If the public doesn’t read anymore, one can make videos to deliver the message (given the time and the proper equipment).

If the public is easily bored and is saturated with interactive entertainment, then one can make quizzes and games and even mobile “apps” to compete for their attention (given the time and the proper equipment).

If the public doesn’t donate, one can search for a way to raise his own money to support the effort.

If the public is stuck on faulty paradigms, one can write extensively to disprove those paradigms and to offer better ones….and then turn those writings into videos, games, and other entertaining forms of communication.

If the public (or the media) won’t spread the word on one’s efforts, one can search out ways to promote his own efforts (if he can raise the money for it).

But what can one do if the public doesn’t care?

Suddenly, it is no longer the message to the public that is the matter at hand, but the reformation of the public itself.  It is hard to imagine a more fundamental problem than this, or one of any greater scope.  Indeed, the problem of the needed public paradigm shift is orders of magnitude greater than the mere problem of organizing a collaborative solution for the decline in the rule of law amongst interested people.

Thus do we “leave our finger” here at the ROLR website while we go off to work on the more fundamental problem.  It will come down to whether individuals can be converted from their current passive nature into effective leaders of others.  It will come down to whether they will adopt the paradigms of rationality, truth, and self correction, which all should be prerequisites for anyone seeking to change the paradigms of others.

Time will tell.  So much is at stake.

The two-pronged idea was quite simple:  Find candidates who would pledge to abide strictly by the rule of law while in office, and find voters who would vote only for such candidates.  The first part was a surprising success in the 2010 election cycle, with 3,000 federal and state candidates invited and 71 taking the Candidate Pledge.  The grand failure, however, came with the Voter’s Pledge efforts.  Even though we served up somewhere around 19,000 pageloads at the ROLR website in 2010, only 24 voters signed the Voter’s Pledge.  This number should have been in the thousands.

Why is ROLR failing?

Since we have not been able to fund widespread surveying, our evidence is only anecdotal.  If our observations are accurate, however, the following represent various reasons that ROLR is failing to hook the voters:

1. The public doesn’t understand the Rule of Law and why it is crucial in a constitutional republic.
2. Voters have a hard time perceiving that there could be more power in not voting as than in voting for the lesser of two evils.
3. There is so much propaganda about voting that many feel it is their consummate obligation and the greatest possible act of patriotism, with the possible exception of giving one’s life in the military.  It is for many, however, a devotional or even semi-religious act, and not necessarily a rational one.  For them to sit an election out for lack of a lawful candidate, therefore, borders on the unthinkable.
4. Many voters are more focused on keeping certain candidates out of office than in putting certain types of candidates into office.  They think that lesser-of-two-evils voting is a viable political strategy, even though the record proves otherwise.
5. Voters do not understand that both major political parties are deeply and irreversibly corrupt and have been for well over a century.  Therefore, they continue to hold out hope that somehow, their favorite party will get its act together and pull off some meaningful reform if they’ll just keep supporting it.  That is, they hope that one of the two major parties will somehow act against its own character to bring about something substantial.
6. Many voters still want to believe in Santa Claus, as it were.  That is, they’re quick to believe a candidate who tells them that things are not so terribly bad, and that if they will only vote for them, we can turn things around.  Therefore, ROLR is seen as unnecessary, and frankly, as scary.
7. ROLR didn’t have the marketing funding required to reach enough people in order to develop the “critical mass” necessary to start a viable movement.
8. ROLR didn’t have the funding necessary to continually document governmental violations of the Constitution, raising public awareness.
9. ROLR didn’t have the funding necessary to continue developing reading material, games, and other items that could have assisted in “going viral”.
10. Even though ROLR contacted mainstream media on many occasions, not once did any news agency run a story about it.  (This fact is seen by ROLR founders as a good indication that we may actually be on the right track!)
11. No famous candidates took the ROLR pledges.  Even some major candidates whose typical rhetoric would appear to most to be quite in keeping with ROLR’s paradigms neglected to respond to our invitations.  If they had signed the pledges, perhaps their supporters would have gotten more involved.  (It is important to note that not once did any such candidate respond with criticisms or concerns about the pledge, or asking to learn more about us or our long-term intentions.)

