HOW MUCH MORE WILL THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ENDURE?

[Guest guest]

How Much More Will

The American People Endure?

Our Mothers (and Thomas Paine) Warned Us

About People Like The Disciples Of Strauss

By Jason Miller

11-11-5

 

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.

 

I 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, 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 or comments on his blog, Thomas Paine's

Corner, at http://civillibertarian.blogspot.com/.