Shedding Democracy

shedding democracy

In retrospect, it is almost difficult to believe how much traveling I've done, how much surveying, how much photographing and writing, editing and uploading, posting and polishing, restaurant sampling and inventing.  I've been to so many places now that I stopped counting them long ago.  I sit here in my latest way-station; my make-shift field office, digitizing another stack of books, no longer having a single moving box or crate to move with me each time I raise the sails, and look out at another majestic and towering mountain face, wondering how many more I'll see before my work is through.  How many more dozens of girls will I bed down?  Will I surpass 100 soon?  How many more discoveries will I make?  How many more ancient ruins will I walk out to and meditate upon?  Things grow quiet in this chapter.  The annoyances are steadily lessening, and barely tax me more than for a few minutes twice a week.  The vistas now blow away even those of the best video games, such as Halo Reach.  My idea to write a novel became eight, then ten, now 13.  And although I've yet to be able to hire the best troops I served with, the company which eventually will has been growing -crystallizing- this entire time.  I once thought of myself as an artist, then became one.  I once thought of myself as an engineer and inventor, then went to school for it and became one.  I once thought of myself as a war-fighter; a warrior, then trained for years for it and became one.  Now I think of myself as a king, and my best war friends as kings, and the patterns in this life suggest we will at some point fairly soon... become them.  The trouble with democracy is that its Achilles heel allows any majority, no matter how foolish, uneducated, or evil to set the rules for all others.  Anytime evildoers are in the majority, their vote takes control for years or longer.  Democracies, like all governments, also suffer from being lobbied and worse.  Thus, there are such things as better systems.  There are such things as good kings.  To those of you who have fought for democracy this whole time, I remind you that the oath we took was not to preserve democracy or any particular form of government.  The oath we all took was to protect good, intelligent people with the help of the latest revision of the living-document Constitution, which we are also to carry on in its intended form; as a document undergoing indefinite revision to keep pace with the times.  Our oath has nothing at all to do with our nation or any nation, nor with any of its leaders.  Our oath has nothing at all to do with protecting people just because they happen to have been born within the latest imaginary lines.  Would you protect another Hitler just because he was an American citizen?  Would you protect an outcast and person wrongfully labeled a felon or fugitive, regardless of what the authorities tried to order?  Would you shield a foreigner and total stranger from the bullets of men on your own team making a mistake?  Ask yourself these tough questions.  Ask yourself if you are a warrior of the world, not merely a citizen of one nation.  Real men, real warriors, real thinkers; these are the teammates I will be working with from now on.  Food for thought.  Down periscope for me; back to work.