Speaking Truth to Power on Capitol Hill

In the ‘Spirit of ‘76’
 
by Christopher Rudy

   

My experience as a visionary metaphysician has sometimes lacked the right brain gift of story-telling that optimizes a vision as if you were experiencing it yourself. But sometimes a true story from the heart is the best way to convey the highest ideal of Constitutional Freedom that speaks truth to power. 
  
By a rather bizarre synchronicity of events, I found myself giving the keynote address to ten agencies of the Federal government on Capitol Hill, Washington DC.  It was a Future’s Summit to brainstorm on the possible futures for the 13 year Bicentennial Era - how America would celebrate the Revolution.

The year was 1974, the month of November.  I was 25 years old. 
 
Flashback to that time. The Vietnam War had recently ended. While yet burdened by so much war insanity, the public’s conscience was shifting from war-making to peace-building. There was a nationwide surge of hope, faith and charity that looked forward to a better future. Not just for America, but for some of us, the whole world. 
 
I had been to Washington DC a few years earlier to document the huge demonstrations against the Vietnam War. As a photojournalist, I attempted to capture the spirit of two major demonstrations, perhaps the first of the “million man” variety in the US.


1970 © Christopher Rudy

Later - on Capitol Hill - I had a much smaller audience but quality made up for quantity.  The place was the Science and Astronautics Chamber of the Rayburn Building. I gave the last speech at a three day Future’s Summit sponsored by The World Future Society and the Committee For the Future.  Present were Directors of The United States Communications Agency, The US Information Agency, The American Revolutionary Bicentennial Commission and leaders of seven other federal agencies that were attending to see what the 13 year ‘Bicentennial Era’ – from Declaration to ratification of the Constitution – might look like.

Below is a picture I took of Barbara Marx Hubbard who was one of the sponsors (Marx Toys - Barbie Doll - fortune) of this Future's Summit "SYNCON" (SYNergy CONvergence). Hubbard directed the event as Chair of the Committee For The Future.

 

Consider the revolutionary changes the world was going through back then. The rate of global change was accelerating with the instant emotional connections of satellite-TV reporting of global tragedies and triumph. Do you think the whole world didn’t morn the murder of JFK, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy?  Are you aware how the world changed with the moon landing that showed how small our world had become from a lunar perspective?
 
Flash forward to the faster acceleration of changes following the Bicentennial Era.  Consider the mind-boggling change (for old-timers) with the Internet.  Look how the whole world mourned the 9-11 disaster in solidarity with the American people.  Think how fast the whole world woke up to 9-11 truth.  It took a few years but it took 50 years for the whole world to find out that Pearl Harbor was an inside job too!  Net reality has become the front lines for freedom of speech, assembly, press, and right to petition government - our five core Constitutional freedoms.

 
The future of freedom requires we learn from the past - and upgrade our Five Core Internet Freedoms - or government of, by and for 'We the People' will once again witness how the inordinate love of power of a super-rich few is challening the ordained Power of Love - the Aquarian Mandate.
 

Longer version continued:

So there I was speaking before TV cameras recording this Future’s Summit – synopsis at www.heartcom.org/CapHill.htm. Before me were many independent visionaries, futurists, NASA scientists, unified field theorists, and future-curious bureaucrats in government agencies.
    

Earlier that year, for four weeks in June, I attended the World Game Studies Workshop with Buckminster Fuller at the University of Pennsylvania.  Early on, my views were well received and I was invited to give a lecture to the group.  The director of this workshop was sufficiently “moved” by the response to my talk that he feared I would take over the agenda for the rest of the workshop!  But I had no such plans. A book was produced on our research -- Energy, Earth and Everyone – that dealt with hydrogen conversion technologies that would replace fossil fuels.  The reason it hasn’t happened, of course, isn’t because the know-how (science) is not available. The economics and politics are far more "complex" (entrenched status quo of Big Oil), but I digress.
 

