(image: youtube)
04 July 14
readersupportednews.org
he
Glorious Fourth is a day to let ‘er rip, be as red-white-and-blue as
you like, hang out the flag, join the parade, keep an eye on the sky
where those fireworks are bursting in air. Start early: pop a Sousa into
the sound system, turn up the volume (not too loudly out of respect for
the neighbors) and eat breakfast in march tempo.
Later there’ll be hot
dogs and potato salad, ball games to watch and the evening festivities
on the Mall on PBS. And, if there are kids of all ages around and
grown-up guests, or just the two or one of you, read aloud — or repeat
from memory — the opening paragraphs of the Declaration, up to the Bill
of Particulars of the King’s “usurpations and abuses.” Cherish the sound
of those words — “the separate and equal station to which the laws of
Nature and Nature’s God entitle us… unalienable rights…life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness…consent of the governed…laying its foundations
on such principles…to guarantee their safety and happiness,” that last
word used in the 18th century sense of “well-being.”
But on this particular 7/4/14 don’t deny the reality
that insists on breaking in. We’re being dragged back into the chaos of
the Middle East. We are engaged in a “war on terror” that places
security over liberty with the uncritical and tacit consent of too many
people. We’re told that we’re a superpower and a superpower can never
retire, even if it must become a “snooperpower.” Is that the “separate
and equal station” among nations that the Declaration referred to? On
this day in 1981 Ronald Reagan declared that “putting people first has
always been America’s secret weapon.” Tell that to Wall Street titans,
hedge fund managers, multinational CEOs and the US Chamber of Commerce
for whom profits over people has become a mantra. Here at home “We, the
people” are losing that ongoing battle in all societies between wealth
and commonwealth as inequality blooms, the middle class withers and the
poor are still with us, their numbers growing.
How do we restore the sense that it’s still terrific to be American?
Start with that other publication of 1776, Common
Sense. Yes, admire, respect, cherish the words of the Declaration. But
allow yourself to be set on fire by the blunt, fiery salvos against the
“royal brute of Britain” fired from the pen of Tom Paine. It’s not just
because he was such a tremendous journalist and propagandist, who spoke
the language of the ordinary folks from whom he himself came. No, not
just that. It’s because Paine understood and gave voice to the essential
and potential radicalism of the American Revolution.” We have it in
our power,” he said, “to begin the world anew!!” America’s was the first
large-scale application of the idea of revolution. Resist the seductive
idea of some historians that the Constitution was first and foremost a
kind of conservative reaction to the free-swinging proclamation of human
rights in the Declaration, that it made rules, set boundaries,
protected contracts and property rights (including property in Negro
slaves) and deliberately made the Senate a conservative assembly,
serving longer terms and not elected directly by the people.
All true, but the Constitution set no religious or
property qualifications for any Federal office, gave the power of the
purse to the chamber elected directly by the people of the states,
guaranteed to them a “republican form of government,” abolished
hereditary aristocracy, proclaimed in its Preamble (conveniently ignored
by the political and financial powers-that-be) that it was “We, the
People” who ordained and established the Union, in order, among other
aspirations, to “promote the general welfare.” That was new and
dazzling in 1787 and it began to clear the ground for beginning the
world anew, setting the pace for democratic revolutions that burst into
being around the globe, and pushing Americans themselves to keep
expanding the zone of freedom.
Think on these and of Paine’s sparkplug role. Then
summon his spirit to remind yourself that we can, if we really care,
pick up the broken thread of democratic zeal. We are not a people
content with a yellow stripe down our backs. We know the difference
between compromise and surrender of ideals. We are not of a nature to be
contented with “the lesser of two evils.”
So on Friday supplement your reading of the
Declaration of Independence with a passage or two chosen from Common
Sense or Paine’s later work to rally the weary Continental armies, The
Crisis. You might like to visit your local library, take out a copy and
do likewise on our nation’s 238th birthday. And start fighting back!
How?
Recognize that for all of us, these, too, are the
times that try our souls. Be peacefully but persistently aggressive.
