OUR FADING HERITAGE

OKAY, I MISSED A COUPLE, but I did answer 31 of 33 questions correctly my first and only shot at the gold in this civics quiz sponsored by Our Fading Heritage. My score of 93% placed this 53-year old above the average American taking this test in November.

Wrong responses: #14 and #30. Damn, I knew what the Pilgrims were all about, and I knew they weren't Catholics. And with number thirty, I must have internalized wrong advice from Senator John McCain during the presidential debates. Oops.

What's really fascinating about this civic literacy quiz is the scorecard showing that US citizens tend to score higher than our own elected officials. Go ahead, pilgrim. Show your grit. Take the test. Embarrass your leadership if that's what it takes to get their attention. Okay, I know that's just fantasy...

But since Adrian Fenty's DC government is still stumbling around trying to sandbag the recent SCOTUS decision outlawing the District's draconian ban on handguns, rifles, and shotguns, in addition to all those other classes of weapons I know little about at this time, I think I'll present HERE the Commonwealth of Virginia's rather relaxed position on firearms among its own citizenry, and HERE is the website for the Open Carry advocacy organization. Strange stuff for a long-time DC city slicker like myself.

THE NEW SECESSIONIST MOVEMENT?

Gerald Celente of the Trends Research Institute reacts to the financial crisis on a Coast to Coast radio show. He speaks of tax revolts and even regionalization of America as an affect of Americans wanting no part of a federal government.

So, here's a tip I ran across at the Confluence site:

When I was a DV advocate I received several threats from angy husbands. They decided we could take the class that police officers take without any extra cost. I learned to shoot a shotgun, a rifle, self-defense and use a 357 pistol. The shotgun is a bitch and almost took my arm off, until I was taught to lean forwad to the point of putting all my weight forward. I became a pretty good shot.

My grandparents always said that the necessities weren’t meat and veggies, we could grow those. The run was on things like flour, meal and sugar. My grammy always froze our flour and meal for a week, then put it in the cabinet. She learned a long time ago that it kills the eggs inside the flour and meal that I guess occur naturally. I do it now, just because I grew up with it, freezing it increases the shelf life by months.

Sage advice, my friends. And here's a link suggesting that the plastic liners inside tin cans can be dangerous, in fact more dangerous than the toxins inherent in plastic water bottles. According to the FDA, 17% of the American diet comes out of cans, and many of those have an epoxy liner made with Bisphenol A, a chemical which can mimic human estrogen and which is linked to breast cancer and early puberty in women. While the leaching of BPA from Nalgene water bottles and other polycarbonate bottles is a concern, the danger from canned food may be greater.

All this convenience we were sold by science seems to be nothing more than a delivery system for early death. Most of us will never lives as long as our grandparents, or our great-grandparents. This system is screaming out for a hard fix. And we may be getting it, one way or another.

HYPHENATED AMERICANS

"There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation of all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities." [Teddy Roosevelt in a speech before the Knights of Columbus]

FITZGERALD: HOW DUMB, HOW LONG?

HUGH FITZGERALD OF JIHAD WATCH today asks, "How dumb do we have to be, and for how long?" The answer of course, is blowing in the wind. And you know what that means. Massive destruction. Bombs and explosions of every sort do indeed tend to present the olfactory sensitive with a peculiar odor of the day. But until then, let's just play with words, and send them money, yep that's what they need, more money, boast our misguided leaders.

SAN'A, Yemen - A bomb rigged to a motorcycle blew up amid a crowd of worshippers leaving Friday prayers at a mosque in a rebel stronghold of northern Yemen, killing at least 18 people and wounding about four dozen, officials said. –from this news article

Shi'a and Sunnis at it again. Yes, of course, the American government must do what it can to try to stop this kind of internecine warfare among Muslims, in Yemen as in Iraq. Otherwise there might be a "catastrophic" situation. Otherwise there might be "chaos" in the Middle East.

And somehow this "chaos" and this "catastrophe" that will ensue will, we are told, be bad for us, in ways always unspecified, as if we are simply to accept the conclusion of our betters—you know, the people in the government who pick up their news just as you and I do, but who lack the time, and the inclination (unlike you, unlike me) to spend the time to read about Islam, to read the texts of Islam, to learn what the Western students of Islam (not the espositos but the real thing) have said about the contents of Islam.

