Democracy and Libertarianism are inherently incompatible. The reason for this is that a large majority of the adult population in all countries puts a higher value on illusions of security than on personal liberty, let alone on the liberty of others. Both Democracy and Libertarianism, as currently formulated, are value systems with some false assumptions. I will discuss the ethics and the assumptions underlying these systems and then give you a third alternative which produces a libertarian society as a side-effect, not as the central goal.

At the core of any civilization is a system of values or ethics together with assumptions about reality. The European civilization, out of which America emerged as a new civilization, had at its core "the natural, hierarchical order of things, Christian ethics, and a notion of the hereditary superiority of some people over other people". Only the Christian ethics seem valid. This system was highly compatible with the hierarchical order of the Catholic Church, extending beyond this world all the way to God, but less so with the new protestant sects, which claimed, and occasionally tolerated, respect for individual conscience, so long as this conscience was compatible with the prevalent interpretations of the locally accepted Protestant Bible. The scientific revolution, which began at about the same time as the Reformation, and had a common cause behind it, showed, any rational person, that religious authority was wrong about nearly everything in the natural world from Astronomy to Zoology. Therefore, it was reasonable to assume that religious authority was probably also wrong about the psychosocial and ethical world as well. Therefore, rational people began to look to reason and science to guide them in Moral Philosophy (Ethical Behavior) as well as in Natural Philosophy (Physical & Biological Science).

The pioneers in this approach were humanists, such as Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes in England, and Michel de Montaigne and Rene Descartes in France. The culmination of this new approach was achieved in Holland, the most libertarian society in the world at that time, in the ETHICS of Benedictus de Spinoza. Spinoza was to Moral Philosophy what his contemporary, Isaac Newton, was to Natural Philosophy. Spinoza was the first, true libertarian philosopher; Jesus was the first libertarian mystic. As a consequence, Spinoza, the son of Jewish refugees from Spain, was excommunicated by the Jews of Holland and persecuted by Jews, Catholics, and Protestants. It seems he had something to offend everyone. He was condemned by religious authorities up to the present time -- an excellent indicator that he was correct.

Bertrand Russell, another libertarian philosopher, referred to Spinoza as "the noblest and most lovable of all the great philosophers...ethically he is supreme". Russell also said that in a democracy the only people who can get elected to office are those who are stupid, hypocritical, or both. I am not quite that extreme, but it might explain why in the United States, in spite of the obvious ethical and intellectual superiority of the Libertarian candidates, they consistently and collectively receive less than 7% of the popular vote; voters prefer those who share their prejudices. This is an important reality that all Libertarians should carefully consider.

The democratic ethical and political philosophy grew out of a distortion of Spinoza's libertarian philosophy. Spinoza was among the most profound of thinkers, and although he defined all his terms, he wrote in a difficult mathematical style and in Latin. The Latin is often mistranslated into modern languages with similar words that have the same Latin roots but which are in direct opposition to Spinoza's own definitions, thereby making him even more difficult to understand. However, enough of Spinoza's true meaning still comes through, even in the poor translations, to have deeply influenced such eminent thinkers as Goethe, Einstein, Russell, Constantin Brunner, and many other libertarians who acknowledge their debt to Spinoza. Libertarianism is, clearly, more a state of mind than it is a political system or a party.

A major distortion of Spinoza's ethical and political philosophy was produced by the line of thinkers -- Locke, Hume, Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, and others -- leading to Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson is probably the most brilliant, ethical, and creative leader any nation ever had. He is, in my mind, correctly identified as the founder of libertarianism in the Uni-ted States. He, not Washington, is the moral father of our country, although Tom Paine might have been the midwife. Yet, although Jefferson clearly wanted a libertarian society, and he and his two closest disciples were Presidents for 24 consecutive years, he produced instead a democratic society that has been destroying individual liberty, almost since its inception.

Another, more serious, distortion of Spinoza's philosophy was produced by the philosophers, Leibnitz, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Engels, etc., leading to Lenin and undemocratic socialism, which includes the racist National Socialism of Adolf Hitler, as one of many spinoffs from Hegel.