One person at the World Game appreciated the 'whole systems' communications rEVOLUTION I was talking about and invited me to attend the Future’s Summit in the fall and present my views there.  He was an influential member with the organizers of the Future’s Summit, so I prepared ten papers to give to the ten agency directors that attended.
 

As the Future’s summit was concluding, it was this friend who got everyone’s attention and introduced my concluding address.  I spoke behind the podium in the middle of the chamber with the Great Seal of the United States prominently on the front of it.
 

My message was simple. I only spoke about 10 minutes.  I explained how cable TV was wiring the nation with satellite downlinks to cable TV stations. Congress had mandated public access to the new CATV medium with channels required for public access on all cable TV networks.
  

I explained how the Revolution could be celebrated with an electronic upgrade of “freedom of the press” with this new “printing press” (cable TV).
  

I explained how “freedom of speech” could be upgraded with use of the new portable video cameras whereby people could originate their own multi-media programs – with help at the public access studios… explaining how video is more “friendly” than film -- can’t make a mistake – just erase over errors until it “speaks for itself” the way you want.
  

I explained how “freedom of assembly” could be upgraded with replay of these locally originated programs over the public access network on the local CATV system.
  

And this is where it gets interesting – the mix of all these elements at the heart of the Spirit of Revolution that forged the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
  

What I explained was the new interactive potential of “Freedom of Speech”.  Not just an individual’s creation of original programming, but the instant evaluation of the program by everyone in the “assembly” of people watching the program.  This is what the founders understood as “town hall meetings” because that was the only way to meet back then. But interactive cable TV could change that. Indeed, every interactive network in the whole world could be an “electronic town hall meeting”. 

 

The point I simply made was the need for an electronic upgrade of our horse-and-buggy system of representation that would make government responsive and accountable to the purpose for which it serves "of, by and for the people".  In other words, how “We the People” -- through CATV – could celebrate the American Revolution with a Space Age upgrade of a technologically obsolete legislative system, improving accountability to Constitutional principles with an interactive process that provides a beacon of freedom for the entire world that was fast becoming a “global village” in the terms of futurist and visionary Marshall McLuhan.
  

There was one key problem, I explained.  How do you get a hundred or a million people responding to the same program at the same time without creating noise?  You can’t without a “real time” (instant, moment to moment) system of response ability -- that by it’s availability and use, encourages responsibility for the governing process. Obviously, you can’t expect people to be responsible for their lives and their government without the means of “town-hall” response ability consistent with the capabilities of the global village “come-into-community” (communication) technology of the day.
 

 48 years later (2022), it should be a self-evident truth
   that the computer/Internet revolution has brought us to
  the point where we clearly need an Operating System
 for global rEVOLUTION along more enlightened lines
   framing public representation for public enlightenment.
  (Web 3.0 cyberEthics for culturing social Conscience)

 

What I explained at this Future's Summit is that the mass-to-mass interactive solution is a standardized framework of evaluation criteria that reflected – and perfected -- the core Internet 'first principles' at the heart of the U.S. Constitution.  This frame of reference -- a universal interface for global mass-to-mass communications -- could provide context and meaning for collective response during public discourse on an issue.  People could both originate and evaluate programs and then originate new programs that highlighted the consensus of consciousness referenced by the “evaluation criteria” of the standardized 'Universal Interface'.
 

     As Bucky Fuller might say today,
this 'whole systems' model of
   planetary 
TeLeCommunication
is a timely 'operating system'
     for upgrading 'Spaceship Earth'.

 

I explained how that evaluation criteria would have to be truly “universal” in the language of consciousness itself -- an exquisite metaphor for archetypal maps of consciousness that have provided cultural DNA throughout recorded history.  To the extent it frames a prevailing awareness of the laws and language of consciousness -- the quintessential foundation of self-governance -- it would involve and evolve our individual and collective 'Conscience' -- with a capital 'C' --  in the way which would distinguish a natural rEVOLUTION in higher consciousness.  And in the process would raise the standard of 'cyberEthics' (heartware) for truly spiritual government of, by and for ALL people as U.S. Founders aspired to.

