Memorial Day 2012

Memorial Day 2012
A Remembrance

    My memory of war starts with World War II. I was just a boy during the war and it was largely an adventure to us, but I remember the quiet pride and the sadness in the eyes of the increasing number of mothers who hung a gold star in their window, never knowing if my mom might be next and my big brother, a Pearl harbor survivor, gone.

    The wars, great and small, were legion in the last century. My dad lost his leg in the Horse Cavalry in the Phillippines in 1913. WW-I, was the “Great War to end all wars.” An entire generation died in the trenches. One of my uncles, who lied about his age, was the first, and youngest, soldier from Oregon to die in that war, at the battle of Chateau Thierry.

    The memory of man is short and only twenty years passed before another generation was thrown into the meat grinder to stave off domination by Hitler’s Nazis, Mussolini’s Fascists and Imperial Japan’s expansion.

    We had hardly buried the dead and recovered from the shock of the realities of nuclear annihilation when East and West went at it in Korea, a war which still goes on, the fighting finally just stopped by mutual agreement.

    The cold war and the covert wars went on, then along came Vietnam. Since then, the “little” wars have gone on all over the world, like bush fires in the California hills, consuming human and material resources.

    In 2001, we saw  the tragedy of 11 September and its aftermath. Then we watched another war in Afghanistan, which has been swallowing up armies since the time of Alexander the Great. We are now in the tenth year of a horrendous war in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Pakistan, which has killed US troops in the thousands, Iraqis and Afghans and Pakistanis in the hundreds of thousands and fosters still more hatred and unrest. Every year, our wars expand and poverty increases here at home. We have prosecuted yet another war in Libya and are facing yet more "preemptive" wars in Iran and possibly Syria.

    Along with our endless wars, we are faced with increasing oppression at home, with endless surveillance of our citizens, police repression of dissent, a Supreme Court that rules in favor of business and fascism, a nation where torture has become the norm and the military may pick anyone up and incarcerate them for life with no charges and no evidence.

    Once more the toll will be enormous, at home and abroad.

    Amongst the dead may be the man who would have discovered the cure to cancer and other deadly diseases, the composer who may have surpassed Mozart or Brahms, the playwright or poet who might have succeeded Shakespeare, the statesman who could have brought about world peace or the person who might have been able to end world hunger.

    Those are the might-have-beens. The reality is the millions of humans who have died, fathers, brothers, sisters, mothers, children, fighters and civilians in this past century, all with the dream of peace and human dignity before them. Yet, with the new millennium, war and repression still goes on around the world.

    Let us give pause in remembrance of those who died, often alone and forgotten, victim of mine and booby trap, sniper fire or disease and infection, whose resting place is unmarked save for perhaps a little more verdant growth where they have nurtured the soil.

    Let us give pause in remembrance for those who survived, maimed in body or soul by the atrocity of war.

    Let us give pause in remembrance for those who survived to carry on, with nothing but memories, of which they do not speak.

    Let us give pause in remembrance for those whose lives ended abruptly, without warning, on 11 September. And those of all nations and beliefs who continue to die by war and terrorism.

    Let us give pause and reflect, that we might carry out our lives in such a way that love and tolerance might overbalance hatred and bigotry in the scales of life and the dream of peace might become a reality, so those we remember today did not die in vain.

Steve Osborn

Chernobyl and now Japan

Twenty-five years ago, I wrote the article below. I wrote it as a warning, and to make people think. Now, what I feared so long ago has come to pass. Can we learn from this catastrophe, or do we wait for “the third time is the charm?” I fear we are really running out of time.

Our hearts go out to the people of Japan, their suffering is unimaginable. They have been battered by an earthquake and tsunami of Biblical proportions and now they are in the middle of a cascade failure of nuclear reactors with a far greater destructive potential than Chernobyl. We may feel, or breathe, the effects of that failure around the world.

