If all cities and state governments acted the same way, then they should not treat certain businesses differently than others regardless of their size. The reason for this is that a civil government would not be tied to a particular means of production, especially in a manner that would mix the interests of governance with the interests of a company. If the government recognizes the interest of a company as the interest of the state then the government is encouraged to act in a manner that is not truly beneficial to the polity but instead beneficial to that business. Businesses come and go all the time and there very much could be diminishing returns to investing in one business. Sure, some cities and even states may begin because of a business but they cannot remain vibrant being contingent on the success of that business or industry. Why is there a Rust Belt? Those cities and states invested their capital into businesses and industries that ended up leaving as soon as they could find cheaper labor elsewhere; they failed due to a lack of innovation since the government subsidized or deducted taxes that made businesses rest on their laurels. Those cities and states should have invested in society, not a specific means of production since a particular industry will not last forever nor will be the most profitable for long. The reason why this separation of business and state likely won’t be established is because not all cities or states act the same way. Meaning that there are competitive advantages in the short run that are too alluring for politicians to ignore. This sounds Machiavellian, as governments do what they think they should to get reelected or to seemingly benefit the society they were elected for. If one city does not accept Amazon, another will, and that other city will reap the short run rewards; this is how politicians are observed to think. They tend to leave out the long run effects of giving large business benefits. What if Amazon is accepted in NYC and gets tax deductions on the promise of providing jobs and then Amazon just automates and causes local prices to skyrocket? An example would be large sports events like the Olympics, sure the state and wealthy get a lot of money, but after the Olympics those places and the people who live there are destitute. Their welfare does not increase and sometimes it decreases and yet their “representatives” allow for subsidies and tax deductions to go through anyway. This is because representatives are not always representing the interests of the people but instead of businesses. If a business is truly healthy for a polity then it will grow naturally and from the bottom up; from the demands of the market not the policies of the government. Therefore city and state governments should not pursue large corporations proactively but instead lay the framework for the people to choose and develop industry on their own. As Mayor De Blasio and under the presumption that I am trying to curry favor from Amazon I would prioritize the impact Amazon would have on the community. Amazon is promising 25,000 jobs with an “average” of $150,000; I would ask for salary mode instead of mean since averages can be skewed easily. I would also wonder how many jobs would be lost if a large retail and shipping company like Amazon was dropped onto NYC. How many jobs from other retail and shipping companies would be lost because a wealthier, tax deducted, privileged, behemoth that is Amazon can now compete with them to death? If there is a net job increase that is preferable but does the city have the right workers for Amazon already living here or would there have to be a migration of skilled workers from outside of the city to fill the employment quota? If a migration is needed how will that impact the current residents of the city? Gentrification would certainly increase which would heavily disrupt the local culture of the city that Amazon claims to care about. There is also the issue of infrastructure since the city's roads and subways would not be able to handle the increase in traffic caused by Amazon trucks and vans going in and out of the city which would drive up traffic times and encourage more people to use the subway which would increase foot traffic to the subways. Amazon could have gathered committees of representatives from the local areas to discuss the issues I brought up earlier. Meeting with city officials and being public would have been so much better for Amazon since in reality many local officials only learned about it through the very biased media which affected their opinions on the topic. Had Amazon been more open about and included local representatives the backlash would have been less and support for the decision would have increased. There is a trade off, however, and that would be that prices of real estate would have risen. This is why Amazon should have, and they actually did, talk to multiple cities to make sure that realtors wouldn’t increase prices before a decision was made. This could still have been done while being open; just be open with multiple cities. This might have actually decreased real estate prices as there would have been competition to attract Amazon. The opinions that matter the most are the people via their representatives. If the local and state officers are not willing to work together and there is an increasing opposition to the negotiations that is probably a clear sign to steer clear from that area. As mentioned before, Amazon could have garnered much more cooperation and support from locals had they been more open and allowed local representatives to voice their opinions directly instead of only learning about the deal through the media. Next important opinions would be the shareholders and employees but they pretty much have the same interest of being in a place with low taxes, good infrastructure, and high opportunity to increase their wealth in general. Another opinion to consider might be the rest of the nation, especially the less amicable opinions against large businesses. If Amazon goes to a place and ends up ruining it, that will be fuel for anti-large business sentiments across the nation making it more difficult to find a decent place later. Finding the best place is essential and that requires observing many viewpoints and variables along with analysis of potential rewards along with risks.

By Mark Shubert The natural interest of all life is to survive. Survival requires adaptation to or manipulation of the environment in order to be safe, live long, and expand. People pursue this interest through identities. If you identify as a Christian then you have the interest of keeping Christianity alive which requires adaptation or manipulation of the world to keep Christianity safe, to live a long Christian life, and to expand your religion both in personal understanding and piety along with expanding the population of Christians. All life and all identities have this same drive. Proper statecraft includes clarifying the identity of the state and to remove or prevent identities that do not belong in the state identity from attaching themselves to it. Identities are a lot like viruses since they cannot be considered as life on their own and yet they have the same drive as life. They enter into the minds of people as a virus does a host. An identity only survives if there are hosts to believe in it. Some identities try to attach themselves to other identities to form a new identity with the intent of securing its interests. Similarly, organisms attach themselves onto other organisms in order to survive and these can form new organisms entirely with a new identity and a new interest. This we see in America as Christianity is dying, or at least under the perceived threat of dying, it is trying to attach itself to the national identity. There are formal and informal ways Christianity is adapting or manipulating America. The formal ways include official documents and policies, i.e. changing the national motto from “E Pluribus Unum” to “In God We Trust,” changing the pledge of allegiance to include the words “under God,” allowing state courts to recognize religious iconography such as the 10 Commandments which have little to nothing to do with American politics, and economic policies around religious institutions such as church, non profit companies, and private schools with tax exemptions, deductions, and subsidies. Yes, the non profit companies and private schools do not have to be religious but many are and I would argue that no business should receive tax exemptions, deductions, or subsidies. The informal ways include culture and marketing. Culturally, parents have the ability to force their children to go to church with or without their consent and could use punitive measures such as grounding or insulting against impious children. This is on the decline but is still common in rural parts of the country where small religious communities do not shun these parental actions and some actively encourage parents to behave this way. Marketing includes promotion of awareness and accessibility to religious communities. These informal means are trickery to tackle since the state as a formal institution should not proscribe this behavior, instead a rational populous ought to encourage good parenting and discourage bad parental control without government management. These formal and informal means have been about manipulating the world in order to be more suitable to Christianity but there have also been lots of changes to Christian thought and practice which is Christianity adapting to the world in order to fit in better. Examples include changing views on marriage, divorce, abortion, nationalism, family, apostasy, sex, entertainment, and multi-religious relationships, along with other things. There is a lot of overlap between the formal and informal means of pursuing the interest of Christianity and there are sure to be many more ways that have not been addressed. The state, as a secular entity, needs to maintain that secular characteristic in order to keep its mandate of civility. The reason being is that the enfranchisement of one religion over others is a threat to all religions. If this avoidable threat becomes a reality then the state has failed and lost its claim to civility and enters into a state of war, at least the threat of war, until equal treatment under the law has been restored. This is true for any and all religions not just Christianity but in the context of America which has a strong Christian base of supporters it applies more so to Christianity than other religions. The identity of the state should only be representing two things: the individual and the whole body of individuals. The smallest minority is the individual and the largest majority is everybody. Any other group cannot claim to be the true majority or minority and should not be the interest of the state. White people are not the largest majority in America and so the interest of “whiteness” should not be the interest of the state; likewise, Black people are not the smallest minority and so “blackness” should not be the interest of the state. Instead the whole body of individuals which include both whites and blacks and all other races should be the interest of the state; likewise the individual, which also could be any race, should be the interest of the state. A common phrase uttered by misguided people is that America is a “white” nation. Here we see the identity of “whiteness” trying to attach itself to the identity of the state since these people feel that “whiteness” is under threat and that it should be maintained through formal enforcement. First of all, whiteness is not under threat as there are more white people in the world today than ever before and also whiteness is not a characteristic of America. America is a nation for every individual, not just for white people. The most notorious use of the concept of America being a white nation was the Dred Scott case where the supreme court decided that Blacks cannot even be citizens since America is a white nation. This is referenced at the beginning of the Majority opinion made by Chief Justice Taney who said that when the constitution was made they (Africans) were not included in the community that constituted the state. More sensible minds have overturned this decision and the identity of whiteness as an attribute of the identity of America is gladly dying but still needs to be shot in the head once and for all. The modern argument in favor of this irrational identity is the fact that America is a majority white nation and so the interest of whiteness should be embedded in the interest of the nation. First of all, white people are not the largest majority since the largest majority is everybody including non-whites, and secondly I doubt that if the demographics of the nation were to change that they would want to continue the idea that the “majority” race should be the hegemonic interest of the state. If Asians became the largest racial majority I doubt these whites would argue that America is an Asian nation simply because Asians are now the largest racial majority. This inconsistency causes insecurity among whiteness identifiers which only exacerbates their efforts to make sure that white people will always be the racial majority in the country since they do not want to face their inconsistency and since they fear that their racist policies and rhetoric might be used by Asians against them if Asians became the racial majority. White people, and any race for that matter, do not have to fear such racial policies if race is not a consideration of state interest in the first place. We need to de-essentialize race from the state. We should also consider the history of white identity. Racial identity is a rather new concept and in fact most parts of the world still have ethnic identity as the main interest and not a broad racial one especially in Africa but somewhat in Central and South America, Asia, Oceania, and some parts of Europe. In America at least, the rhetoric we see with racial identity is more prevalent than ethnic identity. The reason for this is that the Anglo whites were the ethnic majority of the founders of the nation but are no longer the largest ethnic group. The largest ethnic group in America today are Germans and the second largest are Irish. Due to this the interest of the state has shifted properly to a more inclusive identity which has ended war (and the threat of war) between the ethnic groups. There was violence between Irish and Anglo peoples which is silly. In fact all violence due to ethnicity and race is irrational and only shows the insecurity of the aggressors. And the German population in America is only around 15%, far from any reasonable use of the term “majority”. Also, what is the German identity? German itself is made up of many old ethnic groups, the Prussians, Pomeranians, Bavarians, Hanoverians, Westphilians, Hessians, Saxons, etc. Identity could continue to be more granular all the way until you reach the individual. How we can ensure the perpetual death of this identity is to teach our citizens, both young and old, that America’s identity does not belong to any group other than the individual and the whole. Formally, whiteness has been abolished by the government, but informally the identity continues in the minds of those who perpetuate this identity by passing it to others like a virus. We hear lots of rhetoric about immigrants and “white genocide” which