If the Ethical State cannot establish itself and survive in the United States, then it may possibly not survive in any other nation, because all other nations have less freedom than the United States. However, an Ethical State might start in other, less free nations by an act of ethical will from visionary leaders, as opposed to rising from the bottom by free choice as we have proposed. This is an unlikely, but not impossible, occurrence. That is, after all, how the United States started in the first place, when an ethical minority used its power at great personal risk to maximize creativity.
So long as the octets and their networks are allowed the freedom to progress, they should continue to work within the United States' system and focus on their ethical, educational, and economic development while having as few transactions as possible with all nonlibertarian governments, corporate monopolies, or other bureaucracies. Hopefully by positive example they will be able to help other Americans transform the United States into the ethical, free society it was originally intended to be in the Declaration of Independence. This would eventually lead to an Ethical State, which would in turn increase the true wealth and the creativity of all Americans, thereby making the Ethical State available to all humanity.
If this could not be done because of government interference, then all ethical persons would have little choice but to revolt, peacefully if possible, and become a sovereign nation. This would be an extremely high-risk venture, although their collective creativity might give them almost as good a chance as the Founding Fathers of the United States had when they undertook their extremely high-risk venture against the British Empire.
The Ethical State, as a state of mind that allows each person to take ethical action alone without having to be led by others, lives in the souls of all ethical persons. Every ethical person who wishes it is a citizen of the Ethical State.
On July 4, 1986, shortly after finishing the second draft of this book, while listening to some of the platitudes and cliches of our political leaders and rereading the Declaration of Independence, I thought of how far the leadership has degenerated since the time when Thomas Jefferson was our president. Thinking of Jefferson, I felt his soul touch mine. This inspired me to rewrite the Declaration of Independence. I wrote it in terms of today's realities, keeping as much of the original words and spirit of Thomas Jefferson as possible. This is what I believe Jefferson would say if he were alive today. It is a message from the future, with words from the past, received on July 4, 1986. It is a quantum event.
As we proceed in creative transformation we make ever greater and riskier commitments. The first is a commitment to the Game of Life. This is a commitment we make to ourselves, with very little risk. The second is to sign the Contract for Creative Transformation within an octet. This is a commitment to a few others, but still low risk. The third commitment is to reject fear--a fearful act in itself. We make many more, ever riskier, commitments. Eventually we make a commitment before the world to all humanity by becoming citizens of the Ethical State. This may have great personal risks associated with it. But the greatest danger that we ever incur comes when we tolerate destructiveness and do nothing.
Second Declaration of Independence
July 4, 1986
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 allexperience 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, and insufferable interference in their private lives.
The elected officials have repeatedly lied to 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 to 1979, the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines from 1966 to 1986, many despotic Islamic states in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and other parts of the world from 1949 to the present, plus many evil, destructive dictatorships in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, whenever it has seemed politically expedient, during most of the latter half of the twentieth century and still today. This destructive expediency has allegedly been practiced to inhibit the deleterious spread of even greater evils, particularlyCommunism. But it is self-evident that unethical means can never achieveethical ends. Confiscatory socialism and other evils have steadily spread and become stronger through the unethical acts of the United States Government. This Government now gives aid and support to the largest communist government 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, 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 bureaucracies 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 tyrannies 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 deception and manipulation of ignorant, fearful jurors. In the current legal system, a combination of money, deception, 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, exacer-bated the pollution and destruction of the environment, destroyed the creativity of its youth through a malignant educational bureaucracy, and madeit ever more difficult for individual creativity to express itself. The Govern-ment 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 to not 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 today. 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 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 another. We declare that harm to another is deserved only when necessary in self-defense against the person harmed. 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 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.