For they are just too occupied and preoccupied to sit in a room and read. They may be cosseted, chauffeured about, and so on, but their daily lives are full of meetings, and hectic busyness, and travelling hither and yon, and getting someone above to "sign off" on something, and coming up with "policies" that need to be formulated by consulting with everyone and his brother, and then written up in the stilted bloodless bureaucratic language which is now the favored medium—they know no other, they have never been exposed to any other—of those in the government, and who presume to instruct, and to protect us. They have to deal now with this crisis, now with that, and with every part of the world.

How can someone as mediocre as Bush, advised by someone as mediocre as Rice—people who have never had the inclination or leisure to read widely in history, or to exercise their imaginative faculty through literature—be expected to have read about Islam? Yet if you cannot imagine something, it is difficult to think about it. If you cannot imagine an islamized Western Europe, if it is simply beyond you, then you will not worry about what that would mean, and are not likely to come up with ways to avoid that completely plausible and deplorable, and entirely avoidable, future for the heart of the West.

One more thing. If leaving Iraq would, as some direly warn, cause great disruption, chaos, a "catastrophe" in the area, then why don't any of the Sunni Arab states, presumably those who would have the most to lose, bother to give any aid at all to the government of Iraq? Answer: why should they? They do not wish to shore up Shi'a who rule in Baghdad. They will, however, continue to urge the Americans to stay, in order to keep the Sunnis in Iraq supplied with guns and money and with a powerful protector that will pressure the Shi'a to make concessions, and concessions—and the Americans will, listening gravely to the advice of rulers of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the other small sheikdoms, fall for it, not realizing how they are being suckered.

And if leaving Iraq would, as some direly warn, lead to terrible disruptions in the supply of oil (during the Iran-Iraq War, that lasted for eight years, there was little disruption and the price of oil went steadily down), then why aren't other oil-consuming nations concerned? Why hasn't China lifted a finger, or spent a penny, to help promote stability and prosperity in Iraq? Could it be that the Chinese are, like the Sunni Arabs, perfectly content to watch the continuing squandering of American money, material, men, morale, happy to see us bleed ourselves, in order to do something which will benefit China and other oil-consumers as much as, perhaps more than, it will benefit the United States?

How dumb do we have to be, and for how long?

Get our troops out of Iraq. Let he chips fall where they may. Inform the public what we are really up against, Begin preparations for all-out war. Seal the ALL borders. Stop all Muslim immigration. Issue national identity cards. Begin a national rationing program for pertinent goods, especially petroleum products. Modify trading levels with China until they bulk up their safety oversights and rectify the massive trade deficit the US has been complaining about for over a decade. Tell Americans that each of us need to gird our loins with the American spirit and start acting like we've got good sense. Maybe, just maybe, candidate Ron Paul had a good idea, or two, or several.

And here's some positive news (well, the ACLU is against it, as well as all the usual suspects who are probably not quite as "law-abiding" as they would have us believe) on the defense front. The LA Times has reported that the LAPD has instituted a new anti-terrorism program that should serve as a national model for detecting suspicious activity, reporting it peer to peer and upward to the federal levels.

WILL ALL TRUE PATRIOTS PLEASE TAKE A SEAT IN THE REAR OF THE BUS

Illustration by Mike Adams

OKAY, I'M AS DISTURBED by this persistent Orwellian news flash culture where we find ourselves p;ushing back as both observer and the observed, as much as the next proud patriot. So let's take a closer look at this article from a Ron Paul supporter, not that there is anything wrong with being a Ron Paul supporter, although this past year I did run across more than a slugfest of rowdy Paulites that gave me pause.

However, cartoonist and "green" activist Mike Adams is worth consideration by anyone who feels that life on this planet can be improved one decision at a time. Let's begin our investigation...