The Democratic Ethic says that the greatest good is that which makes for the greatest liberty or welfare for the greatest number; it is right and proper for a sufficiently large majority to take away the liberty or welfare of a sufficiently small minority, if it will greatly increase the alleged liberty or welfare of the majority. Implicit in this point of view is that decisions reached by large majorities are always ethically superior to decisions reached by small minorities. This is clearly false. Jefferson tried to compensate for this deficiency in democratic government by advocating and eventually getting a strong bill of rights to protect ethical minorities from unethical majorities and government in general.

Yet, the history of the United States is the history of the ever growing power of government and the destruction of individual liberty for the alleged benefit of the majority. This began with the toleration of slavery in the United States for four score and seven years, followed by government imposed racial segregation for five score more years. Democracy led to the military draft, the income tax, the blatantly unconstitutional detention of Japanese-Americans in concentration camps during World War II, the, allegedly, anticommunist witch hunts of the McCarthy era, the nurturing of a huge, parasitical military-industrial complex, and finally to the out-right confiscation of private property and the gross government interference with private voluntary behavior, again for the alleged benefit of a willing, frightened majority. (In a libertarian society there are no victimless crimes.) The most extreme form of confiscation of private property is done in the name of "environmental protection", but it is done without compensating the property owners for their losses, as is provided for in the Constitution, while actually accelerating the destruction of the environment. The only effective protection for the environment is to privatize the earth within the context of an ethical libertarian society; current governments are more likely to exacerbate all problems, than to solve them.

The current environmental tyranny is simply a tactic by which special interests often steal other people's property rights for their own benefit through laws approved by an ignorant, fearful majority that is manipulated by lies and self-serving propaganda by a nefarious minority. The so called "war on drugs" is the latest manifestation of how unscrupulous politicians can manipulate the fear of the majority to impose a police state on everybody. This is done through majority consent, while selectively protecting the monopoly position of certain elements of organized crime. The "war on drugs" greatly expands the market for the particular drugs con-trolled by the Western Branch of Organized Crime (heroin only) by doing absolutely nothing to decrease, and in fact increasing, the American public's dependency on drugs, while attacking the Western Mafia's competitors (marijuana, cocaine, etc.) within organized crime in other parts of the country and abroad. It is clear, that a majority of the electorate learned nothing from Prohibition; it is almost as if it never happened. This is what democracy has brought us.

Libertarianism is based not on maximizing the liberty of a majority at the expense of a minority but on the recognition of certain unalienable rights that are common to all humans. To libertarians, all existing governments have always been evil. That is why "only that government which governs least governs best". For libertarians it is not the function of Government to do us good, for governments are singularly incompetent at doing anyone good. In a libertarian society, we must each seek our own good according to the dictates of our own conscience and not depend on government or the exploitation of our neighbor. The best we can hope of Government is that it not do evil. A main legitimate function of Government is to help protect the unalienable rights of each individual from all minorities and majorities, including the Government itself. Within a libertarian society the basic protection of human rights is the responsibility of the individual and voluntary associations of individuals, not of the Government. That is why the Bill of Rights says that "the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed". The purpose of a "militia", a voluntary, self-defense association, is to protect individuals from Government as well as other enemies. The main legitimate function of Government is to assist willing individuals, in protecting themselves from enemies that are too powerful, mobile, or subtle for local militias, e.g., foreign invaders, ecological aggression, or infectious epidemics. Almost every other action of Government is an imposition on the human rights of individuals, even if some mistakenly believe that they are otherwise being helped by Government. Government must be the complete servant of all its ethical citizens and a master of none of them. This is the libertarian ideal from which the United States has been retreating since its inception

If someone as brilliant, ethical, and creative as Jefferson failed, it was because there was no previous libertarian model to follow and the philosophy of Spinoza was hundreds of years ahead of its time and difficult to fully grasp even today. Jefferson, clearly, saw the Constitution of the United States as a first experimental approximation to a libertarian society which would require many radical corrections, including periodic armed revolts. In Jefferson's own words, "And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that this people preserve the Spirit of Resistance? What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." (From a letter to William S. Smith, 1787, as quoted in Saul K. Padover's Thomas Jefferson on Democracy.)