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"THE BURNED HAND THINKS TWICE ABOUT FIRE"
by
Stephen M. Osborn

©1986 Stephen M. Osborn

The Time: Summer, 1956, shortly before dawn.
The Place: A passageway leading to a lightwell aft of the conning tower of the escort carrier, U.S.S. Badoeing Strait, at sea off Bikini Atoll.

An eighteen year old boy stood with his back to the lightwell, his arms tightly crossed over his eyes, shivering with anticipation as he listened to the voice on the intercom. Other than that, absolute silence reigned about the ship.

"...Five ...Four...Three...Two...One...Zero."
Intense light! Seen right through the arms and clenched eyelids.
Heat! As though standing before an opened furnace door.
Eerie silence.

After a time, the light began to fade; the boy cautiously removed one arm from before his face and winced, for it was back, shining through the remaining arm, but again fading. When he could finally open his eyes, he squinted up the lightwell at a sky so brilliantly blue it dwarfed the noon. Finally, he peeked around the conning tower at the fireball and glowing cloud of "Cherokee," later described to us as a "twenty megaton plus thermonuclear device, detonated at an altitude of twenty thousand feet, at a distance of approximately thirty miles."

Now that young sailor is forty-eight, with a grown daughter and a seventeen year old son. He can still, when he closes his eyes, see those glowing clouds in his memory and feel the shock wave hammer the ship. He still, upon occasion, has the nightmares.

I have written elsewhere of my impression of that nuclear test series and the effect that it has had on my life; on all of our lives. Every time the "cold war" is warmed up, the "Star Wars Program" is extolled or more missiles are deployed, I go through agonies of depression and apprehension. I write, to the Kremlin, to the White House, to the U.N.

The U.N. sends me literature and refers me to my government. My government answered me once. The State Department sent me a copy of one of Reagan's speeches and told me that the President was as concerned about peace as I was and that was why we needed to build more modern, efficient missiles - and retire the obsolete ones. The Kremlin never replies, but a couple of times they have used almost the same language as in one of my letters. A coincidence, no doubt, but it made me feel good.

For a time, we cooperated in space, visited each other's stations, even designed the docking bays so both nation's ships could use them. Now, we are to use space as a battleground. We are to lift satellites into orbit with a nuclear device on board. Good thinking, when we are zero for three and can't even put a weather satellite in orbit.

If we get them up there, they are supposed to be detonated through a device to zap "most" of the incoming missiles with x-rays. Of course, some ten percent are going to get through.

I remember when they detonated a nuclear warhead in space and it screwed up the Heaviside layer so badly that radio communications were knocked out for weeks. They quickly made a treaty never to do that again. We have a rather finely tuned set of screens shielding us from solar radiation. We are not too sure what it would take to damage it beyond restoration, but the scientists have a pretty good idea of what life, or the lack of it, would be like without that screen. With the magic of "Star Wars," they seem to have forgotten all about that test and its effects. (My son just walked in and asked me if I had seen the weather report in the Chronicle? "For the first time in history," he said, "'Scattered showers this evening with minor traces of radioactive iodine.' Wow!")

That brings us to the point of this article; Chernobyl.

Chernobyl was a minor incident. A single reactor failure. The explosion was a simple chemical one, the fire a chemical fire, rather intense and hard to extinguish, but simply an extension of a coal mine fire. The amount of nuclear fuel was probably a few tons at best.

Yet the effect of that small incident has been felt, physically, half way around the earth and the cloud is still moving East. The area surrounding the plant, the local reservoirs, crops, livestock, the earth itself, contaminated perhaps for decades. [now estimated to be 300-600 years] Discussions are going on as to removing the soil and replacing it with uncontaminated soil from elsewhere. Very good. Bring in livestock, new plant stock, new soil. Perhaps in a few years it will be just a memory.

Multiply that by even a small nuclear exchange, or perhaps a major meltdown, say a whole complex of reactors. Where are you going to put the contaminated soil? Where are you going to find the uncontaminated soil to replace it with? We can't even dispose of our current nuclear waste from normal operations safely to date.

