"What does labor want? We want more schoolhouses and less jails; more books and less arsenals; more learning and less vice; more leisure and less greed; more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures, to make manhood more noble, womanhood more beautiful, and childhood more happy and bright."
Happiness and health, peace and prosperity, safety and security, the dream has been the same since the beginning. The problem enters when we only want for ourselves and those like us. The trouble arises when we are willing to use others to get our way.
America has been a history of who gets to go to school and who goes to work in the fields or mills. America is the story of who has leisure and who gets to indulge their greed while others know no leisure and toil to stay alive. America is the epic of who bleeds on the battlefields and who studies military strategy in snug salons.
America is the conflict between those who want the good life only for themselves and their kind, and those who actually want liberty, justice and happiness for all. Such people have been known in America as liberals and are responsible for bringing you freedom of speech, religion and the right to vote.
Right now, the liberal voice of America has spoken loudly and clearly in sweeping Congress clean of corrupt royalist Republican rule. We the people have said enough of the bullshit. The government, media and very rich couldn't keep the wool pulled over our eyes. As we have overcome obstacle after obstacle in the past, so now are we overcoming their dirty tricks, propaganda and immoral wars.
We the people must be the government or otherwise the election we just have won is for naught. No longer can politicians be allowed to manipulate us. No longer can we allow the government to operate without challenge. No longer can we permit anyone in a position of power - politicians, pundits, preachers - to tell us what to think. The price of democracy is vigilantly thinking for ourselves.
One of our first actions must be to amend the Constitution to guarantee all American citizens the right to vote and for their votes to be counted. We also must ensure all elections are fair and that never again will there be the scent of election fraud. We must own and control the voting machines instead of private companies.
We must also quickly protect truth from manipulation. Net neutrality must be preserved. The fairness doctrine must return to radio and television. The airwaves must belong to us the people and not as carrots for the ruling regime to dangle before corporate media. Classes in critical thinking and propaganda awareness need to be widely and routinely taught as essential knowledge for all American citizens.
We the people must have more rights than corporations. We the people must have as much right as the rich to offer political candidates. And we want candidates who aren't bought and paid for. We want politicians out of our own ranks whom we nominate because of their merit and not because they have big hair and smiles. We want politicians who are willing to serve the larger good and not Mammon. That's because we believe society is both for promoting the rights of the individual and the common good. We no longer will allow a Mammonite culture that preaches society is merely a collection of individuals engaged in a dog-eat-dog struggle for supremacy.
We the American people want an economy that serves the greater good and not the interests of the privileged elite. We are tired of struggling to survive and being told that it is our fault our jobs are being shipped overseas. We will no longer work our asses off and accept being told that the reason we are poor is because we are lazy and irresponsible. We are wearied of welfare to the rich and corporations and being told that we the people are not worthy of government assistance. We want members of Congress who are as willing to vote for us having health benefits and pay raises as they are willing to do unto themselves.
Most of all, we the people are tired of being treated like sheep. Cease to fleece, you ravenous wolves. Enough is enough. America does not belong to the rich. Nor does America belong to churches, corporations or the government. America is ours. We the people are finally taking possession as originally envisioned and we are never giving it back. Power to we the people.
B. 1952, GA, USA. D. To Be Determined. Beloved husband, father, grandfather, lover, confidant and friend of many from bikers to Zen masters; American writer and speaker, known for his criticism of Mammon's unholy trinity of big business, big government and big religion; served the least of them professionally as psychologist and voluntarily as activist for decades; loved to shoot basketball, billiards and the bull; lived free, died game. (memorial sketch by davidhewsonart.com)
You have made an eloquent plea to alter the status quo. But you do not attempt to assay exactly how we are supposed to accomplish these necesary reforms.
Oops, I just noticed the little bio item that stated this author is now deceased. Guess he will never answer my question..pity. Anyone else?
by
ardee D. (6 articles, 4 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 2388 comments)
on Tuesday, November 14, 2006 at 7:16:03 PM
I decided to write my bio from the perspective of an obituary. I figured it might help me put what I'm doing in proper context. I also often reflect on major decisions in graveyards.
by
Richard Mathis (128 articles, 103 quicklinks, 5 diaries, 121 comments)
on Wednesday, November 15, 2006 at 7:35:28 AM
Down south we have an expression that a person who lived a really good life preached her/his own funeral. In reality, we all preach our funerals. We all write our obituaries. A cool exercise is writing one's own obit. Not in a hoaky or sappy way but one that is honest yet positive. To rip-off Voltaire's famous quip about God, if death did not exist it would be necessary to invent it. I have known death quite up close and personally, violently, suddenly and totally unexpected. To die game is to have lived game.
by
Richard Mathis (128 articles, 103 quicklinks, 5 diaries, 121 comments)
on Wednesday, November 15, 2006 at 2:58:13 PM
"We owe god a death....and, let it go which way it will, he that dies this year, is quit for the next."
William Shakespeare
Henry IV part II
"Conduct yourself in the sure knowledge that death comes to all men born. Be composed, acordingly, in the face of adversity."
Guy Gavriel Kay
The Last Light of the Sun
"All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance. All our ignorance brings us nearer to death."
TS Eliot
"Do not pity me. I am going to satisfy my curiosity about the origin of things, which even Liebnitz could never explain to me, to understand space, infinity, being and nothingness..."
Sophie Charlotte
Queen of Prussia
deathbed statement, age 36
"Dying is a wild night and a new road."
Emily Dickenson
So many to choose from...but Ill skip the lengthy but beautiful and end with this bon mot:
"This wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death and one of us has got to go."
Oscar Wilde
deathbed statement
by
ardee D. (6 articles, 4 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 2388 comments)
on Saturday, November 18, 2006 at 10:06:11 AM
We go from where we start so if it is peace that we seek then we must seek it in a peaceful manner. Likewise, we must justly seek justice. What is the starting point? Our intent in the present. Where does that lead? We will see.
by
Richard Mathis (128 articles, 103 quicklinks, 5 diaries, 121 comments)
on Tuesday, November 14, 2006 at 8:33:03 PM
