Thomas Jefferson agreed, and a century before Nietzsche, in the deathless prose that is the Declaration of Independence, stated for all times the proper relationship between the People of a nation, and those who would make a claim of authoritative Power over them; "That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government 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 Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." (For more on the relationship between power, authority, and sovereignty, see my OpEdNews February 28, 2009 article "The Tao of Government.")
My friends, we have not only the right, but the duty, to flatten the insidious soufflà © of the plutocrats while we may still do so without violence. It will require considerable courage and no small effort to achieve this goal. It will also require that we persevere against their lies and threats for a decade or more. But then the worth of any undertaking is directly proportional to the length, depth, and breadth of our commitment. The Founders of our nation pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to this task; I believe we cannot risk a lesser commitment.
While we still have the option of non-violently ending the threat by the plutocrats to the United States, the window for that option is rapidly closing for all of us.
The last ten years have been terrible ones for the people of the United States in terms of our individual freedoms, and our ability to take a stand against an overarching government. Nietzsche's next quote very neatly describes the situation the average American finds themselves in today; "How is freedom measured, in individuals as in nations? By the resistance which has to be overcome, by the effort it costs to stay aloft. One would have to seek the highest type of free man where the greatest resistance is constantly being overcome: five steps from tyranny, near the threshold of the danger of servitude."
In November 1963 we were much farther away from tyranny than that: socially, economically, politically and culturally.
We had just gotten through the worst of the post World War II Communist scare, which had reached its peak with the Cuban Missile Crisis, but had not ended in Armageddon. The liberal young American President and the crusty old Soviet Premier had through luck, back room deals and a degree of trust built up through privately transmitted correspondence between the two leaders, averted Armageddon. These same two men had taken the first tentative steps toward peace and mutual disarmament with the Partial Test Ban Treaty that year. (If you have not read James W. Douglass' JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters, do so. It may be the most important book on JFK's assassination in a generation, not because it reveals any new facts or theories about our President's death, but because it exposes how much we lost that grim November afternoon.)
For the first time since Hiroshima, we felt as if the nuclear sword of Damocles no longer hung over our heads. We thought there might be a future after all.
Then came Dallas. And all of our hopes and confidence were shattered by the gunfire in Dealey Plaza, as our young and self-assured leader was taken from us in a moment of violent evil; orchestrated by men who held that what was good for them, and what was good for the country, were the very same thing.
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