive out here the coming winter. I was hoping to be able to finish overdue projects this summer and devote the coldest months to a simplified version of the manifesto. But I'm behind on everything after camping the whole cold summer and I had to winterize gertee because I was burning up my woodpile keeping the baby warm. I don't have any vegetables, meat or fish stored so it's going to mean living on beans and rice again. I've been below poverty level for so long I can't imagine what it would be like to study and write in a heated office, to have a real kitchen to cook and clean up in, and to take for granted the daily comfort an indoor toilet and shower brings. For a minute this summer I thought maybe the von Mises Institute would finance our education, and I was pretty excited about being included in that Vassar College seminar last spring. But Nordica thinks I'm silly for thinking we'll ever get academic recognition and she never hoped for a scholarship the way I did. Many people have suggested I start my own "school" but I really don't have the means or the confidence for such an endeavor. If someone else was to start a school of thought that included ACL studies, I could be persuaded to contribute.

I always hoped "real" scholars would use our anti communitarian thesis in their academic debates, and even if nothing else happens to make our life easier, this one hope has been answered. The ACL gets its own section in this bibliography:

BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR:
"THE COMMUNITARIAN RESIDENCE LIFE MOVEMENT"
by Thomas Wood, June 16, 2008

http://www.nas.org/postings/how_many_delawares/communitarian-bibliography.htm

Wood explains the difficulty in studying the topic:

"THE LANGUAGE OF SUSTAINABILITY

"It is important to consider the whole range of issues that “sustainability” covers. Since enlisting as the principal researcher and investigator for the NAS’s “How Many Delawares?” project, I have been frequently struck, even bewildered, by the multitude of topics “sustainability” is supposed to cover. Below is a selection. Since they are so numerous, I have categorized them as follows: GENERAL TERMS, DOMESTIC POLITICS/IDEOLOGY, INTERNATIONAL POLITICS, LAW, ECONOMICS, ECOLOGY, DIVERSITY & IDENTITY POLITICS, and ACADEMICS:

"GENERAL TERMS: the common good, the collective good, communalism, social justice, civic virtue, strengthening the bonds of community, "moving in the direction of favoring the community in the balance between community and the individual," commitment beyond "mere individual self-interest," socially caring communities, moving away from privacy and a rhetoric of rights to a "vocabulary stressing responsibility and obligation," introducing (or rather reintroducing) the vocabulary and rhetoric of values and morals into civil life, attacks on (extremes of) individualism

"DOMESTIC POLITICS/IDEOLOGY: civil society, green politics (Europe), attacks on, or critiques of, private property, critiques of free markets, global warming activism, critiques of “uncompromising defenses of individual rights,” community building, supplementing or devaluing representative democracy in favor of community action, community activism and organization, critiques of "rights-oriented liberalism"

"INTERNATIONAL POLITICS: internationalism, globalism, elimination of borders, global world government, global citizenry, restoring the balance between global community and prerogatives and rights of autonomous nation states—in particular, correcting the imbalance that presently exists in favor of the big and powerful nation states, especially the U.S.

"LAW: communitarian law, community justice, restorative justice, social justice, restraining individual rights in many circumstances in order to defend and promote community values

"ECONOMICS: critiques of capitalism as inimical to genuine, wholesome, personal and spiritual values, ecological economics, communities versus markets, socio-economics

"ECOLOGY: sustainability; sustainable development; sustainable economies; saving the planet, the Green Movement; the anti-global warming movement

"DIVERSITY & IDENTITY POLITICS: cultural diversity; respect for other societies; multiculturalism; racial and ethnic diversity; social diversity; critiques of heterosexism/ ableism; racism, anti-Semitism, sexism, ageism and every other divisive –ism, including nationalism and ethnocentrism