There has never been a popular uprising in the United States because the Government was taking away too much liberty. Indeed, the most popular forms of protest and political direction are always related to demands that the Government take away more liberty and give us in exchange more services at the cost of our neighbor. This extends from the Civil War, in which the Southerners demanded the "right" to continue to enslave their neighbors and protect their "State Rights" from incursions from the North, to the current demands that a police state be imposed on the people of the United States to protect them from drugs and related violence.

The American Revolution was a minority revolution in which a majority of the inhabitants did not wish to pay for their greater liberty by risking their lives in rebellion against the British Empire. Later, in order to insure political stability and weld the individual free colonies into a powerful nation with an effective central Government, Thomas Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers compromised on the issues of individual liberty and formed a democratic republic for reasons outlined in The Federalist Papers, of Hamilton, Madison, and Jay.

Socrates, Spinoza, and many others had foreseen that all systems of democracy would inevitably degenerate into a tyranny of the majority. That is what we have today. In spite of the evidence before them, Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers fooled themselves into believing that the majority of the electorate valued liberty above all else and would not vote to destroy their own liberty. This was a fallacious assumption which stemmed from ethical men projecting their own beliefs and values into people who do not share them. Two centuries of democratic selfgovernment have shown that what motivates the vast majority of people in all countries is not liberty in general, or even the maximization of their own individual liberty, instead democratic majorities are driven by fear -- fear of their neighbor, fear of strangers and even stranger religions, fear of other races and other nations, fear of drugs and violence, fear of oppression by the strong, and fear of economic insufficiency for the weak.

This was true of the United States at its inception. It is even more true of the United States today. The overwhelming motivation for the tens of millions of immigrants that came to the United States was not greater liberty, but rather the economic opportunity that comes from liberty. Most Americans will tolerate, and perhaps even value, liberty, so long as it does not interfere with their security or violate their prejudices. Very few Americans will risk life or fortune for liberty. That is why democracy has led to an ever-greater erosion of liberty.

The Pilgrims, and many of the other early colonists, originally came to America, not so much to get away from religious persecution, but to be free to persecute their neighbors who did not conform to their religious prejudices or were otherwise non-conformists, viz, the blue laws and witch trials in early New England. Again consider the toleration of slavery and the internment of innocent, ethical Japanese-Americans during World War II.

A true libertarian will never take away the freedom of any ethical being in order to benefit him or herself. Only people driven by fear will take away liberty in order to induce illusions of security. We can show that true security always comes from within, never from without.

For humans, fear has become the belief that we cannot create. Fear is an illusion. Fear is an illusion we choose for ourselves when we are punished for being creative. Any society that is driven by fear will always seek to punish its creative members. The only way any society can evolve is if it gives maximum liberty to its creative members. Yet, all societies that have ever existed end up persecuting their creative members. In the process, they destroy them-selves by destroying the creativity that keeps them alive. This is what is happening today; creative geniuses are often considered, at best, social incompetents, at worst, evil misfits.

"Creativity" is, intuitively speaking, the process by which we produce works of art, invent machines, discover scientific laws, and help others do the same. In my books I show that the most creative thing we can do is to help maximize the creativity of another. In the process we maximize our own creativity. More formally, "creativity" is any process by which we increase truth for someone without decreasing truth for anyone. "Truth", according to the scientific paradigm, is any information which, when we believe it, increases our ability to predict and control in the objective world -- physical, biological, and/or psychosocial. Conversely, "falsehood" is any information which, when we believe it, decreases anyone's ability to predict and control any part of the objective world. Creativity is an interaction of intelligence and ethics. Creativity is, in a sense, the highest form of intelligence.

"Intelligence" is the ability to predict and control the total environment. True information is one of many components in intelligence. The only common denominator in the evolutionary process, from the Big Bang to us, is ever-increasing intelligence. This is clearly shown in the evolution of the biosphere, which is becoming collectively ever more intelligent. Nucleated cells are more intelligent than bacteria. Metazoa are more intelligent than individual nucleated cells. Vertebrates are more intelligent than invertebrates. Amphibians are more intelligent than fish. Reptiles are more intelligent than amphibians. Mammals are more intelligent than reptiles. Finally, humans are more intelligent than all other mammals. Furthermore, this is the order in which the biosphere evolved. Creativity, the highest form of intelligence, seems to be largely concentrated in the human species, because humans, unlike all other animals, have intelligence about their own intelligence.