To put it shortly, America has no serviceable grasp of the concept of the Rule of Law.  They do not know what it is, and worse, they do not care to know what it is.  Perhaps it is not surprising that several candidates stepped up to champion the cause by taking the pledges; candidates are typically of the leader type, after all.  But we must face the practical fact that, without voters of character, a candidate of character is sadly worthless.

The decision of the hour, therefore, regards what is to be done about our sorry state.  Would the nation have responded if only we had tweaked the ROLR message in some particular way?  Would they have come around to the ROLR way of thinking if only we had held out for another election cycle?  Or would it be necessary to launch a billion-dollar publicity campaign in order to get the attention necessary for ROLR to “go viral”? (After many months of analysis and consideration, I am inclined to believe the latter.)

ROLR is a good idea, right?  So how can we just give up on it?

Well, we are not “giving up”, exactly.  Rather, we are putting the website in mothballs until such a time as it seems worthwhile to proceed again.  This wholly unfunded venture never received a dime in donations (even though we asked).  Nor did it ever receive any more than the most trivial offers of volunteer help.  Not one Meetup group was ever formed.  Indeed, fewer than five notes of commendation were ever received by ROLR from the public at large.  Though we hate to suspend our efforts, we simply cannot afford the time and money required to give it another go for the 2012 season.  Rather than to destroy the website, however, we are leaving it up at our own expense in the hope that the right person or persons will stumble upon it and take a mind to get involved.

As for us, however, we are forced to “pick our battles”, and we cannot justify such a use of our time in what is proving to be a failing movement at present.  We remain, however, completely convinced that the ROLR strategy is a viable one, provided that we could manage to change but one thing.  That one thing, however, is colossal; it is the low character of the American people.  In the aggregate, they are utterly duped into believing that their cyclical electoral activities are still worthwhile.  Even if they were disappointed in the last election, they still answer the call to get excited about “getting behind” their favorite parties’ latest and greatest candidates for the next go-round.  Never mind that each successive round of this “party game” puts us further and further from the Rule of Law, from a sound economy, and from freedom.  It is as if they were the victims of a mass brainwashing exercise, faithfully carrying out the will of some evil master without a clue as to their role and responsibility in the whole ordeal.

Please think on this:  If the people cannot change their characters–if they cannot exercise the most fundamental right of all (the right of control over one’s own mind)–and if they cannot exercise the most basic of human obligations (responsibility for one’s own actions), then is there really anything else in America worth fighting for? When the people are of such a low mental state, aren’t we completely defeated and undermined already?

Indeed, how can anyone justify boasting about America’s “greatness” when her people are generally so dull and distracted as to willingly collaborate with lawless politicians who routinely violate the very laws that established their offices?  This behavior is anything but “great”.  Yet the propaganda continues, and we are ever encouraged to believe the fallacious notion that America is somehow greater than the sum of her parts.  The fact of the matter, however, is that we not only lack the sense to follow our own laws, but we don’t even understand why this is a problem.  In light of this fact, how could any honest person endeavor to praise America’s aggregate character?  Those who do are liars playing to the sentiments of the public—who themselves would rather hear reassuring lies than the troubling truth.

There is still hope for us, theoretically.  It does not reside, however, in politics as usual.  Nor does it reside in religion as usual.  Rather, it resides in the possibility of a massive and short-term paradigm shift on the part of the public.  Such massive and immediate shifts, however, are exactly the opposite of what typical politics and religion strive for.  On the contrary, their typical mantra is something along the lines of “change takes time”.  They generally persuade their members to put their hopes in the fallacious notion that substantial  long-term success can somehow result from mere tiny and incremental “victories” at present.  The memory of most is short, however, and they forget how many times they have been persuaded by such promises to plant seeds that would never bear fruit in season.

