Charles Harpur and Dan Deniehy saw republicanism as a vehicle toward humanity advancing to the point of moral perfection. That is a very noble goal, I am not sure that I share humanities capability of achieving that end, certainly not in my lifetime, but in an infinite future I can see humanity constantly advancing and progressing toward something that approximates what Harpur or Deniehy believed.
Their view on liberty and tyranny I share whole-heartedly. A very pragmatic and short-term improvement is the advance of the political technologies and organisation in such a manner to make tyranny and arbitrary government difficult, if not impossible. Most of these tools are available to us today, and many of them have been developed locally.
Australia's major gift to liberty has been the secret ballot but electorally we have been innovative anyway. Hare-Clark voting, Robson Rotation to name a few. I have said in the past Australian Republicans are Democrats too. In this area republicans are strong technologists who see the structures of government as having value as technologies rather than expressions of nationalism, culture and prestige.
Those emergent properties of a technical system are important but not to the point that it swamps the use of the system as an auditable, empirical process that can be improved or replaced with a better technology.
The empirical nature and strong history of Australian Republicanism gives it a conservative bent, while the focus on liberty and eradication of tyranny gives it a strong liberal approach. It has appeals to all points of the political spectrum.
There may come a time when the individuals that make up humanity find internal perfection, but the moral, ethical, social, cultural and economic improvement of the individual as a republican goal is certainly a noble one. Especially when it is predicated under increasing liberty.
The immediate goal is the eradication of tyranny in its absolute and insidious forms. This is achievable now with present political technologies . This point is the base from which maximum liberty is sought.
Phoenix Eats Out is the restaurant review site for
Phoenix,
Scottsdale and
Old Town Scottsdale which lists the modernist and contemporary restaurants, taverns and bars in the greater Phoenix area.
This is the list of the most popular restaurants pages from phoenixeatsout.com that have been viewed the most;
My personal favourite restaurants in Phoenix are
AZ88,
Postinos,
Bomberos with
Grazie,
Humble Pie,
Orange Table,
The Vig,
Fez and others coming close behind. View the complete list with the photo-journalistic style images on
phoenixeatsout.com
Arizona is an outdoor state and has lots of hiking in the city and around the state. Phoenix is unusual for most cities in having several large mountains in the center of the city with great hiking. Anyone who comes to Phoenix has to do the
Echo Canyon trail on Camelback and the
Summit Hike on Squaw Peak or Piesta Peak. The views of the city, suburbs and surrounding mountains are wonderful from Camelback and Piesta Peak.
For more experienced hikers there is the McDowell Mountains in North Scottsdale that has several difficult and strenuous hikes in
Tom's Thumb and
Bell Pass. Alternatively, you can hike the highest mountain in Arizona. At 12,600 feet
Humphrey's Peak is a long and difficult hike.
Between 2004 and 2009 this site,
southsearepublic.org, was a constitutional blog based on scoop which focused on Australian and global constitutional issues.
One of the strongest aspects of it was the development of constitutions by those involved in the blog. These constitutions are the outcome:
The constitutions were built using principles from Montesquieu's separation of powers, the enlightnment's universal political rights and the ancient Athenian technology of sortition and choice by lot.
South Sea Republic started in 2004 as an Australian constitutional blog in 2004 based on scoop software. It was an immigrative outgrowth of Kuro5hin. The archives for each year since then;
The articles are ordered by views.
I am an Australian living in the United States as a permanent resident.
I am a software developer by trade and mostly work in Java and jump between middleware and front end.
I originally worked in the New York area of the United States in telecommunications before moving to Washington DC and
working in a mix of telecommunications, energy and ITS. I started my own software company before heading out to
Arizona and working with Shutterfly. Since then I have joined a startup in the Phoenix area and am thoroughly enjoying myself.
I do a lot of photography which I post on this website, but also on flickr. I have a photo-journalistic website which lists
the modernist and contemporary restaurants in phoenix. I have a site on the
Australian Flying Corps [AFC] which has been around since the 1990s and which I unfortunately
lost the .org URL to during a life event; however, it is under the
www.australianflyingcorps.com URL now.
The AFC website has gone through several iterations since the 90s and the two most recent are
Australian Flying Corps Archives(2004-2002) and
Australian Flying Corps Archives(2002-1999) which are good places to start.