Humanity can predict and control its own ability to predict and control. This produces a natural, scientific ethics that grows out of the evolutionary process, but which is also compa-tible with many important mystically based systems of ethics, particularly Judaeo-Christian and Spinozistic ethics. True mysticism, ethics, science, art and creativity are all interrelated. The Evolutionary Ethic implies that only actions which increase creativity for at least one person without decreasing creativity for any person are ethical. This is the meaning of "good". Any action which decreases any person's creativity is unethical, no matter how many other persons are, allegedly, to be benefited by this "sacrifice". This is the meaning of "evil". The Evolutionary Ethic is that we must do our best to maximize creativity. This is the ethic of Spinoza, which he called "The Intellectual Love of God". If we are to maximize creativity, one of the things we must do is to be fully scientific in our mysticism and thoroughly mystical in our science. Just as liberty is not enough to defend liberty, neither are science or mysticism, each exclusive of the other, enough to maximize creativity, as shown in my books.

The Democratic Ethic, which is the foundation of the new civilization that has evolved in the United States of America, is that the greatest good is that which makes for the greatest freedom for the greatest number, even if in the process we must decrease the creativity of a few individuals. In my books I have shown that unethical means can never achieve ethical ends. If we use unethical means to maximize freedom, we will end up with neither freedom nor creativity. The Democratic Ethic leads to a self-contradictory system. This is, apparently, beginning to become obvious, except to those ethically blinded by fear.

The Materialistic Ethic, of the socialists, is that the greatest good is that which makes for the greatest material security, i.e., "freedom from want", for the greatest number. This ethic grew from the Democratic Ethic, as well as from the line of thinkers that led to both Leninism and Naziism, but it is even further removed from the Evolutionary Ethic than the Democratic Ethic. It also led to its own contradiction by producing, in communistic nations, societies that, eventually, had neither material security, freedom, nor creativity. However, the Materialistic Ethic still survives under democratic socialism. Democracy leads inevitably to socialism, because the majority is always less creative than the most creative minority; in democracies, the majority, eventually, always chooses to live parasitically off of this minority. Therefore, all forms of socialism are unethical because they all justify the use of un-ethical means to decrease the creativity of their ethical citizens by forcibly confiscating the fruits of their creativity and redistributing them to their least creative citizens, which, eventually, become an ever growing majority of the population. It is unethical to nurture parasites. No society which tolerates the destruction of even a single person's creativity can re-main ethical or viable. The only concept of government which does not seem to lead to self-annihilation, through logical necessity, and is compatible with the Evolutionary Ethic, is ethically based libertarianism.

I say "ethically based libertarianism" because libertarianism is not, by itself, a complete ethical system. Personal liberty is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for progress. The United States, except for the slaves, was at its inception the most libertarian society that had ever existed. It did not remain so because liberty is not enough to preserve liberty. The necessary and sufficient conditions for any society to evolve forever, and in the process preserve its liberty, as a side effect, is that it be collectively committed to the Evolutionary Ethic. Liberty is somewhat like happiness: we achieve it, not by pursuing it directly, but rather indirectly, by seeking to maximize creativity, thereby following the Evolutionary Ethic.

If you wish to maximize liberty and/or material security, stop fearing the possible loss of liberty and/or material security, and seek solely to maximize creativity. You will then maximize both liberty and material security for yourself and others, indirectly. Otherwise we, eventually, end up with neither liberty, material security, nor creativity, just like the communists.

A corollary of the Evolutionary Ethic is that means which are not ends are never ethical. Liberty is a means which is not an end. It is the absence of unwanted interference in our private lives. Ultimately, people who are focused on liberty are as driven by fear as those who focus on security; namely, fear of oppression by the strong and evil who will take away their liberty. The entire system of government of the United States was driven by fear of the strong, whether it was the strength of an anarchic mob or the strength of a Caesar. That was why the Founding Fathers created a government with divided powers and checks and balances. It was hoped that it would be strong enough to protect us from both anarchy at home and military tyranny abroad, while sufficiently divided that no American Caesar would ever come to power. This balancing act was clearly unstable; it led to a tyranny of the majority.

