(We prioritize money over......) This is a broad statement and demonstrable untrue. Money for most of us is a tool whereby we obtain food, clean water, and a healthy place to raise our families. Without a viable way to exchange our labor for things we need, we regress to a hunter gather society, every man for himself, short miserably lifespans and violence at the hands of those not clever enough to grow/gather their own food, build shelter or figure out how to keep their homes clean and disease free. It's worded to make us feel guilty for the sins of the thugs and bullies of the world who do exploit people except nowadays they use money instead of simply murdering us with swords and clubs and taking our goods away. At least we have lawyers these days to look out for us. I'd hate to see it go back to the club thing.
(Economic trading system that facilitates death...) Please! Yes, there are wars, and there are those who profit by keeping those wars going. That's by no means "we". And if they weren't providing guns and rockets, the same folk would be going at each other with clubs and spears. The nations supported by that evil economic trading system also do intervene to try and stop the genocide on occasion (admittedly not often enough). What this writer doesn't point out is that the reason the US doesn't intervene in places like Rwanda, Chad and the Sudan where genocide is taking place is because people like this writer would raise blue bloody hell if they did so we only wind up going to war in places where someone else has provided them with enough money to get a lot of weapons that threaten us. We are forced by the peacenik faction to hunt only lions and to leave off protecting the sheep from the foxes. Do away with the "trading system" and adopt, say, the socialist/communist system and all economic decisions are put in the hands of a handful of elite "leaders". Historically, doing away with capitalism has only resulted in a loss of motivation NOT to murder your customers en masse.
(We divide the land) This is a thinly disguised appeal for the state-owns-everything (communist) model. You work for the state, where the state wants you to, making what the state thinks is fair while enjoying substandard food, clothing, shelter, entertainment and healthcare in a polluted cesspool of an environment (ask the former Soviets what happened to the Aral Sea (hint - it went missing). If we have no land that is ours, then we have no security. We can be thrown off our land and out of our homes anytime someone more powerful (like the state) wants to. What a lovely model for a society of all homeless citizens.
(We call some people soldiers...) Fine, let's fire all the soldiers, stand down the military and that will make everything good....right up until the roving bands of thugs wipe out your town and indulge in a little freelance pillage, rape and murder.
(Animals) We all become Vegans. And all those, now useless animals out there consuming food that we have no use for? Turn them loose to graze in people's yards and farmers' fields? Slaughter them all now that they are useless? Universal veganism would throw the economy and the eco-system into a death spiral. You may not like it, but there are more cows and chickens in this country than there are people and what do you do with all those corpses?
(We send children to school) What's she saying? That we should stop teaching our kids. Hey, the German school system is an idea introduced in the early 1900s by progressives who wished to use it to fill kids heads with socialist propaganda. They weren't successful at first, but the school system has become more "progressive" with each generation. I'd love to see that changed.
(We impose financial pressures on parents) That, my dear, is a direct result of, not financial pressure, but social pressure applied by the rising feminist/progressive movement. We lower Dad's salary so women make equal pay which forces women to join the workforce to keep up. It's social pressure that pushed women into the workplace, brought upon women by and large by people who vote to the left, support liberal causes and demand that you keep up with the latest fashions, and by feminists who made housewives and mothers feel ashamed because they don't have a career! So we've reshaped the economy where it takes two incomes to survive and virtually eliminated the wife and mother career track altogether.
(Thousands of religions...) This is presented by a bad thing - the old BS about how religion causes all our troubles. They keep saying this hoping we'll believe it. The problem is history. The societies which were officially religion-free over the past century committed all the genocide, killing hundreds of millions without any excuse of religion for it - their only excuse being that it was done for "the greater good". One of the hazards of casting aside religious morality.
(Love and compassion are mocked?) By whom. We honor those who protect our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness which provide the setting for us to show love and compassion to our fellow humans. If the we is the U.S. we show more compassion toward our fellow man than any country on the planet. Our government gives billions to struggling nations. Our people (mostly Christians) give even more than the government does of our own free will and out of our own pockets.
(Anyone with a really useful invention) She wants to get rid of patents. In other words, you may work for years and years to create a new and useful thing. On the day someone sees it, they may take your idea from you and if they have more money to promote it and sell it, you are flat out of luck. This person who wants to bring down the economic system apparently wants to return it to a feudal system where the guy with the most bucks and the biggest set of swords can take the fruits of your labor and not pay you a dime for it.
This manifesto is a ludicrous mess - the ravings of someone who believes in magical unicorns and the perfectibility of man. It would no more give us a "free" world than resurrecting Atilla the Hun would give us a peaceful Eastern Europe.
I believe man is corrupt, held in check only by good people who band together to protect the rights and freedoms of all, by a self-governing economic system that protects the right to individual property, both physical and intellectual as well as to the fruits of their own labor. Evil must be held in check by strong, brave people who stand on the walls to protect us all from the savages that live in our world and would destroy us to take from us what they are too lazy or ignorant to make for themselves.
All that the author of this blather wants will be available when Christ removes the good folk and leaves the bad behind. After they destroy the world and themselves with it, we'll be the ones to clean it up and replant and rebuild. THEN, we'll get peace and love and compassion. Soldiers will be gone. No more taxes, no more power hungry madmen, no more hate, fear or misery. The laws and social systems we create are to protect us, not from "WE" who might actually feel a little guilt for doing all the things in this manifesto, but from those who feel no guilt for lying, stealing, greed, murder, exploitation and bullying.
No application of guilt of the sort the Free World Manifesto above represents will in any way be effective at changing the behavior of someone who has chosen to do evil. They will blow you off as a joke. But hey, at least you FEEL like you've done your bit for saving the world.
Just sayin'
Tom