 

"Conscience is the most sacred of all property"
~ James Madison, Chief Architect of the Constitution
 

In summary, I explained how the new cable TV technology for informed choice could use microcomputers for public feedback with digital phone numbers inputted on 'real time' basis, providing an upgraded information processing system for response ability and accountability that fulfilled the pure intent of the Constitution.  I called this electronic upgrade of our five core freedoms a process of “information’s ecology” that would “recycle” general knowledge in the way that empowers specific wisdom for self-correcting, self-governing 'self elevation' of a salvation nature.

 

The pure intention is to represent the highest ideals of
freedom and opportunity, consensus and innovation,
for our up-wising and uprising at the heart of global
rEVOLUTION.
 

My final point was that the Bicentennial would ideally celebrate the American Revolution through application of the first principles of the Constitution that make responsible representative government work. I explained how the installed and operational interactive CATV technology provided a “vehicle” (common carrier) for the final ingredient for mass-to-mass communications as has never before been possible for humanity.

 

Consider how the 2020s' computer/Internet revolution
is now poised for such a rEVOLUTION of, by and for
social Conscience in our global social networks.

 

I concluded with the emphasis: "This would be the best way to celebrate the Spirit of the American Revolution, finishing – globally – what U.S. Founders began... a mass-to-mass interactive process for integrating our core freedoms in the Bill of Rights through the golden rule/law language at the heart of Constitutional virtue, principles and processes which empower authentic "whole systems' freedom."
  

When I was finished speaking I offered the 10 papers for the 10 agencies.  There was dead silence. No one moved for an uncomfortable time.  I didn’t realize I “nailed it”.  What I then witnessed, as the Future's Summit suddenly adjourned,  was that the 10 agency heads who came forward for my paper on this process would not look me in the eye as I gave it to them.  No one wanted to talk to me.
 

And then a junior-college vice president from New York City came up to me and said, "You know, the problem with this is…” – pausing as his eyes got wider and began speaking quickly – “this would eliminate bureaucracy... and you're not going to hear from these agencies of the federal government."
 

In retrospect, this was a rather surreal experience,
 comparable to the 1939 Jimmy Steward movie,

'Mr. Smith Goes To Washington'.

 

I didn’t realize that government had become a 'growth industry'.  You would have thought that a definitive way to restore restraint and accountability for government growth would be welcome.  But I was "too innocent" of the way things worked, inadvertently threatening corrupting influences that wanted neither public accountability nor public response ability as would make government accountable to the purpose it has vowed to serve.
 

It was simple enough.  So simple that everyone knew it would work.  That's even more true today with current Internet capabilities.
 

It never occurred to me that our 'public government' had already been privatized by corporate interests. I didn’t know that government had already become a protection racket for Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Banks, Big Media and big business collusion with big government in general. I now know that these "service-to-self" (corporate interests) had their own special interest in growth and profit which betrayed the pure intention of service to others.

 

This is the same core obstacle to realization of
the capability of our instant-everywhere and
interactive freedom and opportunity today.
 

I was indeed naïve.  But it still doesn’t occur to a lot of people that government growth and power is out of control.  Many can’t see the solution because they don’t see the problem -- or feel too overwhelmed with the scope of the problem -- or just want to believe that government represents our best interests.  But if the system is corrupt, how do you work within the system to make it accountable to the purpose for which it was created?
  

Back then I was talking about the capability of interactive CATV.  Now that interactive capability is on the Internet.  The “head end” of the CATV system – and your public access studio – is your desk-top or lap-top computer.  Desk-top video, blogs and pod-casts are reinventing 'town hall meetings' on tens of thousands of social network communities, newsgroups, Facebook, Linkedin, etc.  But still there is no “universal interface” that involves and evolves our individual and collective Conscience in the process.  All of our core freedoms COULD be upgraded but are not, simply because monopoly forces in giant corporations have a vested interest in owning and controlling our government, core institutions and -- in their view -- the physical and human resources of the planet.
 