The fear of anarchy was so strong that our government became a tyranny of a majority, which is manipulated and controlled by a fearful, unethical minority. This minority, today, spends billions of dollars to tell the electoral majority the lies they wish to hear. It uses their fear and prejudices to keep them ignorant and compliant. The major instrument for keeping the democratic majority ignorant is the government-controlled educational system. The major instrument for keeping them compliant is the mass media, which has, for many years, been for sale to the highest bidder. Today, the media are controlled by an extremely anti-libertarian oligopoly. That is why libertarians and their positions are largely ignored by the mass media.

The government-controlled education system not only keeps the electoral majority ignorant, it also destroys their creativity by punishing those who, in any way, question the status quo. It rewards the rest with praise, grades, scholarships, and well-paid positions at universities and their government and corporate affiliates. It rewards those who are docile, conformist, and who regurgitate the information that has been instilled in them, with no creative ideas of their own. Through destructive reward and punishment in our schools, and mind-numbing entertainment in the mass media, the American electoral majority has become convinced that it is totally uncreative. Fear is the belief we cannot create. Politicians use lies and fear to convince the uncreative electoral majority that they must protect themselves from the nonconformist, creative minority by confiscating their wealth and redistributing it among themselves. This creative minority is constantly denounced by the most successful politicians. That is why so many Libertarians cannot win elections. That is why Libertarianism is incompatible with Democracy. In all nations, political power concentrates in those whose main goal is power.

What creative people most want is, not power, but rather, to be creative and not have anybody interfere with anybody else's creativity. Libertarians never want to control others. They only want to control themselves. That is why almost all creative people are libertarians, although, obviously, not all members of the Libertarian Party are necessarily ethical or creative. However, it is unethical to vote for anyone we know not to be an ethical libertarian.

What destructive people most want is to control others in general and creative people in particular, because they are driven by fear and have no confidence in their own creativity. Since creative people tend to seek solely creativity and tend not to pursue power, in every society that has ever existed, eventually, its creative members end up with no power and all power is concentrated in the least creative, most fearful persons the society can produce. People are destructive and evil only because they are afraid. This is why all civilizations have always collapsed. This is why our civilization is collapsing today. The current collapse of communist countries is merely a preview of what is happening, more slowly, to the social democracies, which include the United States.

Consider how the power is distributed in the United States. How many of our presidential candidates, senators, representatives, judges, governors, millionaires, union leaders, ministers, or even teachers have ever produced a work of art, discovered a scientific law, invented a machine, or helped others do this? Today, there are much fewer creative leaders than in the past. The trend is clear: our system of government leads to the concentration of power in the most evil, destructive people our society can produce, just as with every other system of government, except that, it seems to be even worse in every other country. But there is hope.

It is unethical to give up hope, because it is unethical to be certain. The Libertarian Party has shown that perhaps 5% of the nation is sufficiently ethical and creative that they will vote for libertarian candidates, out of principle, knowing that they will not win. This creative minority must become the nucleus for a second American Revolution which can serve as a counter-example to the current destructive trends, which are not only impoverishing the country, but are also leading to its self-annihilation. Libertarians should continue their political activity as part of a larger program of ethical education for the public, without fear of loss or expectation of ever winning public office. The most effective form of education is through example.

In my latest book I have presented a technique for amplifying individual creativity as well as helping people work together creatively by mutual, 100% consensus, rather than by any form of tyranny. Only voluntary interactions by 100% mutual consensus can ever be ethical or creative. This is possible solely for voluntary networks of small, autonomous societies of not much more than four families. I call these independent groupings of four men and four women "Octets".