The end of Free Speech in America has arrived at our doorstep. It's a new law called the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act, and it is worded in a clever way that could allow the U.S. government to arrest and incarcerate any individual who speaks out against the Bush Administration, the war on Iraq, the Department of Homeland Security or any government agency (including the FDA). The law has already passed the House on a traitorous vote of 405 to 6, and it is now being considered in the Senate where a vote is imminent. All over the internet, intelligent people who care about freedom are speaking out against this extremely dangerous law. This bill is the beginning of the end of Free Speech in America. If it passes, all the information sources you know and trust could be shut down and their authors imprisoned.

The bill states:

‘...ideologically based violence’ means the use, planned use, or threatened use of force or violence by a group or individual to promote the group or individual’s political, religious, or social beliefs...

Note that this means the "planned use of force to promote a political or social belief" would be considered an act of terrorism. This all hinges on the definition of "force," of course. Based on the loose use of logic in Washington these days, and the slippery interpretation of the meaning of words, "force" could mean:

• A grassroots campaign to barrage Congress with faxes
• A non-violent street protest
• A letter-writing campaign that deluges the Senate with too much mail
• A sit-in protest that blocks access to a business or organization
• A grassroots e-mail campaign that overloads the e-mail servers of any government department or agency

The author, Mike Adams of NewsTarget continues on...

You get the idea. "Force" could be defined as practically anything. And since the "planned use of force" would be considered a criminal act of terrorism, anyone who simply thinks about a grassroots action campaign would be engaged in terrorist acts.

Well, maybe. No more Boston Tea Perties I suppose, even though I've heard Bill O'Reilly call for a new Tea Party several times over the past few years.

If you stopped someone on the street and handed them a Bible, for example, this could be considered an act of terrorism ("...use of force to promote the individual's religious beliefs...")

If you sent a barrage of angry letters to Washington about global warming and the destruction of the environment by the U.S. military, this could also be considered an act of terrorism ("...to promote the individual's political beliefs...")

If you believe in same-sex marriage and you wrote a letter threatning a sit-in protest in front of your state's capitol building, this could also be considered an act of terrorism, even if you never carried it out! ("...planned use of force to promote a social belief...")

This is all strong conjecture, but possible. With the Supreme Court going bonkers on issues like property rights and similar bad jokes against the people the past few decades, anything's possible.

Adams concludes that the United States is on the fast track to fascism, with Congress now working right alongside the current administration to criminalize any thoughts, words or speeches that disagree with current government policies regarding war, terrorism, domestic surveillance and civil liberties. Simply speaking out against the war on Iraq, he fears, could soon be labeled a crime. Merely thinking thoughts against the war on Iraq could be considered a criminal act. And while I agree that this doesn't bode well for the America we once knew, one wonders when the police will start rounding up Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, John Murtha, Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, and millions of other fine washables who vigorously oppose this war, for whatever reasons.

But we ARE at war, and from my own perspective, well-documented here on this blog and others found at The Scenewash Project, the enemy is already living and plotting here among us. While I cannot in the least fathom why these same leaders seem to show little interest in plugging these immigration holes to actually help keep our potential enemies out of this country, there is no validl argument against the fact that this enemy is already here, and at some point in time, we will fight this enemy on our own soil.

Professor Naomi Wolfe also fears this coming fascist state of America. In her lecture and new book, Naomi reveals the ten steps to fascism. She attempts to persuade us that the United States of America is pursuing all ten steps. Is her fear justified, or is she just another cheese-nibbling liberal defending the enemy as it chips away at our system which is predicated on the achievements of liberty they wish to overthrow and replace with sharia law, as has been stated here in America and abroad many times over by their own spokesmen.

That this S.1959 legislation, the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act, represents one of the ten steps to achieve a fascist state is worth considering. Wolfe stipulates that this legislation is designed to squash all opposition to the State's ongoing march towards "blatant" fascism, where secret police and secret prisons dominate the law enforcement landscape, stripping U.S. citizens of all civil liberties and Constitutional protections.