But think about this, the urgent need for a
new 'World Game'; new 'Common Sense';
Global rEVOLUTION!
 

What would a systemic update (upgrade) of our core Constitutional freedoms look like?  How else, but with the currency of Conscience, will we define and refine the Next Economy?  Would you agree that the teeming masses worldwide are yearning to breathe free with their pure intention for focused attention on our evolutionary ascension?  So what are we waiting for when we could achieve that now?
 

It is still the divine destiny of America to innovate an
optimal model for Conscious Evolution with simple
Internet applications via heartware cyberEthics.
 

Consider how our system of electing representatives could now be centered and connected with a new “Net reality" – the capability of mass-to-mass TeLeComm as will involve and evolve 'information's ecology' whereby wisdom is 'recycled' to define, refine, combine and 'shine' enlightened social Conscience in our ubiquitous social networks.  New heartware standards for cyberEthics will create wholly new industries with vast potential for integrating the gifts, talents and resources of humanity for the sacred purpose that social Conscience has always served.
 

All social problems are basically communication problems - how to come into unity for REAL community. True servant leaders will join ranks quickly when they see HOW the best and brightest communicators among us can raise social conscience in our ubiquitous social networks... culturing 'Net worth' with enlightened Net reality.
 

That's not rocket science.  It's a golden age blueprint;
an operating system for our global village.
 

Now that's a revolutionary concept... empowering conscientious common sense whereby truth of what's best for all would rule with a heart.  Indeed, it was Thomas Paine's COMMON SENSE that sparked the American Revolution.  And heaven knows it would be an upgraded version of COMMON SENSE that would lead to leadership based on virtue and  talent that "speaks for itself" with the idea of democratic freedoms truly represented over the global Internet.

 

"We have it in our power to begin the world over again."
~ Thomas Paine, Common Sense

Today – 44 years since my surreal experience speaking truth to power -- I would add that the future of civilization may well depend on the resurrection of a virtue-centric process at the heart of informed choice, representative government and holistic healing of ALL our social, political and economic institutions. I’ve had a lot of time to think about it.
 

The heart of the matter – the Spirit that matters
is pure intention for evolutionary ascension...
to make it so!  The way follows the will.
 

With that pure intention we will focus attention on the COMMON SENSE vision for a global COMMONWEALTH based on abundant Conscience... a self-fulfilling prophecy as a natural function of the self-governing, self-correcting, self-elevation process which will make it so.
 

The 'synergy' from integration of our
five core Constitutional freedoms

- a term coined by Buckminster Fuller -

creates a 'holy' (systemic) whole
which is greater than the sum of
our five core Internet freedoms
.

 

The obvious benefit will be a systemic (whole system) rEVOLUTION in higher Conscience of, by and for what is truly best for all.  This rEVOLUTION will naturally check and balance collective momentums of "DUH" (Dense Unconscious & Heartless)... and that's a good thing!
 

 The masterkey to this process - an 'Operating System' for
 our global village - is the universal interface for mediating
mass-to-mass TeLeComm as will involve and evolve our
individual and collective Conscience, and in the process
will also define, refine, “combine” (synergize) and shine
 
our Co-Creation with the Spirit that matters through all of
our gifts & talents serving the purpose of enlightenment;
More 'Light as Conscience' to fulfill the rEVOLUTION.

 

If the dominant global superpowers doesn’t do it, who will?  If it doesn’t begin with “US” – in the “United States” – where will it begin?  If not us, who?
 

In short, if the United States doesn’t get its Revolutionary act together, we’re toast. We didn’t celebrate our Revolutionary heritage with much more than token 4th of July fireworks during the Bicentennial.  Perhaps it wasn’t time. But if not now, when?
 

