|
November 2005,
Volume 13 Nr. 17, Issue 185
Our Mothers
(and Thomas Paine) Warned Us
about People like the Disciples of Strauss
Jason
Miller
How much more
will the American people endure?
"Find
out just what people will quietly submit to, and you have found out the
exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them, and
these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows.
The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they
oppress."
---Frederick Douglass, African-American slave, and abolitionist
229 Years Later
Have Passed and True Freedom Still Eludes Most of Us
In support of the brave and
intelligent citizens of Vermont who recently passed a resolution to
secede from the union, I decided to update and modify our Declaration of
Independence to fit the circumstances we are facing in 2005. Despite the
numerous distinctions between then and now, in some significant ways,
little has changed. Like our Founding Fathers, I enumerated grievances
of the Oppressed in my version of the Declaration, and many are
similar to those spelled out in the original version drafted in 1776. Even
the name of the lead Oppressor remains the same.
realize this updated
Declaration has no authority, and that such a movement towards
independence from our corrupt plutocracy would require significant
grassroots support and organization to be successful. However, I believe
it is crucial to fan the dying embers of the American spirit of
independence in a time of unprecedented apathy, conformity, and
complicity in the crimes of our abomination of a federal government.
George Bush is not fit to lick the boots of a man like Thomas Paine, yet
he is one of the most powerful men on the planet. With
the might of the US government at their disposal, he and his loyal minions
have committed duplicitous, larcenous, and homicidal acts virtually
on a continual basis throughout their reign. In a symbolic act of
defiance against King George, and an act of support for social
justice and human rights, I have signed my revision of the Declaration.
Thomas Paine was one of the
few Founding Fathers who championed the rights of the "common
people". Paine recognized the universality of human rights, which
is why he has not been enshrined in the "American pantheon"
with the likes of Washington and Hamilton. Were he alive today, he would
once again be vehemently agitating for change as he caught scent of
the overwhelming stench emanating from the seemingly grand epicenter of
inhumanity rising from the banks of the Potomac River. In
deference to Paine's spirit, I wrote this revised version
of the Declaration of Independence.
The Declaration
of Independence of the Fifty Colonies and their Poor and Middle Class
Inhabitants from the Imperialist Federal Government of the United
States of America
The unanimous Declaration of
the Fifty Colonies of America,
When in the Course of human
events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political
chains which have enslaved them to another, and to assume among the
powers of the Earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of
Nature and of Nature's God of each person's understanding and choosing
entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions to mankind demands that
they need declare the causes impelling them to separate.
We hold these truths to be
self-evident and irrefutable, that all Humans are created equal, that
they are endowed with certain unalienable Human Rights (as delineated in
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html).
---That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among the
People, deriving their just powers from the consent of the Governed,
--That whenever any Form of Government usurps powers without the
Governed's consent and becomes destructive of these ends, it is the
Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new
Government, laying its foundations on such principles and organizing its
powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their
Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments
long established should not be changed for light and transient causes;
and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that Humans are more disposed
to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by
abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train
of obscene abuses and heinous crimes, pursuing invariably the same
Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is
their right and responsibility to depose such Government, and to provide
new Guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient
sufferance of these Fifty Colonies, their Poor and Middle Classes, and
most of the rest of the world; and such is now the necessity which
constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history
of the present King of the United States [George II], and that of
his predecessors [of the Royal Houses of Elephant and Donkey alike]
dating back to the reign of King Richard of the Royal Family of Nixon,
is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations [by kings and their
trusted advisors], all having in direct object the establishment of an
absolute Tyranny over these Colonies and their Poor and Middle Class
inhabitants. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
They [King
George II and his royal advisors: Lords Cheney, Rumsfeld, Feith,
Wolfowitz, Gonzalez, and Lady Rice] have refused their
Assent to Laws and Policies, most wholesome and necessary for the public
good.
They have
engaged in acts of ethnic cleansing and genocide in the city of New
Orleans through acts of criminal neglect and gross
mismanagement of the aftermath of a natural disaster, the willful
creation of a diaspora of the poor Black inhabitants of New Orleans, the
suspension of labor laws which would have ensured fair wages to those
rebuilding the city, and the dispensation of generous federal contracts
to crony corporations to rebuild a city favorable to the interests of
the wealthy.
They
manipulated facts and presented lies to the American People and to
Congress to gain necessary approval of a "preventive", illegal
war against the sovereign nation of Iraq on the shifting premises that
this nation posed an immediate threat to our national security, that the
Iraqi people needed a champion to topple a ruthless dictator, and that their
purpose was to spread "freedom and liberty". It has now
come to light that Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction, had no
connections with Osama bin Laden, and was little or no threat to the
United States. They knew this prior to the
invasion. They subverted a government led by a
former US ally whom the US supported when it knew he was committing
genocide. They installed a puppet Iraqi regime
fortified by 140,000 US military personnel and call it
"Democracy". They are responsible for
the deaths of over 100,000 Iraqi civilians. Their hands
drip with the blood of innocents slaughtered using monies from our
Treasury and the blood, sweat and tears of our children.
They
recruited and trained US military personnel under the pretext that they
would be engaged in defending their nation. After enticing young men and
women to serve based on blatant lies, They
thrust them into imperial conquests like the one in Iraq. They
are responsible for the sacrifice of over 2,000 American lives which They
sacrificed at their sacred alter of the almighty Dollar.
