Showing posts with label Amitai Etzioni. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Amitai Etzioni. Show all posts

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Five Essential Thoughts to Ponder

Each of the subjects I touch on in these next five posts will be highlighted with a piece of my photo shop art—just for fun—and to break up the monotony. The order in which these topics are placed is significant. I will list them according to how important I think they are. How truly important these things are is impossible to discern.




Number One:

Communitarianism. This is first on my list because most people have never heard of it. Communitarianism is a hard word to say. It is also hard to spell and difficult to remember. The official definition is, “of or relating to social organization in small cooperative partially collectivist communities.”

A condensed description of
Communitarian goals would be, “The balancing of individual rights against the needs of the [global] community.” I see a major problem with balancing or “harmonizing” individual rights versus community “responsibilities”. When the rights of the individual are limited with laws, “administrative policies”, or professional peer pressure, the concept of personal freedom suffers.

Amitai Ezioni, the guru of the Communitarian Network and advisor to various presidents thinks that we have “focused on the rights of the individual for too long…” I couldn't disagree with him more. From restrictive Home Owner Associations to thousands of useless tax laws--the individual’s ability to live a private life (with private belongings) has been whittled away for decades.

Local Agenda 21 is a comprehensive policy set up by the United Nations. It was presented at the1992 Rio Summit. LA 21 outlines their plan for every community in the world to be managed under similar guidelines. They focus on Environmentalism, “Sustainable Development” or “Smart Growth” and “Economics” and so on. All of the countries of the world are either signed up to participate, or they are being peer pressured into signing up. If you haven’t heard the terms: “Green”, “Smart Growth”, or “Sustainable” buzzing in your ear lately… You’re either not listening, or you are a hermit.

The goals of Communitarianism are presented so that they always sound GREAT. Imagine! Well organized communities with people working together efficiently. Everyone trained or
designated to manage everything in a “Sustainable” fashion… and always with a focus on what is best for “Mother Earth”. If you disagree with their agenda,you obviously want to live in a poorly organized community where no one works together. Nothing is managed properly and therefore it cannot be sustained. Selfish individuals are ignorant of the needs of “Mother Earth” ...or they just don’t care. The individuals only care about themselves.

Often people mistake Communitarianism for Communism. This is a false conclusion. Various other titles describe communitarian values. Maybe you’ve heard them: The Third Way, The Radical Middle, “Non-partisans”, “Centrists” etcetera. (Both Obama and McCain represent Communitarian Ideals.) These separate titles exist for the “Communitarian Platform” because it identifies their goals AWAY from the goals of the “Liberals” or “Conservatives”. Third Way politics are the
SYNTHESIS of the left and right. The radical middle claims to combine the best of the “socialist leftists” and “ultra-capitalist conservatives”.

Communitarianism is not Communism because Communism focuses only on the power of the “state” and obliterates the existence of the individual. Within Communism, if you are not working for the interests of the “state”, then you
cease to exist. Communitarians claim to balance the individual’s rights against the needs of “community”. What they don’t tell you is that their work involving administrative laws and “regulations” is laying the foundations for a supra-national (world wide) legal structure. I placed Communitarianism at the top of this list because the goals of this movement are REAL and they are slowly being accomplished in EVERY community in the world: From the Bottom Up. The sovereignty of countries is being dissolved. It is being replaced with Communitarian Law. Stay Tuned for my next installment.