"ACADEMICS: community service; service learning, civic engagement, campus compacts (linking course content with community-based work), engaged scholarship, holistic thinking (versus linear, logic-chopping, individualist thinking), emphasis on the civic and democratic mission of the university, community-university partnerships, education as an essentially moral enterprise, learning communities, holistic education and holistic learning, educating to develop moral and civic responsibility; community values, contextualized knowledge, transformative learning toward sustainability, participative learning, emphasis on the social nature of life and learning, critiques of “academic competitiveness,” cooperative learning communities, creative learning (vs. mere “information transfer”), non-hierarchical education, education built on social interrelatedness"

http://www.nas.org/polInitiatives.cfm

The NAS biblio also includes references to Michael Shaw, Chris Gerner's Amerikan Expose and Berit Kjos. Funny how the only thing missing from the list appears to be a section on religion, which appears to be the most likely source for communitarian thinking. This would mean their discussing the Heirarchy of the Plan, as is covered extensivley by Bobby Garner at congregator.net. Some of my articles referenced do include mentions of Blavatsky, Bessant, freemasonry and Talmudic Law so maybe the academic discourse will open itself up to include every available factual document.

I just love it when I read "official" source explanations of communitarianism that back up everything I write about it. This one is even more special since it explains the direct tie between community policing and Etzioni's brand of communitarianism, i.e. "Communitarians claim to have influenced the development of social policy in America (Etzioni has been a policy adviser to the Clinton administrations) and Britain (where communitarian ideas are said to have found favour with New Labour). Community policing, for example, is a policy consistent with communitarian ideals."

collectivism
A Dictionary of Sociology | Date: 1998

"collectivism -- A term with a general and a variety of specific applications. In the most common usage it refers to any political or socio-economic theory or practice which encourages communal or state ownership and control of the means of production and distribution. Particular applications vary greatly since there are numerous examples of collectivist organizations.

"Farmers organized into collectives were, until recently, a significant social group in the former USSR. These farms controlled the labour inputs of members, fixed rates of remuneration, and determined the content of agricultural production. Many were the result of a violent forced collectivization of peasant and family-owned farms during the Stalinist period. Agricultural collectives in China have had a more varied history. One of the most popular schemes was a ‘responsibility system’ introduced in the 1980s, whereby individual peasant households signed a contract by which the land still belonged technically to the collective, but was assigned to individual households for their own use. These contracts specified obligations on either side, for example with respect to the provision of tools and equipment, payment of taxes, and meeting of production quotas. A particularly interesting form of collective—the workers' self-management of the economy—emerged in Tito's Yugoslavia. However, sociological research confirmed that the theoretically democratic distribution of influence within the enterprise was not matched by the real power of Workers' Councils, which tended in practice to be largely symbolic.

"The collectivist critique of liberal and other theories of individualism argues that market relationships are competitive, tend also therefore to be divisive, and undermine those communal bonds which are necessary between individuals if they are to cope with misfortunes to which all are in principle vulnerable. For example, social welfare theorists argue that unrestrained free exchange causes welfare problems, as evidenced by the housing market which fails to provide shelter to those in demonstrable need. One of the most celebrated collectivist defences of the welfare state was made by Richard Titmuss (see The Gift Relationship, 1970), who argued that welfare systems should be defended by reference to arguments about altruism. His argument was that people should receive welfare as a gift from strangers, an expression of social solidarity, rather than as an entitlement or right derived from a complex network of reciprocal relationships. Thus, in the case of blood donations, Titmuss maintained that if this ‘most sacred’ of commodities were to be commercialized then the moral bonds between individuals would become wholly contaminated by calculations of self-interest and market price. As he puts it, ‘In not asking for or expecting any payment of money those donors signified their belief in the willingness of men to act altruistically in the future, and to combine together to make a gift freely should they have need for it. By expressing confidence in the behaviour of future unknown strangers they were thus denying the Hobbesian thesis that men are devoid of any instinctive moral sense’. This communitarian view of welfare as an expression of the common values that bind otherwise disparate individuals together may be contrasted with the more individualistic conception of welfare derived from the theory of citizenship. The latter implies that claims to welfare resources are simply an extension of the legal and political rights that are characteristic of liberal democracies and, therefore, that collective welfare is quite consistent with the theory of liberal pluralism. Welfare states are simply adjuncts to markets; that is, rational deprivation-alleviating institutions and policies, resting on the individualistic principles of reciprocal obligations and exchange. Communitarianism, by contrast, embodies a vision of a social order that fosters intimate communal bonds.

