Trump’s victory speech early this morning was all about how HE is going to make America great for US. But only WE can make America good and just and genuinely democratic.

To do that we need to have a clear vision of what we mean by that. So let’s start talking about that—hugely! That is what follows below.

Earlier I posted a Substack titled “I can’t wait until November 6; here’s why.” Today, November 6, take a look at it.

How do egalitarian principles apply to thorny questions that currently divide us?

What is it OK to do in the name of freedom, and what’s not OK?

OK to teach creationism in public schools? OK to place poison labelled as medicine on the shelves in stores?

Here are my thoughts on this question, based on the egalitarian principles that I (and I believe the vast majority of people also) want all of society to be shaped by. These principles all derive from the Golden Rule: no-rich-and-no-poor equality, mutual aid, truth and fairness as discussed here. I call people who want to shape society by these values egalitarians, whether they’ve ever heard that word or not.

How egalitarian—i.e., genuine—democracy works, and how it decides if creationism is taught in public schools, etc.

I say that egalitarians, and ONLY egalitarians, should make the laws that everybody must obey. I discuss how this can be implemented here, where I call it genuine democracy. As you can read there, the idea is that in a local community the sovereign authority is the local assembly of egalitarians (and only of egalitarians). There is no higher governmental body with law-making power. A local community is more or less the size of a U.S.. zip code or whatever size realistically enables all the egalitarians who live or work in it and who want to participate as equals in democratically writing the laws that everybody in the local community must obey, to do so.

While the local assembly of egalitarians is the sovereign power in its local community, it is possible that an assembly in community, say A, would enact a law that is clearly anti-egalitarian and oppressive of innocent people. In this case it is likely that other local assemblies of egalitarians elsewhere¹ (in communities, say B, C, D, etc.) would declare that the community A assembly is not REALLY egalitarian and that communities B, C, D, etc. are morally obligated or at least permitted to use force (including violence or its credible threat) to stop assembly A from doing the oppressive anti-egalitarian thing it is doing.

How does this relate to whether or not people can make creationism taught in the public schools? What about placing poison labelled as medicine on shelves in the stores?

Here’s how it relates.

Egalitarians have the right in their sovereign local assembly of egalitarians to enact any law they wish², including making creationism taught in the public schools and placing poison labelled as medicine on shelves in the stores.

BUT

Other egalitarians also have the right to declare people who claim to be egalitarians but who enact anti-egalitarian oppressive laws to be actually anti-egalitarians and to use force to prevent such laws from being enacted.

SO

If a local assembly of egalitarians enacted a law to make creationism taught in the public schools, then other local assemblies of egalitarians would have to decide if such a law was so oppressive that they needed to prevent its enactment by force. This is different from merely believing that it is a bad law or a stupid law, a LOT different!

Egalitarians in other communities could, for example, try to persuade the egalitarians who teach creationism in the public schools that that is a bad thing to do (on the grounds that creationism is not truth), but not use force to prevent them from doing it. That’s what I would do, personally. Yes, it is a judgment call, since teaching false things to children is arguably oppressive, but is it so oppressive as to justify violence to stop it? What if the people teaching creationism in the public schools happen to be very egalitarian good people otherwise? (I know such people.)

Likewise, if for some crazy reason, a local assembly of egalitarians decided to place poison (known to be poison!) labeled as medicine on the shelves of stores, then I think it most likely that egalitarians elsewhere would decide that the pro-poison people are not really egalitarians (since knowingly mis-labeling poison this way violates the principle of mutual aid) and would use force to prevent it from happening if persuasion first did not work. Of course persuasion would involve first finding out if the pro-poison people knew it was poison, and acting accordingly based on whether they did or did not know it.

What is YOUR solution?

If you, dear reader, disagree with what I wrote here, please say in the comments how you would handle these kinds of controversies. Would you favor having some central national law-making governmental body that would command what people could and could not do? How would you ensure that this central law-making body with power over hundreds of millions of people was not, itself, oppressive? I discuss this question here.

Egalitarianism is not utopia, as I discuss here. But it is far better than our current class inequality, in which we live under a dictatorship of the rich.

Read here how YOU can help build the egalitarian revolutionary movement to make society egalitarian.

1. Yes, it is also a logical possibility, even if a remote one, that most egalitarians elsewhere would find nothing wrong with assembly A’s oppressive terrible and actually anti-egalitarian decision. If this happened, it would mean that the egalitarian revolutionary project was doomed because most humans are, regardless of what they claim to be, anti-egalitarians. My entire advocacy of egalitarian revolution is based on the knowledge that most people do indeed have egalitarian values and want to shape society by those values. My evidence for this is presented here. If you claim I am wrong about most people, then go ahead and dismiss virtually everything I have written. But first you need to be sure I am wrong about most people. Here’s how you can find out.

2. I advocate that there be an Egalitarian Bill of Rights that egalitarians honor.