Interestingly, one never hears such incremental mantra as “change takes time” in the hospital Emergency Room.  Instead, one hears orders given and carried out immediately—even radical orders, such as for chemical injections or for surgery.  But Americans generally do not believe that any real state of emergency exists.  Thus are radical treatments viewed as silly, alarmist, or even sinister.

After giving several years’ worth of contemplation to the question, I am now fully convinced that even if the entire federal government, along with each of the 50 state governments, were abducted by aliens and whisked away forever to some other planet, the citizens of America would not seize the opportunity to do anything differently.  Instead, if their current and habitual behavior is any indication, they would simply pick more people quite like they ones who were abducted and send them to the seats of government to carry on business as usual.

To say that the public is uninformed about what ails us would be a colossal understatement.  Not only could they not identify our fundamental issues, but they must first be disabused of the misinformation to which they currently cling.  Before they will ever venture to sort out the facts, however, they must first come to care about such things.

It is quite difficult to reform a republic when the populace is disinterested and is itself in need of reform.

These three paradigms should be the goal of our societal reform:

1. All rational, all the time.
2. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth—no matter where it may lead.
3. Self correction is the rightful duty of mankind.

Kay and I will continue to pursue the promotion of these paradigms in the mean time.  Until we get some indication that the public is ready for ROLR, or until we find some partners who have the “right stuff” to give ROLR the boost it needs, we’ll leave it parked here as an archive of the effort so far.  We hope in the next few months to publish a book on how character is the fundamental American flaw, and thereafter, a website analyzing how various shortcomings in our Constitution have been exploited over the centuries–and what could be done about it if we all cared to fix anything!

With stubborn hope that a better day will soon dawn,

Jack Pelham

Apparently, the thought of fixing problems is a radical thought in American politics.  It seems much more fashionable simply to complain about things!  Indeed, some people make quite a reputation for themselves for being adept at knowing just what to complain about.  But ask them for actual solutions and it becomes quickly apparent that you have asked for something outside the scope of their base of concerns.  Complaining, therefore, is for “lightweights”, while solutions are for “heavyweights”.  And “heavyweights”, it seems are a rare breed.

Meanwhile, the political parties seem to have split up the nation’s problems, each adding a few of them to their own ostensible agendas for reform.  One party is for fixing this, while the other is for fixing that.  But does anybody notice that neither party is effective at fixing anything when they are in power?  The “fiscally responsible” Republicans, when they had power under Bush 43, actually increased (more than ever before) the size and spending of government.  Meanwhile, the “impeach Bush” Democrats who gained control during the Bush tenure utterly failed to impeach Bush, doing their best to bury the bill in committee.  Thus do we see that this sort of solutions talk is only talk, and not sincere policy.

The public, meanwhile, seems plenty content with the all-talk-but-no-action performance of our “two-party system”.  One would likely have to shake them up a bit to get them even to give serious consideration to the possibility of actually fixing something!

I remember a discussion I had with a concerned citizen in an exceedingly-corrupt town in Tennessee.  She was utterly shocked when I said, “I can’t think of any problem we have that couldn’t be solved.”  She said, “Really?”, and before I could answer, she said it again:  “Really?”

I asked her to name any problem, and when she did, I explained how it could be solved by reforming governmental practice back to the city charter.  Then I asked her to name another and another, which I addressed similarly.  It didn’t take long before she realized that problems are best solved (and considered) one by one.  She also realized that she was speaking more from a position of being overwhelmed, than of logical analysis.

And so it goes with the nation; we are emotionally convinced that attempts at reform are “useless”, even though there has hardly been any substantial attempt at reform that is not itself corrupt.  For instance, it will serve no good whatsoever if the Republican push for the fall elections is just an attempt to regain power, rather than actually to fix our current problems.  (And the regaining of power is exactly what most candidates are after!)