Freedom of Conscience is the divine right expressed at the heart of the Bill of Rights through “Freedom of Religion”.  If there’s not freedom for conscientious common sense, we don’t have any freedom at all.  Without this higher Conscience of moral virtue being represented with the response ability that encourages responsibility for good government, look what happens with the abuse of power at the top!
 

Why is “freedom of religion” the capstone for all the others?  If we don’t represent true spirituality at the heart of all our other freedoms, we become slave to a politically correct “BS” (Belief System) which is morally wrong.  Without virtue at the heart of it, values become corrupt. The system becomes broken.  People fear the government.  Just look at the global warring over resources now, and the state of the economy.
 

Something major has to change, and mark my words,
we're about to see the end of the world
as we have known it.
 

If we do what we’ve always done, we’ll get what we’ve always got.  When will we stop denying the core freedoms of speech, assembly, religion and press FOR THE WHOLE WORLD that we once claimed was our divine right?  If we don’t affirm those rights between our ears and through our network communities, how will anyone anywhere in the world trust our words of “freedom and liberty for all”?

 

As I explained, our SYSTEM of self-government is based on response ability through good information. Without well-informed choice – with virtue-centric interactive processes that culture Truth and Love – government and media powers will keep informed choice FROM the people rather than “of, by and for the people”.  Propaganda replaces principle.  Might overpowers right.  Subversion of the golden rule becomes, “He who has the gold -- black gold and moneyed power – makes the rules.”
 

You can’t expect people to be responsible for their lives or their government without response ability that is consistent with the communication capabilities of the day.  Today, that capability is interactive but the status quo 'control matrix' is not – it’s one way programming -- their way.  They rewrite history and reframe every issue to force their agenda.  It is an agenda for furthering self-serving corporate interests at the expense of all public servants who have pure intention for the highest and best service-to-others.
 

I’m not young and innocent any more.  I don’t learn fast but I learn well.  I still believe in the core principles of the Constitution, but I’m realistic about the collusion of federal government with giant corporations in an incestuous relationship of self-serving protection rackets.
 

I've learned that even back in 1974 there was a revolving door of directors between US regulatory agencies and the corporations they were supposed to be regulating. Back then, I didn’t know that the fix was in, as many insiders from that time – like Dr. Scott Peck, author of A World Waiting To Be Born -- have exposed so well since then.
 

But I’ve been diligent in finding the answers.  Within months after my experience on Capitol Hill, I discovered Jeremy Rifkin’s Peoples Bicentennial Commission, which explained how corporate tyranny was the new “King George”.
 

That movement obviously didn’t get much press in the corporate media because it stood for the U.S. Founders principles of checks and balances that giant corporations have increasingly usurped, rewriting laws that give corporations the same rights as individuals, but without public accountability to match that usurpation of power. This corporate tyranny has corrupted the Justice branch of government as well as the Executive branch.  They have bought-off the Legislative branch.
 

Just look how blatant is the corporate collusion with government today.  Not just with Big Oil and Big Pharma or reelection campaigns financed by corporate media moguls.  Not just Rumsfeld and Aspartame or Cheney and Halliburton.  The major TV media are in bed with military-industrial contractors and the Big Pharma dominated medical-industrial complex.  Embedded reporters spin the news, government ad agencies create fake news, and Pentagon departments fabricate intelligence… all to “make a killing” on war and disease with no accountability to the public’s interest for ending the war.  It’s out of control.
 

People have always said I was ahead of my time.  I always thought I was right on time. But perhaps there was a larger cycle that we all had to be “on time” for.
 

How long will it take for the American people to resurrect our horse-and-buggy representation systems with an electronic Space Age upgrade for the Family of Man in our new global village?  Will enough good people wise up and rise up with a vision of virtue and valor for the victory of the rEVOLUTION?
 

Are you ready for the Evolution Revolution?
 

There are good reasons why there is nothing more valuable than an idea which has found its time.  Necessity is indeed the mother of invention.  Global resources are limited, and imminent Earth changes will limit them further.  The beginning of a new world of Unity Conscience is truly the end of the world as we have known it.  We are ALL CONNECTED as never before in history.
 