Oh! We're in high dudgeon about the Soviets not keeping us informed of what was going on. At Three Mile Island, the state officials couldn't get any information about what was going on for days, just the usual "Situation under control," followed by "A small. amount of radiation was released," then "Well, it was a bit more than we thought," etcetera. When the Titan exploded at Vandenberg, the local officials could get nothing from the military about the toxic cloud of Red Fuming Nitric Acid vapor drifting across the landscape. Union Carbide wasn't exactly free with information on either of their spills and just try to get toxic dump information out of any company or agency without a court order. Come on, now, the Russians didn't do anything differently than we do.

We crow about our containments, but they cannot withstand infinite pressure. Why do you think they valved off radioactive vapors at TMI?

Russia offered a moratorium, unilaterally, on nuclear testing. No more tests, period. Reagan said, "You can come over and watch ours." We then proceeded to set off three tests, while the Russians kept saying, "No more testing, please." After we set off three, they called off the moratorium and Reagan said, "See, the Russians can't .be trusted." Since then we set off another one. Who is showing bad faith?

Our seismographic stations around the world can pinpoint any explosion over a few hundred tons. That makes verification quite easy. We could have supported the moratorium. Ending the arms race is the only thing in the world that makes sense. It is bankrupting everything but the military-industrial complex. Even a one-sided nuclear attack is going to destroy civilization and most of the life on the entire planet. We are getting a little fallout from Chernobyl. What does the government think would happen if we hit the Soviet Union with everything we've got before they could get anything off the ground? They would be the lucky ones, most of them would be quickly dead, we might take months, but we would have sealed our fate and that of the rest of the world as well.

The lesson of Chernobyl, TMI, the Fermi Plant near Detroit, Bikini, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Nevada and Utah is clear; Star Wars, hardened sites and missile subs have nothing to do with it. We must leave the nuclear beast alone until it is tamed and its waste made harmless. The best way to do this is to talk, and listen, then act to dismantle this beast. Perhaps, if we do this and the world heaves a collective sigh of relief, we can then bend our efforts to solving some of the problems of hunger, poverty, disease and illiteracy here on earth. With that under control, perhaps we can even begin the joint adventure of exploring the stars.

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It is twenty-five years since Chernobyl. We have many more reactors in service, the cold war arms race has begun yet again, to the enrichment of the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Complex and the death or crippling of millions around the world as we pursue endless wars for oil and mineral wealth in other countries. Now we have a cascade reactor failure in Japan with possibly up to five reactors and their cooling ponds melting down and spewing into the atmosphere

Brownshirts Dressed in Blue?

I wrote the article below on 2 September 2004 after the police corralled hundreds of people and held them on a rat infested pier until the RNC was over. We have continued to deteriorate to the point that we now have candidate's thugs beating up any opposition. And the right is praising them! I see little difference between being Bushwhacked in 2004 and living in the Obamanation today, except that the wars and torture and giveaways to the rich are even wider, more brutal, and more blatant.

Brownshirts Dressed in Blue?
by
Steve Osborn

I have observed the Republican fascist takeover of our government with great trepidation, as I am a student of history. The parallels with the Germany of the 30's are frightening. The Weimar Republic was under attack and the economy was failing. They could have balanced the budget, but chose not (or were not allowed) to tax the wealthy Junkers, the owners of most of the agriculture and heavy industry of Germany. Instead, the burden fell on the middle classes.

Hitler had written his plan for Germany and the World in Mein Kampf and there was little of freedom in it. The Nazis had a small minority in the Reichstag, but there was a large organization of thugs known as the SA, or Brownshirts. These stormtroopers protected Hitler’s rallies by driving off or beating up on the opposition. They destroyed polling booths and drove off opposition party voters at the polls, stole ballot boxes, and generally brutalized any opposition. Hitler made a pact with the army Officer Corps and the Junkers, that the army would be rebuilt and supplied. They would be given free rein. The Junkers would not be taxed or their profits reduced by the Nazi government. They poured huge amounts into the Nazi coffers, which was used to fuel a propaganda machine unmatched until today.