is proof that this identity still exists informally in the minds of some people. Proper statecraft includes making sure the formal institution of the state does not have a racial or ethnic attribute attached to its identity. Similarly, Christians have made claims of America being a “Christian” nation. My argument against racial and ethnic identity of America is the same in regards to religion. Simply having Christianity as the majority religious group does not mean that the identity of the state ought to include Christianity. And like my previous argument, the Christian identity itself can be and has been divided into many denominations which if you continue dividing you end up at the religious conscience of an individual. This is why James Madison in his speech against religious identity of the state through formal means of taxation and enforcement called a “Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessment,” argued in the perspective of the individual conscience not the conscience or identity of a particular group of Christians. James Madison was undeniably against the formal institutions of religion and certainly against the identity of the state including a religious attribute. Where many get confused about Madison is from his many pro Christian quips but those are all informal suggestions not formal enforcements. A stronger defense against Christian identity in the American identity includes our Constitution and the 10 Commandments. The 10 Commandments is a large idol of Christians and an icon used to spread the Christian identity. However, enforcing seven of the ten commandments would violate our Constitution and American civil rights in general. The first four commandments; no worshiping of false gods, no idols, no using the Lord’s name in vain, and keeping the Sabbath day Holy, all violate the First Amendment. You can worship any God you like, you can make idols if you want, you can use the Lord’s name in vain, and you don't have to keep the Sabbath Holy. The fifth, seventh, and tenth commandments are not restricted by the Constitution or even any law in America; you don’t have to honor your parents under threat of legal punishment; you can commit adultery and not be punished for it; you can covet or be jealous of other people’s lives without being arrested. There are only three commandments that are included in American politics and those include not murdering, not stealing, and not lying in the court of law. These three are common sense, and Christianity has no monopoly ownership over these concepts since these concepts have existed before Christianity or even Judaism. The seven previous commandments that the Abrahamic religions could claim originality of are ironically the commandments that are not formalized in American politics and increasingly losing support informally as well. The ten commandments have no place in American politics and Christianity, or any religion, has no place in the American identity. Some say that America’s political values enumerated into the Constitution come from religion or the Bible. I would ask, where in the Bible does God say that everyone has the right to worship whichever God they wish to worship and no punishment on Earth or after death would be inflicted depending on the religious choice of an individual? The concept of religious toleration, especially as a right directly endowed to people from God, is found nowhere in the Bible. Where then does the idea of religious toleration come from? In modern times, from the enlightenment, specifically after the bloody Thirty Years War, which shed light on universal values including liberty which extends to religious toleration. Liberty requires that the state and society be tolerant of certain actions like worshiping a religion that is different from others. The source of American values is not the Bible, but universal values understood through reason. To my fellow secularists, learn about this as much as you are interested in this topic and ponder new arguments to end the spread of religious identity in politics. For the tactics that they use we can use, but their weaknesses are also our weakness for secularism is itself an identity like any other. This means that our identity ought not to be the identity of the state, instead, it, along with religion, should be a non issue to the government and politics in general. That is the goal; to separate the issue of religiosity from government not to replace religious hegemony with atheistic hegemony. Only then could this specific identity conflict die and remain dead. France has done a terrible job at this with their laicite which enforces atheism which again should not be the identity of the state but instead liberty, something that is a universal concept that can be applied to everyone. There is a lot more religious unrest in France than in America because religious communities feel and are threatened by the state, while in America we handle religion through liberty which does not threaten religions in general. How America handles religion, although not perfect, is better than France and most of the world. Where we can make progress is abolishing the formal religious policies mentioned earlier along with decreasing informal support among the American population mainly through increasing education of science and cosmopolitanism. Race and Religion seem to be the main identities trying to leech off of the American state identity but there are many different identities that we should be perpetually concerned of. Cultural identity, sexual identity, gender identity, sports identity, music identity, corporate identity, the cult of an individual person, etc. these smaller identities for the most part are not significantly affecting American identity except for corporate identity which includes the automobile culture where the government subsidies infrastructure that benefits automobiles more than other types of transportation which gives an unfair advantage to one industry over the other which could be more costly to the nation since other forms of transportation may be faster and safer than cars and trucks. This could be solved with Non Negotium, the idea that there should be a separation of business and state; where the government does not identify with any one particular industry so that state power is not used to perpetuate that industry over others. Another identity that we need to address and one that used to have actual political authority is the identity of land ownership along with educational meritocracy. The government needs consent of the governed; a civil way in which the people give their consent is through the institution of suffrage. Suffrage ensures the interest the people have in the state since they give their consent. Restricting suffrage to just those who have land or “high education” will only decrease the amount of interest the people have in the state since not everyone owns land nor has everyone received a “high education.” This decrease in interest of the people will make the state lose credibility since it decreases the amount of consent it has from the people. Having a well educated electorate is important, the way to have this is not by restricting suffrage but by expanding education. Spending needs to increase both on the state and federal level, but the education institution needs reform. The identity of the state should not be contingent on anything but the individual and the whole, dividing the people into subgroups to be treated differently is not proper governance. Land owners should not be the identity of the state, nor should “high education” whatever that actually means. Enfranchisement based on educational merit can and has been tyrannical depending on who decides what is a proper education. Throughout history educational requirements had very little to do with an actual decent education and had more to do with party loyalty. Another identity that had an effect on many countries around the world includes cults of personalities or the state identity attached to a single individual. This includes dictators and monarchs, especially absolute monarchies, but even constitutional monarchies still have that unreasonable identity of a single person attached to the state identity. In the US there is a soft cult of personality with the president and a proper republic would decrease the authority and gravitas of the executive in order to secure the power and probity of the legislature. We have holidays around the president, not congress. Most people know who the president is but not their congressor (I use the term congressor instead of having to say congressmen and congresswomen). We have lots of statues of past presidents and very few of congressores. The solution is not more statues of congressores but instead less statues of presidents and individuals in general. Statues of the personification of universal values like the Statue of Liberty are perfectly fine but statues of individual people lead to cults of personality which should not be encouraged and especially enforced or paid for by the state. The executive branch has assumed many delegated powers from the legislature since the legislature is becoming distracted by irrational politics. Look at the bills introduced in congress during any given month and there will be bills that are not necessary nor proper for Congress to be interested in; some bills are about honoring an athlete, or renaming a post office, or commissioning a statue. None of these bills are necessary nor proper and so should not fill the schedule of congress. A well regulated and properly functioning congress would filter out this nonsense and focus on actual policies; policies that, due to congress being distracted, have been delegated to the executive branch. What I am referring to is who decides how laws are enforced. The legislative branch creates laws, the executive branch enforces laws, but who decides how laws are enforced. This was an issue that Washington mentioned in his first inaugural address and he decided that congress should decide how a law is enforced. This decision has not been enumerated into the constitution properly and so over time congress has delegated that power to the executive; this is why there are many agencies and departments in the executive branch with little to no oversight or much interest by congress. Congress technically does have power over deciding how laws are enforced but this requires a proactive Congress and we see that they are not using this power responsibly which allows the executive branch to get away with creating policies that circumvent the legislative branch. Changing the understanding of the state identity would change how congress uses its power for that identity’s interest. If Congressores view sports as important to federal legislation then they will waste their time introducing and passing legislation about sports, but if they understand that sports should have no place in politics, especially federal politics, then they will not waste their time. Another identity that has gripped the Southern United States is the Confederacy. People are identifying with an institution that no longer exists, that was immoral at the time and especially today, and anti-American as it went against the Constitution and the Rights of people. They perpetuate this identity simply because they lack education on the matter and it was given to them by their parents or friends like a virus. We need to remove this identity from the hearts and minds of those people. Formally, with good education, and informally, with more open discussion with these people to make them feel more attached to the true American identity than with the identity of the Confederacy. Adopting universal values is the best way to achieve this. If those who are against the Confederacy identity, as all Americans should be, switched the racial identity of America from White, as it was during the time of the Confederacy, to Black, then many who still identify with the Confederacy and therefore the White identity of the nation will view anti-Confederacy as anti-White and would not feel attached to America today and would continue to fight against anti-Confederacy rhetoric and actions. Switching America’s race from White to Black is not the answer, but instead to universal concepts that everyone can get behind regardless of race. This is the proper progressive movement. However, there is an idea that universal values threaten a race, they do not. It does threaten the identity of a race which, as mentioned many times before, is a virus that only survives when it has hosts who believe in it and if everyone adopted universal values the identity of race would die. This is a concern of all conservatives who are not actually conservatives since they do not want to conserve anything and certainly not the current state of America. They are more like restorationists who want to restore a previous state of America. Some want to restore the state that America had in the 1980’s, some the state of the 1950’s, some the state of the 1860s. There are inconsistencies with all of these restorationist since they want to keep modern amenities like technology but they want to restore identities that they identify with the most; very few people actually identify with technology such as the Amish. Race is a major identity to Confederate sympathizers since it was an identity to the Confederacy and so both identities need to parish. The identity of the state should only be interested in that which is consistent with the individual and the whole body of individuals. Religion differs from person to person and so any one religion ought not to be the identity of the state, same goes for race, ethnicity, culture, language, gender, etc. Those should be non issues to the government. That which is universal should be the attributes of our state identity: equality, justice, representation, liberty. Cheesy I know, but universal concepts like these are the only ones with a right to be attached to the American identity and nothing else. This, of course, has only addressed the formal identity of the nation. What is equally important, especially for a democratic-republic, is that the people should also hold this probity. In a democracy, if the majority believe that Christianity ought to be the interest of the state then there will be religious enforcement which begets violence or the threat of war. Therefore, the people need to hold and maintain this idea of proper state identity and of their own identity as well. It is not enough for the government to be anti-racist, the people need to be anti-racist as well. Same goes with all of these concepts and identities. The people, individually, should hold and act upon these values, just as the state, which is the whole body of individuals, should also do so. Non-political identities should not be political, obviously, but the issue is determining what is and is not a political identity. Any identity that can apply to everybody, universal concepts for example, are political identities and have more of a right to be attached to the state identity than identities that only apply to a subgroup of the total population. This is the theory of proper state identity. However, reality shows people do not pursue proper statecraft but instead the interest of certain non-political identities, and so the difficulty is to promote this understanding of universal identity and decrease support for less than universal identity politics.