The potential for our global village today is
no less profound than the potential in the
New World of America that U.S. Founders
were pioneering. It's a global issue now.

 

We’re ALL together in this connection as ONE community of many community networks.  Enlightened Netizens aspire to being freely informed and upward-mobile with pure intent for the highest and best use of the CONSTITUTION of first principles for freedom and justice for all.
 

"It is at all times necessary,
and more particularly so during the progress of a revolution

and until right ideas confirm themselves by habit,

that we frequently refresh our patriotism by reference to
First Principles".

- by Thomas Paine who sparked the American Revolution with
COMMON SENSE, the most successful pamphlet in history
whose name and
flame are the same.
 

Support the Constitution – Network for the Net worth of
Mass-to-Mass TeLeComm,

 

 

 

BOTTOM LINE QUOTABLES:

 

THE GOLDEN RULE OF GOVERNMENT:
"The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything
 which would be unlawful for them to do themselves."

~ John Locke


"It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million human beings collected together
 are not under the same
moral laws which bind them separately."
~ Thomas Jefferson

 

"The issue today is the same as it has been
throughout all history, whether man
shall be allowed to govern himself
 or be ruled by a small elite."

~ Thomas Jefferson

 

"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility
  against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."

~ Thomas Jefferson

(Engraved in stone on the Jefferson Memorial)

 

"The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who,
in a time of
moral crisis, maintain their neutrality."

~ Dante, The Inferno

 

"If once [the people] become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I,
and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors,
shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our
general nature, in spite of individual exceptions."

~Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 1787

 

THE HEART OF THE CONSTITUTION IS THE VIRTUE OF, BY AND FOR GREATER LOVE.

"Miracles do not cluster. Hold on to the Constitution of the United States of America
 and the Republic for which it stands; what has happened once in six thousand years
 may never happen again.
Hold on to your Constitution, for if the American
Constitution shall fail there will be anarchy throughout the world."

~ Daniel Webster

 

"A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government
 on Earth... and what no just government should refuse."

~ Thomas Jefferson in a Letter to James Madison, Paris, Dec. 20, 1787

 

"It is common observation here that our cause is
the cause of all mankind,
and we are fighting for their liberty
in defending our own."
~ Benjamin Franklin

 

'When once a republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying
any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and
restoring
 its lost principles;
every other correction is either useless or a new evil.'
"
~ Thomas Jefferson: copied into his Commonplace Book.

 

"It's time we asked ourselves if we still know the freedoms intended for us by the Founding Fathers. James Madison said, ‘We base all our experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government.’ This idea that government was beholden to the people, that it had no other source of power, is still the newest, most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves."
– Ronald Reagan October 27, 1964

 

KEYNOTE FOR CONTEXT AND MEANING OF THE CONSTITUTION
"Do not separate text from historical background. If you do,
you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution,
which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of
illegitimate government"

 ~ James Madison, Chief Architect of the Constitution


Full Spectrum '5D' TLC:
 via interactive TeLeCommunion:
TeLeComm for TeLeCommunity,
TeLeConscience, TeLeCare 
and
next 
TeLeCommerce
 
economy.

CopyRound © 2022
Worldwide Foundation

 

All “Rights” ( ) Well “Rounded” ( ) & “Synergized” ( )
  with the healthy, holistic and otherwise holy “whole” (
)
in all five archetypal dimensions of universal-cosmic

 
.

"In the beginning, God geometrized." 
~ Ancient Hermetic Wisdom
"In the end, we become what we geometrize." 
~ Modern
 Heartcom Wisdom

         To love with all your mind ~ , eft-brain ogic of a inear nature,
                            and all your heart ~
 , right-brain intuition of a nonlinear nature,  
             and all your strength ~
 , balanced brain of a synergy nature,
and your Netizen neighbor ~ 
in our Global Village (whole brain)
                          as thyself ~ 
, interdependent TLC Co-Creation.