For almost 220 years we Americans have stayed free because the U. S. Constitution, together with the American Creed of Democratic freedom with equal justice for all under the rule of law that flows from it, have required us to be a morally and ethically self-correcting people.
Today, that requirement has all but vanished!
Over the past half century, our public officials have been so busy sabotaging the Constitution and the American Creed that today’s leaders effectively have no freedom to morally and ethically reflect on themselves in a remedial way like Americans. In other words, our leaders now stand before us as being morally and ethically irrelevant to us all as Americans!
As a result, ordinary Americans are on the brink of losing their freedom to behave like Americans as well.
FOLLOW THE MONEY
How could it be otherwise? Since the end of World War II our election campaigns have been funded by huge special interests to advance their parochial agendas, not the moral and ethical well-being of Americans as a free people.
In order to stay loyal to their financers, most of America's politicians have become virtual traitors to their country as well as international war criminals.
American politicians take an oath of office to 'preserve, protect and defend' the Constitution. Yet, as a convenience to the special interests that put them into office, these same politicians conspire with their president to wage wars without a formal declaration of war by Congress as required by the Constitution.
If that kind of rank double-dealing does not encourage America's enemies, while making of her politicians accessories to their president’s slaughter of innocent men, women and children, I‘d like to know what does!
THE BEGINNING OF THE END
To help illuminate the danger that America’s current political class now poses to the freedom of ordinary Americans, just try to reconcile some of the following: PNAC. Patriot Act I -2001. Patriot Act II - 2003. The Torture Memos. Operation Falcon. Over 800 Cheney-Halliburton concentration camps located in 47 states. Executive Orders 10990, 10995, 10997-11005, 11049, 11051 and 11310. The Defense Appropriations Act of 2006. The Military Commissions Act of 2006. The theory of the Unitary Executive.
How can it be that Americans were never consulted on such matters? What utter contempt for we the people! With terrible foreboding one can only guess what form our leaders' appalling duplicity will take next.
COMING SOON TO A NEIGHBORHOOD NEAR YOU
Deep down, we all understand the horror and suffering our stubborn American leaders inflict on others – the Vietnamese, Afghans and Iraqis being the most obvious examples. What we Americans do not understand is that eventually this same horror and suffering must become ours too!
To protect the integrity of their funding our leaders cannot afford to be content merely to slaughter innocent strangers and subvert the moral and ethical principles of the Constitution. Logically, they must also target the emotional and physical wellbeing of their fellow citizens who still choose to live by their principles as Americans. What else could possibly explain their alibi-ridden dereliction of duty (complicity?) on 9/11/2001? How else to fathom their haughty indifference to the human suffering in New Orleans in the wake of hurricane Katrina?
The recent introduction into our public conversation of a “mushroom cloud” hanging over an American city by President Bush, and Condoleezza Rice may be most instructive here. God help us all!
A CALL FOR A NEW UPRISING OF DIRECT DEMOCRACY
I, for one, do not care if our leaders want to dominate the world. Somebody has to do it! As an American, my only concern is that it be done morally and ethically according to our Constitution and the American Creed.
Our leaders apparently just can't share that sentiment. What they understand best is how to feast at the same corrupt funding trough. We the people cannot destroy the trough – the Supreme Court won’t let us – but if we the people know what's good for us what we can do, and must do, is prevent our leaders from showing up at feeding time.
To begin the process, right now we the people must rise up and force the issue for public financing of all our political campaigns.
How? In two ways!
(1) Starting today, we must make public financing a litmus test for all of our politicians. If they support public financing, then we must demand that they return their special interest funding and make public financing the law of the land. NOW! If they refuse, equivocate or “spin” the issue, then we must abandon them and work unstintingly for their defeat at the polls in 2008.
(2) Immediately, we the people must organize local and statewide “Committees of Conscience” comparable to our founders’ Committees of Correspondence. The purpose of these committees should be to marshal the people’s sense of things on all of the issues that affect them the most. Each month this sense of the people should then be presented to our local, state and national leaders with the understanding that when it comes to doing the people's business it must be done NOW and they must either “lead, follow or get out of the way!”, to borrow the words of Tom Paine.
WE ARE THE LEADERS WE HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR
Voltaire wrote, "It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong."
I am sure that is true. Nevertheless, in solidarity and steadfast devotion to our Democratic principles we the people can do these two things. We still care about our freedom. Yet, our lackluster leaders still choose to be bought and paid for by those who seek to abolish our freedom forever! As Jefferson said they would, they have become "wolves" because we the people have not watched them like hawks! It is time we did so!
As it happens, we the people have experience with defanging wolves. We defanged them before when our marches paved the way for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, our demonstrations stopped an illegal war in Vietnam, and when we properly unseated two presidents - first Johnson then Nixon. We can defang them again!
As Nietzsche wrote, "then what is freedom? It is the will to be responsible to ourselves."
A FINAL WORD
My intention is that this blog will be the beginning of a new kind of spontaneous and open-ended conversation in America. At the center of that conversation will be a new moral and ethical reframing of issues grounded in the inalienable principles of our Constitution and the American Creed. By that light, it is my fondest wish that with greater confidence, insight and understanding we might then begin to address and solve our problems more effectively.
As we pursue that endeavor, I want this site to bring new Democratic hope to all Americans, and the promise of a new moral and ethical beginning. In that spirit, I heartily encourage everyone to talk to each other copiously on this site, and, of course, to share with this writer any comments and/or suggestions you may have concerning the nature, scope, content and focus of its material.
As ever, your support and interest are sincerely welcomed and gratefully appreciated.
Good Luck To Us All, And I Look Forward To Our Conversation Together Soon.
*NOTE – COMING SOON: A NEW WAY OF COMMUNICATING LIKE AMERICANS! “PRESERVE, PROTECT & DEFEND”
If we the people want to “preserve, protect and defend” our Democratic freedom we are going to have to make sure that leaders like our present leaders never rise up again. To do that, we have to morally and ethically reframe what our freedom means to us in terms of our Constitution and the American Creed.
A NEW LANGUAGE OF THE SACRED (NLS)
A new way of thinking and speaking like Americans does exist! It is a NON-SECTARIAN NEW LANGUAGE OF THE SACRED (NLS) anchored in the inalienable principles of the U. S. Constitution and the American Creed. Watch for it in up-coming posts.
Post Quote
“The government is merely a servant -- merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them.” -- Mark Twain
Post Exercise
What does equal justice for all mean to you? What limitations, if any, are implied? Who should qualify? Why? Who shouldn’t? Why not?
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