As long as power is centralized around the state...

[Selatius]

there can be no long-term peace. The issue is power itself. Who gets to wield it? The problem with selecting a few individuals and giving them decision-making power over everybody else is that it opens the door to manipulation and abuse of power. This is the nature of power. It corrupts. It attracts the greedy, the poor souls who've been twisted and ruined by their lust for power. This has been a lesson repeatedly taught and forgotten in the last several thousand years.

Centralized power, in my mind, must not be trusted. Instead of being passive participants in our world (choosing others to determine the course of our world), I say we drop that idea. I say we become the government. We become direct instead of passive participants in the decisions that affect us. We become our own keeper. You are your own keeper. I am my own keeper. Anything that affects us should be decided upon by everyone involved in a way where we hold the decision-making power, not the select few. I reject the notion that people are so inherently stupid to determine what is best for their lives that we have to elect others to do it for us. It opens the door to elitism, that one is righteously fit to lead others, and taken in the wrong way, it could lead one to conclude that one is better than the next person, that one is superior and that others are inferior and unworthy, which flies in the face of the idea that "all men are created equal."

We have the self-evident gift of free will and the gift of reason. We can learn, learn enough to make informed decisions about our lives instead of letting others do it for us. We can change, and we must try. I say trying and knowing for sure is far better than not trying and wondering for the rest of one's life if the dream was possible at all.

The only reason why people are the way they are is because they've been deprived of the essential food of the mind: Knowledge. In this case, they've been robbed blind and kept in a prison, a prison not of steel bars and concrete but of ignorance and fear. This is why I believe in education and popular organization and free thought as a true long-term solution, not the bureaucracy and not the politicians or "politricksters."

I believe in mutual cooperation, not wasteful and destructive competition to see who can stomp who into the ground. I believe in democracy and the ability of people to rise up to the challenges of life.

(/End spontaneous rant)