"During the early 1990s, the term ‘communitarianism’ was appropriated by a small group of mainly American social scientists, linked by a common hostility to the philosophies of liberalism and libertarianism. The sociologist Amitai Etzioni was one of the prominent founders of this movement (see his The New Golden Rule: Community and Morality in a Democratic Society, 1996). Etzioni argues that the advanced industrial societies of the capitalist West suffer from ‘rampant moral confusion and social anarchy’ because individuals have been given too much freedom and not enough responsibilities. Etzioni and other communitarians are in favour of more obligations and fewer rights. They tend to shun economic explanations of social problems, preferring instead to blame everything from crime to excessive consumerism on the moral decline of the family, much of which can be traced to the increasing employment of women outside the home. Etzioni claims this has created a ‘parenting deficit’ which prevents ‘effective personality formation’ in infants, increasing reliance on child-care facilities that often amount to little more than ‘kennels for kids’, and in due course producing a generation of young people who lack the moral fibre to resist crime, drugs, and early sex.

"Communitarians deny that they are advocating a return to the 1950s-style division of labour (formal employment for men, back into the home for women), and proffer instead a range of ‘pro-family practices and policies’, such as Etzioni's ideas for ‘peer marriage’ (a two-parent family, in which each partner has the same rights to extended ‘family leave’ after the birth of children, underwritten by a hardening of the laws against divorce). More broadly, communitarians favour a social order in which ‘the community’ identifies the common good, and persuades its members to act towards it. In this way arguments in favour of (say) safer driving will succeed because they have moral force.

"Communitarians claim to have influenced the development of social policy in America (Etzioni has been a policy adviser to the Clinton administrations) and Britain (where communitarian ideas are said to have found favour with New Labour). Community policing, for example, is a policy consistent with communitarian ideals. Critics have suggested that communitarian arguments are both vague and naïve. Who will pay for extended parental leave-of-absence from employment? What if ‘the community’ endorses values such as homophobia or racialism? What happens to dissenters, who refuse to conform to the ideals of the two-parent family and marriage for life, and are not persuaded by mere exhortation alone? Communitarian social policies are also said to be authoritarian in effect if not intention. See also BROKEN WINDOWS THESIS; COMMUNE; GIFT RELATIONSHIP."

broken windows thesis
A Dictionary of Sociology | Date: 1998

"broken windows thesis -- A thesis which links disorderly behaviour to fear of crime, the potential for serious crime, and to urban decay in American cities. It is often cited as an example of communitarian ideas informing public policy." http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O88-brokenwindowsthesis.html

Â© A Dictionary of Sociology 1998, originally published by Oxford University Press 1998

Individual liberty loses without a fight
by Niki Raapana
July 13, 2008

There's a lot more people in the U.S. using the word communitarian now. When I learned the word in 2000 I found mainly references to it in upper academia, European Union and CAFTA integration papers, and eventually (twice!) in the Washington Post. I looked it up online. I scanned every philosophy and political science text I could find. Not one textbook I've seen included it. It seemed to have appeared in Etzioni's head one day at lunch, just like he said it did. Nobody I knew had ever once heard the word, and some people still accuse me of making it up.

I'm living proof that there has never been any funding for anti communitarian studies in the United States. If it hadn't been for a few generous private doners and people purchasing 2020, I would have starved to death, found slumped over my laptop, still trying to find more evidence to convince Americans communitarianism is a REAL threat to their liberty.

Since April 2000, I've written thousands of letters to academic institutions around the globe asking for assistance with our opposition thesis. When our ACL thesis was included in a sociology class at Vassar College last spring, I thought that would open up the debate to include opposition arguments. As recently as last month I wrote the Ludwig von Mises Institute, the bastion of individualist economic theory. Dead silence is all I ever hear back.

