--I really love this piece; look forward to the rest.
Somewhat similar tend the thoughts of an in some circles famous writer these days:
Robert Anton Wilson.
A recent book called: "Escaping the 19th century" carries essays about relations
between Fourier, Marx, Nietsche and Proudhon besides many unknown facts from history
topped of with ethnographic speculation... about the mount builder cultures in what is
now known as Wisconsin, roughly for instance. Throughout he wields a concept called
the war machine, adapted from Pierre Clastres' work (which I had the pleasure to read
while in Australia a few years back).
Underlying it all is a stark, bleak and binary opposition between the social and
capitalism; sharing and fighting woven together by the spirit of shamanic freedom
taking Taussig the anthropologist as lead and inspiration.
Once again, kudoos for tackling the prior appropriation imperative which is no less
than an issues of loyalty not to royalty but humblest yet most awesome beginnings.
On Fri, 16 Apr 1999 09:57:20 (Robert) Bruce Reyburn wrote:
>(extract from a larger work in progress)
>
>CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED.
>
>Copyright B. Reyburn 1999
>
>Do i sense an Australian declaration of independence in the wind, as
>the debate about the Preamble widens into a peoples' debate about
>wider constitutional matters? I would much perfer to see a declaration
>of Interdependence, one which stresses the importance of the social
>and ecological relationships which make up our lives.
>
>But getting to that 21st century position will require us to work through
>the heady hangovers of modernism. It looks like being a fascinating
>process.
>
>Before we are completely Jeffed (with him as the next Prime Minister?)
>it may be timely to introduce into the debate about the Preamble
>an expression which lies at the core of both the existing legal tradition
>and that of the United States Constitution via the Declaration of
>Independence.
>
>"The consent of the governed" is that expression. That's us - the governed.
>
>It plays a key role in at least two ways. Firstly, it underwrites the 1901
>Australian Constitution (a British Act) by virtue of its role in the
>unwritten English Consititution/Bill of Rights. Secondly, it impacts on
>us via the United States as that country imperially insists that it
>provides
>an important pecedent for Western style democracies (and since our
>lives are now flooded by the US popular culture social breakdown pulp
>fictions, we increasingly think in their terms).
>
>With that notion of the of the consent of the governed goes the second
>part of the argument, that the governed have a right to change their form
>of government when it fails them. By revolution if necessary, and by
>bloodless revolution by the precedent established in 1688 which gave us
>our present form of Constitutional Monarchy (and John Howard and Jeff
>as our leaders).
>
>QUOTE FROM AN ESTABLISHED AUTHORITY
>
>The following extract from the Encyclopaedia Britannica explains all (taken
>from the entry "Constitutional Law' 1976 edition, Macropedia Vol 5 page
>85 written by David Fellman).
>
>"Much of the modern thinking about constitutionalism derives from the
>writings of the English common-sense philosopher John Locke (1632-1704).
>In his Two Treatises of Government (1690), he provides a classic analysis
>of the concept of the state that involves natural law and the social
>compact. He maintained that man originally lived according to the law of
>nature in what he described as a "state of prefect freedom" and equality.
> Although Locke did not believe, as Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) had
>argued before him in Leviathan (1651), that the state of nature was
>intolerably bad, he did believe hat it was not a very convenient condition
>because of the lack of established, settled, known law"; the lack of
>"known and indifferent (impartial) judges; and the absence of an
> executive to enforce judgements. "
>
>"Accordingly, by unanimous consent, men (sic-R) abandoned the state of
>nature and entered into a social compact that created a government
>designed to protect their natural rights. The only right surrendered in the
>process was the right to enforce the law. According to Locke, government
>rests upon the consent of the governed and is bound to observe the terms
>of the compact that created it; if government violates its trust, men have
>the right to resort to revolution. This became the rational justification
>for the Glorious Revolution of 1688 in England, and it supplied the basic
>line of argument in defense of the revolution in the American colonies a
>century later."
>
>"Thus, in the opening of the Declaration of Independence (1776) Thomas
>Jefferson affirmed that all men are created equal in that they are endowed
>by their creator with certain unalienable rights that government is
>instituted to secure; when government fails to accomplish this basic
>purpose, the people have a right to abolish it and in its place institute a
>new government."
>
>IMPLICATIONS FOR FIRST PEOPLES
>
>The consent of the governed clearly was never granted by First Peoples
> to the Anglo-Australian constitutional arrangements either upon
>colonisation or upon the formation of the Commonwealth of Australia.The
>infamous 1901 Australian Constitution specifically excluded Aboriginal
>peoples.
>
>The rights of First Peoples who had a pre-existing form of law and were not
>living in a state of nature raises some fascinating constitutional
>arguments for the republican debate.
>
>Australia's First Peoples clearly had an established known and settled
>law ('Dreaming law'); known and impartial judges (elders who were noted for
>the strictness by which they enforced the law on relatives and strangers)
>and who also constituted a local arm of an executive which was
>decentralised across Australia. (Anthropologists, please note the damage
>done to the rights of First People by your simple minded models of
>social organisation which exclude such political considerations,)
>
>An Australian Declaration of Interdependence - which could also include a
>Covenant of Cultural Partnership between First Peoples and Settler Peoples
>- may be an appropriate place for First Peoples to reinstate their rights
>(according to the British myth-makers themselves) to give or withhold
>their consent to be governed by Constitutional government arrangements
>according to whether or not those arrangements deliver to them the basic
>requirements for a full life.
>
>Indigenous authorities may wish to insist that their consent be conditional
>upon recognition of their laws, cultures and cosmologies; annual resource
>rentals from their Settler cultural partners for the use of First Peoples
>living countries; mental, physical and spiritual well-being and health for
>all members of their families on a par with that which was the case prior
>to colonisation: rights to have a genuine say in the way the country is
>governed, etc.
>
>And a provision for a bloodless change of arrangements should they wish
>to withdraw their consent at any time.
>
>There are fascinating implications for the rights of Settler Peoples
>also...
>
>Bruce
>15 April 1999
>
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