THE PEACE NETWORK
1880 Route 64
Ionia, NY 14475
May, 2002
FOR ALL OF HISTORY we humans have been living in groups--tribes, clans, city-states, and countries. It's our historical way of protecting ourselves against the other human groups with no allegiance to us.
Traditionally, if one group wants the land or other resources of another group, and has the power, it takes them by force. This is war. (It is also "justice" and "God's will", because whichever group wins the war gets to write the history.)
What is the role of the individual citizen in all this? To follow the leader. To succeed in war requires a loyal and obedient army, and a supportive population. In modern terms, the public needs to supply soldiers and pay taxes for war, without undue grumbling.
In the U.S. Declaration of Independence, we find the new idea that citizens have fundamental rights, "That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,…" Here the citizens have the power, and delegate it through a legal system to their representatives, who have the responsibility to lead where the people want to go, or be voted out of office.
Now history has turned another corner. Suddenly there are good global communications, and we find that there ARE no "other" human groups. It's just us. We are the people, we are citizens, living in the world. There is no one here but us.
Today, in this interconnected, overpopulated, resource-depleted, environment-threatened world, do "We the people" want more wars? Do we want more terrorism?
We have been playing follow the leader for thousands of years. The result is that many of us live under cruel conditions, and many of us inflict cruelty on others. Many of us are desperately poor, without enough food or even clean water for our children. Many of us are victims of disease. Many of us are poorly educated.
In the American model, every human being on earth has "certain unalienable rights", and also the responsibility to work for a form of government which protects these rights. The time has come for us, as world citizens, to demand leadership from our elected officials to build the legal structures needed to protect basic human rights everywhere.
This will end war, end terrorism, and end the game of follow the leader.
*** PEACE ***