There has been no place in academia for our approach, since our focus is on the way communitarian programs and policies thwart legitimate American law. I don't interpret individualism as an egotism endangering the stability of democracy, I interpret the ancient theory of global communitarianism as high treason against every legitimately created people's government in the world.

This is the usual academic approach to the communitarian versus individual theoretical divide, from an abstract posted by the University of Heidelberg:

Christian Maul (HCA PhD in American Studies Scholarship, Landesgraduiertenförderung): “Henry David Thoreau’s Concept of Individualism in the Light of Communitarian Theory.”

"Emanating from my MA thesis, my PhD project explores the representation of a core value of American identity, individualism, in the works of the influential transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau, who created one of the most consistent concepts of American individualism and the image of an economically and intellectually autonomous self. From the point of view of modern political philosophy, however, Thoreau’s approach to individual autonomy seems to have lost
its value; communitarian philosophers such as Michael Sandel, Michael Walzer, and Charles Taylor argue that individualism interpreted as egotism endangers the stability of democracy as it exposes the self to a process of de-solidarization. In fact, the communitarian movement pleads for a return of the individual into the community through active participation in democratic processes and institutions. Thus, the modern American individual exists in an area of tension between individualism and social commitment. In my current research work, I am developing a model for the interpretation of the relationship between the individual and society and of Thoreau’s concept of individualism from a communitarian perspective. This model is based on major writings of communitarian theorists and depicts the ideal communitarian self by tracing fundamental characteristics of an American self which interacts with the social forces surrounding it. My further research interests include the contemporary American novel, autobiographical literature, and American-German literary interrelations." Primary supervisor: Professor Dr. Dieter Schulz

I've been attacked and ridiculed for years for refusing to shift my focus away from communitarianism. I've been advised more than once to start using a term Americans were more "familiar" with. The Libertarian Party told me they only use terms Americans can understand. The Democrats told me I sound like a Right Wing Property Rights wacko; Nancy Rising wanted me to include Jim Marrs' alien theory in my work. The Nebraska Republicans told Michael Shaw I look like a nutcase because I live in a tent. People who said they wanted to "help"ALWAYS told me told me the word was just too long and too hard to spell, so I should quit using it. Just recently I was asked to shift my educational focus to a bumper sticker with the words, "Sustainable development is a UN coup against Americans."

In the past year I've seen my work plagiarized by Dave Hodges of the Arizona Constitution Party, I've been hounded for not submitting to the Fusionist Borg and the Wizard of Oz characters who followed Terry Catzman666 Hayfield to leftrightunite, and I have serious doubts about the Bridgestone Media Group's purpose for including my interview in One Nation Under Siege.

To top it all off, Nancy Levant, who became a dear friend and a prolific vocal opponent of communitarianism suddenly stopped emailing me last fall. I have only Darren Week's assurance that she is just taking a break because she works as a field laborer all the time now, and there's no internet where she lives.

Now, without any fanfare or apologies from anyone, I can find hundreds of references to communitarianism on all kinds of websites and online magizines. People all over the place are talking about it, almost as if it's been around forever. It's as if everyone should already know what it is. This article in the National Review on June 30, 2008 by Michael Know Beran refers to it hitorically, assuring us it's always been part of American politics:

"The late Arthur Schlesinger Jr. once opined that the United States vacillates between phases of glittering, communitarian "public purpose," associated with appealing patrician showmen like the Roosevelts, and drab, profit-seeking "private interest" periods presided over by presidents so boring no one remembers their names. Amid his many errors, Schlesinger was right in perceiving that the idea of communitarian public purpose has a glamor, a charm, a way of touching the high-minded, generous instincts of the soul, that the ethos of profit-and-loss will never match, golden-egg-laying goose though it be."

Try to access Schlesinger's articles without paying for them, take this search link leading to JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/pss/1849465:

* Review: [untitled]
* Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
* Reviewed work(s): Tomorrow A New World: The New Deal Community Program by Paul K. Conkin
* The American Historical Review, Vol. 65, No. 4 (Jul., 1960), pp. 933-934 (review consists of 2 pages)
* Published by: American Historical Association

Note: This article is a review of another work, such as a book, film, musical composition, etc. The original work is not included in the purchase of this review.

