There Should Be NO Politicians!
Instead there should be voluntary federation of egalitarians, which is genuine democracy
People who support the egalitarian values of no-rich-and-no-poor equality, mutual aid and fairness (whether they’ve ever heard the word “egalitarian” or not) are egalitarians, and they are the vast majority of people. Egalitarians (adult ones, that is) should be required to obey ONLY laws that they have a right to write in participation as equals with other egalitarians in a democratic sovereign Local Assembly of Egalitarians. This is genuine democracy (of egalitarians.)
Order on a larger-than-local scale can and should be based on voluntary federation of egalitarians, with delegates* from local assemblies meeting to craft proposals (not laws!) that local assemblies implement or not as they wish. Read about how voluntary federation (though not of egalitarians) creates large (even global) scale order TODAY here.
What If a Local Assembly Enacts a Racist or Otherwise Unjust Oppressive Law?
If a given Local Assembly enacts a racist or otherwise unjust oppressive law, egalitarians in other local assemblies are fully within their rights to a) determine that the members of the given local assembly are not truly egalitarians and that the law it enacted is anti-egalitarian and b) forcibly prevent the law from being enforced. (This is essentially what egalitarians do when they make an egalitarian revolution, right?)
Why Is Voluntary Federation of Egalitarians So Important?
The alternative to voluntary federation of egalitarians is a form of government in which egalitarians ARE forced to obey laws that they have no right to write in participation as equals with other egalitarians. Typically this means there is a governmental body somewhere composed of politicians who are exclusively empowered to write the laws that all egalitarians in the region over which the government rules—often a region covering thousands of miles—must obey. This is a dictatorship of the politicians over the egalitarians.
Furthermore, it is a welcome mat for an oppressive minority to gain domination over the egalitarians by merely having to gain control over the relatively small number of politicians. This is how, today, hundreds of millions of egalitarians in the United States are forced to obey anti-egalitarian laws written by a few hundred politicians in Washington, D.C. who are essentially controlled by Big $. This is also how a small number of Bolsheviks gained control over millions of Russians and imposed on them cruel inequality and anti-democratic tyranny, as I discuss briefly here in the subsection titled “Workers and Peasants Fought Against the Bolshevik Party's Authoritarian Domination.”
The United States Constitution
The anti-genuine-democracy and hence anti-egalitarian character of virtually all national governments today is disguised by bogus concepts. The United States Constitution with its We the People preamble falsely purports to give power to the people by calling for free and fair elections and by basing government on a separation of powers (checks and balances), as if these things equated to genuine democracy for ordinary people. What the Constitution actually does is give power to the wealthy people, as discussed here.
Free and Fair Elections
For example, merely choosing the politicians by an election, no matter how “fair,” does not prevent the elected politicians from having unjust dictatorial power over egalitarians, nor does it prevent an oppressive minority such as Big $ from gaining control of the politicians and hence dominating all of the egalitarians (as respected academics have verified is the case today in the U.S. in this academic article also reported on here and here and here). But the mass media tell us how important it is for us to vote, and how democratic our society is because we have the right to vote and because our elections are fair. This is simply a lie.
Separation of Powers (Checks and Balances)
The United States Constitution calls for establishing what is in effect a dictatorship of politicians over all egalitarians, and tries to make this idea seem like a good idea by talking about a “separation of powers” (checks and balances) between the legislature (with an upper and lower house to check and balance each other) and the executive and the judiciary to check and balance each. This separation of powers is designed to enable the government to subjugate egalitarians (read about this here) while preventing the emergence of a tyrant (a monarch or single-person dictator or a small cabal dictatorship) subjugating upper class people. Well, for the minority of wealthy upper class folks, this is indeed a wonderful idea. But for egalitarians it’s a horrible idea. The mass media always preaches the wonderfulness of the “separation of powers” (checks and balances) in the Constitution. Should we egalitarians join this chorus of praise? I don’t think so!
Should We Try to Gain Support for Genuine Democracy by Pretending It’s What the U.S. Constitution is Really About?
No. The U.S. Constitution is widely respected only because the ruling class has worked very hard to heap praise on it since its inception. The ruling class has virtually deified the Founding Fathers (George Washington and his “I cannot tell a lie” cherry tree myth, etc.) to hide that fact that they were enemies of We the People!
The truth is that the very core, the very essence, of the U.S. Constitution is the creation of a government designed to be used by an oppressive upper class to dominate and control the have-nots. This really is indisputable.
How important is it to speak the truth?
It’s vitally important. It is THE MOST IMPORTANT THING TO DO! Speaking the truth is primary. In the absence of the truth, there can be no justice. In the absence of justice there cannot be a fair and decent and peaceful society. If we trip over the truth by failing to speak it about the U.S. Constitution then we place ourselves on the road that leads to failure, at least failure for achieving genuine democracy and a society based on justice and fairness and decency.
In the early years of the Vietnam War, before, say, 1968, most Americans believed (or at least did not want to say out loud that they did not believe) the government propaganda about how the war was to bring freedom to the Vietnamese, that it was a war for a noble purpose, a war to protect the freedom our Founding Fathers bequeathed to us (“If we don’t stop the Communists over seas then we’ll have to fight them at home!”) and to ensure that others can enjoy this freedom as well. At this time some people began refuting this propaganda lie. It took several years of persistence but eventually these people succeeded in persuading a majority of Americans that the Vietnam war was NOT about bringing freedom to anybody. Would our world be a better world if these people had decided to join in the praise of the Vietnam War? I don’t think so.
Do Most Americans Want to Hear the Truth, or Hear Familiar Lies?
Contrary to the elitist and contemptuous view of ordinary people that is so prevalent today (including among Marxists and Leftists), most ordinary people really do want to hear and know the truth. They respond positively when people speak the truth respectfully and persuasively. Here’s how I first discovered this fact. I later discovered that people like these people (zoom in on any photo to read the sign they are displaying) WANT to hear somebody speak the truth that they virtually never hear spoken otherwise.
From 2008 to 2010 I spent a lot of time going door-to-door in Somerville, MA (a working/middle class town near Boston) talking to people about Israel in the context of getting signatures to put an anti-Zionist question on the ballot (which got majority YES votes, as described here.) I discovered that people WANTED to hear somebody speak the truth about Israel, even people who were pro-Israel because they had never heard the truth before. On one occasion I especially recall, I rang a door bell and a woman in her 60s or so opened the door and asked me what I wanted. I said I wanted to talk to her about Israel. She told me she knew nothing about Israel and that I should join her in sitting on her front porch and tell her about Israel. I spoke for about 15 minutes about a class understanding of the conflict there. Then her husband came down and said to her, “What’s going on?” She said she was hearing about Israel, and then—to my pleasant surprise—she explained the Israel/Palestine conflict to her husband just as well as I had explained it to her!
The fact is that most people respect political activists more, not less, when they speak the truth in a principled and clear manner. Should we decline to speak the truth about the U.S. Constitution in an effort to court the approval of people who may, today, respect that document? I don’t think so.
* The delegates should be instantly recallable by the assembly from which they come. Because the delegates are not law-makers but only proposal-crafters, however, the harm that a bad delegate can do is very minimal, in contrast to the great harm a bad delegate can do in a government where these delegates are law-makers.