Octets can agree, by 100% consensus, to cooperate with each other on mutually desirable projects where each Octet voluntarily agrees to fulfill certain contingent obligations. Each Octet has its own sovereign territory, perhaps as small as one hectare, where it has the right to do as it wishes, so long as it does not impose undeserved harm on anyone else. Each Octet may function alone as a sovereign nation. In a network of Octets, the main legitimate function of government is to protect Octets from each other and from outside aggression, including ecological aggression. (I repeat, that only the privatization of the earth within an ethically based libertarian society can solve the current ecological crisis.) Internally, each Octet is sovereign and self-governing by 100% consensus. The government, itself, is based entirely on mutual defense, trade, and access treaties between consenting, sovereign Octets. No Octet is obligated to cooperate with any other Octet. There is zero bureaucracy. Each Octet does its best to be self-sufficient in education, economics, health, self-defense and everything else, in this order of priority. All projects requiring more than one Octet are engendered through voluntary interactions through 100% consensus. Both education and economics are organized so as to maximize creativity rather than on the accumulation of another concept of knowledge or wealth. Creativity is the basis of all knowledge and wealth. Wealth and knowledge, like liberty and happiness, are best maximized, indirectly, by seeking to maximize creativity with no considerations of wealth or knowledge, except as resources, not as ultimate goals of accumulation.

This type of society will probably appeal solely to a very small minority of today's adults, although it would probably be very attractive to most children and to almost all creative adults. It will function solely for those who can make a full commitment to the Evolutionary Ethic and regard all other goals as, at best, marginal. I call such a society and the state of mind of people who seek to create such a society an "Ethical State". There is still enough liberty in the United States, and a few other countries, to create an Ethical State, in spite of and independently of their governments. In an Ethical State, majority rule is replaced by unanimous consensus within and between Octets. Remember, if you are a true libertarian, the main thing you demand of any government is that it not infringe on the liberty of any ethical person.

By using some techniques I have developed experimentally and described in my most recent book, although there may be better ways, it is relatively easy for small groups of cooperative people to become maximally creative, while creating a true libertarian society for themselves. A few of my associates and I have already begun this for ourselves. It is, clearly, easier to do this in the United States than in other countries, but it is still feasible even in some police state tyrannies. We should all stop trying to sell libertarianism to those who do not want it, by trying to convince them that libertarianism is economically optimal, which it is. It seems, only people who value creativity more than happiness will make a commitment to take all the steps necessary to create a libertarian society, which can only be the indirect consequence of creating an Ethical State. The steps necessary to create an Ethical State are as follows:

1. Understand and make a total commitment to the Evolutionary Ethic by doing your best to maximize creativity for yourself and others. This is the only step you can take entirely alone.

2. Recognize that the only ethical meaning of "love" is the desire to and the act of helping another person maximize his or her creativity, then seek to love as many people as possible, including your enemies, but not fewer than the other seven persons who join in your Octet.

3. Recognize, that for humans, fear is the belief we cannot create, and that fear is an illusion that can be overcome in ourselves by understanding the nature of fear, recognizing fear in ourselves and others, then rejecting fear as a motivator of our actions and doing that which we believe will maximize creativity, irrespective of how much fear we feel. Our ability to reject fear as a motivator and substitute ethical action and love in its place is what makes us human. No subhuman animal can do this. We always win, and never lose, by increasing creativity.

4. Do your best to create an entirely voluntary Octet of four men and four women, to include yourself, who are also committed to these four points, then see how you can best communicate with one another so that you collectively maximize each other's individual creativity. This collective form of eight-way communication and self-enhancing creativity, I call "autopoiesis".

5. Finally, do your best individually, as an Octet, and as a network of Octets to become self-sufficient in education, economics, health, self-defense, etc., in that order of priority, while having as few transactions as possible with nonlibertarian forms of government. If you have taken the previous four steps, to even a slight degree, you will find this self-sufficiency and the natural resulting libertarian society very easy to achieve, so easy to achieve, in fact, that the whole process may appear more mystical than scientific to those who engage in it.

All libertarians want to be part of a libertarian society. It seems to me, that you will never get a fear-driven democratic majority in any current nation-state to choose libertarianism for themselves. Therefore, create it for yourself on a smaller scale. If you cannot create a libertarian society among eight, willing adults, you should never expect that you could create it for millions of fear-driven people. It seems, that there is still enough liberty in the United States to start a libertarian society among four men and four women, then expand it.