So how is it possible that Hegel's "Idea" just popped into Etzioni's head in 1990, if thirty years earlier, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. was talking about communitarianism in his review of the New Deal Community Program?

Beran's article continues:

"Americans, with their democratic traditions, have an aversion to the word "aristocracy," but not to the idea of it, which, in its most innocent and natural form, merely acknowledges what everyone knows to be true--that in any one of the various departments of life, some people are vastly superior to others.

"I suspect that many voters might even be persuaded to distinguish between aristocracy's more- and less-salubrious forms. Of the two competing patrician philosophies on the hustings this year, one of them, McCain's, represents the aristocratic ideal in its prime, when the knight aspired to fight the good fight. The other, Obama's, represents the patrician ideal in its decadence, when the novice qualifies for the exercise of public power by dreaming the good
communitarian dream."

What is the "good communitarian dream?" It's a vision of peace, health and happiness for everyone in the world. Visualize Heaven and you still can't imagine how beautiful it will be. Once the state is allowed to achieve its evolutionary role and become our god, anything is possible.

In Barack Obama, Americans have found their Hegelian Messiah. Protecting individual rights, the only legitimate purpose for American governance and law, has been slowly replaced with communitarian values. Obama was named the Wonder Boy for the Third Way back in 1994. Hillary Clinton uses the term communitarian to describe more enlightened voters. Both Democratic candidates for U.S. president are committed communitarians. Yet the Republican candidate McCain and the darling of the Independents, Dr. Ron Paul, both studiously avoid addressing the theory of communitarianism in any of their speeches. IF ONLY ONE of the above candidates had openly explained the new theory of community government, ALL Americans would have had the opportunity to choose between liberty and slavery. But none of them did.

The American conservative right has proved itself to be the perfect thesis to the necessary antithesis, cleverly never alerting their followers to the real deception, keeping loyal patriots behind the times by using outdated terms like caplitalism, communism and socialism to describe communitarianism. As a result of this concerted effort to keep Americans dumbed down, Individual Rights, the basis for the ENTIRE American political system, is what's defined as "outdated."

Watch closely as millions of Americans scramble to catch up with the newspeak. Our free people will never know how many thousands of enlightened Americans are already receiving trillions of grant dollars to fund the emerging communitarian vision, but they will quickly find out that if they object to the mandatory community service theory or refuse to cooperate with the communitarian datagatherers or developers, they will be ridiculed and ostracized by the more spiritual members leading the new American collectives.

The entertaining drama that is called "democracy" in the U.S. is about to drop the final curtain on the authentic American dream. Americans aren't voting for a new president in the national election this fall. They're voting for a new god.

Notes:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_12_60/ai_n26678769, "McCain's challenge: how to preempt Barack's communitarian dream," National Review, June 30, 2008 by Michael Knox Beran

Further reading:

http://www.inclusionist.org/node/1507 . About: "Inclusionist.org is a policy blog and website dedicated to advancing a progressive, long-term vision for a fairer, more inclusive and sustainable world. In February 2007, Inclusion entered into a partnership with the Center for Economic and Policy Research, one of the leading economic and policy research organizations in the United States. Established in 1999 by economists Dean Baker and Mark Weisbrot, CEPR promotes democratic debate on the most important economic and social issues that affect people's lives.

http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=03&year=2008&base_name=the_communitarian#105141. About the American Prospect; Liberal Intelligence:" The American Prospect was founded in 1990 as an authoritative magazine of liberal ideas, committed to a just society, an enriched democracy, and effective liberal politics."

http://www.savethemales.ca/obamas_slip_revealed_his_true.html , Dan's comments:

http://www.inclusionist.org/node/1509, "We're all communitarians now" by Shawn Fremstad