If you actually wanted to fix things, rather than just to regain power, you’d come up with something considerably different from the practices (and platform) of the Republican Party.  In fact, you’d come up with something much more like ROLR.  Our simple pledges for candidates, if faithfully followed by incumbents, would do more to reform our governments than any partisan victory this fall.  The reason for this is simple:  Most of our current problems have resulted from excesses of power.  Therefore, those elected officials who would faithfully abide by their enumerated powers, and use their fullest checks-and-balances powers to keep the rest of the government from exceeding the law, would, by this one simple paradigm shift, do more to change our halls of government than any other reform movement could possible do.

The reason that neither major party will ever endorse ROLR is quite likely because ROLR would be a threat to their mode of operation.  They would rather not solve, but promise to solve.  They would rather not honor the Constitution in practice, but only in rhetoric.

The need of the hour, however, is not for political parties to support ROLR, but for candidates and voters to support ROLR as a way to sidestep this stupid “party” game and actually to get something fixed!

Having become aware through our web statistics program that some number of visitors have come to ROLR from a discussion about ROLR at ResistNet.com, I traced the visits back to this discussion initiated by a Henry Wallace: http://www.resistnet.com/forum/topics/dianne-berryhill-candidate-for?id=2600775%3ATopic%3A2178381&page=2

I tried to register with ResistNet to participate in the conversation there, but I would have been forced to sign a statement against the “leftist” trend in government.  I, however, do not believe that only “the left” in government is violating our Constitution.  Indeed, those identifying themselves as “the right” seem to violate it just as frequently.  Therefore, I opted not to join and to post my reply to Mr. Wallace here.

About ROLR’s Legislative Pledge, Mr. Wallace says the following to a candidate:

The first line of the Pledge you have taken probably says it all:

“I pledge allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America, to the sovereign Republic established thereby, and to the just and equitable Rule of Law thereunder.”

Other than just sounding very amateurish, this Pledge never bothers to DEFINE this “Rule of Law” which it PLACES ON AN EQUAL FOOTING WITH OUR PRECIOUS CONSTITUTION.

Mr. Wallace fails to take the actual wording of the pledge into consideration.  He asserts that ROLR puts the rule of law “on an equal footing with our…Constitution.”  If this is so, how is it that the pledge says “I pledge allegiance to the Constitution….and to the ….Rule of Law thereunder.”?  Clearly, the “Rule of Law” referred to here is occurring under something.  And what is the antecedent of “thereunder”?  It is “the Constitution”, of course.  Therefore, the pledge calls for the Rule of Law under the Constitution.  Mr. Wallace, however, asserts that we are calling for the “Rule of Law” “on an equal footing” with the Constitution.  This is a simple matter of fact, however, which may be readily observed by any reasonable and honest person.

In criticizing a ROLR-pledge-signing candidate, Mr. Wallace attempts to raise suspicion about the definition of “rule of law”:

Simply put, Dianne, I don’t think you have ANY IDEA what you signed here! Someone could come to you later with a “definition” of Rule of Law, and you would not even be able to say, “Hey, THAT’S not what I signed!”. Because what you signed does not even DEFINE what is meant by Rule of Law.The term was NEVER USED in our Constitution. “…The rule of law has been described as “an exceedingly elusive notion” giving rise to a “rampant divergence of understandings”. See

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_law

The reason that there is no definition of “rule of law” included in the ROLR pledges is that the term’s definition is self-evident within the context of the pledges.  As previously discussed, the “thereunder” puts the Rule of Law under the Constitution, which is itself a finite and stable document. Thus “rule of law thereunder” is far from “an exceedingly elusive notion”.

Perhaps we catch of glimpse of Mr. Wallace’s drive to malign the term and his dubious tactics when we witness how he snatched his quotation from its natural context.  What Mr. Wallace quotes to give the impression that “rule of law” is beyond definition is this:

“an exceedingly elusive notion” giving rise to a “rampant divergence of understandings”.