The constitution of the United States outlines the structure of government and also the relationship between the government and its citizens. This structuring creates checks and balances between the government and the people to ensure that there is limited tyranny from the many and from the few. Articles one through three enumerate certain powers granted to legislative, executive, and judicial branches that also intend to create a system of checks and balances through a division of power. Even within article one, the legislative branch is divided into two houses, a bicameral legislature, the house of representatives, and the house of the senate. For each of these two houses, the politicians themselves are elected differently and have different responsibilities and powers. The house of representatives is filled with members who are elected for only two-year terms and are chosen by the general population, at the beginning mostly wealthy men but we have extended suffrage to the real general population, within congressional districts. The senators were elected by the state legislatures, the 17th amendment changes this to the general population of a state, and serves 6-year terms with one-third of all senators being up for reelection every two years. The number of senators for each state was equal at two regardless of the population of the states. This bicameral system shows the concern that the framers had on the division of power where the house was elected by the general population and varies from state to state based on the total population of that state and the senate being few and equal for all states. This way the many did not have complete legislative authority over the few and the few did not have complete legislative authority over the many. This system has worked well for the past couple hundred years with some bumps in the road but systems such as the amending process, the constitution and the division of powers have made our union more perfect over time. Outside of the legislative branch included the executive branch which is run by a unitary executive leader called the president. The president had nearly unanimous control over his branch with a few exceptions with appointments to cabinet positions that need to be approved by the senate along with treaties of peace and war and embassies. The president was elected by the states through an electoral college and served four-year terms. The twenty-second amendment limits presidential terms to two. The office of the president is an example of the power of one but that office also had checks and balances to deal with and is responsible for. The president can veto any bill that is passed by congress but can be overridden by ⅔ vote from both houses. The president can also be impeached starting with the house issuing the impeachment and the senate as jury and judge to convict. This way the one (president) had power over the few (senate) and the many (house) but that the few and many could remove the one as they see fit. The third branch, the judicial branch, is the smallest and resides in the supreme court. Currently, there are nine members although there is no limit to how many there can be. These justices are not elected but nominated by the president and approved by the senate. The supreme court can be seen as the second group of the few, other than senators, given their impartiality to politics and focus on judicial issues that ought to remain out of party drama. Outside of these branches are the powers of the amending process which is necessary in order to form a more perfect union since we did and still don’t have a perfect union so the only way to become more perfect is to be able to fix or amend the constitution whenever necessary. The amendments themselves have to be approved by the congress and president but also ¾ of the state legislatures as well. Here we see another instance of the one and few (the federal government) and the many (state governments). The amendments could be ordered into two classifications, this is something that I made myself, the first being administrative amendments and individual-rights amendments. The administrative amendments consist of those amendments that change the structure of government such as changing how senators are elected or putting term limits on the office of the president or changing how the vice president assumes power or creating income tax. The individual rights amendments include the first ten amendments, the thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, nineteenth, twenty-fourth, and twenty-sixth amendments. The first ten amendments are historically called the Bill of Rights but I believe that we should change the term’s meaning to include any amendment that deals with the issue of rights like the six other amendments I included. This Bill of Rights that I describe can be seen as the eighth article of the Constitution since these amendments do not amend any other part of the constitution itself but do amend the relationship between the people and the government. The Bill of Rights as I understand them to be, is yet another example of the framers separating power between the few (including the one) and the many since the many citizens do not get to amend the constitution themselves, but the amendments do restrict government behavior to prevent tyranny against the people. Overall the constitution does a decent job at resolving the issues between the one, the few, and the many. There are still issues that need to be addressed such as gerrymandering which is an overstep of the few to control the many; since it should be the people who choose the representatives, not the representatives who choose the people. There are issues with plurality voting and winner takes all for state and federal elections because that often means that less than a majority chooses the representatives and this system can be compared to gerrymandering on the state and federal level. Other than those few issues, the amount of peace and general prosperity of the union, compared to other nations, shows the success of the constitution in separating power, creating a system of checks and balances between many groups, forming a cohesive structure of government, and establishing a healthy relationship between the government and the people.

Freedom is the ability to act. Many thinkers pondered this and wondered what does it mean to act and what kinds of actions should an individual commit based on the goals and consequences of those actions in the world we live in. The following thinkers understood freedom to be an essential part of life both natural and political but had different views on what the source of freedom is and how to use that freedom properly. Machiavelli stated that the individual should act in a manner that best secures their freedom and they should leave morality out of the picture. This does not mean do whatever you want since what you want now might compromise your security in the future. This self-control, environmental awareness, and prudence is the virtue of a prince. They can restrict their irrational desires without restricting their ability to do what is necessary to better secure their livelihoods and freedom. Hobbes argued against the individual approach of Machiavelli and said that individuals should give up their rights to a sovereign who can do a better job at securing freedom than they could alone in the state of nature. The powers or freedoms an individual has in the state of nature, which they use to secure their wellbeing and freedom, ought to be given up to a sovereign made up of many individuals. This sovereign has a greater power than the sum of the individuals and can better secure itself and in turn its subjects in the state of nature. The sovereign, itself surviving in the state of nature, has the right to do whatever it deems necessary to secure itself in such a state just as an individual has that same right when they are in the state of nature. Similarly to Hobbes, Winthrop’s little speech on liberty claimed that there were two types of freedom. Natural liberty is man vs everyone, where the individual could do both good and evil but will ultimately and naturally do evil. Civil liberty includes the covenant with God and man which establishes moral law, and political constitutions between men. Civil liberty is the end goal of government so an authority designed to do what is good in the eyes of God and the constitutions of man must be obeyed while authorities not consistent to these are unlawful and should be resisted. Locke expounded on Hobbes by asserting that individuals should consent to a social compact that is designed for creating an environment most conducive to the individual's freedom. This consent has to be free and maintained. Any force or violation of consent puts the government and the people in a state of war where the people appeal to heaven for victory over the government. To maintain the state of civility both the individual and government should reserve their actions and only do what is productive in maintaining the civil society and not start a war. In line with Locke, Montesquieu adds that individuals should not view freedom as the ability to do whatever they want to others or else others can do what they want to them, instead people should look for freedom in laws that limit individuals from being tyrannical while also limiting the government from being tyrannical. The state through due process of making laws should be the authority in which citizens subject themselves to and no unlawful authority should be tolerated. The balance between individual and political body is itself made up of balances of the powers within the two. The government can be balanced by separating and checking the three powers of the government. Legislative power, or the power to create laws, the judicial power, or the power to judge violators of the law, and executive power, or the power to execute the laws and violators. Out of Montesquieu the American founders showed what they thought of freedom in the Federalist Papers. Federalist #1 says that liberty is apt to infection but a strong government secures liberty anyway. In Federalist #10 Madison states that liberty is apt to faction but is still essential to political life. Here lies the distinction of the different types of freedom. Too much freedom, and the individual can be corrupted and start a war with other people or the government. Too little freedom and the individual is a mere subject to another’s will where their government is not supported by consent but by force, and so a certain amount of freedom is necessary. Deducing from this, there is a balance of freedoms and a civil society is one where the government and the people support each other in maintaining this balance. Nietzsche pushed back on the idea of the balancing act and said that to live in your own horizon and no one else’s is freedom. To live as the last man or someone caught up with the world they did not create is to not live freely. This concept of freedom is individualistic, more so than Machiavelli’s freedom, since Nietzsche does not only say to obey oneself he also supports forcing or willing others to obey. After all nothing is true, everything is permitted. God is dead therefore individuals have the freedom to cast their horizon for others to follow. Those who are able to do this are ubermensch, who know that the horizon is fabricated yet are able to live as if it is real. Lewis refutes Nietzsche and even Machiavelli’s Godless ends and believes in a greater good beyond the individual. To Lewis there is licentious freedom and noble freedom, where one’s animalistic desires are not a liberty but a restraint to further freedom, and by restraining these desires and pursuing virtue we become truly free. Here is the balancing act again. God is alive therefore individuals have the freedom to pursue noble actions and avoid evil ones. Professor Innes’ chapter on liberty in “Christ and the Kingdom of Men” is in line with Lewis and says that freedom is the license to do what we want and is not the highest good in itself. Nobel freedom is self governance to preserve oneself by restricting their own desires so that there is no “war of every man against every man,” a fear that Hobbes mentions in the “Leviathan.” The government has freedom but its noble freedom is to secure the rights and well being of its citizens. The people have a similar freedom where their noble freedom includes respecting one another. Individuals have freedom to work with or fight against the state and the people, but the noble choice is the former. Moral freedom where despite the failures of others the individual decides to do what is good. In summation of these concepts and arguments, freedom is the ability to act, but not all action is free nor are all of its consequences conducive to freedom. In the pursuit of maximum freedom one ought to do what is necessary given the nature of the world, both natural and civil, to achieve this end. Naturally, one should stay away from the state of war since war is the environment with the least security for oneself and instead they should join and remain in the state of civility. To join, one consents to deposit some of their freedom or power in a trust called a government which uses the sum of its citizen’s trust to better secure freedom for itself and its constituents. This trilateral power of the individual in nature is held in trust within the government. The power to legislate, judge, and execute one’s will. To remain, an individual must keep out of a state of war between them and their fellow citizens or between them and the government and in turn the government must maintain the trust of its citizens by neither violating the freedoms that the people did not consent to give up nor allowing its citizens to be in a state of nature or war. The people should be prudent in their own actions and be diligent of the actions of the government while the government ought to reciprocate this behavior. Mutual governance, including self-governance, is the balance between the individual and the government that is essential to maintaining the state of civility. When the government restricts a freedom that the people do not consent to deposit to the government then that is a civil rights violation. This violation puts the people and the government in a state of war but this could be solved through civil means through protests, petitions, and an amending process. These civil means should be lawful and respected on all sides to prevent the escalation to a more severe and natural war. If the people violate each other or a lawful and civil government, then that government is responsible for quelling those violators. Equally, if the government violates the people and rejects civil reforms then it is the responsibility of the people to resist, abolish, and make a new government to restore the state of civility. The actions someone or some government does that better secures their freedom, which usually includes the externality of securing other’s freedom as well, is virtuous, noble, and reasonable. Actions done that start or perpetuate the state of war is viceful, ignoble, and unreasonable to the law of nature. A civil government would be designed after the trilateral of power mentioned earlier that its constituents consent to giving up to the government. These three powers, when held by an individual, signal that they are in the state of nature and most likely in a state of war. Therefore, the civil government meant to protect its constituents from nature and war ought to keep these powers separated and checked. Freedom is the ability to act and there are actions that can increase freedom and there are actions that can diminish it. It is the end purpose of civil society, both the people and their institutions, to discover and implement the actions that increase freedom and restrict or abolish those acts which diminish it. These disquisitions from thinkers were about how this would look like in practice. Each building off and critiquing preceding thoughts in a perpetual deliberation. This is relevant today because we need to continue this essential civil discussion.

