derKUEKeN - _{Kreis für Umwelt Erwachsene Kinder und ernsthafte Nachhaltigkeit}

The party is a vehicle for directing public discourse towards the relevant topic of society. The relevant issue that concerns us is the future, because this is the space that can be shaped by the present. Children are the clearest sign of the future. They are our children and they are always also children of society. It is in them that responsibility is most evident. This responsibility lies with us, the responsible citizens as parents, grandparents, educators and also politicians.

The starting point should be simple, it should lie with the question: How can our society be built and structured so that it offers our children a good society and community? A good society should be the ability to make our children more true, smarter and better people than we are, it is a joy to look at. The starting point of any political action is thus the question of expediency for our children. This is a radical change of perspective.


From this simple and basic idea of caring we deviate the main party principals

Basic Principles

The basic principles set out our essential values and set out the basic direction of our social and political ideas. All other ideas and measures must be measured against these basic principles and values.
Since the children of society are at the centre of all our efforts, this directly results in an effort to act sustainably. These two topmost values also provide us with the following basic principles:

pacifism

 Pacifism is the consistent consequence of responsibility for our children. It must be radical in the sense that we must understand that war can only take place with war material and that we must stop producing and using it.

Secularism

 Secularism is also a consequence of this responsibility. When we accept a higher being, a God, then this higher being in the end bears the responsibility, the responsibility for the state of the world. On the other hand, the responsibility, especially to human society and to our children, to take responsibility for oneself, seems natural. The central point is therefore self-determination, which is central to maturity.

Contemporaneity

 We must remain responsible to the existing people, the present is the space in which the future can be shaped, not the future. Concrete people can be the goal of our responsibility, not possible people.

Structural incompleteness

 We, as living humans, are structurally incomplete. This is precisely our possibility for development. Each of our social products resembles us in this: the party is structurally incomplete, we must constantly change the structures of the party, including those of society. It cannot be our aim to build a perfect society, it cannot exist under these conditions. Our goal can only be the positive and sustainable development of society.

Preserving the natural foundations of life

 Conserving - or restoring - a healthy and rich environment inevitably derives from responsibility for our children and all future generations and is closely linked to the concept of sustainability.

The natural foundations of life are our resource, which make human life on Planet Earth possible in the first place. To overexploit these resources for short-term profit is robbery of future generations, makes it even more difficult for them to survive and must therefore be seen as irresponsible action against our children and grandchildren.

We are committed to the Antropocene and the resulting responsibility. The effect of us humans on the earth is meanwhile so great that we must consider Hans Jonas extension of the Categorical Imperative, "Act in such a way that the effects of your actions are compatible with the permanence of real human life on earth"[1].

solidarity

 Man is a being of community. Therefore, our concern is for the community as it must be for the individual. Solidarity expresses, among other things, the intergenerational contract that binds us together.

 Justice

 Only in a society that compensates for structural disadvantages in the opportunities for individual participation and thus enables everyone to participate in society can children grow up in a culturally appropriate way and mature into mature and socially knowledgeable people.

Lifetime as treasure

 That lifetime is a decisive value follows from Hans Jonas' statement that life is a purpose for life[2]. The time of our life is irretrievable and passes, therefore it is a treasure. A treasure to share, with children, with people, with loved ones. As primates we are beings of community and lifetime, spent with other people, is a gift. We have to spend less money, consume less products - not only for sustainability reasons. If we spend less money, we have to earn less money and have more free time.

Cooperation instead of competition

 Competition is an enemy of the community. It promotes the isolation of people and disturbs their natural openness and cooperative abilities. With this he makes all people unhappy, because humans are beings of the community.

Commitment to universal human rights

Universal human rights form the basic basis for people's interaction with one another. To grant these rights to every human being and to create a corresponding social, legal and political environment is again the essential foundation on which mature, enlightened and independent personalities can develop responsibly. For generations, the education of our descendants has focused on these very attributes. Universal human rights protect the individual, like all citizens, from disproportionate interference in their own affairs and from state arbitrariness.

Therefore, a commitment to universal human rights is also a commitment to the rule of law and co-determination.


The KUEKeN party is devoted to enlightenment in the matter of Kant:

>Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one's own mind without another's guidance. Dare to know! (Sapere aude.) "Have the courage to use your own understanding," is therefore the motto of the enlightenment.

But since Ardorno/Horkheimer's "Dialectic of Enlightenment" we know reason need be related to some kind of human reality. Without such binding to the real needs of us humans, reason tends to have a logic of it's own and separates from the basic needs.
The simple example is economics. Where it is reasonable for the economic actor to boost their profits but for human kind it's the worst, as it destroys the foundation of our very basic living conditions.
To prevent reason from going rough in such a way, we use the care we have for our children to bind reason to the basic human existence.
"Without children there will be no future, without future there is no history, without history there is no meaning"

"Only in the context of a narration can the end appear as completion. Without any narrative, the end is always an absolute loss, an absolute deficiency." (Byung-Chul Han. Transparenzgesellschaft. Berlin 2012. Verlag Matthes & Seitz. 3. Auflage 2013. ISBN 978-3-88221-595-3. S.52)

All the German stuff can be looked up here: http://kueken-partei.de.

