Citizen or Subject?

Until 234 years ago, the American People were subjects of His Majesty, the King of England. They were governed by His Majesty’s Government, far away and caring little for its distant subjects except for the money which could be extorted from them. Laws were piled on laws, taxes upon taxes. This caused much unrest, except for the very wealthy who had connections to His Majesty’s Government.

In 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence in which he said “The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

“He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

“He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and, when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

“He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them, and formidable to tyrants only.

“He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

“He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing, with manly firmness, his invasions on the rights of the people...

“He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

“He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

“He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

“He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies, without the consent of our legislatures.

“He has affected to render the military independent of, and superior to, the civil power.

“He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution and unacknowledged by our laws, giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

“For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us;

“For protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states;

“For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world;

“For imposing taxes on us without our consent;

“For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury;

“For transporting us beyond seas, to be tried for pretended offenses;

“For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries, so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies;

“For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments;

“For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

“He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.”

This is but a portion of the grievances the American People had against the King and his government. However, as subjects of the King, we had no independent power, even for the redress of grievances.

As you read the above, did certain similarities suggest themselves to you with modern America?

After a long and bloody war, the American People won their freedom and became Citizens of the United States of America. With the memory of being subject to a king fresh in their minds, the Congress wrote a document, the Constitution of the United States, and appended the first ten amendments to it, commonly known as the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights does not enumerate the rights of the American Citizen, it forbids the government from interfering with those rights. As a matter of fact, the Tenth Amendment states "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the People." It established the means whereby the three branches of government were to be a system of checks and balances to prevent any one of the three gaining too much power, and thereby, to avoid a dictatorship.

It was not foreseen that the three branches of the government would become the paid agents of the wealthy, cooperating to control the people and curtail the Bill of Rights, and, in fact, most of the Constitution.

We are once again under the control of an effective dictatorship where the Rights of Man are ignored or circumvented by illegal and unconstitutional laws. Our so called “representatives” ignore We the People, listening only to the wealthy corporations and cartels which the Supreme Court has designated “persons.”

A huge agency has been created, “Homeland Security,” which has been given the right to overrule the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, to pry into every citizen’s home, business, communications. There are ever growing lists compiled; no-fly lists, border crossing lists, dossiers compiled on anyone who protests what is happening to our nation. Minorities are again coming under the eye of the government and discrimination is running rampant. We have the highest per capita percentage of people in prison of any nation. Exposes have been made of collusion between judges, law enforcement, and the private owners of prisons to be sure the population continues to increase, to the profit of the owners.

Business such as the oil companies are granted immunity for their crimes, and the government agencies that are supposed to be safeguarding us and regulating them are run by industry managers of the same industries, appointed by “our” government.

Reread the complaints above from the Declaration of Independence. Better yet, read the whole document. Look at the position of the average American, today. Then, tell me, are we Citizens of the Constitutional Republic of the United States, or or just Subjects of the American Empire?

Anchor of Liberty

We've all grown up reciting the Pledge of Allegiance; every morning at school, in offices and at assemblies. How much thought do we give to that pledge and its meaning?

I pledge allegiance to the flag... What is a flag? Webster’s describes it as a piece of cloth or bunting with distinctive colors, patterns or symbolic devices used as a state symbol. In general it is an easily recognized symbol of a nation or group. Our flag has gone through many incarnations from the Grand Union flag of the revolution through an ever increasing number of stars as states were added to the Union. The flag of the United States, “Old Glory,” has flown proudly as the ensign on ships protecting our shipping from both the British, and Barbary pirates, in the 1800'’s, from the crest of Mt. Suribachi on Iwo Jima in World War II to the moon and beyond, as painted on Voyager, now on its way to the stars. Sadly, it has flown just as proudly at Wounded Knee, Manzanar, Mai Lai and Fallujah.

Of the United States of America... What is the United States of America? It is a vast country, bounded on the East and West by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, by Canada to the North and Mexico to the South, not to mention Alaska and Hawaii beyond those boundaries. It is the home of diverse people and cultures and has every extreme of climate and geology.

And to the Republic for which it stands... What is a Republic? “It is a state or nation in which the supreme power rests in all the citizens entitled to vote (the electorate) and is exercised by representatives elected directly or indirectly by them and responsible to them.” What is it that makes our republic so unique in the annals of history? It is the three documents bequeathed to us by the founders of our nation, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, and the first ten amendments to the Constitution, known as the Bill of Rights. The founders of this nation had had their fill of autocratic government, unresponsive to the needs and wishes of its citizens. The Declaration of Independence spelled out that every person had the inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Inalienable means that it cannot be taken away or abridged. It also declared that every man had the right to rebel against those rights being infringed. After a long and bitter campaign, the United States of America was born. A Constitutional Convention was held in which the framework of government was hammered out. When completed, it was a remarkably brief document consisting of seven articles which concisely spelled out the rights, privileges and obligations of all three branches of government and how each of the three should provide a system of checks and balances on the others so that no branch of the government could assume dictatorial power or infringe upon the rights of the people. Included was the process by which the Constitution could be amended. When the Constitutional Convention had drafted the document, almost as an afterthought it was decided that there should be an enumeration of simple acknowledged principles of the rights of man. The list of an American citizen’s rights was to be an absolute barrier to infringement by the government upon the citizenry. (An interesting fact; If you carefully read the Bill of Rights, you will note that it does not enumerate our rights, it forbids the government from interfering with or taking away these rights. The rights are inherent.) These were added as the first ten amendments to the Constitution and called the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights is the irrevocable law of the land, the nation’s ultimate guarantee of human dignity for every American.