The Nazis finally won and took power. Hitler quickly suborned the Reichstag into a rubber stamp congress for his programs. He used a phony terrorist act (The SS set fire to the Riechstag Building and blamed it on the communists) to clamp down on the people, for their own security of course.

“Restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of freedom of expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and association; and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications; and warrants for house searches, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permitted beyond the legal limit otherwise prescribed.”

No, that is not a quote from the PATRIOT ACT, it is taken from a decree “for the Protection of the People and the State” (AKA the Enabling Acts) issued on 28 February 1933, the day after the Reichstag fire, suspending the seven sections of the Weimar constitution which guaranteed individual and civil liberties. It was described as a “defensive measure against Communist acts of violence endangering the state.”

Once the Nazis had consolidated their power, newspapers or radio stations expressing opposition were either shut down, or the Brownshirts destroyed their presses and offices. As the newspapers were suppressed, they were “bought” by Nazi propagandists. Soon, all that one heard or read in Germany was the Nazi’s “fair and balanced” viewpoint. Soon, it was death or a concentration camp for those who disagreed or even listened to another viewpoint. Labor unions quickly came under fire and were abolished. The various churches who tried to protest were silenced or outlawed. Pensions were erased and labor laws were abolished. New ones were substituted which left the workers with no right but to do what they were told. Then came the book burnings and an attempt to erase anything that did not agree with the Nazi view of the world.

Don’t get me wrong, I do not equate Bush with Hitler. Bush doesn’t have Hitler’s charisma, nor is he anywhere close to as intelligent. I am just trying to point out that the United States is poised on a slippery slope and the lesson is there to be read in fairly recent history.

In both Italy and Germany, the government and big business were closely tied and business had the right to unlimited profit. The government passed laws against organized labor and repealed any laws that guaranteed worker’s rights. Pensions were repealed and the funds returned to business and government to use as they wished. Both governments invented foreign enemies that “threatened their existence.” The people were expected to approve any measure that protected them from those enemies. People who protested these policies were automatically classified as traitors or enemy agents. They were tried, often in secret tribunals, and executed, or just disappeared, often to a concentration camp. Ethnic groups were singled out as scapegoats and persecuted, often winding up in concentration camps. The above description is only a thumbnail sketch of what happened, but one can get the idea.

The result in each case was a nation whose citizens were bombarded with only one point of view until they came to believe it, who marched lock step with their leader right into the abyss, dragging millions of innocents along with them. In four years, we have gone from a respected nation that worked with the world to try to make it a better place, to a nation hated and despised for being a bully, a liar, a killer, a torturer and a gross polluter, raping the environment for private profit and greed.

I would like the United States to be remembered as something better; as a nation of law and empathy and respect; as a nation with a marvelous Constitution and Bill of Rights that is a model for any emerging nation. Watching the actions of the NYPD suppressing the people exercising their First Amendment rights, while the major “fair and balanced” media ignored it, made me realize how fragile these freedoms and that Constitution have become under the Cheney/Bush regime. These latter day Brownshirts are rapidly gaining power. We the People are rapidly running out of options and we had better exercise them at the polls before it’s too late.

-30-

930 words
2 Sept. 2004

A Blog of Sorrow

It has been very hard to blog lately. Every time I go online, the situation gets worse. Every day, the slide from Fascism to Nazism is accelerating. The oil volcano is increasing (see page 19, just ahead of the want ads, stale news) The wars are widening, more civilization is being destroyed in the name of Profit, the god of the Corporate Oligarchy.

I wrote this poem some years ago,

Cathedrals

Far out at sea, the unbroken great blue circle
Ever changing yet ever the same.
Standing on the bowsprit I gaze into the deep, clear, blue depths
Or out to the horizon. Sometimes there are dolphins!

At night, the heavens are filled with myriad stars, far more than are seen on land.
They stretch out to infinity, eternity,
The only human interlopers,
The satellites moving in their straight lines from horizon to horizon.

Below in my bunk I am lulled by the quiet hiss of the bow wave,
The rasping zzzzip of passing dolphins,
Distant songs of humpbacked whales echoing from the deep,
And the quiet tread of watchstanders passing on the deck above my head.