The imminent death of democracy seems to be a common theme in these days of populist right wing politicians taking up the mantle and pushing illiberal ideas. The two poster boys for this are Donald Trump and his British doppleganger Boris Johnson. Trump continues to jeopardize his re-election chances on a daily basis and Boris seems to be on a short road to the ash heap of history in the midst of one of the most confusing political crises in modern history.

Today the UK Parliament  narrowly voted to table a bill that if passed will prevent Boris Johnson from executing a no deal Brexit on Oct 31st. Johnson has threatened that if that bill passes he will call a snap election for mid-October, just two weeks before Britain is scheduled to leave the EU with or without a deal. This writer has written before that the proper way for Britain to proceed out of this mess is to hold a second referendum to clarify just what Britons want to do about their membership in the EU. A snap election is about as good as it gets for settling that matter. The biggest problem is that with only two weeks to do anything, a newly mandated government will have to hit the ground running.

This is not perfect but democracies are not perfect and never will be. Boris Johnson has never led his party through a general election yet seems to believe that simply by virtue pf winning a majority of conservative party member votes he has the authority to take deeply profound actions without even the consent of Parliament. Parliament is duty bound to push back against such despotism.

There are signs of people yearning to have more say over their governance in Moscow and Hong Kong as well as Paris, London and America. Perhaps we in the west had to be at the brink of losing what we have before we realized what we have got. Let's hope it is not too late.

Before embarking Marine 1 to fly to Air Force 1 on his way to Dayton Ohio, Trump engaged in a press scrum on the south lawn of the White House. He was asked if his hate filled, anti-immigrant rhetoric had inspired the shooter in El Paso and Dayton. His answer was that what he says doesn't have any impact on what people do.

We can only hope that is true. As usual, the thoughtless, reality-challenged drivel that pours out of the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has only demonstrated the depth of this man's ignorance.

Trump's rhetoric got him elected President of the United States in 2016.

Trump's rhetoric moves stock markets around the globe, usually downward.

Trump's rhetoric inspires those marginalized by their own paranoia and hatred, to believe they serve a just cause while engaging in violent and deadly acts against those the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES identifies as "invaders", "rapists", "murderers" and "drug dealers".

Vile and disgraceful of the office from which it is broadcast? Yes, Inconsequential? - not on your life.  

Last week CNN reported that the Trump administration is considering adding 100 civics questions to the test to become a US citizen. I'm all for prospective citizens knowing what they are getting into. There is one condition that I would ask for before supporting this initiative. Require US politicians to answer them all correctly. I bet the Orange Buffoon in the Whitehouse would fail miserably.

There is nothing so blind as all consuming ambition, more so when combined with boundless and unwarranted self-confidence. Boris Johnson's ascension to the Prime Minister's Office is the product of a vote of confidence from less than 100,000 Britons. On that thin basis he says he is determined to take Britain out of the EU on October 31st even without a deal with the EU. The Leave side won the 2016 referendum by a slim margin. It is unknown how many of them intended to leave even if no deal could be reached. The MPs of the party now led by BJ does not support a no-deal Brexit. There is no Parliamentary majority that does support a no-deal Brexit. The Northern Ireland / Irish border will become a frontier of chaos under a no-deal Brexit. The British economy will be pitched into a deep well of uncertainty. British citizens now working in the EU (if any are left) will be in limbo, likely abruptly fired. Likewise any EU citizens working in the UK.

The sudden, un-regulated, re-establishment of a border between Northern Ireland and Ireland has the potential to re-ignite the "Troubles". The violence which plagued Northern Ireland for decades until The Good Friday Accords of 1998 essentially erased the border between the two Irelands. It was possible to do this because both Ireland and the UK were members of the EU.

Boris Johnson has ridden the Brexit issue to the Prime Minister's Office without a thought to the chaos he will unleash if he proceeds with his stated intent. Lives will be lost. Lives will be disrupted. Money will be lost. All because Boris wanted to be Prime Minister and was willing to do anything to achieve it. This foolish little man would be ashamed of himself if he understood the concept. Let's hope his term as Prime Minister ends abruptly  and soon with a non-confidence vote. The election that will follow can then serve as a second referendum on Brexit itself, something the UK desperately needs.

It seems only a matter of time before the Accidental President or his sycophants rename Independence Day. Cadet Bone Spurs' obscene infatuation with military hardware and Generals has produced the first July 4^th ever to feature tanks and fighter aircraft as part of the celebration of American Independence. Added in for good measure to ensure the proper amount of adulation of the President is a new ticket-admission-only VIP zone around the Lincoln Memorial where another new feature will be the President himself speaking to the assembled masses.