The political problem is how to best achieve and preserve peace. This problem ought to be considered by everyone since everyone desires the preservation of their own lives which is best done in a peaceful environment. Peace is best made and kept under a system where the state, made up of consenting individuals, governs the people effectively while also being governed by the people themselves. This system of governing reciprocity ensures that the people do not violate each other while not being violated by the government made to protect their property in the first place. This system, that secures perpetual civic peace, is one that Locke tries to formulate in his Second Treatise, which is the state of civility or what he calls the civil society. Locke addresses the political problem by first recognizing the state of nature. Although the state of nature is not all warfare, unlike Hobbes’ view, the state of nature is more opportune for war to break out as any perceived threat to one’s property is justification for judgement and execution by any and all individuals. This innate desire of self preservation is the law of nature that is universal in the state of nature. An individual naturally seeking to decrease the chances of war will look to civil society or a commonwealth to find security for their property. Locke’s view of property is broader than the land around someone but also includes the individual person (Locke, 19). After recognizing the state of nature, the state of war, the law of nature, and the nature of people, Locke then goes to describe what the state of civility is. In short, the state of civility or civil society is the trust people put into an institution designed to protect their property. This protection does not just mean protection from neighbors or outsiders but also protection from the government itself, which leads to how society can achieve perpetual civic peace. Locke’s plan for perpetual civic safety starts at what he calls the “first society” or the conjugal society which is between husband and wife (Locke 42). This led to the start of the family as a relationship between parents and children. This relationship is not a temporary one made for mere procreation but a well established one made for the continuation of the species which requires parental relationships to last long enough to nourish and train the next generation to live on their own. In this society, Locke mentions how the parent who is most able and powerful should have the final say but that what the final say should be is not freely determined by that parent and it must be a final decision in the best interest of the family. As the stronger partner has final say, the lesser partner maintains the right to separate from their marital bonds, if separation is conducive to their wellbeing (Locke 44). This mutual respect between individuals, even if one individual has power over the other, continues into the master-servant dynamic. A servant, according to Locke, is a temporary civil obedience to a master via consent from the servant in a contract of paid labor (Locke 45). Since this obedience is temporary the servant’s individual right to his property is still protected from any tyrannical action by the master. A slave, on the other hand, is not temporary nor consenting and is taken through just war and so their right to their property is forfeit to the absolute will of the master which removes that slave out of the state of civility since the civil society is based on preserving an individual’s property (Locke 46). Continuing from the small commonwealth of a family with its master, pater familias, and servants and possibly slaves, Locke expands the scenario to a broader political body that he calls the political society. This is a political structure that has the power to preserve property, which consists of life, liberty, and estate, and the power to execute those who commit offenses on anyone’s property. This is created when the society’s members consentfully give up their natural power to a single entity and in return that entity ensures the rights of the individual (Locke 46). Similar to how the lesser partner gives up their power or final say, not their rights, to the stronger partner in a marriage. This power is what individuals would use if they were in the state of nature or war to preserve their natural right to their property, however, being in that state of civility requires the relinquishing of power and judgement in order to ensure continuity of authority which better creates an environment that best secures peace to all members’ property (Locke 47). The authority of the state, frequent re-evaluations of its consenting members, preservation of property, and commonly established laws are all crucial in solving the political problem and creating perpetual civic peace. Locke dives deeper in outlying the importance of separating the power that was granted in trust by the individuals to the government. In the state of nature, an individual has the power to set their own laws, judge others based on those laws, and execute those who violate their laws. In the state of civility, the government has that power which is divided into three parts or branches. The state of nature is chaotic and inconvenient in part due to the fact that the individual has this trinity of power, making them a type of an absolute prince and as long as they maintain this power they will not be in a civil society (Locke 48). So when the government has this power, it is prudent to keep each part separate from one another in order to prevent the government, and specifically the individuals in the government, from becoming such princes and bringing themselves and everyone else into a state of nature (Locke 49). Individuals may consent to what they were assured is a civil society but if that society turns out to not be one that protects property then those individuals are not actually in a civil society but still remain in the state of nature (Locke 51). However, if an individual is truly in a civil society then they do not have a right to act as if they are still in a state of nature without also losing their protection of their property from that society. The act of joining a body politic is a compact which includes giving up their natural power to the majority as long as the majority maintains the consent of the individual which can do so by recognizing, respecting, and protecting their property (Locke 51-52). There are objections made about this civil compact which Locke responds to. One of the objections is that no one actually signs a compact, instead people are born under a government and are forced to submit to it without the ability to begin a new one just as a child is submitted to their parents without their consent. Locke points to the fact that there are many instances throughout history of new political bodies being formed and that if people were truly bound to their parent’s political community against their consent, then everyone would be living under one government (Locke 61). It may be difficult for an individual to secede from the community they were born into, especially if they are still a child, since their power is overwhelmed by the power of the government, however, one individual acting on their own is not a civil society but instead what occurs in the state of nature. Due to this it requires multiple people either from one previous group or from a diversity of groups to form a new political body with a new majority. Essentially, if one desires to be in civil society, which everyone does anyway, then they must be in a political body with and live under a majority (Locke 64). Someone cannot be alone and in a civil society. There may be restrictions on individual actions but there are also restrictions on the government, even to the supreme authority which is the legislative branch of a civil society, that functions to preserve peace. These include the supreme authority not being arbitrary over the lives of its members, not being arbitrary in its decrees and judgements, not being violators of property, and being diligent and responsible to its legislative duties by not delegating the power to make laws to any other branch (Locke 73-75). These build trust in the society’s members along with assurances that laws will be equal and don’t vary from person to person, will be designed for the good of the people, will be supported by the people, and will be where the people desire power to be held at. Perpetual civic peace is created when consenting individuals grant their power in trust to the political body which is then used appropriately for the good of the people. When the people give their power they must restrict their behavior and not take into their own hands legislative, judicial, or executive power or else they remove themselves from civil society and are back into the state of nature. When the government is granted the powerful trust of the people, it too must restrict its behavior to only be preserving the property of its members since preserving property is the source of consent from the people and any violation of this consent ends the government’s claim to civil society and everyone is back into the state of nature. This relates to modern day since war and conflict still rages on. Clearly we have not created a society of perpetual civic safety where people’s rights to life, liberty and property are respected not only by the state but also by the people. This should not be disparaging, however, as the system currently in America is one that can be amended through reasonable and peaceful means instead of accident and force. We do not need a violent revolution, instead we have a republic, if we can keep it through political participation and legal prudence. Work Cited Locke, John. Second Treatise of Government. Edited. C.B. Macpherson. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1980. Print.

Hobbes wrote on the nature of people and what kind of political life comes from such nature. Humans are inherently self centered in the choices they make along with their morality of good and evil since those things are relative to the individual’s desires. Under these conditions of human nature, people’s lives are solitary, nasty, poor, brutish, and short. In order to preserve oneself in such a natural world, people have congressed to form civil societies where each member gives up a certain degree of their natural rights to form a sovereign entity that has the power to enforce judgements and keep order in a chaotic world. This congress to create civil society has its difficulties that stem from individual desires of security and freedom. Since those desires require power and the more power one has the more assurance to their security and freedom it is prudent for a sovereign to obtain as much power as possible (Curtis 330). The beginning of Hobbes’ view on human nature looks at what people desire. People desire first and foremost the preservation of their own lives. All else is secondary to this desire since without the preservation of oneself all other desires are null in void. A person cannot enjoy freedom or security without their life. Given this primary desire, people will do whatever they think is necessary to obtain it, which causes conflict between people if they believe their livelihoods are under threat by each other. Under this condition, people assert themselves as far as their power allows and can only be impeded by natural obstacles or other people (Curtis 327). This mutual animosity towards one another is a contributing factor to why lives are solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. People desire livelihood but the secondary desires are important too in how a person decides to behave. They seek pleasure and avoid pain according to Hobbes and will also lead to conflict when people view each other either as pleasure, which might be at someone’s expense, or as pain, which will include conflict to avoid or get rid of that pain. No matter what passion someone pursues, whether its influence, wealth, information, or dignity, they are all for increasing power so do not believe noble passions are for their own sake (Curtis 330). In nature, good is not objective but subjective to what the individual considers as good; an individual considers their own preservation as good, therefore, what people think will preserve their lives is what is good (Curtis 327). Nature has also made people equal in body and mind (Curtis 332). This does not mean that two people have the exact same body or mind but that when people congress there is an averaging out that occurs. Someone might be stronger than you that you can beat through whit, there could be someone smarter than you that you can beat through strength, and there could be someone stronger and smarter than you that you can beat through outnumbering them if you can form confederacies with multiple people. Essentially, no matter the differences between two individuals they are minuscule differences in the grand scheme of nature. Hobbes points out that in the nature of man there are several reasons for conflict that relate to preservation (Curtis 333). Competition, where people fight for scarce resources; diffidence, where people fight for safety; and glory, where people fight for reputation usually against those who have a difference of opinion. These casus belli can only be subdued by a common power and once this common power is put into effect there can be flourishing. This flourishing occurs because in the state of nature there is uncertainty which provides little fruit from production while in the state of civility under a common power, there is more certainty therefore more production in goods, services, culture, trade, construction, movement (Curtis 334). From this state of nature of people, political society is formed but with difficulty. Hobbes states that political society is a product of people, specifically a product that better preserves the well-being of the people who made it. This well-being is supposed to be better than the lack of well-being people had under natural society or anarchy. Since society is inherently better than anarchy, all societies are morally justified. This does not mean that all societies are the same, only that they are all justified since they bring people out of natural despotism (Curtis 327). Political society might be a product of people and their nature but this does not mean that political society reflects on human nature positively. Society exists to do what nature cannot, secure the preservation and liberty of the individual. Since everyone has a right to all things in nature, society has to centralize this right into one sovereign that all individuals give to in order to provide peace. The greatest power is to have the most people, with consent, concentrate their efforts into one entity, the sovereign (Curtis 339). It is difficult, however, to reason with your natural enemies and to congress their powers into one sovereign through consent which Hobbes called a political commonwealth (Curtis 341). Once this covenant by consent and consensus is made it is unjust to be disobedient to it. The general chain of thought Hobbes is going through to describe the importance of covenants is that the preservation of life is the prime goal of everyone; peace among people is how you preserve life; peace can only be obtained by a powerful sovereign; the power of sovereigns come from the number of people who make a covenant with it; covenants are only as good as the people who keep them; which means that breaking the covenant with the sovereign removes the individual from civil society back to nature where there is anarchy and a lack of well-being. Anyone who does this forfeits their stock with the sovereign and so the sovereign, acting as another creature in nature, can legally and dutifully and rightfully execute covenant breakers. On the other hand, the individual should only do things for the sovereign that furthers his own desires (Curtis 348). A sovereign also has to pass and enforce good laws. These are not the same as just laws, since Hobbes thinks that all laws are just according to the sovereign, instead good laws are those that are, “needful, for the good of the people, and withal perspicuous (Curtis 348). These are necessary since bad laws can cause diseases in the commonwealth which includes seditious ideas such as individualism (Curtis 347). Such an idea consists of the individual’s ability to determine good and evil which is true in nature but not so in civil society. This identity crisis in the people on whether or not they live in a good sovereign or chaotic nature whether it be a true crisis or a false one will degenerate and weaken the sovereign itself. Despite these difficulties to overcome, the conditions of human nature can also contribute to the success of political society. People’s desire for security and liberty leads to them giving up some of both to a sovereign since a sovereign or commonwealth is more powerful than the sum of its individuals as mentioned earlier. This happens when people are able to rationally calculate whether or not giving up some of their rights now to a sovereign will provide security and more freedom from nature in the future. Hobbes views covenants with sovereigns to be rational, good, and necessary since sovereigns are the souls of commonwealths where submission through covenants and by not disobeying or breaking those vows will provide protection to what people desire most. People in nature live terrible lives due to a lack of safety and freedom which destroys lives rather than preserve them. People desire the preservation of their lives. The only way to preserve life is to end war and anarchy and to be at peace with each other and with nature. The only entity strong enough to secure peace is a sovereign. Sovereigns are made up of the consensual covenants of the people and those subservient to a sovereign lives not in chaotic nature but in civil society called a commonwealth. A sovereign itself lives in nature and so it has a right to all things just as an individual living in nature has a right to all things. The individual, however, loses its right to all things when it contracts itself to a sovereign. This process, according to Hobbes, is how a sovereign gets its power, from having more people give the sovereign their power or right to take things. This applies to American life today because there are political discussions on how much freedom or power individuals should have or should give up to the government. The most prevalent inquiry in the past year or so is what authority the government has to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic. Following the thought process of Hobbes we see that wearing a mask, quarantining when sick, maintaining decent hygiene, and getting vaccinated is the most rational thing an individual can do since all of those things increase the likelihood of preserving someone’s life. Since people have consented to a sovereign in the form of the United State’s government, the government has the power to ensure the well-being of the people. This submission includes obligations and liberties of the individuals involved (Curtis 344). As just mentioned the well-being of the people increases with the wearing of masks, quarantining, hygiene, and vaccination, then the sovereign has a right to enforce those behaviors on the people. These legal implementations from a lawful power must not be disobeyed according to Hobbes and those who disobey forfeit themselves to lawful punishment. Bibliography Curtis, Michael. The Great Political Theories: A comprehensive selection of the crucial ideas in political philosophy from the Greeks to the Enlightenment. Volume 1. New York, N.Y.: Harper Collins, 1981. Print.

