Forum Post: Re-write of The Bill of Rights based on OWS member comments...
Posted 12 years ago on Feb. 19, 2012, 11:25 a.m. EST by uncensored
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FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF CITIZENS
AMENDMENT 1. Citizens of the U.S.A. have the right to work, that is, are guaranteed the right to employment and payment for their work in accordance with its quantity and quality. The right to work is ensured by the communal organization of the national economy, the steady growth of the productive forces of our society, the elimination of the possibility of economic crises, and the abolition of unemployment.
AMENDMENT 2. Citizens of the U.S.A. have the right to rest and leisure. The right to rest and leisure is ensured by the reduction of the working day to seven hours for the overwhelming majority of the workers, the institution of annual vacations with full pay for workers and employees and the provision of a wide network of sanatoria, rest homes and clubs for the accommodation of the working people.
AMENDMENT 3. Citizens of the U.S.A. have the right to maintenance in old age and also in case of sickness or loss of capacity to work. This right is ensured by the extensive development of social insurance of workers and employees at state expense, free medical service for the working people and the provision of a wide network of health resorts for the use of the working people.
AMENDMENT 4. Citizens of the U.S.A. have the right to education. This right is ensured by universal, compulsory elementary education; by education, including higher education, being free of charge; by the system of state stipends for the overwhelming majority of students in the universities and colleges; by instruction in schools being conducted in the native Language, and by the organization in the factories, communal farms, machine and tractor stations and collective farms of free vocational, technical and agronomic training for the working people.
AMENDMENT 5. Women in the U.S.A. are accorded equal rights with men in all spheres of economic, state, cultural, social and political life. The possibility of exercising these rights is ensured to women by granting them an equal right with men to work, payment for work, rest and leisure, social insurance and education, and by state protection of the interests of mother and child, prematernity and maternity leave with full pay, and the provision of a wide network of maternity homes, nurseries and kindergartens.
AMENDMENT 6. Equality of rights of citizens of the U.S.A., irrespective of their nationality or race, in all spheres of economic, state, cultural, social and political life, is an indefeasible law. Any direct or indirect restriction of the rights of, or, conversely, any establishment of direct or indirect privileges for, citizens on account of their race or nationality, as well as any advocacy of racial or national exclusiveness or hatred and contempt, is punishable by law.
AMENDMENT 7. In order to ensure to citizens freedom of conscience, the church in the U.S.A. is separated from the state, and the school from the church. Freedom of religious worship and freedom of antireligious propaganda is recognized for all citizens. AMENDMENT 8. In conformity with the interests of the working people, and in order to strengthen the communal system, the citizens of the U.S.A. are guaranteed by law:
a. freedom of speech; b. freedom of the press; c. freedom of assembly, including the holding of mass meetings; d. freedom of street processions and demonstrations.
These civil rights are ensured by placing at the disposal of the working people and their organizations printing presses, stocks of paper, public buildings, the streets, communications facilities and other material requisites for the exercise of these rights.
AMENDMENT 9. In conformity with the interests of the working people, and in order to develop the organizational initiative and political activity of the masses of the people, citizens of the U.S.A. are ensured the right to unite in public organizations--trade unions, cooperative associations, youth organizations,' sport and defense organizations, cultural, technical and scientific societies; and the most active and politically most conscious citizens in the ranks of the working class and other sections of the working people unite in The Party, which is the vanguard of the working people in their struggle to strengthen and develop the communal system and is the leading core of all organizations of the working people, both public and state.
AMENDMENT 10. Citizens of the U.S.A. are guaranteed inviolability of the person. No person may be placed under arrest except by decision of a court or with the sanction of a procurator.
AMENDMENT 11. The inviolability of the homes of citizens and privacy of correspondence are protected by law.
AMENDMENT 12. The U.S.A. affords the right of asylum to foreign citizens persecuted for defending the interests of the working people, or for their scientific activities, or for their struggle for national liberation.
AMENDMENT 13. It is the duty of every citizen of the U.S.A. to abide by the New Constitution of the USA, to observe the laws, to maintain labor discipline, honestly to perform public duties, and to respect the rules of communal intercourse.
AMENDMENT 14. It is the duty of every citizen of the U.S.A. to safeguard and strengthen public, communal property as the sacred and inviolable foundation of the Soviet system, as the source of the wealth and might of the country, as the source of the prosperous and cultured life of all the working people. Persons committing offenses against public, communal property are enemies of the people.
AMENDMENT 15. Universal military service is law. Military service in the Workers' and Peasants' Army is an honorable duty of the citizens of the U.S.A.
AMENDMENT 16. To defend the brotherland is the sacred duty of every citizen of the U.S.A. Treason to the country--violation of the oath of allegiance, desertion to the enemy, impairing the military power of the state, espionage is punishable with all the severity of the law as the most heinous of crimes.
Is this what you're looking for?
If I'm reading this correctly then you copied and pasted the constitution of the USSR here and simply replaced whatever term the Soviets used for themselves when they wrote it with "USA" and made other minor, cosmetic changes to it. The government that arose from that constitution (as you well know) cost Russia the lives of over twenty million of her own citizens during the reign of one man alone, and nobody in their right minds would seek to reproduce that government in America. Even most of the radicals on here don't want to see this country turn into that, and their vision of whatever "ism" they sign onto is nothing like what Soviet Russia was.
Should we all get in line behind the radicals? Absolutely not. On the other hand, should people brandishing relics of an already dead system in our faces really get us all riled up and ready to charge at our newfound enemies (who are, of course, defined and appropriately demonized by the people who post things like this)? I should hope not. If you take issue with the specific stances of OWS or its members, then pick one, explain what your problem with it is, and let's have a civilized debate on the matter.
If you really feel the need to resort to creating a Two Minutes' Hate to get people to listen to you or support your position, then perhaps it's time to reevaluate what you do and don't support.
Do you just pretend that most of OWS thinks as rationally as you do? Have you not read the posts here since October? BTW, you are correct about where this came from. Glad it caught your attention.
I don't think that they all do (although I must admit I came into this thing hoping that a lot of them were) and if you read a lot of the posts I put up addressing that are addressed to or responding to people who are on board with this movement you'd see that my opinion of them is much less rosy now than when this started. I'm getting more and more disappointed with the lack of direction, organization, or desire to move into the territory of political activism. The reason I'm still around despite all that is not that I'm blindly enamored with the movement, but because if this thing dies now it will have wasted an enormous amount of potential.
The other reason I came down on you so harshly is because as oppressive and impoverishing as Soviet-style communism was, not even the looniest of the people I've spoken to on here would like to put something similar to that in place. That said, it's been twenty years since the USSR collapsed and still Soviet-style communism remains far too convenient a spectre for large corporations and neocons to point to when they want to push for further deregulation and further erosion of the social safety net.
If you'd pointed out how obnoxious, unrealistic, and/or incoherent certain people on here have been, or demanded that someone answer for the continued violence in Oakland, or wanted to know if anyone here had some sort of coherent strategy for 2012-2016 and what exactly that strategy would be intended to achieve, I would have acknowledged what you had to say (in a couple of cases even agreed with you), given the best answer I could, and then honestly solicited your opinion about what you'd like to see this country become over the next twenty years, because as different as everyone here appears I doubt that there's as much overall divergence of preferred long-term outcome as a lot of people believe.
In sum, my complaint with you isn't a statement that radicalism is a good thing or that I believe fuzzy ends, a nonexistent leadership, and adherence to unrealistic ideologies are any kind of foundation on which to build a movement. I'd just prefer that you not resort to the political version of Godwin's Law to make your point, and I believe that's fair to ask.
How hard did you really think about this before posting it? Did you even follow it to its logical conclusions? Come on.....
So you don't think any government would promise this to it's people?
first of all, are you really trying to support the moral and logical legitimacy of this document based on whether or not governments would promise these things to their people?
Let me ask you something. Right to work... for whom? Doing what?
You're missing my point. I put this together based on the comments I've read here posted by utopians looking for a communal way of life. The questions you are asking me are actually the questions I am asking them.
I see.
It stuns me that people actually take the time to do this asinine stuff. Only in America are we rich enough that people can live in the kind of bubble that will produce something like this. Son, you'd better pray nothing actually changes in America or you might have to face reality.
don't say that too loud, the Noam Chomp-munchers aren't done whinning.
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What a bunch of crap.
So this is NOT what OWS is hoping for? That's not what I've gathered from reading the posts here since October.
Yeah, I, too, get the feeling that they aren't interested in what works, just what others have worked for.
I, mistakenly thought that at one time that conservatives could work with these empty headed marxists for a better future.
Then again, I was foolish enough to believe that they were liberals, and not far left zealots
The reasonable ones have already left this stupid movement. Nothing left here now but the "leadership" and the hopeless, useful idiots. A few of us non-OWS folks are sticking around to save people like Arod. ARod still has a chance but he is too easily swayed by this group.
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To call that crap steals shit's thunder.
Give shit credit when shit is due credit.