Dear Friends,
It seems to me, opaque government is corrupt government, only transparent government can be honest. By transparent I don’t mean we are “allowed” to see some of what they do, if we spend a few million on attorney fees to pry it open… but everything that government does is immediately transmitted onto the Internet for anyone to see, and recorded for later viewing. (At our pleasure). Total utter and complete transparency. Anything less than pure transparency, will become corrupt, because that is the nature of government, politics and power. Total transparency is the end we must seek, it is an end in and of itself, it bestows just government to our kids. Anything less and they will inherit the same corrupt, psychopathic and power mad elite we did. Don’t we want better for them?
Every office, hallway and bathroom must be equipped with cameras and microphones. That is what transparency is. The people being able to see, in real time, what their representatives are doing. Otherwise, we don’t have representatives, we have rulers. Representatives work in the light while rulers work in the dark. Because if someone represents you, they are your employee, and what employer would allow an employee’s work to be opaque? No one would. If any firm did, they would not be in business very long, since every employee would soon become lazy, expensive and even counterproductive… as our rulers are. The Freedom of Information law is a pathetic expediency to pretend there is transparency when in fact there is none.
Spy agencies like the NSA, CIA and FBI must be eliminated once and for all. By their nature they operate in the dark. While there may be many who honestly think, what they are doing advances the cause of our Constitutionally limited government, they do the exact opposite. Moreover, I think everyone in those agencies know it in their hearts, even if they are unwilling to admit it to themselves. The elimination of the national security apparatus, (other than our standing army) probably seems suicidal to many. They have not thought it through. The CIA is a means to project force, no more no less. The FBI is a means to nationalize law enforcement, and the NSA is a means to spy on the people, from behind a curtain. Their actual function is to undermine good government.
Everything government does, needs to be saved for future generations to view, and know what our government did as well as what it is doing. That way mistakes are open for all to see, so they need not be repeated. No one thinks representatives are perfect, nor should we expect them to be, they are human beings. Those who pretend to be perfect are usually the most flawed. This is a function of transparency as much as real time broadcasting. There should be no “memory hole” when it comes to government. Declassifying the actions of government decades after the fact, allow the most heinous crimes to go unknown and thus unpunished… like MK Ultra, the Plutonium Files and the Tuskegee experiments. It is past time to open the gates and behold the true ugliness of government.
Why do we have government in the first place? Is it to provide a means for psychopaths to loot society? A way for the elite to lord over the rest of us? A form of injustice we allow to be safe from each other while at the mercy of those without it? Or, maybe, it exists for another reason? Could that reason be to provide a structure that allows everyone to achieve their highest possible selves? One that does not impede people, provide a hammock or hobble with a political education, but instead hands everyone a ladder. One which anyone can climb as high as they are able or have interest to. Only a fully transparent government can do this. Because only a government that is transparent will serve the interests of the people, who monitor them, and not the oligarchs, that profit from them.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