Republics can learn from The Prince and apply many of the lessons provided to princes by Machiavelli. This does not mean that the lessons applied by republics are moral or even efficient, only that republics can apply them. These lessons consist of establishing new states, on maintaining old ones, on expanding the state, on the state’s arms, on the popularity of the state, and a warning on flatterers in society such as populists in modern American politics. A republic, being the political identity of a people, can be just as Machiavellian as any prince and can learn much from Machiavelli. On Old Republics An old republic that has been established politically and culturally is similar to a hereditary principality that has become accustomed in the state. It is easier for the president to run an old republic than that of a new one since the amount of accidents or deviants from republicanism is low. As Machiavelli put it regarding hereditary principalities, “because it is enough only not to depart from the order of his ancestors…” meaning that continuity is an advantage to running a state, . The more continuity there is the less likely there would be accidents. It would take much to shake an old republic but when it does happen, the president must use extraordinary and excessive force which is required to restore the status quo. An example of this occurring in the American republic would be the actions taken by president Lincoln during the Civil War. It took an extraordinary situation that was brewing for many decades to shake the American republic. This forced president Lincoln to take extraordinary measures to bring the rebellious states back into the fold such as suspending habeas corpus, or putting in charge a general like Grant who demanded unconditional surrender, or allowing a general like Sherman to march to the sea through Georgia. On New Republics Unlike an old republic a newly established republic must quell anti-republicanism by either removing royalists or by changing the minds of the people to be pro-republic. This must be done to prevent counter revolutions that aim to restore the royal order or the order of a previous republic. America did not have to worry too much about counter revolutionaries since many loyalists left the states to Canada. France did have to worry about counter revolutionaries since royalism and aristocratic rule was embedded in Parisian culture as well as in the Catholic rural populations which remained in the country after the establishment of the first republic. In the words of Machiavelli, “So you have as enemies all those whom you have offended in seizing that principality, and you cannot keep as friends those who have put you there because you cannot satisfy them…” meaning that a new republic must be better than the previous order while being stronger than the old power. America was just able to beat the old power of the British Empire but struggled to be a better regime for many years after the Revolution. There were internal struggles such as Shays’ Rebellion which tested whether or not the new republic deserved to exist. It turned out that the American republic did not deserve to exist and so it was reformed by the creation of the Constitution before discontent brought its downfall. On Conquest Similar to the issues of a new republic, as a republic expands there are issues with establishing the new order in the conquered territories and peoples. A republic will need to have a common language, perhaps a shared religion, but definitely share political principles of republicanism. Regarding the similarities of acquired territories, Machiavelli states that, “When they are (similar), they may be held with great ease, especially if they are not used to living free;” meaning that if a republic expands to include people who have not been free the republic could either maintain that tyranny or expand freedom. The former maintains the social order regarding freedom while the latter makes the expanding republic a liberator. If the expanding republic tries to limit the freedoms that were once enjoyed by the people then there will be rebellion. An example of this is the Philippine-American War where America claimed the Philippines in the Treaty of Paris concluding the Spanish-American War. The republic that existed in the Philippines that had been fighting the Spanish for independence were now fighting America for their freedom. Although the governments of the Philippines and America were republics, they were different in culture, religion, and most different in nationalism. This difference and the mistreatment by America eventually concluded in Philippine independence in 1946. Machiavelli’s remedy to differences between conqueror and conquered people is to colonize or as he puts it, “...would be for whoever acquires it to go there to live in person.” America tried this to a certain extent in the Philippines which did eventually change the Catholic and Muslim nation to a more Protestant one along with changing the national language to English but it did not change Philippines’ nationalism which persisted. On Republican Military and Mercenaries Establishment and expansion can only be secured through military means. Machiavelli warns that a prince who cannot form his own army will be under the control of those who can, “...I say that I judge those capable of ruling by themselves who can, by abundance of either men or money, put together an adequate army and fight a battle against whoever comes to attack them…” A strong republic, just as a capable prince, will be able to raise an army for itself and not for the interest of another state or money or general. An army in a republic that is paid, led, and regulated by a single general is just as dangerous as a general who can do those things in a principality. Such a general in a principality, Machiavelli warns, will seek to remove the current prince and establish himself. Such a general can remove the republic and establish himself. An example of this is Napoleon Bonaparte who fought for the French republic who later absolved the republic to establish his own empire. Mercenaries are also not to be trusted for the same reasons and then some. Machiavelli warns that a good mercenary is dangerous since they will take advantage of their position over a prince and would seize what the prince paid them to protect. A bad mercenary, on the other hand, is simply a bad investment who will waste the prince’s money and lose anyway. On Avoiding Discontent The use of the military and how that military acts especially domestically can affect how the people view the government. Machiavelli shows how a prince can be hated, “What makes him hated above all, as I said, is to be rapacious and a usurper of the property and the women of his subjects.” This can also be applied to republics but not in the same way. In general, when a prince usurps property and the dignity of its people it is usually done due to the selfishness of the prince which is universally despised. When a republic usurps property it can claim that it is seizing property to be redistributed to the people which can on occasion be supported by the people themselves. This is an advantage a republic has over the prince but if taken too far and if the redistribution is not equal then that may cause discontent. Just as a prince taking property for himself is hated, a republic taking property for the politicians or higher class is also bad enough for the people to hate the state. A republic wishing to avoid as much hatred as possible should not be rapacious. A republic also should not take conspiracies seriously during times of general happiness. As Machiavelli assures the prince that conspiracies during general content is nothing to be worried about since the prince has laws and the people on their side while conspirators have nothing but fear and jealousy. So too should a republic be indifferent to conspiracies only during general happiness. If the people were against the government then conspiracies ought to be taken seriously since those have the potential to go into effect. Maintaining the happiness and the general welfare of the people is the concern of a republic just as it is for a prince. On Flatterers “Populists” A republic should not be hated by the people but they should not gain support through flattery. Machiavelli states that, “choosing wise men in his state; and only to these should he give freedom to speak the truth to him, and of those things only that he asks about and nothing else.” This means that a prudent prince will not let themself be distracted by those who wish to take their attention away from real issues. A prince should not be focused on flattery but on war and the state. Similarly a republic both its administration and the people should not be distracted by flatterers or populists. The government should not be distracted by flatterers because they will lose focus of their main objective which is fulfilling the will of the people. The people in turn should not be distracted by populists who wish to guide the focus of the people away from their issues and grievances and instead towards frivolous policies. An example of this would be politicians today distracting the people with bread and games or with exaggerated policies meant to calm the people. Representatives, Senators, and even Presidents are always promoting large projects while ignoring inflation or other issues. Republics can be Machiavellian in how they are established, how they maintain power, and how they expand. The lessons to a prudent prince can just as easily apply to a prudent republic which suggests that these rules are more like laws of politics given their universal use. Laws that change the preferences of the people to be pro republic, just as a prince would need to make sure that their subjects prefer them over another prince. Works Cited Machiavelli, Niccolo. The Prince. Trans. Harvey C. Mansfield. Second Edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Print.

The Taliban The Taliban started in 1994 by a bunch of students taught traditional Muslim education and values. A part of this education included Salafism, given its prevalence in the region during the Soviet-Afghan War. I talked a little bit about Salafism in a previous post and there is a lot to the concept but I focus on the political aspect; the political aspect is that Muslim countries should be free from foreign interference, especially non-Muslim interference. America, being a non-Muslim foreign country interfering in the country is why organizations such as the Taliban are fighting us. US-Taliban Peace Deal (2020) Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan between the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban and the United States of America February 29, 2020 which corresponds to Rajab 5, 1441 on the Hijri Lunar calendar and Hoot 10, 1398 on the Hijri Solar calendar A comprehensive peace agreement is made of four parts: 1. Guarantees and enforcement mechanisms that will prevent the use of the soil of Afghanistan by any group or individual against the security of the United States and its allies. 2. Guarantees, enforcement mechanisms, and announcement of a timeline for the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Afghanistan. 3. After the announcement of guarantees for a complete withdrawal of foreign forces and timeline in the presence of international witnesses, and guarantees and the announcement in the presence of international witnesses that Afghan soil will not be used against the security of the United States and its allies, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban will start intra-Afghan negotiations with Afghan sides on March 10, 2020, which corresponds to Rajab 15, 1441 on the Hijri Lunar calendar and Hoot 20, 1398 on the Hijri Solar calendar. 4. A permanent and comprehensive ceasefire will be an item on the agenda of the intra-Afghan dialogue and negotiations. The participants of intra-Afghan negotiations will discuss the date and modalities of a permanent and comprehensive ceasefire, including joint implementation mechanisms, which will be announced along with the completion and agreement over the future political roadmap of Afghanistan. The four parts above are interrelated and each will be implemented in accordance with its own agreed timeline and agreed terms. Agreement on the first two parts paves the way for the last two parts. Following is the text of the agreement for the implementation of parts one and two of the above. Both sides agree that these two parts are interconnected. The obligations of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban in this agreement apply in areas under their control until the formation of the new post-settlement Afghan Islamic government as determined by the intra-Afghan dialogue and negotiations. PART ONE The United States is committed to withdraw from Afghanistan all military forces of the United States, its allies, and Coalition partners, including all non-diplomatic civilian personnel, private security contractors, trainers, advisors, and supporting services personnel within fourteen (14) months following announcement of this agreement, and will take the following measures in this regard: . II A. The United States, its allies, and the Coalition will take the following measures in the first one hundred thirty-five (135) days: 1) They will reduce the number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan to eight thousand six hundred (8,600) and proportionally bring reduction in the number of its allies and Coalition forces. 2) The United States, its allies, and the Coalition will withdraw all their forces from five (5) military bases. B. With the commitment and action on the obligations of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban in Part Two of this agreement, the United States, its allies, and the Coalition will execute the following: 1) The United States, its allies, and the Coalition will complete withdrawal of all remaining forces from Afghanistan within the remaining nine and a half (9.5) months. 2) The United States, its allies, and the Coalition will withdraw all their forces from remaining bases. C. The United States is committed to start immediately to work with all relevant sides on a plan to expeditiously release combat and political prisoners as a confidence building measure with the coordination and approval of all relevant sides. Up to five thousand (5,000) prisoners of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban and up to one thousand (1,000) prisoners of the other side will be released by March 10, 2020, the first day of intra-Afghan negotiations, which corresponds to Rajab 15, 1441 on the Hijri Lunar calendar and Hoot 20, 1398 on the Hijri Solar calendar. The relevant sides have the goal of releasing all the remaining prisoners over the course of the subsequent three months. The United States commits to completing this goal. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban commits that its released prisoners will be committed to the responsibilities mentioned in this agreement so that they will not pose a threat to the security of the United States and its allies. D. With the start of intra-Afghan negotiations, the United States will initiate an administrative review of current U.S. sanctions and the rewards list against members of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban with the goal of removing these sanctions by August 27, 2020, which corresponds to Muharram 8, 1442 on the Hijri Lunar calendar and Saunbola 6, 1399 on the Hijri Solar calendar. E. With the start of intra-Afghan negotiations, the United States will start diplomatic engagement with other members of the United Nations Security Council and Afghanistan to remove members of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban from the sanctions list with the aim of achieving this objective by May 29, 2020, which corresponds to Shawwal 6, 1441 on the Hijri Lunar calendar and Jawza 9, 1399 on the Hijri Solar calendar. . III F. The United States and its allies will refrain from the threat or the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Afghanistan or intervening in its domestic affairs. PART TWO In conjunction with the announcement of this agreement, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban will take the following steps to prevent any group or individual, including al-Qa’ida, from using the soil of Afghanistan to threaten the security of the United States and its allies: 1. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban will not allow any of its members, other individuals or groups, including al-Qa’ida, to use the soil of Afghanistan to threaten the security of the United States and its allies. 2. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban will send a clear message that those who pose a threat to the security of the United States and its allies have no place in Afghanistan, and will instruct members of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban not to cooperate with groups or individuals threatening the security of the United States and its allies. 3. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban will prevent any group or individual in Afghanistan from threatening the security of the United States and its allies, and will prevent them from recruiting, training, and fundraising and will not host them in accordance with the commitments in this agreement. 4. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban is committed to deal with those seeking asylum or residence in Afghanistan according to international migration law and the commitments of this agreement, so that such persons do not pose a threat to the security of the United States and its allies. 5. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban will not provide visas, passports, travel permits, or other legal documents to those who pose a threat to the security of the United States and its allies to enter Afghanistan. PART THREE 1. The United States will request the recognition and endorsement of the United Nations Security Council for this agreement. . IV 2. The United States and the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban seek positive relations with each other and expect that the relations between the United States and the new post-settlement Afghan Islamic government as determined by the intra-Afghan dialogue and negotiations will be positive. 3. The United States will seek economic cooperation for reconstruction with the new post- settlement Afghan Islamic government as determined by the intra-Afghan dialogue and negotiations, and will not intervene in its internal affairs. Signed in Doha, Qatar on February 29, 2020, which corresponds to Rajab 5, 1441 on the Hijri Lunar calendar and Hoot 10, 1398 on the Hijri Solar calendar, in duplicate, in Pashto, Dari, and English languages, each text being equally authentic. Source: https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Agreement-For-Bringing-Peace-to-Afghanistan-02.29.20.pdf Current Events There is a lot of news right now about the Taliban following the US' announcement of withdrawing troops from Afghanistan in April of 2021. Several cities have been taken over by the Taliban and the capital, Kabul, is under siege as I write this; without foreign military aid it looks like Kabul will be captured. There have been several maps showing slightly different controlling regions, but the consensus is that the Taliban has taken over the majority of the country rapidly and will take the rest of the country potentially before the year's end, if no foreign interference occurs by then. The Trump and Biden administrations did warn of such an outcome but did not expect such rapid gains by the Taliban as many cities and towns are surrendering without a fight and the Afghan President was forced to flee the country. The US embassy in Kabul has been fully evacuated and we might not have an embassy in Afghanistan for a while, but the US is still remaining neutral as all of this is going down. Any action against the Taliban now would force US troops to return and the war continued which is not the goal of the Biden administration as President Biden has made it clear that the war will be over by September 11, 2021, the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001. What Now? The question now is what should the US do? Below is a list of actions I think the US should take to secure peace and to lessen the negative externalities of a Taliban takeover. Finish the troop withdraw Recognize the Taliban as the official government of Afghanistan Set up an embassy and open talks with the new regime to further peace talks Use aid as a bargaining chip to maintain human rights protections in the country Have open talks with Taliban-recognized nations such as Pakistan, to stabilize and de-radicalize the country as to not become a threat to neighboring nations. (Include the Taliban in these talks to not make the Taliban think that these talks is an anti-Taliban coalition) The failure of US intervention is self evident, the Taliban take over of the entire country is inevitable, and the future of the people of the nation and region is unknown; given this reality, US military restraint is paramount, so is peace talks. However, the Biden administration as made statements of forcing Afghanistan isolation if the Taliban were to take over fully. This is an issue as neighboring nations such as China and Pakistan have announced that they would recognize a Taliban controlled government. Share your thoughts and ideas in the comments section; this is a serious topic that no one should take lightly and this is a difficult topic where I and probably no one else has a perfect solution.

In Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address he emphasized that the cause of the war was slavery and so to end the conflict slavery itself needs to end. He goes further criticizing supporters of slavery, especially those who also read the Bible, by saying that it is strange for people to pray to God for slaves to make their food. Here it seems that he is trying to say that God is on the side of the Union but instead includes all Americans at fault since there was still slavery in the Union and that America benefited from 250 years of the peculiar industry and so the war was what America deserved. Two years prior to his Second Inaugural Address, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation which freed all slaves in rebellious States. This proclamation solidified the Union cause and Lincoln did so by arguing that the office of the Presidency had the power to abolish slavery in rebellious states since the President had the Constitutional authority to deal with insurrection and slavery just so happened to be the cause of the insurrection. Lincoln knew that the only way to permanently abolish slavery and secure suffrage for Black Americans there needed to be amendments to the Constitution. These amendments became the 13th and 14th amendments. Lincoln ends his final public address, a couple days before his assassination, by addressing how many voters in Louisiana have sworn loyalty and supported the passing of the 13th amendments and promoted opening schools and protecting Black men voting rights. He argued that the Federal government and the American people should recognize and welcome the free-state supporters of Louisiana instead of scorning them and rejecting their progress. Lincoln planned for a reconciliation worth supporting. In Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address he emphasized that the cause of the war was slavery and so to end the conflict slavery itself needs to end. He goes further criticizing supporters of slavery, especially those who also read the Bible, by saying that it is strange for people to pray to God for slaves to make their food. Here it seems that he is trying to say that God is on the side of the Union but instead includes all Americans at fault since there was still slavery in the Union and that America benefited from 250 years of the peculiar industry and so the war was what America deserved. Two years prior to his Second Inaugural Address, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation which freed all slaves in rebellious States. This proclamation solidified the Union cause and Lincoln did so by arguing that the office of the Presidency had the power to abolish slavery in rebellious states since the President had the Constitutional authority to deal with insurrection and slavery just so happened to be the cause of the insurrection. Lincoln knew that the only way to permanently abolish slavery and secure suffrage for Black Americans there needed to be amendments to the Constitution. These amendments became the 13th and 14th amendments. Lincoln ends his final public address, a couple days before his assassination, by addressing how many voters in Louisiana have sworn loyalty and supported the passing of the 13th amendments and promoted opening schools and protecting Black men voting rights. He argued that the Federal government and the American people should recognise and welcome the free-state supporters of Louisiana instead of scorning them and rejecting their progress. Lincoln planned for a reconciliation worth supporting. In his speech on Reconstruction Lincoln shows mercy to the rebellious states and citizens by exercising a broad presidential pardon to those who swear allegiance to the United States. This provision did not include high ranking military personnel or politicians who left the Union in support of the Confederation and required ten percent of the voting population of each Confederate State to swear the oath mentioned above. It is interesting that Lincoln would exclude certain people since in his Second Inaugural Address he blamed everyone for the war and yet he is treating some rebels differently than most. The oath of loyalty was necessary given that the rebels abandoned the Union to set up a new Confederate government but also because the values of the Confederacy were antithetical to the Constitution such as not recognizing equal individual rights After Lincoln’s assassination, his VP Johnson became president and took reconstruction into a different direction. In Johnson’s Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction, he excluded even more people from the benefits of rejoining the Union including those with taxable property values above $20,000. This act reflected Johnson’s views on the war being a class issue and showed clemency to everyone under a certain wealth bracket. This sped up the reunification process which means that the necessary amendments to secure freedom for former slaves had to include states that fought to defend slavery. Johnson was against acts such as the Civil Rights Act of 1866 which extended citizenship and equal protection to everyone regardless of race, color, or previous status of servitude. Given that this act would extend liberty and the recognition and protection of individual rights and that Johnson vetoed it under the pretense that it violates “States’ rights” it shows that Johnson was in favor of States violating individual rights. Lincoln thought the opposite; he did not want States violating individual rights since it was antithetical to justice; Johnson allowed that kind of injustice to occur since he feared that the Federal government would violate State’s rights. The problem with Johnson’s argument is that States don’t have the right to violate individual rights and so the Federal government stepping in and protecting individual rights is not a violation of States’ rights. Because of Johnson’s leniency to the South, the former Confederate States began passing laws known as the Black Codes that brought back the spirit of slavery along with conserving the slave era political, social, and economical status of whites over blacks. The Black Codes themselves prevented Black Americans from renting property in certain places and prevented them from marrying Whites. The codes also regulated labor such as requiring limited contracts to be made with Black workers and if the worker quits before the end of the contract then the wages are forfeit. Radical Reconstruction was the response to Johnson’s Reconstruction since the Southern States were violating individual rights. Congress passed the Reconstruction Act of 1867 which divided the States into five military districts until the States established a proper Republican form of government that protects individual rights. It was under these conditions that the 14th Amendment was passed. The 14th Amendment essentially did two things; redefined citizenship to include everyone regardless of race and status of servitude, and gave the Federal government the authority to ensure individual rights are protected from State governments. These acts are supported by the Constitution since it grants Congress the power to determine citizenship and not States while all governments must ensure due process and protect fundamental rights which are in the 5th Amendment and Article Four respectively. Lincoln prepared America for reconciliation by establishing the cause of the war and who is at fault (everyone), while also proposing how the States could reunify peacefully and with justice. This required Amendments to protect individual rights and mercy to Southern States. This plan did not go into effect since Lincoln was assassinated and instead Johnson lead Reconstruction with too much mercy for the South and not enough justice for victims of slavery and racial discrimination. This radicalized the Republican party to the point that they militarily occupied the South and bullied them into passing the Amendments that seemed to protect individual rights but were only words on a piece of paper and after the compromise Southern States began Jim Crow.

“The issue of Government has always been whether individual men and women will have to serve some system of Government or economics, or whether a system of Government and economics exists to serve individual men and women.” This quote from FDR shows the crux of the issue. What system should people live in? A system where both institutions serve people in order for them to live life to the fullest. A system of politics where they could have equal representation via democracy or a system where “representation” is determined by how much money you have? There is an issue with this line of questioning because the government is not inherently democratic and most often is less representative of people’s needs or desires than the market. Another issue is to what extent can the government and the market serve the people? Does the government serve the people equally with the market or does the government serve the people more? How should the government serve the people and does the market have to do the same? How do we make sure that the power to serve does not become the power to dictate? FDR tried to answer these questions via the New Deal which consisted of legislation like the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) and the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA). These acts were used by the government to regulate personal production and consumption but not without pushback from the people who sued the government and/or appealed to the Supreme Court. These acts made to serve the people ended up dictating people’s actions; even tangentially related actions were being restricted. The Court decided in Wickard v. Filburn that Congress can regulate commerce; a power enumerated in article 1 section 8 clause 3 of the Constitution but includes its derivatives such as personal production and consumption. There were similar decisions made by the Court in prior cases. In U.S. v. Darby, the Court ruled that since lumber production was then sold across state lines Congress had the Constitutional authority to regulate that production and enforce minimum wage and overtime pay laws on Darby. However, there were also cases where the Courts made the opposite decision. In Hammer v. Dagenhart, the court ruled that Congress cannot regulate production and could only regulate explicitly interstate commerce. This case was about the federal government cracking down on child labor and argued that since the goods produced eventually entered interstate commerce, Congress could regulate its production line. In Wickard v. Filburn, the Court made a similar argument saying that since personal production and consumption of wheat affects interstate commerce of wheat then Congress had the authority to regulate personal production. Since there are precedent cases in support of both sides of Wickard v. Filburn, it makes it difficult to say whether the Court ruled correctly. This discussion involves two main Constitutional interpretations; the first being that Constitutional authority must be enumerated; the second being that Constitutional restrictions must be enumerated. The former means that Congress can only do what the Constitution says it can do; the latter means that Congress can do whatever it deems necessary unless the Constitution says otherwise. Those in favor of the former interpretation bring up the 10th Amendment which states that power not delegated to the federal government by the Constitution is given to the states and the people. This amendment is only saying that power not expressly granted to the federal government automatically goes to the states, but it is not saying that the federal government cannot assume those unenumerated powers on its own, especially when the federal government invokes the necessary and proper clause. Wickard v. Filburn is constitutionally confusing but logically disturbing. Taken to its absurd but logical conclusion the federal government can regulate absolutely anything and ought to regulate everything since everything affects interstate commerce in one way or another. We know the intention of the Constitution was to prevent such an outcome from happening, and so if we logically work backward we can see that the Court decision is wrong from a Constitutional standpoint. Then again, the Constitution does not explicitly restrict the government from going that far. The federal and even state governments should detach themselves from the market unless safety, health, labor, and property are being violated; price control, production quotas, and trade do not violate those essential protections and so those regulations should not exist. This would create a wall of separation between business and state where the market is free as long as it does not violate individual rights. Looking only at the commerce clause, Congress only has the power to regulate interstate trade and not the production of the goods that would be used in that trade. This interpretation should be the primary interpretation since it requires the least amount of additional conditions; this simpler interpretation was the primary one held by both Congress and even the Presidency before the New Deal. The nondelegation doctrine is the concept that Congress cannot delegate legislative power to any other branch or to private individuals or to businesses. This doctrine was famously brought up in the Schechter Poultry Corp.v. U.S. a case where the court’s decision proved the efficacy of this doctrine in maintaining separated powers is flimsy. In the case of chicken production, the issue involved regulations not made by Congress but by executive agencies under the New Deal. The doctrine is weak today but could be reinforced with other political doctrines. The issue with the doctrine is that even if legislative power is fully reinstated in Congress the other branches and private interests can still propose laws that Congress passes without much debate. The nondelegation doctrine requires support and many things could be done to make Congress more efficient at handling legal issues without feeling the need to delegate power. Succinctly, the government and economy should serve the people, however, both institutions should serve the people differently while being separated from each other. Congress does have the power to regulate the economy, specifically interstate trade, but shouldn’t regulate the entire economy; specific and necessary amendments could remove the power to regulate most of the economy especially when it comes to benefiting businesses. Any regulations made should be made directly by Congress and any changes made by the executive branch under the necessary and proper clause should be reviewed by Congress. Any appeals to executive changes should be brought to Congress and not to the Supreme Court. Congress needs to be better at passing laws and fixing problems; right now they aren't, which is why and how the executive branch is able to assume more power without much push back from the people or even Congress.

What is America? By Mark Shubert America is not just a government institution in North America but more importantly a cosmopolitan concept; a concept for the cause of all of humanity where each individual is treated equally to any other individual, where rights are discovered and protected and an amending process makes sure that our governments do not infringe on those rights, where life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is the focus of the law of the land, where there are no hierarchies with titles of divinity nor nobility but instead a collection of fairly and freely elected representatives with limited power and scope and who are constantly being replaced, where the structure of governments have their powers separated, where those powers are checking and balancing each other constantly, where science is promoted freely to all, where innovation and the wealth produced by that innovation does not stifle equality but instead provides the means to it, where the betterment of the well being of everyone is sought after before the frivolous extravagance of selfishness and ambition, where patriotism is not the worship of symbols and names but the giving of hearts and minds to these principles, where the laws created by representatives are not made to spite the people but to increase their welfare so that the necessity of punishment is a rarity, where representation should not be determined by the similarity of life styles, class, race, sex, creed, or birth place, but by their devotion to their constituents in public servitude and that their probity include these ideals. “America is not just a government institution in North America but more importantly a cosmopolitan concept; a concept for the cause of all of humanity…” Over the course of the United State’s history, the word America has become nationalized to mean only the territories under the jurisdiction of the government that is called the United States of America. People wave Old Glory and proudly proclaim “God Bless America” as “Hail to the Chief” plays or some other song like my personal favorite “Hail to the Spirit of Liberty.” However, there is a lot of political disunity in these United States. Many Americans are questioning what it means to be “American” or to “believe in American values.” America, as stated before, is not just the government that governs a collection of states, but a cosmopolitan concept that hosts a variety of ideals that exists for the betterment of Mankind. “...where each individual is treated equally to any other individual…” Equality is a tricky topic because people do not make the distinction between the government treating people unequally to businesses or other individuals. People think that this value must be enforced on and by those three entities and this is partially true. It is the case that the government ought to enforce equality to its citizens as much as it could and to leave out any prejudice that can exist. But should a business and an individual be forced to live by this? Well if a business or an individual wants to consider themselves to be America who believes in American values, then yes, they ought to ignore prejudice and treat everyone as equally as possible. But these values themselves should not be forced onto people nor should they have to be absolutely enforced. What I mean is an individual can treat his or her family differently than they would to a stranger without violating this principle. Inequality of treatment becomes harder to justify between two strangers and even more so when a business does it. America, the nation, has had and still has an embarrassingly large number of areas today that includes businesses and individuals who discriminate against others on the basis of race, sex, gender, class, and even religion. Although these are Americans and American businesses, they are not living by American values. Individuals have the right to discriminate and show prejudice; businesses on the other hand should not be considered individuals, since they are made up of individuals and they themselves have no consciousness or person hood, and they should be forced to follow this principle. How we can enforce this is by taking away the state’s recognition of a certain business that does not promote or enforce equal treatment within that business. We can take away the business’ bailouts and block them from selling their stock on the market and by taxing them at a higher rate if they do not meet equality standards provided by local, state, and federal governments. “...where rights are discovered and protected and an amending process makes sure that our governments do not infringe on those rights…” Our “rights” are those that are included in the Amendments such as the Bill of Rights which are the first ten amendments but also six more amendments that include rights such as the 13th, 14th, 15th, 19th, 24th, and 26th amendments. These six amendments should be included when we talk about the Bill of Rights since they are about rights just like the first ten are. All of them needed to have been discovered, debated, supported, and enumerated into the constitution. There are many more rights out there some are being debated today and some have yet to be discovered. This process is arduous but careful; some suggest that it has been made this way to prevent more rights and there is a sad truth to that, however, the amending process is a tool that can also make it difficult to remove these rights once they are put in. The process also ensures that the people are sure about these rights and it gives a good diagnosis of the state of our union; if the vast majority of the people are disgruntled that a right is not protected by the constitution then that means that Congress and the state legislatures in opposition to the will of the people and at that point, it is the duty of the people to encourage or replace those representatives with those who will pass the amendment without issue. “...where life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is the focus of the law of the land…” This is intentionally vague in order to let the current population determine these terms and to amend the government to live by contemporary definitions. What are those three things? Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness are the standards of living that we decide. People today declare their penance to the Founding Fathers for creating such a wonderful and decent standard of living. However, the current standard of living is vastly different from the standard of living from 240+ years ago. Slavery is abolished, infrastructure has been developed multiple times, women and all races are protected of their suffrage, sanitation has increased multiple times, healthcare has increased multiple times, discrimination and for the most part, violent hatred is less common. All of these did not exist for the generation of women, enslaved, or poor that lived during the generation of our Founding Fathers. They did not appear all at once but had to have been fought for by the disenfranchised against those who were already privileged to be living in such a standard and by those fooled to believe that increasing the standard will harm them. “... where there are no hierarchies with titles of divinity nor nobility…” Our Constitution prohibits the use of religious tests and so religious assessments should not be common nor should judging someone on the basis of religion is practiced by people who claim to believe and follow American values. Given the first clause of the first amendment states that Congress shall pass no law respecting the establishment of religion, no religion should be preferred and no religious establishment should be endorsed. The Constitution also prohibits the recognition of any titles of nobility, essentially preventing legitimate or respected distinctions between classes of people such as lords nor should these higher classes be treated differently than the “common folk”... we need to work on this one a bit more given how the wealthy usually get more passes on infractions and lesser sentencing than the average American which is not consistent with equal treatment. “...a collection of fairly and freely elected representatives with limited power and scope and who are constantly being replaced…” Fairly means democratically and freely means without much cost to the people voting. The 26th amendment fixes this problem by getting rid of poll taxes which were a way of preventing the poor from voting. Limited power simply means that a single representative or senator should not have the power to enact too much change, at least not without a large caucus in congress to pass those reforms. Usually, there are a few representatives and senators who guide the rest of congress, these are the movers and shakers. The issue is that all congressmen should be movers and shakers instead of what we currently have which are mostly career politicians who just go with whomever they think could help them win re-election. What exactly they are changing should be up to their constituents. Constantly being replaced refers to enacting term-limits in congress; nine terms for representatives, eighteen years, and three terms for senators, another eighteen years, is what I propose. “...where the structure of governments have their powers separated, where those powers are checking and balancing each other constantly…” The separation of power has always been a political issue since the start of human civilization. Do the priests get the most power? What about the kings? Well, that particular question does not apply to Americans since we don’t have titles of divinity nor nobility but we still have to wonder about legislative, executive, and judicial power. These three powers were decided to be the most important and bare essentials of a government during the Age of Reason by a number of political theorists primarily in England, France, and the American colonies who were known as the Republic of Letters since they shared their ideas through letters. They were living in a time where there were two powers, a legislative and an executive, and these two powers were constantly at war with each other trying to seize more power all at the expense of the people. There was also a clergy “class” who acted as their own power but they weren’t part of the government and they usually sided with the executive power especially after the creation of legislative power. Those political theorists, some of whom were our Founding Fathers, realized that separating the government into two powers was not enough to create stability and provide security and welfare to the people so they decided to create a new division of power that would be judicial power. A new branch of government that would be semi-independent but not co-equal. In fact, our Founding Fathers made our government in a way so that no branch was equal to another; they had the legislative branch as the head of the government but today any American would think that the President, executive branch, was the head of the government and that is true today which we should restore Congressional authority since congress is more democratic and representative of the people. Some would argue that the branches should be or are equal because how can you balance two branches if they are not equal? The balance isn’t a comparison of two or more branches with each other but it is a balance between one branch and its enumerated power. What I mean is the balance is between a single branch and what they are supposed to do or not do; the ones doing the balancing are the other branches. “...where science is promoted freely to all…” Education is a right that needs more protection and recognition from our government and the public. Science in this usage simply means knowledge that is discovered or expected of the public. These include history, science such as chemistry, and astronomy, also language, math, and civics. These topics should not be owned by anyone nor should anyone be making profits from compulsory education. “...where innovation and the wealth produced by that innovation does not stifle equality but instead provides the means to it…” Innovation and the capitalization of that innovation are ways to provide better living standards for everyone. Innovation into technology, medicine, production, communication increase the standard of living directly while wealth and the distribution of that wealth, either from the market or the government, increase the number of people who get to live in that higher standard of living. It is self-evident that the current economic system has severe inefficiencies when it comes to innovation, particularly the distribution of that innovation in the market. The evidence of this is the fact that companies who do the innovating are selling with planned obsolescence in mind which means they are not selling the best of what they have but instead only distributing a portion of their actual innovation to be sold in parts in order to make more profits. Think of it as a video game designer launching a game that is not good and even unfinished than selling many DLCs. They could have sold the completed game but they decide to sell it in pieces and the sum cost of those pieces is greater than the whole game. This is an inefficiency in innovation because it limits the market’s response to new technology. Another inefficiency are patents, especially how patents exist today which is very different than even fifty years ago. Patents restrict the number of people who can innovate with a given technology. Since all innovation requires previous innovation, whoever owns that previous innovative technology has a lot of authority in who can use that technology to innovate even more. “...where the betterment of the well being of everyone is sought after before the frivolous extravagance of selfishness and ambition…” This is a continuation of the last paragraph since it is the bourgeoisie, the owners, who reap surplus value from the market at the expense of the market and are the ones to restrict innovation in order to have planned obsolescence in the first place. This statement also refers to a number of economic stimuli that a lobbied government seems to have no issue with a handout at the expense of the taxpayer. These stimuli include tax incentives and subsidies. The current economic philosophy of congress and of many economists is trickle-down economics which is essentially the idea that the bourgeoisie should be given more money, through tax incentives and subsidies, and that they know what to do with that money that will trickle down to the American worker. There are a ton of issues with this, the first being that the American people need more than a trickle to live a decent life, and what is trickling down isn’t actually wealth but instead debt. The rich don’t give money, they loan it. When they do “give” money, they received tax deductions and oftentimes subsidies which means they don’t actually give anything of their own but just move other people’s money around and they end up with the surplus-value along with fooling the people into thinking that they are philanthropists. Another issue is that the high class are usually the ones to crash the economy and yet they still get subsidies even when it is clear that they do not know how to handle money or the economy themselves. Under the current system it is encouraged for owners of especially large companies to tank the company, take subsidies and bailouts, buy back bonds, receive loads of money through compensation, and then abandon that company leaving thousands if not millions of Americans affected and paying the costs of the economic downturn. “...where patriotism is not the worship of symbols and names but the giving of hearts and minds to these principles…” Many Americans think that patriotism is just respecting a flag and some names of dead people. We see this in the apotheosis of Washington, the deification of our Founding Fathers, reverence to their “holy wisdom,” glorification and worship of statues, all while neglecting the suffering and discrimination of their fellow Americans. Our Founding Fathers were not wise men, nor were they good men especially in today’s use of the word good. They were not a monolith of ideas but instead fought each other, disagreed with each other, even killed each other, and all of them certainly used their position in the colonies and the newly born nation to pocket themselves wealth and admiration. As they wrote all men are created equal, they owned slaves, they were even aware of their hypocrisy and did very little about it. Our Constitution was not created out of genuine love for political theory but out of compromising with dozens of special interest groups including the interest of maintaining the institution of slavery. Patriotism is not the worship of those men or even the men and women who came before us. Patriotism is not for the past but the future. We do not live for the Founding Fathers but instead, they lived for us and we live for our posterity for in the preamble of our Constitution the second to the last clause is, “to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” These blessings are the principles that I have outlined so far, and so it is Patriotic to live by these principles because it is these principles and ideas that shape our behavior and treatment of one another, not a flag or a statue. Flags and statues mean whatever someone wants it to mean and so they can have preconceived notions of the meaning of the flag and then pledge loyalty to their interpretation of that flag even though their interpretation has no basis in reality and oftentimes are inconsistent with actual American values i.e. the values mentioned in this essay. “...where the laws created by representatives are not made to spite the people but to increase their welfare so that the necessity of punishment is a rarity…” One reason why the legislative branch should be the head branch instead of the executive is that the legislative branch is more responsible to the constituents of their state or district while the executive, which is mainly made up of appointed offices, is not dependent or even caring of the will of the people. Everyone desires what is good for them. This often includes their loved ones such as family and friends but also their community. How someone knows what is good for them is a consequence of their environment. Crime is not the source of what is wrong with the public but a reaction to what criminals believe to be best for them. The solution is not retribution but reconciliation through the improvement of the environment. Instead of more police, how about more schools, clinics, parks, rehabilitation, and the increase in the general welfare. When the conditions of labor, social life, and family, are improved there is a decrease in the desire to ruin those improved conditions. In essence, the happier people are the less they will be deviating from the public good. “...where representation should not be determined by the similarity of lifestyles, class, race, sex, creed, or birthplace, but by their devotion to their constituents in public servitude and that their probity include these ideals.” Oftentimes people want a sectarian government, a government where the representatives are chosen by demographics, I know sectarianism has more of a negative connotation but in this use of the word I do not necessarily mean discrimination however sectarian structure governments do lead to the majority party or sect to mistreat the other sects. What this means is that if the black community makes up 13% of the total US population then the government should be made up of 13% black representatives. This isn’t good since it divides this nation up by race and this can be applied with religion like how several sectarian governments are in the Middle East, or ethnic groups, or sex, or gender. Our nation should not be divided on those issues. This is also not good because the black community should not be limited by demographics. Under the current system, if racism in America did not exist, we could see 50% or 80% of congress be made up of black individuals, same with women who make up just over 50% of the population they could be 90% of congress just like how men who make up just less than 50% of the population make up 90% of congress. This way representatives are determined by the values and pragmatism that their constituents desire. The issue with this is what “values” some Americans have, such as sexism or racism, or homophobia... The solution to this isn’t sectarianism, but instead the removal of bigotry through proper education and cosmopolitan interaction. All of these principles can be put into two categories; the first being the structure of government and the second is the relation between the people and that government. The first includes ideals like separation of power, checks, and balances, no titles of divinity nor nobility, the amending process, no sectarianism; the second includes ideals like protected rights, equality, providing security and welfare. It is important to understand both categories to better understand our society and to contribute more to this discussion about politics.

Non Negotium which literally means “without business” is the idea that businesses and politics should be separated, at least as separated as they can get and certainly more separated than what they are now. This idea of creating a wall of separation between business and state is similar to the separation of Church and State that we have in the United States, or at least what we should have. Some of the issues that Non Negotium addresses directly are taxation and subsidies. Some of the indirect issues include lobbying, regulation, contracts, and patents. This policy will remove the governments ability to subsidize businesses hopefully entirely. This policy will also remove tax deductions and exemptions for businesses including religious establishments, which the separation of church and state should do anyway but isn’t, and including secular non-profits. If businesses want to decrease taxes then they should decrease them for everyone, not just for themselves. The point of taxation is that the more political influence is held by people who don't pay taxes then they and the government have the incentive to increase taxes on everyone else. Take the situation where you have ten people who make the same amount of money and are taxed ten dollars each in order to have a functioning government with a budget of 100 dollars. Each person also has a certain disposable income that can be used to support political campaigns. Then say one of these people makes the argument that since they are religious they shouldn’t have to pay taxes. Now you still have a government with the necessary budget of 100 dollars to work, but you only have 9 people paying taxes which means the non religious people have to pay more in taxes. Now, that one person has the incentive to lobby the government with the extra money they have to increase the budget and taxes which they do not pay but do benefit from. In this situation the 9 people would simply out vote the one but sadly real life instead imagine this one person holds the majority of influence over the government and can choose to increase taxes that they do not pay on everyone else. This situation happened many times in the past in many different nations including France during the French Revolution where about ten percent of the population held 2/3rds of the political power in government, the first two estates which were the clergy and the aristocrats, who then used their position to levy higher taxes on the other 90% while decreasing taxes on themselves which was the number one cause of the French Revolution this also happened in Russia during the Communist Revolution, there seems to be a common trend of religious establishments and the wealthy participating in this unequal treatment and so religious establishments and the wealthy should not be able to get away with it in America. Instead, non negotium and other types of political separations, advocate that everyone and every business should pay taxes so that there is no political or economic advantage in favor of one group over the other. Imagine if churches and all non-profits which benefit the wealthy as tax havens and “charity” have to pay taxes just like everyone else equally, there would be more support in favor of decreasing taxes for everyone equally. This increase in the pool of taxpayers will also decrease the tax burden on the working class and would help alleviate any social or economic strife between people. Non negotium would work on most businesses in ending lobbying since the whole point of lobbying is to receive benefits from the government. Under non negotium the government would not have the authority to help those businesses and so the incentive to lobby in the first place would be removed. Now, I did say most, because there are certain industries that are not entirely economic but instead are also political such as planned parenthood or the NRA since abortion and gun ownership are also political issues. Subsidies and tax deductions would be removed from planned parenthood and the NRA and other political organizations as a part of non negotium, but these organizations would still want to lobby the government in order to keep their industries legal. We could make abortion, guns, etc. non political by ensuring their end or protection but since the country is divided on these issues they will remain politicized. This has happened before where a political issue is no longer political such as with the end of prohibition and ever since alcohol sales and consumption is for the most part no longer politicized. To reiterate, non negotium removes the power of the government to benefit any business or establishment through subsidies and tax deductions or exemptions. This idea could also go further in protecting industries or businesses from harsh and unfair regulation since regulation usually benefits the wealthiest businesses or establishments in a particular industry since they can afford the costs of regulations while their smaller competitors can't. And so there should be more of an effort to define the purposes of regulation to make sure that the only regulations that exist are those that directly help or protect consumers, workers, and the environment. All other regulations should be abolished. When it comes to regulations themselves the government should have public servants to make sure that the regulations are enforced and applied to all businesses but also that the inspections should be done in a timely manner so as to not interfere with businesses. One of the main reasons why many business owners, especially in the construction and manufacturing industries, don't like certain regulations is because of the amount of time it takes for inspectors to do their jobs and so the government should invest in more inspectors as public servants to inspect and enforce regulations in a manner that does not hinder economic development the way they do now. Non negotium would not end government contracts. Contracts are very different from subsidies since with a contract the business must provide a specific service or good for the government as opposed to subsidies which are just payments to businesses just to keep the business alive even if that business does no good for the government or people. Although supporters of Non Negotium can and should advocate for less government contracts especially when it comes to the military and specifically mercenaries. Lastly, there is the question of patents. Patents help inventors by giving them time to market their inventions to make money off of them and patent laws have changed dramatically over the centuries in the United States. Patents can, however, be used to restrict the market and owners, not necessarily the actual inventors, can abuse patents. It would be consistent under the idea of Non Negotium to limit patent protections. For example, any inventions made while using funds or equipment from the government should be made open source and not be patentable. Patent protections should also only last a maximum of 7 years. The original term of patents was 14 years, now it is 20 years and the reason why the term is so long is because that time would be used to market and get investors. However, it hardly makes sense that there would be extensions past the 14 year term since marketability is so much faster and easier than it was when everything was done on paper and delivered by horse. I suggest 7 years with no extensions given the advancements in communication and time for marketing. Non Negotium- the idea that business and state should be separated from each other as much as possible.