The Opener: Ideological Initatives

I am a middle class, 30 year old white man. I grew up in Suburbia, and had access to be best public education available. I attended a top 10 engineering school, and have secured a job in corporate America's famed middle management. I am a symbol for the current system, and all that can be accomplished by a person in the Land of the Free. However, I have always had a strange, nameless sensation that all is not well. Listening to people around me repeat the rhetoric they see and hear in the media, I knew that there was a vast shortage of independent thought in the US. However, in trying to determine my own philosophy, I searched (mostly in vain) for independent media and thought. I saw none in the universities, none in the media, and none from the feaux-intellectuals. My anger with the general populace only grew when I saw them following demagogues that I knew could not possibly be honest. I fortunately was exposed to some of the alternative theories I craved through a friend of mine. I learned the philosophy of Socrates and Plato, as well as the teachings of St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. Through my ideological growth, I was gradually exposed to Karl Marx, Michael Bakunin, Gore Vidal, and Noam Chomsky. In their writings, I finally saw a view of the world that made sense to me. This revelation led me to re-consider my political viewpoints as well. For those who have either limited of flawed notions of various terms, I submit the following link for your review. I feel it is one of the best descriptions, as well as the easiest to comprehend. Some of the most recognized, and my 3 favorite, thinkers on the topic are: Michael Bakunin - Russian Philosopher, 19th century Signature Work: God and the State Henry David Thoreau - American Writer, 19th century Signature Work: Civil Disobedience Noam Chomsky - American professor, 20th century Signature Work: Chomsky Website The common thread that ties these seeming divergent individuals together is their desire for true equality among ALL people, and their mutual distain for governmental policies designed to favor one particular group. The irony, of course, is that I happen to belong to the favored group (white American males). The government of all nations, specifically the US, helps to maintain the status quo, and to support the current ruling class economically and philosophically. From the writings, almost totally ignored in our universities, of 19th century Russian philosopher Michael Bakunin, Marx's great libertarian enemy. He died in 1876. "The States pay their outward respects to this idea of humanity; they speak and apparently act only in the name of it, but they violate it every day. This, however, should not be held against the States. They cannot act otherwise [my italics]. Their position having become such that they can hold their own only by lying. Diplomacy has no other mission. [So much for the obvious. Now for the presently relevant.] Therefore what do we see? Every time a State wants to declare war upon another State, it starts off by launching a manifesto addressed not only to its own subjects but to the whole world. In this manifesto it declares that right and justice are on its side, and it endeavors to prove that it is actuated only by love of peace and humanity and that, imbued with generous and peaceful sentiments, it suffered for a long time in silence until the mounting iniquity of its enemy forced it to bare its sword. At the same time it vows that, disdainful of all material conquest and not seeking any increase in territory, it will put and end to this war as soon as justice is reestablished." Isn't Politics wonderful?