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gene-koo/obamas-message-is-in-the_b_87969.html, Gene Koo: "Obama's Message is in the Remix"

http://www.newswithviews.com/Devvy/kidd352.htm, "Okay Obama, let's talk issues" by Devvy Kidd at newswithviews.com

http://www.tehrantimes.com/Index_view.asp?code=172170, "Obama advisor: U.S. not cooperating with Solana," Tehran Times Political Desk

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2008/07/hagel_reportedl.html, "Hagel reportedly to join Obama in Iraq" posted by Scott Hellman

http://www.radicalmiddle.com/politicians.htm, Radical Middle Centrist Politicans includes: Chuck Hagel (R-NE) -- Senator from Nebraska; spoke at radical-centrist New America Foundation conference in 2005; author of the misleadingly titled article "A Republican Foreign Policy," Foreign Affairs, July / August 2004

Hagels' sponsored and co-sponsored record in the U.S. Senate: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/R?d108:FLD913:@OD1(sen+hagel+chuck): He sure is focused on resolutions honoring everyone and establishing "new" national days. See http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c108:S.RES.461:, National Character Counts Week in 2004, co-sponsored by Senator Evan Bayh, the leader of the Third Way group in the Senate. The co-sponsor list pretty much names the rest of the Third Way Senate group and it includes Lieberman, who may end up as McCain's VP!

http://www.ontheissues.org/2008/Chuck_Hagel_Free_Trade.htm

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/politics/bulletin/bulletin_080702.htm, highlights on McCain's trip to South America and promotion of free trade

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/06/20/politics/main4198107.shtml, Obamas Balancing Act on Free Trade

http://www.slate.com/id/2195008/, Constitutional Drift, Obama Steers Right

http://everything2.com/node/1621509, Barack's speech at the 2004 Dem convention

http://cumbey.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_archive.html, Hagel and Javier Solana with commentary on Hagels' ties to EU's high priest.

http://hagel.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Speeches.Detail&Speech_id=f69da09a-6756-4b90-9dc1-2c879b2b0b51&Month=6&Year=2008, "The United States must continue to press for a successful conclusion to the Doha Round of global trade negotiations. America’s leaders should stand behind our trade agreements and support the pending Free Trade Agreements with Colombia, South Korea and Panama as well as renewing Trade Promotion Authority for the next President.." and "Like our workforce, our nation’s infrastructure is aging and will require new initiatives like the bill that Senator Chris Dodd and I have introduced to create a National Infrastructure Bank that would allow private investment to finance public infrastructure projects." and "International institutions are more important now than at any time in modern history. Our post-World War Two alliances and partnerships, particularly with the European Union, Australia, Japan, South Korea and Turkey, must be strengthened and recalibrated to recognize that these powers are no longer American Twentieth century surrogate powers" and "We are engaged in a war of ideas and ideologies to win over the youth of this region. Classrooms are the battlefields. This will require a
revolutionary universe of new thinking and policies. The human dynamic always dictates outcomes. " and "President Bush deserves credit for his initiatives to create the Millennium Challenge Account promoting sustainable, long-term economic growth and good governance in the world’s poorest countries. The President’s Emergency Relief Plan for AIDS Relief…or ‘PEPFAR’…which has been the world’s largest international health initiative in modern history to combat HIV/AIDS also deserves great credit. These programs should continue. In addition, we need to understand how some of the developed world’s trade policies harm the world’s poorest countries, and, as I have said, urgently seek a successful conclusion to the Doha Trade negotiations. Public-private partnerships must become a central tenet in our development strategy."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41113-2004Nov10.html, New Group-Third Way Values

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/01/01/opinion/meyer/main3665004.shtml,

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24257539/, Ed Norton's Earth Friendly Advice... and his family lineage

"Shock the wearer on demand!" Somebody linked our dialectic page to a forum discussing a perfectly crafted dialectical solution to terrorism and hijackings. People who really care about the planet should be the first to volunteer for this:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/weblogs/aviation-security/2008/Jul/01/want-some-torture-with-your-peanuts/

Do Humanitarian/Human Rights also mean Communitarian/Community Rights? One of the biggest obstacles to following the Communitarian's movement is the numerous terms used to describe the exact same things. To this day most average Americans have never heard of the word communitarian. Is it a "real" term used by officials in the U.S. government?

Does communitarianism mean "the devolution of power to groups and the seizing of authority from the nation-state by communities"?

The following quotes may help answer that question:

Colin Powell used the word "communitarian" five times during a short interview with Bob Schieffer on CBS Face the Nation December 17, 2006. Schieffer never once uses the word in his responses; one would have to assume he's already very familiar with the term.

Mr. POWELL: The number one priority has to be working with the Iraqi
government and their strategy, provide security for the people of Baghdad,
initially--that's the center of gravity. But I think, ultimately, with our
help, has to be done by the Iraqis. They're the ones who have to solve this
internecine civil war humanitarian--communitarian conflict that they're
in--communitarian.

SCHIEFFER: Well, let--let's--let's--you've talked about it, and as I--I take
it, you--you think that the 160,000 troops are not going to be any more
successful than 140,000 have at this point.

Communitarian guru Amitai Etzioni in an abstract explaining a neo-communitarian approach to international relations- rights and the good in the Human Rights Review in Volume 7, July 2006:

Amitai Etzioni

"Abstract New communitarianism is important even to those who care little about academic disputes. A greatly altered communitarian position lays the foundation for an international legal framework that is more comprehensive than the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is more attentive to beliefs in the East, and enhances the ability of nations that adhere to different values to find common ground on policies ranging from humanitarian interventions to fighting terrorist groups. The article first examines criticisms leveled against communitarianism and then highlights the ways a neo-communitarian approach has overcome these criticisms. The question of under what circumstances one nation may interfere in the internal affairs of another, especially to advance human rights, using means as different as cross cultural moral judgments to armed humanitarian interventions, serves as a litmus test for distinguishing the new from the old communitarian approach."

Natural Law in English Rennaissance Literature by R.S. White explains it thus:

"In the terms of Natural Law, good is humanitarian, communitarian and is driven by compassion, reason and conscience."

A New US Military Strategy: Issues and Options Project on Defense Alternatives Briefing Memo # 20 by Carl Conetta and Charles Knight, 21 May 2001 includes:

"4.2 Are peace operations un-American?
Some advocates of selective engagement have targeted humanitarian and peace operations as prime candidates for triage. From an orthodox Realist perspective the cost of pursuing humanitarian or communitarian goals may easily outweigh their service to manifest national interests. Certainly the material benefit to national interests is seldom direct. The beneficial effects of stemming genocide, relieving refugee crises, or forestalling war are as diffuse as the negative consequences of doing nothing."

In an Indian paper by Mararand Paranjape titled Dominance and Dissent: Interrogating the Terms of Discourse we find the terms again used interchangably:

"In fact, the only secularism which survives such a crisis is one which has a strong humanitarian and communitarian component. But the more humanitarian and communitarian it becomes, the more it begins to resemble dharma."

And again, from India's Integrated Rural Development of Weaker Secitions in India

"Vision: Sustain humanitarian and communitarian values of respect for each other, dignity, harmonious living with nature, work together for a self reliant community, continue to work collectively, to attain self sufficiency and just, gender equal, sustainable and ecologically sound civil society.

"#1 Goal:Community Development Education of the Weaker section to create in them an awareness for Social health and economic development through a process of Community organisation."

As Anne-Marie Slaughter, Dean, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University said in her review of Amitai Etzioni's book, "From Empire to Community, A New Approach to International Relations":

"In this timely and provocative book, Professor Etzioni offers a rich compendium of insights and ideas. His vision of a potential East-West synthesis is particularly compelling. Better still, he is not afraid to tackle the very real challenge of creating genuine institutions to govern a potential global polity. A valuable read for anyone interested in the future of global governance."

In an MIT Security Studies Program Seminar called Strategies of Humanitarian Intervention, in a paper presented by Taylor Seybolt of the United States Institute of Peace on 19 September 2007:

"2. Another questioner sought to probe the rationale behind the right to protect. The liberal ideas underlying the right to protect are in contrast to the communitarian ideas behind the prohibition on genocide, so these ideas may at some level be in conflict. The focus on genocide may be in part a matter of convenience, given the existing force of the anti-genocide regime."