Diving on the reef, I pass beneath the stands of kelp
Rising like fluted columns
Which spread overhead, muted light filtering to the sea floor
Like sunlight through stained glass

Walking on the floor of a great virgin forest,
The first branches spread a hundred feet overhead.
Wild rhododendrons provide splashes of color
And my gaze stretches for miles.

Standing on a windswept ridge, gazing at a rugged, snow shrouded peak.
Mighty rivers look like tiny rivulets, running from beneath the glaciers.
The tree line is far below me,
And on the eroded cliff beside me, seashells!

These are my cathedrals.
This is where I feel close to my God,
In the quiet wonder of God’s creation,
Far from the works of man.

Steve Osborn
23 August 2002

I wrote that poem to reflect a life I lived and loved for many years. Now, the reefs are becoming lifeless, coated with blobs and streamers of oil. My heart is close to breaking as I watch film of dolphins and whales struggling to breath as the inhaled oil turns to pneumonia, filling their lungs with fluid.

The trees have long been cut down, being replaced with vast tracts of cheap houses.

In the valleys, the glaciers are receding. The peaks become less snow-shrouded every year.

Only the seashells remain.

I wrote the poem out of joy, out of love. Now it seems to be but a requiem for times gone by.

An oil company CEO will have to write the next poem about the sea, but I don’t think I’ll read it.

End to Nukes? Not while our corporations run things!

Desmond Tutu has an article on ending nuclear weapons. In it he said, "Two-thirds of all governments have called for such a treaty, known as a nuclear weapons convention, and UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon has voiced his support for the idea. Only the nuclear weapon states and NATO members are holding us back."

And therein hangs the tale. The major nuclear powers hold Security Council seats. When the UN was set up, the "winners" of WW-II were not about to be told what to do by a couple of hundred small nations. Therefore, the SC was formed and has veto power over anything presented by the UN.

You can see how that works when the UN overwhelmingly votes to restrict Israel's genocide, or its aggressive wars; and especially when they try to force Israel to divulge any details of its massive nuclear weapons program and its nuclear arsenal. The US vetoes it and Israel pats it on the back, says "Good boy!" and receives its annual $3 billion gift in weapons technology and hardware, courtesy of the US taxpayer.

As long as the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Complex (MICC) can maximize its profits through war and nuclear technology, we will not see any progress.

The United States government is supposed to be governed, and limited by, a Constitution put in place by "the consent of the governed," We the People. In actuality, if two-thirds of the American populace were to rise up and insist on an end to nuclear weaponry, or to war itself, our alleged Representatives would check with the MICC, who would tell them to vote "No" or face losing their corporate contribution gravy train.

We would quickly find out what the voice and opinion of We the People is worth, as we have many times in the past. The wishes of a few billionaires outweighs the will of the people at a ratio of about three or four billionaires to two hundred million people.

The United States has turned into a fascist government, a marriage of government with big corporations. We the People have only the duty to provide tax money and cannon fodder for our wars of aggression. We are no longer citizens of the United States, we are now subjects of the American Empire, just as we were subjects of the British Empire and the King of England prior to 1776.

If you look at what is happening in the Gulf today, you can see the proof. BP has done incalculable damage to the world's ecosystem, damage which continues to grow. Has the government stepped in, taken control, mobilized most of the planetary oil recovery experts and equipment, seizing BP's funds to finance the effort?

No, BP is still in charge, doing what they wish, holding off any outside agencies, refusing to divulge vital information, and telling the government to back off. The government has even been running reporters off the Louisiana beaches and confiscating cameras.

However, we will have a Blue Ribbon panel to investigate the spill! Just like the Warren Commission and the 9-11 Commission, where little of substance is investigated and, after the whitewash, will be classified and put into sealed archives for the next generation to read, if any...

Do you think we still have a representative government? Technically, yes, but it represents the corporate "persons," not We the People.

End nuclear weaponry? Not unless the Corporations agree. They won't.

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.