Towards A General Understanding of DGB Philosophy and Its Practical Applications to American Politics

1. Reading Stimulants

Here is a list of some of my stimulants for this 'essay-to-be', just purchased this afternoon.

New Books From Chapters

1. Mike Moore, Mike's Election Guide 2008, 2008.
2. Bob Woodward, The War Within: A Secret White House History, 2006-2008.
3. Ronald Wright, What is America?: A Short History of The New World Order, 2008.
4. Al Gore, The Assault on Reason, 2007.

Old Books From The Newmarket, Main Street Used Book Store and Cafe

1. Locke, Berkeley, Hume, The Empiricists, 1961.
2. Edited by Robert Brown, Between Hume and Mill: An Anthology of British Philosophy, 1749-1843, 1970.
3. Richard Norman, The Moral Philosophers: An Introduction to Ethics, 1998.
4. Louis P. Pojman, Ethics: Discovering Right and Wrong, 1990.



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2. DGB Opening Comments


When things are going wrong in the world -- or within our smaller and more immediate segment of the world, and of our lives -- it is important, indeed, extemely important, to return to our core values, to re-awaken ourselves to these, and to re-generate ourselves with the 'spirit and the energy' that is contained within these values. Some people may do this within the context of their Community. Others may do it within the context of their Church. Still others may do it within the context of their family.

All of these different 'self and social foundations' -- and the values contained within them -- can be imperatively inspirational in terms of dealing with any type of personal and/or social tragedy, traumacy -- or simply, 'bad times'. I say 'imperatively inspirational' because in deeply bad or tough times, not to have these places of self and social foundation upon which to 're-invest new positive energy into our tired, beaten-up, and demoralized minds and bodies can mean the difference between wanting to go on -- and not wanting to go on. Ultimately, it can mean the difference between life and death, or to be more specific, for example, the difference between a teenage boy or girl who runs away from home, ends up on the street -- and doesn't come back.

Now for those of you who may be unfamiliar with me and my work, my name is David Bain. I am a Canadian -- and yet here I am -- writing to a predominantly American audience. Why? And what possible connection could/can there be between American Politics and my evolving 'DGB Philosophy'?

The connections -- as I see it -- are two or threefold: two in the present, and one in the past.

1. Canada is just as much at war in Afghanastan as America is. And stated quite simply, I don't like war any more than I am sure that any one of you do. War stinks as much as the rotting corpses that are building up in Afghanastan, Iraq -- and now Pakistan.Indeed, war is the worst of all human evils, particularly if you include all of the peripheral evils that go along with war such as torture and rape as men and women become more and more estranged from their humanistic base. War is the epiteme of 'anti-humanism'.

2. Which brings me to our second point of connection. I mentioned three sources of 'self and social foundation' -- family, community, and church. Here is a fourth one: great leaders -- and great sources of philosophical inspiration.

The foundation of American Democracy and the foundation of DGB Philosophy are one and the same: Enlightenment Philosophy and the founding philosphers or 'fathers' of Enlightenment Philosophy, The American Declaration of Independence, and The American (as well as Canadian) Constitution.

I am talking about such great philosophers and/or politicians as: John Locke, Adam Smith, David Hume, Denis Diderot, Voltaire, Montasquieu, Immanuel Kant, Tom Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and a host of great 'post-Enlightenment leaders' who I would also like to include in this group such as: Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower (if only for his most famous speech), John F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King...


So what unites DGB Philosophy with America, American Politics, America Democracy -- and The American Dream -- is the same set of humanistic-rational-empirical-Enlightenment values that are the foundation of both.

However -- and this is a big 'however' -- oftentimes, in a world of increasing greed, power, and selfishness -- which I generally summarize under the term 'narcissism' -- we lose these Humanistic-Enlightenment values, and in the process -- we lose our way, we lose the American Dream, and we lose ourselves. The inspiration of these rational-empirical-humanistic values is gone, and in its place, we are confronted with a spiritual, nuclear holcaust.

It's at this time that I say its time to go back to basics: back to our core foundations of support and values; our family, our community, our church, and our core group of inspirational leaders and their philosophical works -- past, and/or present.

That is what I will do here:

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2. The American Declaration of Independence


United States Declaration of Independence
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United States Declaration of Independence


1823 facsimile of the engrossed copy
Created June–July 1776
Ratified July 4, 1776
Location Engrossed copy: National Archives
Original: lost[verification needed]
Rough draft: Library of Congress
Authors Thomas Jefferson et al.
Signers 56 delegates to the Continental Congress
Purpose Announce and explain separation from Britain[1]

The United States Declaration of Independence is a statement adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, announcing that the thirteen American colonies then at war with Great Britain were no longer a part of the British Empire. Written primarily by Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration is a formal explanation of why Congress had voted on July 2 to declare independence from Great Britain, more than a year after the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War. The birthday of the United States of America—Independence Day—is celebrated on July 4, the day the wording of the Declaration was approved by Congress.

Congress issued the Declaration of Independence in several forms. It was initially published as a printed broadside that was widely distributed and read to the public. The most famous version of the Declaration, a signed copy that is usually regarded as the Declaration of Independence, is on display at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. Contrary to popular mythology, Congress did not sign this document on July 4, 1776; it was created after July 19 and was signed by most Congressional delegates on August 2.[verification needed]

Philosophically, the Declaration stressed two Lockean themes: individual rights and the right of revolution. These ideas of the Declaration continued to be widely held by Americans, and had an influence internationally, in particular the French Revolution. Abraham Lincoln, beginning in 1854 as he spoke out against slavery and the Kansas-Nebraska Act[2], provided a reinterpretation[3] of the Declaration that stressed that the unalienable rights of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” were not limited to the white race.[4] "Lincoln and those who shared his conviction" created a document with “continuing usefulness” with a “capacity to convince and inspire living Americans.”[5] The invocation by Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address of the Declaration of Independence defines for many Americans how they interpret[6] Jefferson's famous preamble:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

By the time the Declaration of Independence was adopted in July 1776, the Thirteen Colonies and Great Britain had been at war for more than a year. Relations between the colonies and the parent country had been deteriorating since the end of the Seven Years' War in 1763. The war had plunged the British government deep into debt, and so Parliament enacted a series of measures to increase tax revenue from the colonies. Parliament believed that these acts, such as the Stamp Act of 1765 and the Townshend Acts of 1767, were a legitimate means of having the colonies pay their fair share of the costs to keep the colonies in the British Empire.[7]


Many colonists, however, had developed a different conception of the empire. Because the colonies were not directly represented in Parliament, they argued that Parliament had no right to levy taxes upon them, a view expressed by the slogan "No taxation without representation". After the Townshend Acts, some essayists began to question whether Parliament had any legitimate jurisdiction in the colonies at all.[8] By 1774, American writers such as Samuel Adams, James Wilson, and Thomas Jefferson were arguing that Parliament was the legislature of Great Britain only, and that the colonies, which had their own legislatures, were connected to the rest of the empire only through their allegiance to the Crown.[9] Parliament, by contrast, contended that the colonists received "virtual representation."[citation needed]

To be continued...