July 4^th, Independence Day is intended to be a celebration of the people asserting their inalienable rights in opposition to a Parliament that taxed but did not represent them, did not listen to their concerns and the King who allowed that indifference. In 2019 the people's celebration is hi-jacked by a would-be-King who is indifferent to all but his immediate, selfish needs with occasional pretense at caring about those who worship him like a god.

July 4^th in Washington is supposed to be special; the people peacefully assemble in celebration of the Declaration of Independence. American Ideals are honored in recognition that the true strength of America is not the size, power, or number of its tanks and aircraft, but the idea that people have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and that those rights are to be protected by a constitution, the rule of law, free speech, free press, free assembly, free petition of the government and free religion. It is those words, incorporated in the FIRST amendment, and the practice of those freedoms that make America great. It is sad that the Accidental President does not understand and cannot comprehend these self-evident truths.

Anything that progresses the cause of world peace should be unreservedly celebrated by everyone. Trump's 20 steps into North Korea at the side of Kim Jong Un is one of those acts that we all should be happy about.

Trump wants us to think this was all a spur of the moment event prompted by his realization that he was close enough to the DMZ to just drive over and shake Kim's hand. Maybe that is true, maybe it isn't. The unplanned nature of this turn in world history was seen in the scuffle that broke out between North Korean security personnel and members of the western press corps plus White House staffers accompanying Trump. No-one told them what to do about these people trying to do their jobs so they reverted to standard procedure and forcibly barred them from entry to a room.

Now the press is covering that story with almost the same energy as the one that Trump wants them to cover.

Trump loves to break norms and ignore standard procedures. He thinks that only whatever is in his echo chamber is important. He is wrong and it is costing him the adulation he so desperately craves. The reason there are staff and preparations and protocols for international meetings is for the purpose of both parties clearly conveying the message they want to send to each other and their own people. Trump's moment in the history books will now forever be accompanied by a note about North Korean security roughing up his Press Secretary. Who knows how difficult it is to just get together for a handshake? Given Trump's record with Press Secretaries, maybe that is what he wanted. 

 

On Thursday the President of the United States, the servant of the people of the United States as occupant of the highest elected office in the land scurried past some reporters as he boarded Air Force One on his way to the G20 Summit in Tokyo. One of those reporters, acting in the capacity of eyes and ears of the people of the United States dared to ask the people's elected leader what he would say to Vladimir Putin about Russia's meddling in US elections. You know, the elections through which the people choose who amongst them will lead the nation built on the principle of Government of the people, by the people for the people. Trump's response? "It is none of your business"

One might think that the Accidental President lies awake each night developing some new way to disgrace his office and inflict one more cut to American Democracy. Sickening is too weak a word.

Elizabeth Warren is quickly getting into second place behind front runner Joe Biden and past the erstwhile placer, Bernie Sanders. Whether you like her and her policies or not this is a great development for politics. Why? Because Elizabeth Warren is the only candidate talking about what she wants to achieve and how she wants to achieve it in specific terms that voters can consider before deciding to vote for her or not. While most candidates bombard us with a lot of vague objectives or demonize their opponents, Elizabeth Warren has not so quietly gone about explaining the details of her platform to people. Her practice is so rare because the political science campaign strategist types think it is boring and voters do not pay attention to details. I think the strategists have not considered that how the details are packaged makes a huge difference and that Elizabeth Warren's has figured out how to package them. Let's hope this works and catches on for future elections. An informed electorate is better for everyone except those politicians who depend upon ignorance, anger and fear to get them elected. The fewer of those we see running for office the better. 

Debates about which course of action to take in the pursuit of national objectives are not new to the Whitehouse. There was (likely brief) debate about the appropriate response after Pearl  Harbor was attacked and there was debate about the US response to Iran shooting down a US drone this week.

The media and some citizens are expressing concern about the disagreements between the President and his advisors, saying no-one knows who or what to believe about US policy and objectives.

The reason for the concern is not the existence of these debates. Important decisions need to be debated and all options have to be considered before choosing which one best meets US objectives. The difference is that this administration, this president, has chosen to conduct these debates as public spectacle rather than the closed door fashion of the past.

Past practice allowed previous administrations to consider all options, choose one and announce it with an appearance of cabinet solidarity that left no doubt about US policy and objectives. The press and the public could and did disagree with US policy but everyone could at least agree on what it was.

Trump’s twitter addiction and his administration’s lack of message control creates this mess where people around the world can cherry pick US "intentions" and use them for their own purposes.

Trump likes to think and has often said that being unpredictable gives him an advantage. That may be a smart strategy when negotiating real estate deals (I doubt it) but it can be disastrous for international relations. Real Estate deals are transactional, no one expects to develop or benefit from a relationship between the buyer and seller. International relations are built upon and function according to the knowledge and history that exists between each state. Nations are not people, unpredictability between them leads to misjudgments and poor choices amongst the options available. Wars start and millions of people die. It is not a forum for seeking momentary “advantage” by acting without a clear objective.