One Nation, under God, indivisible...The First Amendment declares the separation of church and state, but nowhere does it state that belief in a Supreme Being is something that cannot be professed publicly or shown in public places. Neither does it ban prayer in public. Rather, the separation of church and state was to guard against the growth of any sort of ruling theocracy such as had been seen throughout much of human history, where the church ruled and dictated human behavior according to its particular beliefs. Indivisible because since the civil war, we have hung together as one nation despite our differences.

With Liberty and Justice for all. Those ten amendments are that guarantee. They cannot be abridged regardless of expediency. Nowhere else in the world does a citizen enjoy the enumerated rights and benefits guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. The President takes an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, as do the Senate and the House. The Supreme Court is to enforce those Constitutional guarantees and see that neither of the other two branches of government violates or tries to set aside those rights. It is the duty of every citizen to see that the Constitution and Bill of Rights is protected. Without them, the United States of America is nothing special, just another big country ruling its people any way it sees fit. And the people become no more than servants of the state.

I would urge everyone to obtain a copy of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution including the Bill of Rights and study them carefully. It is only by knowledge that we can acquire wisdom and only by informed wisdom that we can maintain our unique and inalienable rights and freedoms.

Our Fairly Subtle Conversion to Fascism

Chris Hedges wrote an interesting article, published on CommonDreams,

Is America ‘Yearning For Fascism?’

It quickly got almost three-hundred comments. One commenter likened what is happening in the US to Nazi Germany. A response to that was that we were being very disrespectful to equate the trashing of a synagogue here, a “few broken windows” with the holocaust, which killed millions.

I felt constrained to answer, and decided to put it in the blog lest we forget.

When people come apart at the seams because someone compares the US to Nazi Germany; "A few broken windows to the holocaust," I must point out that National Socialism started out with a few thugs breaking the heads of the opposition, vandalizing homes and buildings. As the power grew, the thugs became the SA, brown-shirted armband wearing arrogant thugs, using quasi-military training. Slowly, as their power grew, they became more intrusive. Finally, as Hitler came to power, the SA could enter your home, search it for any sign of opposition, or Jewish artifacts, trash your home, drag you into the street where you might be "shot while trying to escape." The alternative was a concentration camp.

It wasn't until the SA became internationally embarrassing to the Reich that Hitler instituted the "Night of the Long Knives," killed off the SA leadership and rid himself of possible competitors. After that, the "rehabilitated" SA and the SS really began their works of terror and the "final solution."

My point? Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, started small. They could even have been stopped early on, but nobody did anything. For the most part, they were treated as a bad joke. By the time the people realized they weren't, it was far too late.

It is starting small here, too. But it is growing and our apathy is giving it strength through non-resistance.

Read Sebastian Happner's Defying Hitler. It is an authentic journal by a German boy who grew up during WW-I and lived through the chaos that followed. He fled Germany in 1939, when it was becoming apparent that his chance of survival was becoming minuscule. One of the stories was of a group of friends of varying political persuasions who used to get together, sample good wine and talk. At the last get together of this group, one said to Happner, "For expressing those opinions, I should report you to the Gestapo, but as we are old friends, I won't this time." He waited in fear for several weeks for the knock on the door in the middle of the night, before he finally decided that his "friend" had not turned him in.

Haven't we been trained in the past decade or so to watch what we say or what we write? Political correctness! Think carefully before you open your mouth to be sure there is no possibility that some group might take offense, turn you in, have you arrested, sue you for everything you own. Any opinions expressed should be carefully vetted to see that it won't lose you your job, your place in the community. We went through that when I was in High School and McCarthy was running amok. We foolishly thought that was all over when he finally overreached himself and took on the army.

The ones we consider "crazies," the Tea-Baggers and others of their ilk need not worry. Their opinions are approved by Miniprop and the Thought Police, i.e., Homeland Security (HS) , as is the continually increasing intrusion into our lives and privacy "for our own good and safety, " of course.

Remember the program in Bush's early administration which Congress refused to ratify? Knowing government, they've gone ahead and done it anyway. "Citizens, watch your neighbors. Report anything unusual, or any controversial opinions expressed, for evaluation by HS. Remember, terrorists are everywhere and only your vigilance can root them out."

Millions of Americans on "no-fly" and "border watch" lists, travel restricted. Our e-mail, phone conversations, and even spoken conversation in our homes may be recorded and data mined. The list is growing by some twenty-thousand a day! If millions of Americans are considered potential terrorists and put on watch lists, then perhaps it is the government who should be on the lists, should be restricted by We the People from committing their excesses, but sadly, it won't be.

When the day comes that a large part of We the People are looking out through the razor wire, we will understand, but by then, it will probably be too late.

Obama's speech to the troops at Bagram Gulag and air base, (wearing his leather "Bomber's Jacket" reminiscent of Bush and his "Mission Accomplished" flight suit ) should be a wake-up call to us all. Endless deaths, of soldiers and peasants, endless war for oil and minerals and pipeline routes. The same sort of arguments Hitler used as he took small country after country.

Obama is just a shill, a mouthpiece like his predecessor. He just speaks better English. The Military-Industrial-Congressional-Complex that Eisenhower warned us about is very powerful, very wealthy, and has bought the government, lock, stock and barrel. War is the most profitable thing in the world and they are not going let it go as long as they are in charge. They are in charge.

Thomas Jefferson once said, When the government fears the people, that is freedom. When the people fear the government, that is tyranny."

Be afraid, be very afraid. Better yet, start thinking about how to turn this runaway freight around, or at least stop it.