I have written four books on this subject. What I have given you here is only the briefest of introductions to the process of Creative Transformation, which I believe is the only way that a libertarian society will ever come about. Our democracy seems already too degenerate to produce even the very limited version of libertarianism proposed by the Libertarian Party in the United States. In fact, a truly libertarian society, where the only legitimate function of government is to help coordinate the mutually desirable activities of many autonomous Octets within an entirely voluntary network of free Octets, would probably receive much less than the small support of the electorate that the Libertarian Party currently has. The Libertarian Par-ty could achieve political power only by becoming as ethically and politically corrupt as the Democratic and Republican parties; this would, at best, be a Pyrrhic victory. However, we do not need majority approval of the rest of the electorate to create an Ethical State and a Libertarian Society among ourselves, any more than the Founding Fathers and the patriots, who risked and gave their lives for our liberty, needed the support of the Tory majority, who, at best, stood on the sidelines and did nothing, or, at worst, aided the British tyranny.

What we do need is a sense of our own creative power, ethical obligations, and freedom. Freedom and security always come from within, never from without. Freedom, according to Tom Paine and Tom Jefferson, is something we receive from God, the God of Spinoza, not from any human other than ourselves. Both creativity and freedom are gifts from God we need only take. So long as we believe that our freedom, our ethics, or our creativity depend on others, we will never be free, ethical or creative. We always create our own future. It is our unalienable creativity and our ethics that make us free. We need only recognize this to become free.

To become collectively free as a people within the Ethical State, we need a Second Declaration of Independence which builds upon the truths in the First Declaration of Independence and extends them with the knowledge of the last 215 years. I will now conclude and summarize what I have said by excerpting, from my latest book, a Second Declaration of Independence as Thomas Jefferson might have written it, if he could have survived until today. It is a message from the future with Jefferson's own words from the past.

SECOND DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
Inspired by Thomas Jefferson

Unanimously Agreed to by All Citizens of the Ethical State

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the Earth, the separate and sovereign station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of humanity requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that humanity is equal before God in being endowed by the Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the maximization of creativity according to the dictates of one's own conscience. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among humanity, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such forms, as to them shall seem most likely to maximize creativity.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience has shown that persons are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under any form of despotism, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future creativity.

Such has been the patient sufferance of the subjects of this government, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former system of government. The history of the Government of the United States is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of tyranny over these now-free people. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

The Government of the United States, in collusion with the vassal governments of states, counties, and municipalities, have usurped the power originally granted by God and the Constitution of the United States to the people, and imposed destructive taxation, an inequitable legal system, an oppressive, compulsory educational system, the theft of property rights, and insufferable interference in their private lives.

The elected officials have repeatedly lied to and misled the public in order to obtain their support in further reducing their liberty. A majority of the electorate has repeatedly shown itself willing and anxious to be deceived by voting for the most deceitful of the political candidates before them. A majority of the electorate has repeatedly rejected ethical candidates who refused to lie to them. The Government of the United States and a majority of the voters have shown that the United States' system of government is a failed ideology which leads to the concentration of power in the hands of the most destructive liars that the society can produce. The possibility that all other systems of government have in the past been even worse does not justify any form of destructive tyranny. We seek the best possible form of government, and not merely the lesser of popular evils.

The Government of the United States has shown its moral bankruptcy by squandering the wealth of its people in supporting some of the most corrupt, destructive tyrannies in history. Among these have been the governments of the Soviet Union between 1941 and 1945, the Republic of China (now in Taiwan) since 1941, the Shah of Iran from 1953 to 1978, South Vietnam from 1954 to 1975, the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua from 1933 until 1979, the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines from 1966 to 1986, many despotic Islamic states in the Middle East, Pakistan, and other parts of the world from 1948 to the present, plus many evil, destructive dictatorships in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, whenever it seemed politically expedient, during most of the latter half of the twentieth century and still today. This destructive expediency has been practiced to allegedly inhibit the deleterious spread of even greater evils, particularly Communism. But it is self-evident that unethical means can never achieve ethical ends. Confiscatory socialism and other evils have steadily spread and become worse through the unethical acts of the United States Government. This Government now gives aid and support to the largest communist tyranny in the world, the People's Republic of China. Humanity is now closer to self-annihilation than at any time in history.