Demand of your representatives at national, state and local levels:
either they deliver their votes to break the Money Power or they don’t
get yours. Nothing less will get their attention. This weekend and in
the coming elections they will be showing up in person; find out when
they will be where you live and turn up to challenge them. Don’t wait
for some far-off organization to send you a petition. Get off the couch
and picket their home offices. If you are ignored, or they protest that
your defection will lead to their defeat, remind them of the advice of
General Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox of Revolutionary fame: “We fight,
get beat, rise and fight again.” That’s why the Constitution provides
for frequent elections, new chances to turn opinion in your favor. And
that’s why it ensures your right to be as demonstrative as it takes to
be heard. Don’t leave it to others. Be as immovable on your side as the
tea party is on theirs and don’t shrink when the corporate media and
partisans on the cable channels and talk radio equate you with them as
“extremists” and sing their love songs to “centrism.” Write to the
editors of your newspapers or what is left of them, go see them, call on
the heads of the networks and tell them to fire their carnival barkers
for the one tenth of one percent who have bought our government, or at
the very least open their pages and their mikes and cameras to genuine
debate with bona fide reformers and radicals of many stripes.
Make your first absolute demand an amendment to strip
corporations of their personhood, nothing less. The Supreme Court isn’t
sacrosanct either; Congress can change its size and the scope of its
jurisdiction. Remind your representatives and senators that Citizens
United can be reversed.
And watch those state legislatures, where revolutions —
of right or left — can get started. Make so-called “off year” elections
meaningful; get to know your state legislators, follow the example of North Carolina’s “Moral Monday” protestors,
demand of your local news outlets more news of what’s being done in
your name in the state capitals. Declare your opposition to legislators
in bed with ALEC, Big Money’s spin machine and treasury that’s enacting
the legal agenda of corporate control of our economy and our lives, one
law at a time.
Take direct action: it’s your right. Boycott restaurants that won’t pay minimum wages to their staffs
the way the black citizens of Montgomery boycotted their segregated
buses and won. Eat at home and put the money you save into the campaigns
of candidates who take no corporate money and will vote for public
financing of elections. Don’t wait for new parties to form, for
organizations to draft platforms. Deny your dollars to food industry
conglomerates that push sweet and fattening drinks on your kids. Make
the Almighty Dollar your weapon instead of theirs.
Be as passionate and involved as those populists of
the First Gilded Age who wrested hymns from their original context and
gathered to sing battle songs against Mammon. Christianity began as a
radical religion of the lower classes. Remember the Hebrew prophets of
old: Jeremiah, Amos, Isaiah and their poetic and pulsing cries for
social justice. Speak out in your churches and congregations of whatever
faith, or in your professional and social clubs. Be willing to work
with others who disagree with you on social issues but recognize that
inequality is an equal-offender crime; it poisons the lives of
pro-choice and anti-choice, gay and straight, black, white and brown
with cold impartiality. Parade, picket and protest wherever figures of
power and authority gather to plan new devices of enrichment for the few
at the expense of the many. If the police attempt to herd you into
“protest zones” far from the action try the old radical but nonviolent
tactic of refusing en masse and filling up the jails.
Off the wall? Too extreme? Our situation is extreme;
this is no time for summer soldiers and sunshine patriots. Even a
sensible billionaire like entrepreneur Nick Hanauer gets it. “The oldest
and most important conflict in human societies,” he says, “is the
battle over the concentration of wealth and power.” Of capitalism he writes:
It can be managed either to benefit the few in the near term or the many in the long term. The work of democracies is to bend it to the latter…We should never forget that, or forget that the United States of America and its middle class made us, rather than the other way around. Or we could sit back and do nothing, enjoy our yachts. And wait for the pitchforks.
The tea party gets its strength from the commitment of
members who see themselves as fighting an oppressive government run by
social engineers. They’ve got the right idea but the wrong villains and
their successes only deliver us into the hands of government owned by
robber barons. What we need this Independence Day is to take aim at that
“long train of abuses and usurpations” visited on us by monied
interests, invoking as the Declaration tells us, our right, our duty to
“throw off such government and provide new guards for [our] security and
well being.”
We haven’t come this far by crawling on our knees. Stand up – and reclaim the patriot’s dream.
No comments:
Post a Comment