Our Constitution was formed in the fear of trouble, in the shadows of Shays' Rebellion, the uprisings of farmers in western Massachusetts protesting unfair taxes, and in the shadows of slave uprisings and the active protests of the poor.
Our founders, 55 rich white men all of the wealthy propertied class, wanted to set up a strong federal government that would have an army that could control things, put down rebellions, and, as they said in one of the Federalist Papers, filter the grievances of the people through a legislative body, the Senate, so that by the time the grievances made their way through the Senate, the anger and bitterness of the people would be softened.
The Senate would appease the anger and anguish coming from the House of Representatives, and temper the passions coming directly from the people.
The system constructed by the Founding Fathers did nothing to take care of poverty and class division in the country.
The Declaration of Independence was indeed a very remarkable historical document that had never been promised before. Yet, the original words of the original Articles of Confederation, the first Constitution of the United States, were changed by the fearful and arrogant propertied class, from an equal right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of property, to, "the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
They were motivated by their economic self-interest to construct a type of government that would protect their wealth against "an excess of democracy," as Alexander Hamilton called it.
Those wealthy men did not agree with the liberating agenda, born out of the European Enlightenment, of the common people of our country, who had risked their lives to repel the unjust chains of the British Empire.
It was land and property that became the first species of the privileged. The founders did not try to establish a monarchy, but instead made wealth the king. These selfish men altered the triumvirate of Enlightenment-era rights. The aspirations of "we the people" were disregarded by the wealthy Federalists who wrote the current US Constitution. They enthroned wealth as the repository of the right to govern.
There was nothing in these slave owners' Constitution about economics, and about the rights of working people. There was nothing in the Constitution that granted the right of a job, the right of social security, the right of health care, the right of housing, nothing.
If we're going to change society, we cannot depend on something created more than 230 years ago by the Founding Fathers, and we cannot depend on a narcissistic mafia don as president, and the Pentagon "deep state" war machine that controls him. Nor can we depend on a bribed Congress and a co-opted Supreme Court.
Democracy does not come from the top. Democracy comes from ordinary people, you and me, seeing what we have in common and seeing what we are lacking.
If we have no anger at our country's moral-less actions, anger at its willful mendacities, anger at its blithe indifference, anger at its murdering hordes, anger at it smug myths, anger at its exploitative habits, anger at its catastrophic wastes, anger at the smile on the Republicans' hyena-hungry faces, anger at Trump's corruption and stupidity, anger at the electoral system and corrupt paperless computer voting system that vomited up Trump and Bush, and anger at the Republican hypocrisies, then we belong to the fascist tyranny that is destroying democratic liberties around the world.
When you and I get together, we combine our energies. We protest together, we demand things together, we walk the streets in protest together, and we protest in the suites together.
This is how we can make change happen and get close to the ideals of the Declaration of Independence.
When, in the course of human events, it becomes incumbent on "we the people" to repudiate and dispel the obsolete societal behaviors that have estranged man from his consciousness, we then must join together and create with all the youthful energies of the world, evolutionary and revolutionary communities, free from the corporate tyranny of fossil fuels, and the corporate tyranny of non-organic processed industrialized foods, and corporate farming, full of deadly animal fats, sugars, salts and chemical additives.
Our call to action must include ending the corporate tyranny of fossil fuels, and global warming, by living light on the earth, by eliminating meat from our diets, as it represents more than 20% of greenhouse gases, through animal release of methane gases. We must actively support the "Green New Deal" of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the Sunrise Student Movement.
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