Thoughtcrimes would, in the Mike Adams worldview, become a reality in the United States of America, and since Congress is pushing this through as quickly as possible so that each individual member of Congress can claim that he or she is "against terrorism" we as patriotic citizens should feel all the safer, because as well are made well aware, this administration and the Democratic Congress agree on very little. But, as Adams rightly points out, this bill doesn't merely target terrorism: It targets anyone who speaks or even thinks thoughts against the U.S. federal government. Here's his scenario:

With this bill, the U.S. government is officially labeling the People of the United States as criminals. It is drawing a line in the sand and stating that from now on, it's the Government vs. the People. If we don't stop this bill from becoming law, we are lost as a nation. There is no turning back from tyranny once the government turns its own citizens into criminals, enforcing only the thoughts, ideas, words and speeches that it approves or tolerates. Everything is at stake here!

Stopping this bill from becoming law is the single most important thing all Americans can do right now. If this becomes law, all free speech about health freedom, the crimes of the FDA, the crimes of the Bush Administration, America's role in global warming and any other topics could all be criminalized. YOU could be labeled a terrorist, kidnapped by government thugs, taken from your home, thrown in a secret prison, denied access to legal representation, denied due process and essentially "disappeared" into a system of such corruption and evil that it now begins to blatantly mirror Nazi Germany.

Think it couldn't happen here? It's happening right now! This is exactly how it happened in Nazi Germany. First, burn the Reichstag and blame it on the "enemy." Pass new police state laws. Disarm the people. Spread fear. Erect secret prisons and secret police. Call anyone who disagrees with you a "traitor." Control the mainstream media. Sound familiar? This is all happening right now in the United States of Amerika, and if we don't work to stop it, this nation will rapidly devolve into a fascist police state where no one is truly free.

We are but a few small steps away from it right now. All it would take is one dirty bomb in a major U.S. city. Bush would declare Martial Law and take over the National Guard. Troops on the streets. Anyone who writes a blog against the government would be arrested. Authors of "alternative" books would be kidnapped and have their books burned on the street. It could all happen at the stroke of a pen. The infrastructure for tyranny is in place right now, just waiting to be invoked.

There we have it. The ultimate in polarizing designer fear-mongering, as we are continuously bombarded with and held hostage by dystopian nightmares injected into our social being from both sides of the great divide.

Our best weapons: Non-violent protest and speaking the truth

How can we fight back against this onslaught of tyranny? We must use what remaining free speech freedoms we have right now to alert our fellow citizens to what's happening. We must rise up and tell the truth while urging our representatives in Washington to resist the temptation to vote for more "anti-terrorism" legislation that only works to enslave the American people.

We must use our phones, faxes, emails and blogs to rally our friends, family members and anyone who will listen to oppose these police state laws, and we must organize mass (peaceful) protests against this government that is attempting to marginalize the rights and freedoms of our People.

Okay, sounds good on the ears, and pulls at the patriotic heartstrings of those of us who recall with fondness the uplifting stories of America's humble beginnings. But now, let's fast forward:

We must not be lulled into a sense of false security by the purveyors of hatred and fear—the Sean Hannitys, Rush Limbaughs and Bill O'Reillys of the world. Instead, we must listen to the voices of freedom. In terms of the upcoming election for U.S. President, there is only one candidate that actually believes in freedom: Ron Paul. He needs your support to win.

All the other candidates are nothing more than tyrants of different political affiliations. Ron Paul is the only candidate who truly understands the fundamentals of freedom. That's why he's the only real choice for our next President. Can you imagine what Hillary Clinton would do with the police state powers that Bush has now created? That's the danger of all laws that centralize power in Washington: It's not necessarily what today's President will do with them, but what some future President will do with them.

That's why it's never good enough to say, "Well, we intend to only apply these laws to terrorists and not to U.S. citizens at home." That may be the intention right NOW, but virtually all such laws creep into areas of enforcement for which they were never intended. Just look at the application of RICO laws which were originally designed to fight organized crime operations but are now applied to virtually anyone (and yet they are never applied to Big Pharma, which operates almost exactly like organized crime!). All these anti-terrorism laws run the danger of expanding in enforcement to the point where they are applied against the People of this country. At first, it's only illegal for "terrorists" to think thought crimes, but before long, it's illegal for anyone to think those same thoughts. That when the domestic arrests of authors, journalists, bloggers and thought leaders will kick off, and the country will plunge itself into outright tyrannical fascism.