Interestingly, however, the full sentence, from which the quotations are wrested, reads thus (emphasis added):

While the rule of law has been described as “an exceedingly elusive notion”^[2] giving rise to a “rampant divergence of understandings”,^[3] a dichotomy can be identified between two principal conceptions of the rule of law: a formalist or “thin” and a substantive or “thick” definition of the rule of law.

Thus do we see that Mr. Wallace’s suggestion that “rule of law” has so many possible definitions as to make it a useless and/or dangerous term actually does violence to the very context from which he quotes.  Indeed, this context notes two and only two “principle conceptions” of the rule of law.  One has a difficult time imagining that Mr. Wallace intent was to faithfully convey the assertion of the Wikipedia author.

Mr. Wallace suggests to the candidate that ROLR might someday come forward with a definition of “rule of law” that is contrary to her understanding of the term at the time of her signing of the pledge.  Interestingly, however, the term “rule of law” has been defined on this website for sometime as follows:

It is interesting to imagine how Mr. Wallace might propose some alternative definition that might secretly replace this present definition in the future.

Now, to show just how easy is the common definition of “rule of law”, I have pasted below the results of a Google search on “define:rule of law”.  The results are pasted below in their entirety.  The items in gray font are the ones that do not purport to define the common term, but that deal with something else:

• a state of order in which events conform to the law
  wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
• [[File:A mosaic LAW by Frederick Dielman, 1847-1935.JPG|thumb|200px|right|Mosaic representing both the judicial and legislative aspects of law. Woman on throne holds sword to chastise the guilty and palm branch to reward the meritorious. ...
  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_law
• The Rule of Law Index is a tool designed by the Wold Justice Project team to measure countries’ adherence to the Rule of Law. It is a comprehensive tool that measures nations’ performance on 16 factors and 68 sub-factors. …
  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_Law
• The Rule of Law (Օրինաց երկիր, Orinats Erkir) is a centrist political party in Armenia, led by Artur Baghdasarian. It is the fourth largest party in the Armenian National Assembly. …
  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_Law_(Armenia)
• the doctrine that no individual is above the law and that everyone must answer to it
  en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rule_of_law
• One of the cornerstones of democratic society, meaning that everyone is subject to the law. It is not just the rule that everyone is covered by the Criminal Code and must be charged and convicted if appropriate. …
  bitbucket.icaap.org/dict.pl
• A legal system in which rules are clear, well-understood, and fairly enforced, including property rights and enforcement of contracts.
  www-personal.umich.edu/~alandear/glossary/r.html
• All government officials and all private citizens must follow the laws of the nation and must be treated equally under the law. The government is created by and for the people and is answerable to the people.
  courts.oregon.gov/Coos/glossaryofterms.page
• another phrase for law and order; the principles that require that the powers of the state be derived from and limited either by legislation enacted by Parliament or a legislature or judicial decisions made by independent courts;
  www.manitobacourts.mb.ca/definitions.html
• The rule of law is the principle that governmental authority is legitimately exercised only in accordance with written, publicly disclosed laws that are adopted and enforced in accordance with established procedure. The principle is intended to be a safeguard against arbitrary governance.
  www.sos.ky.gov/kids/civics/glossary.htm
• The principle that every member of a society, even a ruler, must follow the law.
  asn.am/classes/standards/terms/r/r.php

So I ask just how “elusive” is the definition of this term?  If we were to listen to Mr. Wallace, we would immediately suspect that anyone using the term must be up to something.  But if we observe the use of the term in the real world, we can see that it is not suspicious at all.  And if the general definition is in question, there’s always the context, which Mr. Wallace didn’t seem interested in exploring.  Here’s the third paragraph of the Legislative Pledge:

I pledge that if I am elected, I will not act outside the limited powers of the office, even if the Executive or Judicial branches, or the people themselves, or any interest, whether foreign or domestic, should insist that I can or should do so.  I will obey the Constitution or Charter that created my office, and not the rule of popular opinion.  Should that Constitution or Charter prove inadequate or unjust, I will work to amend it lawfully as needed, but shall obey it strictly until it is lawfully changed.

