Today is Independence Day, 2024. As it may be the last such occurrence in more than name only, we should enumerate what stands to be lost to minority rule.
The majority clearly shares common preferences for a value system where you are emancipated from those who would deny you the ability to actualize yourself because finding and knowing your real self is a prerequisite to taking actions to take control of your life and realize your purpose. So that they may be free to live purposefully, the majority seeks to cultivate a multi-generational ethos that actions taken in the present ought not diminish the opportunities of others in the future to enjoy similar levels of social, economic, or environmental prosperity, utility, and sustainability.
The majority wants to live in a society that lacks systemic or social barriers to a person’s progress in the areas of education, health, housing, income, job opportunities, economic stature, prestige, and power. A society where the majority believe that in order for them to win in life, someone else doesn’t have to lose, where there are rewards for working hard, but not punishments for not working hard enough, where the strong have a duty to protect the weak, and the powerful are more accountable than the powerless. A society where, in general, everyone is better off today than yesterday, and will be again tomorrow and tomorrow and for all the tomorrows.
To accomplish this, the majority wants a theory of economics where the purpose of capital is to create social, economic, and environmental structures where everyone flourishes, that this purpose is placed at the center of the business model, and that aligning the core activities of the business to solving needs in ways that fulfills that purpose is how the organization creates the greatest value for itself, it’s community, and it’s investors.
All of that is the target, and it isn’t shocking that, while the aim of the majority might be true, calling the results mixed is being charitable. Amongst the majority there are opposing views about the rate of change, about how much sacrifice should be made by those who have been lucky for those whose luck has been bad, or about who is or is not part of the majority. Suffice it to say that if you are unhappy that the rich and powerful aren’t being held accountable, that the strong aren’t protecting the weak, or that the system is rigged against you because of things about you that you have no control over, you are in the majority. You could be quietly suffering through or you could be protesting as part of Occupy Wall Street or the Tea Party or Black Lives Matter, but what each of these movements are protesting against is that this system of values being denied to you and the rest of the majority, and who you are protesting against are the minority of people who don’t want you to have it.
To be clear, the leaders of the minority want none of this. They want to win by making anyone… everyone else lose because they don’t believe in a society where everyone can win. They want to keep you from finding out who you are because they want to you to be who they tell you to be. They want to keep you from controlling your life because they want to control you. They want to take as much as they want for as long as they want and they don’t care about tomorrow, because they can never be satisfied with what they have. They are covetous.
To keep what they have, and to make sure they keep getting more, they will build systems and and societies that divide, diminish, and destroy communities that help one another or stand up to them. They aren’t concerned with what’s fair, they don’t believe in duty, and aren’t accountable to anyone. They are bullies.
And they will lie to you. They will lie and tell you they are on your side, that you can only have the system of values you want by taking it away from someone else. They will lie and tell you they can lead you, that only they know how to win, how to climb the ladder, how to make sure you get yours. They will lie and tell you they share your values, that they believe in tomorrow, in freedom, in liberty, in fairness, in the American dream, in a just society. They will lie and tell you about all the threats and dangers in the world, in vivid, lurid detail so that you will be scared and then they will lie and tell you that only they will protect you. They will lie and tell you they believe in God, that they have faith and repent from sin and love their neighbors as themselves, that they turn the other cheek, they they give to Cesar what is Cesar’s, that they are the camel passing through the eye of the needle. They will say anything you want them to say, anything you want to hear, anything that will get you to give them your money, your time, your attention, your freedom, your adoration, and your vote. They are frauds.
Above all, they don’t want to share. Not power. Not money. Not freedom. Not liberty. Not America. Not with you.