Further reading for those who can afford it:

Ordering the International: History, Change and Transformation By William Brown, Simon Bromley, Suma Athreye

There's other places where the term is used too:

The spare parts syndrome - artificial bodily parts for impaired humans
UNESCO Courier, July-August, 1993 by Bernard Teo

"The humanitarian and communitarian foundation of organ transplantation would be corrupted by such a consumerist approach."

Is communitarianism a term much used by the U.S. Military? Here's an excerpt for the U.S. Army War College Quarterly, Sociopolitical Stresses and the RMA by FRANK J. STECH From Parameters, Summer 1995, pp. 47-54

"Communitarianism and the Values Revolution

Technology plays even less of a role in explaining the second destabilizing feature of our world: the quest for values, rooted in ethnology, regionalism, religion, and other fundamentalisms.[5] This quest generates what Samuel Huntington termed "the clash of civilizations."[6] The quest for values, while virtuous in many dimensions, also tends to attack liberal values and supplant state power, civics, and citizenship. "The faith of the Enlightenment in the inevitable triumph of human reason and liberty," wrote Almond and Verba in The Civic Culture, "has been twice shaken in recent decades."[7] This "faith" in the reason and science of the Enlightenment is under broad attack again, not by fascists and communists this time, but by intellectuals, ranging from fundamentalist Islamic mullahs to liberals such as Vaclav Havel and conservatives such as William Bennett. Fewer every day seem prepared to make Descartes' declaration that identity depends solely on pure reason. Fascism and communism challenged the "inevitability of democracy" in this century; challenges in the next century will be based on values, not ideologies.

But if communitarianism (the devolution of power to groups and the seizing of authority from the nation-state by communities) seems good for established democracies, those same democracies seem unwilling to grant that such actions may be good for ethnic groups and tribal enclaves, for Yugoslavia or Chechnya. "We should stop touting order imposed from the center for others," wrote William Safire recently, "even as we come to reject that course for ourselves. On the contrary, we should encourage others to go with the flow of centrifugal political forces all over the world."[8] Many would reject Safire's "go with the flow" perspective, seeing that communitarianism's ideals conflict with the core democratic political precepts which sharply limit the claims of state, government, and community on the individual. There are no assurances that all communities will share the same values, that different groups will concur on moralities and responsibilities, that all citizens will obey the same authorities. Wrote French journalist Jean Daniel, "America is wondering if its citizens have less in common than they have differences. . . . [T]hey all come together not under the banner of assimilation or oneness, but of coexistence . . . . This tendency toward `communitarianism' is as alarming for Europe as it is for the United States. We can see in Lebanon and the former Yugoslavia where this kind of convulsion leads."[9]

Western nations may continue to defend liberal political values (human rights, democratic processes, free speech), even as their citizens shift to more communitarian motives for political actions (community rights, moral processes, socially conscious speech), devolve more political power to communities, and find their armies becoming more exclusive enclaves of a warrior spirit. Such spirit stands good stead for traditional offensive and defensive military missions. It is less clear, though, how well "warriors" will perform in the "operations other than war" that represent much of the future work of Western military forces. If the citizenry question the political foundations of these operations, their military execution will become that much more difficult to sustain, regardless of the depth of warrior spirit or professionalism in the armed forces. And pitted against these Western defenders of liberal political values (perhaps only feebly supported by communitarian voters) will be the warriors of nations and ethnic groups that implacably hold tribal and fundamental values. OOTW seem far better served by a professional ethic than by a warrior spirit.

Friday, November 22, 2013

Speech to Independent Regulatory Review Commission in opposition to Common Core

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Saturday, January 26, 2013

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Monday, April 26, 2010

Monday, October 26, 2009

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Monday, January 19, 2009

Monday, December 29, 2008

Thursday, October 2, 2008

Friday, August 15, 2008

Monday, August 4, 2008

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