They have
continued to perpetuate, protect, and expand the powers of corrupt,
avaricious corporations These cornucopias of avidity for
wealth and power pay sub-standard wages, offer minimal benefits to
their employees, increasingly utilize inexpensive "offshore"
labor, manufacture products in "sweat shops" which egregiously
violate the human rights of their employees, profiteer during wars and
natural disasters, rape the environment and plunder our precious natural
resources, utilize "creative accounting methods" to increase
their stock value, capitalize on laws enabling them to create hostile
environments for unions, demand virtually endless increases in corporate
welfare, and strangle competition through mergers and
acquisitions accomplished with their over-inflated stocks.
They have perpetuated
and expanded an executive branch of government which is in many
ways indistinguishable from the leviathan corporations and wealthy elite
which it serves and represents.
They have
forsaken their primary responsibility, which is to preserve the
universal human rights of their citizenry, and to secure its general
welfare. They have rapidly eroded federal domestic
programs promoting health care, education, basic infrastructure, and
housing, while directing unconscionable sums of public monies to the
military industrial complex comprised of current and former government
officials and the wealthy elite. They seize the lion's
share of taxes from their citizens and spend obscene amounts to finance
a grotesquely powerful military [and their
imperial adventures], while a significant number of their
citizens want for proper education, housing, transportation, and even
nourishment.
They
have created a rogue military state which engages in terrorism of such
magnitude that terrorist acts committed by the Iraqi Resistance, while
equally as morally objectionable, are modest in comparison.
They
have created a rogue military state which engages in terrorism of such
magnitude that terrorist acts committed by the Iraqi Resistance, while
equally as morally objectionable, are modest in comparison.
They have,
through their willful neglect of the general welfare, allowed 46
million Americans to languish with no health insurance, 13% of their
citizenry to experience poverty, 3% to experience homelessness, 24% of their
Black populace to live in poverty, and 6% of their citizens
to experience unemployment. These glaring blights on humanity are inexcusable
in the wealthiest nation in history.
They have
continued to loosen federal regulations on the "free market"
economy, thus further enriching their plutocratic allies while
impoverishing more and more Americans. They have worked
tenaciously to perpetuate the exportation of Neoliberal economic
policies to Latin America, crushing economies throughout that
region, and creating chasms between their rich and poor.
They
have employed chemical weapons in Iraq, violating numerous treaties,
conventions, and International Laws.
They
have exposed their own soldiers and the civilian inhabitants of occupied
Iraq to the dangers of depleted uranium.
They
have employed a variety of illegal and unethical means to manipulate and
taint the results of two presidential elections to ensure their
ascendancy to the seat of power.
They
have enacted laws and policies hostile to science and intellectual
viewpoints, thus leading our nation down a path of ignorance and
superstition.
They have
grossly usurped their powers by intimidating Congress into enacting the
Patriot Act, decimating Habeas Corpus and due process by illegally
detaining Jose Padilla [an American citizen] for three years, and
violating virtually everything for which the Bill of Rights stands by
illegally detaining, torturing and murdering accused terrorists
at Abu Gharib, Guantanamo Bay, and other undisclosed locations around
the world.
They violated
Posse Comitatus in New Orleans and have since stated their intention to
crush it by deploying US military personnel on a wide scale in
future domestic disasters.
They have
consistently rewarded or promoted those members of their Royal Court who have
committed criminal or grossly incompetent acts.
They have pillaged
the public Treasury, dispersing tax monies to their cronies and
collaborators in their corrupt schemes. They have
created an astronomical national debt which will hang from the necks of
future generations as a millstone of astounding proportions.
They
have virtually relieved themselves and their wealthy compatriots of
their tax obligations. In so doing, They have placed
the burden of filling the public coffers on the backs of those who
benefit least from their governance [the Poor and
Middle Classes].
They
have financed and enabled the ruthless Israeli colonial occupation of
Palestinian territory, and have allowed elements closely aligned with
the radical Likud to shape their foreign policy
decisions, particularly in the Middle East.
We [those amongst us who do
not remain entranced by the powerful propaganda of the mainstream media]
have Petitioned for Redress in humble, reasonable terms in a variety of
ways. Our repeated Petitions have been answered by repeated injury. A
Prince of the American Royal Family of Bush, whose character is
thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the
ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in
attentions to our brethren in the federal government, their corporate
allies or the wealthy elite. We have warned them from time to time
of their attempts to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We
have reminded them of our inalienable rights derived from Natural Law,
the US Constitution, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We
have appealed to their senses of justice and magnanimity, and we have
beseeched them to disavow these usurpations based on our common kindred.
They have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We
must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our
Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of Humanity, Enemies in
War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the
Representatives of the Fifty Colonies of America and their Poor and Middle
Classes, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude
of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good
People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these Fifty
Colonies and United Peoples are, and of Right ought to be Free and
Independent of the United Stated Federal Government; that We are
Absolved from Allegiance to the Federal Crown, and that all political
connections between them and us, is and ought to be totally dissolved;
and that as Free and Independent People forming a true Constitutional
Republic, we have full Power to provide for the General Welfare of the
Populace, to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish
Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States
may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm
reliance on the protection of divine Providence (by the Higher Power of
each person's understanding), we mutually pledge to each other our
Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.
Kansas
Jason
Miller
Jason Miller is a 38
year old activist writer with a degree in liberal arts. He works as
a loan counselor in the transportation industry, and is a husband with
three sons. His affiliations include Amnesty International and the
ACLU. He welcomes responses at willpowerful@hotmail.com
or comments on his blog, Thomas Paine's Corner, at
http://civillibertarian.blogspot.com/.
© 2005
Jason
Miller
|