The Government in its alleged attempt to defend its people has taken away their liberties and has almost succeeded in destroying them along with the rest of the world.

The Government, and a majority of the electorate of the United States, have engaged in gross fiscal mismanagement. They have produced an ever-growing national debt, of over $13,000 for each man, woman and child in the nation, whose 10% per year compound growth rate is accelerating and ruining the nation. At the same time, they have impoverished the creative people of the United States by confiscating their wealth and redistributing it to the most destructive persons in the nation, thereby spawning a new parasitical class of bureaucrats, monopolies, oligopolies, and their clients who further destroy the creativity of the nation.

The Government of the United States has constantly expanded its police powers, through the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Internal Revenue Service, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and other bureaucra-cies, to spy upon and harass its ethical citizens with police state methods, while selectively aiding and abetting the ever more destructive organized crime syndicates at home and the tyran-nies abroad. In gross violation of their civil and human rights, the Government has made it increasingly difficult for ethical citizens to arm and defend themselves, while simultaneously contributing to the proliferation of vicious criminals by supporting and expanding a legal system that punishes the ethical and rewards the unethical. These destructive practices are exacerbated by the rulings of the Supreme Court which constantly take away individual liberty for the benefit of the police bureaucracies and for political expediency, by catering to popular fear and prejudice, while protecting criminals at the expense of the innocent.

The legal system itself is dominated by parasitical lawyers who corrupt the law to serve solely their own power-seeking and money-making purposes by constantly eliminating all vestiges of truth and justice from the legal process and replacing them with legal technicalities, bureaucratic procedures, and the deceit and manipulation of ignorant, fearful jurors. In the current legal system, a combination of money, deceit, and/or a clever, unscrupulous lawyer can always prevail over truth and justice.

The Government of the United States, with the criminally negligent acquiescence of an electoral majority, has plundered the wealth of its citizens, imposed upon them an ever growing oppressive government, exacerbated the pollution and destruction of the environment, destroyed the creativity of its youth through a malignant educational bureaucracy, and made it ever more difficult for individual creativity to express itself. The Government has greatly endangered the very survival of humanity and life on earth. The political leaders of the United States, and those who vote for or in any way support them, have shown themselves unwilling to change the situation to provide for the common welfare and prevent the destruction of the people's God-given creativity.

In spite of all its faults, we recognize that the Government of the Unites States is among the least evil governments on earth. But just as the United States was originally created when an ethical minority of its inhabitants revolted against what was then the least evil and most powerful government on earth in order not to be forced to accept the lesser of evils, so now must a new ethical minority revolt against the least evil and most powerful government of to-day. For evil in any form, no matter how powerful, must not be tolerated. We recognize along with those who signed the original Declaration of Independence that all current governments are inherently evil; only that government which governs least, governs best. We have used the remaining liberty in the United States to warn our American brethren of these dangers through our words and our actions; we have given alternatives. They have chosen to continue on the path of self-destruction.

We, the People of the Ethical State, choose life over death. We choose creation over destruction. In ethical self-defense, we declare ourselves a free and sovereign people, no longer bound by any ties to any government other than our own. We welcome those who choose to join us in a creative, free society. The Ethical State begins. We shall create a Moral Society.

Before the world and the God who created all, we declare ourselves an Ethical State dedicated to the maximization of creativity and bound by no other law. We declare the inviolate liberty of every human being to do and say what he or she pleases, as long as he or she does not impose undeserved harm on others. We declare that harm to another is deserved only when necessary, in self-defense against an aggressor. A person's life and property belong entirely to him or herself; no one has a right to any part of another person's life or property. Only mutually voluntary transactions by 100% consensus can ever be ethical or creative. The tyranny of any majority over any individual is hereby denounced. We, the People of the Ethical State, swear eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of any ethical being. We declare all persons ethical until proven otherwise.

Upon these principles we shall henceforth govern ourselves and interact with others. We shall do our best to maximize creativity. Toward this God-inspired end, we, and all future citizens of the Ethical State, pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

© John David Garcia, 1992, All rights Reserved.