Could it be any clearer that the ROLR pledges put the US Constitution as the Supreme Law of the Land?

One wonders, therefore, the true nature of Mr. Wallace’s objections to ROLR.

I am frequently troubled by absurd assertions about our Constitution…things that seem to be repeated with increasing regularity and that threaten to become foundational platitudes in our nation’s political (un)awareness.  I thought I’d address a few of these today

Plain Meaning?

“…when I taught about the Constitution, I emphasized the ambiguity and vagueness of the document.  In short, there is no “plain meaning”. ” read more…

In our first week of actively recruiting candidates to sign the Rule of Law Revolution Candidate’s Pledge, we have had a very encouraging response with twenty candidates now signed and several more having notified us that their signatures are imminent.  (See them here,)

Over the past week, we emailed to nearly 400 candidates, whose addresses we have found from gleaning the Internet in search of any and all candidates in the US. We do not know how many candidates are actively campaigning across the country, but to put it in perspective, if only one candidate was active per city, that would be roughly 30,000!  Our 400 current invitees, therefore, are likely around only 1/1000th of all the candidates out there.

Naturally, we do not expect that every candidate will sign.  Indeed, it is apparent that many candidates don’t even know what the rule of law is.  And of those who DO, a great many of them intentionally violate it as part of their scheme and artifice while posing as public servants.  Even so, we are proud to have begun this important work, and are committed to seeing it through—whether it takes a year for “Rule of Law Revolution” to become a household term, or twenty years.

We will continue contacting candidates as we go.  (We have another 90 email invitations being prepared to go out today.)  Our hope, however, is that the public will become active in inviting their favorite candidates to take the Candidate’s Pledge.  This is what will be required for “viral” growth.  Further, we hope to turn our attention shortly to important marketing efforts such as:

1. Online Advertising
2. Social network marketing
3. Providing promotional items such as business cards, t-shirts, etc.

The Voter’s Pledge
Meanwhile, we are working on fortifying the message of the Voter’s Pledge.  Signing numbers have been disappointing so far, but this is not particularly troubling as the website currently has very little in the way of convincing voters to sign the Pledge.  We’ve been anxious to jump on this task and are excited to tackle it in the very near future.  Be looking soon for things like “Three reasons you should sign the Voter’s Pledge today!”

About Leadership
We have been very proud to see a significant number of candidates sign the ROLR Pledges so early on.  When we ponder how it is that the number of candidate signatures now exceeds the number of voter signatures, we wonder whether it’s not fairly obvious: that the leaders among us are simply more apt to “get it” quickly than are the rest.  That is, those who have already been working on “making it happen” by running for office themselves are likely much quicker on their feet when it comes to realizing the importance of this interwoven system of pledges.  We look forward, therefore, to seeing the candidates exercise their leadership influence to bring more and more voters in as time goes by.

As we’ve been saying since the beginning, the Rule of Law Revolution is a new paradigm for this generation (although it was alive and well in 1789 when the Constitution was ratified).  We certainly understand that it takes time to change the prevailing political paradigm of a nation, but with such an encouraging return for our limited (and unfunded) early efforts, we might just be seeing the beginning of something really big!

One of the ROLR candidates emailed this morning, suggesting that having the “Party Affiliation” column on the table of candidates is not in keeping with the whole circumpartisan angle of ROLR.  While this is something we had previously considered at ROLR, my personal bent toward collecting and distributing every bit of data I can get my hands on had won out—until now.  Today’s suggestion, however, made just the right sense, and at just the right time.  Hence, read more…

After a great many months of silence, I received an email today from a fan who noted the inactivity of the site and asked if ROLR is “dead in the water”?

Good question! read more…