Again, we're on the track right now. This is happening, folks. You're LIVING through an amazing chapter of history right now. You're actually witnessing the downfall of a free nation and the rise of a superpower fascist state. You're actually part of it.

When it's all over, will you look back and realize you did nothing? Or will you now take a stand against tyranny and oppose these dangerous laws and lawmakers who threaten the Constitutional freedoms of you and your children?

Mike Adams has his theories down pat, and while I applaud his voice and share his concern, like most moral equivalency adherents usually found on the Left, he leaps to analogize the US with one of the worst regimes in history, and he never once considers the very real terrorist threat that our open borders and legal Saudi-influenced immigration policy encourages. And Ron Paul doesn't seem to be all that concerned either. Here's a rock, and there's a hard place. Don't look now, but I seem to be stuck somewhere in the middle.

TEDDY ROOSEVELT HAD IT RIGHT

Teddy Roosevelt in Egypt
Despite almost certain risk of being tagged a filthy racist pig and anything else the heavy hearted, high-minded so-called globalist, uh I mean, anti-globalist, uh fiddlesticks, the uh, let's call 'em the "which is it" crowd, can fathom in their ragged pursuit of raging chaos they prefer to call peace in their lifetime—when it comes to immigration and those immigrants who refuse to assimilate into America, TR said it best:

"In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag ... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language ... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."

Theodore Roosevelt—from a letter he wrote to the president of the American Defense Society on January 3, 1919 three days prior to his death.

To clarify these points I am working offline on an essay which seeks to identify and apotheosize The True American. Of course, this process must begin with Thomas Paine. And I don't mean the monolithic American, but simply the true American. Stay tuned.

TWO KINDS OF PEOPLE

Photograph by Darrel V. Willis

Originally published on November 5, 1996

You have a point to a certain extent when you mock my statement that "there are two kinds of people in the word—those who vote and those who don’t vote." For even those you suggest that voting is a hoax, seem to miss my original point.

I struggle with the question of citizenship, more specifically—voting or not voting. Many people suggest that voting is a cruel hoax, postulating with wimper and whine, that there is only one party, one slate, one candidate, and that’s the fascist corporate dog. Is this for real? Perhaps I am just a silly pawn participating in a sick process that allows the slave to choose his own master. Maybe I can't see the forest for the trees and am wasting precious brain cells worrying about this issue or that. I don't know. Do I betray myself as an artist and an individualist by convincing myself that citizenship, the right to vote, the right to serve on a jury is important? Socrates didn't think so. But then, Nietzsche thought Socrates destroyed the aesthetic of Greek tragedy, of philosophy.

I am happy that I got up and went out to vote. I am happy that I took the time to read several perspectives on the issues, coming to my own conclusions, however petty they may seem on the worldstage at any given point of social struggle, and I don't have any regrets about voting for one of the big parties in spite how I believe the party system in this country is designed to keep new parties from arising. They make it so cost prohibitive, the only rebel we get to see rising from the dust is yet another rich little weasel dusting himself off with the people’s rag.

I also think it’s a shame that more people don't see their right to vote as important. Imagine, if more people did, we might actually see some change. Whether that would be for the better is up for debate, but a true democracy would be one where every eligible citizen adequately informed rises to the challenge and casts a vote. The original idea was that the American citizenry should have a non-violent revolution every election.Of course this idea is naive, and superficial, bugt it is the spirit from which we embrace our heritage. That's what we should strive for instead of sitting on lazy, uppity haunches pretending that we're staging some big protest by not voting. I know a lot of people who don't vote and they don't vote because they simply don't give a rats ass not from some higher level of protest.

I spit on the so-called "independents" determined not to be sheep by not voting. They are allowing their voices to be silent and are not doing anything subversive or meaningful by not voting.

Vote. It's free. You can go to the booth and vote for absolutely anyone you want. You can write in a candidate. That would be much more effective than sitting on a couch with a beer and a ciggy pretending to protest with apathy. There isn't enough revolution happening right now. We perhaps need some voting booth agitation to get our juices flowing. Isn’t that spirit still available to us?

But I digress.