Ran across them in another thread on Ornery and was reminded that I'd been meaning to take a look at their platform for a while now.
What they're proposing actually sounds kind of interesting. Government based not on restrictions but on education. I think I could get behind that. The most interesting part to me, though, is this bit:
quote: THE SOLUTION
The best government is “nature’s government” -- natural law, which governs the universe with perfect order and without a problem. Nations can govern themselves with this same perfection in administration.
The most effective way governments can deal with problems is to prevent them in the first place -- by enabling people to stop violating natural law. How? Not through legislation, but through education that brings the life of every citizen, and the nation as a whole, into harmony with natural law.
How does one learn to think and act in accord with natural law? Understanding specific laws of nature (for example, learning about the health risks of smoking) is helpful. But the laws of nature are too vast and complex to be fully comprehended intellectually. And intellectual understanding alone is not enough to guarantee life in accord with natural law. A new kind of education is needed that will enable every citizen to live -- and every government to function -- spontaneously in harmony with natural law.
The most modern and most ancient understandings of natural law describe a universal level of nature’s intelligence underlying all forms and phenomena in the universe, including the human mind and body. Modern physics has glimpsed this unified source of all the laws of nature. The oldest tradition of knowledge of natural law, the Vedic tradition of India, describes this universal level of nature’s intelligence and states that it can be located -- and accessed -- at the deepest level of the human mind, at the level of pure consciousness [2].
For thought and action to be in tune with natural law, it is necessary to experience and develop pure consciousness. This is not the commonly understood idea of “consciousness-raising” -- becoming more sensitive to or knowledgeable about issues. Pure consciousness is the fundamental level of awareness, the basis of all thinking and behavior. It is the deepest level of natural law in the individual, which is identical with the deepest level of natural law that administers the entire universe. Developing consciousness means connecting individual life with this holistic value of natural law -- with nature’s government.
1. To bring the life of individuals into accord with natural law, education must provide a technique to give them direct access to the holistic value of natural law in pure consciousness.
2. To fully address social problems, governments must reduce social stress by bringing the whole society into accord with natural law.
Society as a whole has a “collective consciousness,” which is the sum of the consciousness of all its individual members. Individual consciousness influences collective consciousness, and in turn is influenced by it [2, 13].
If collective consciousness can be brought in tune with natural law, the whole population will cease to violate the laws of nature. Social stress will be reduced, and problems such as crime and violence will automatically decrease.
3. Government should function with the efficiency and effectiveness of nature’s government.
The Natural Law Party promotes a new definition of government: Government should be able to prevent problems. A government without the ability to prevent problems is not a sovereign government. It becomes crisis driven, a victim of situations and circumstances. Moreover, such a government itself becomes an unwieldy and costly problem for the nation.
To fulfill its highest goals, every government should create and maintain a group professionally engaged in creating coherence throughout society. Such a group would quietly bring the support of natural law to national law; solve problems at their basis in individual and collective consciousness; and promote the highest level of efficiency in governmental administration.
Interesting stuff.
Posted by Sopwith (Member # 4640) on :
Umm unless you disagreed with them. Then you'd need to be re-educated.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
While it would be refreshing to be led by people who were so OPENLY full of crap, I'd probably get tired of laughing at them eventually. So, no.
Posted by Dan_raven (Member # 3383) on :
I read it.
It said: Natural Law is good. Anything not Natural Law is not good.
Governments stop problems before they become problems or else they have problems.
and
Natural Law is the most efficient form of governance.
I still have no clue--What is Natural Law?
Social Darwinism? Division of the Races? Women locked away to safely have the babies while men fight for food? Art, Literature, Drama, Games, The Internet are all out because they are not natural? The strong rule the weak, have all the women, and outlaw any rival male competitor?
Posted by T. Analog Kid (Member # 381) on :
I would hope something nice and Aristotelian...
Posted by TheTick (Member # 2883) on :
Just be glad it's not the Natural Light party. ::shudders::
Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
Dan and Sopwith, I pretty much agree with your assessments. When I read about the party in passing, it seemed like a party based on rationalism. Now that I've been able to peruse their site, it looks like they are a wholly owned subsidiary of some kind of flavor of eastern religion. Most of the solutions to the problems of society are by engaging in their eastern philosophy. For instance, one of the links pointed to transcendental meditation as a way to prevent crime.
Now, I'm not saying they're wrong, but they are no different than those Christians who say that everyone would be happier, and a utopia could be accomplished if the Bible were made the center of the country. Curriculums of schools, parenting, etcetera, all based on the Bible. Obviously, this is a problem for non-Christians, and their solution would be a problem for non-whatever they are.
While I realize that the party is going to do whatever it can to make it appear to be a player in national politics, even their inflated numbers gave me pause. They say that more than a million people voted for their candidates during the last couple of election cycles. If anything like that number voted for them, then that's pretty interesting to me in the sense that I had no idea that there were that many people oriented towards their way of thinking. Huh.
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :