The Price of Freedom

I have to say that I was surprised that the vote to give the telecoms immunity failed yesterday, along with the effort to extend the FISA laws--which means AT&T doesn't get a pass for helping the Administration spy on us without our knowledge or consent and the Administration has to get a judge to approve any future wiretapping. Maybe there is a chance for us to save our country yet--but I'm not holding my breath. The fact that any item on their freedom-to-fascism agenda is un-Constitutional, immoral or just plain un-American has yet to stop the current Administration from proceeding with that agenda--it just slows them down a little bit while they figure out a way to do it without it showing up on anyone's radar. It must be frustrating for them to realize just how many people are actually watching the radar. It must be just as frustrating to find that the political apathy upon which they counted so much and worked so hard to spread among the populace isn't as widespread or as deeply rooted as they thought it would be. That people do actually still care about things like Truth, Justice, Freedom--ideals for which Americans have fought and died since the very beginning of our nation.

What worries me, now that the tide seems to be turning against the evildoers who want to do us harm (by that I mean the BA and its allies in its war against us and our sincere, if somewhat naive, idealism), is how far the tide will carry us before it starts to swing back and what form the next attack will take. They have put too much effort into accomplishing their goal to abandon it because it's finally facing some stiff resistance--after all, having to take one step back after taking two steps forward is still considered forward progress. Some would call it a dance, in which case, WE need to make sure that WE are calling the tune! The biggest problem is that anger, like fear, can only be maintained for so long before it either cools back down into complacency, or erupts into violence--neither of which is a very good solution for the problems that confront us. The fact that we're watching NOW (and that they KNOW we are watching) will only push them back so far. Maintaining such scrutiny is exhausting when done by only a small group within a huge population--especially when those brave few face such condemnation by that population for their lack of "patriotism" and "paranoia." But which is more unpatriotic: those who hold governmental malfeasance up to the light of day, or the perpetrators of that malfeasance? And which is more paranoid: the people who know they are being spied on or ones who are spying so that they can catch the watchers and stop them from revealing what they know?

The vote yesterday was important in that it reminded the BA that there are some members of Congress who do still care about what the People think--especially those who want to keep their jobs--but it was only one step back. Bush's "you're all going to die if we can't spy" fearmongering still works in certain circles, and the fact that he can still rally the Republican faithful to his cause means that we can expect some kind of blowback (another 9/11?) for thwarting him in his march toward becoming the first American Caesar. It also means that we need to keep watching, keep pressuring our elected officials to hear us and respond to OUR will. It was our complacency and apathy that allowed them to succeed as well as they have--now, we have to show them that we have the will to resist sinking back into that complacency and to maintain the kind of eternal vigilance that is the price of freedom.

And While We're on the Subject..........

It seems to me that, for all of our reverence and respect for the “Founding Fathers,” we have apparently forgotten who and what they were: they were REVOLUTIONARIES in the purest sense of the word. They were the Chicago Sevens of their day, except for the fact that they not only advocated the violent overthrow of what was the LEGAL government at the time, they actually SUCCEEDED in overthrowing that government and replacing it with the form they thought would best serve the needs and interests of the American people.

We need to remember the Founders not as we see them in the paintings hung in so many public buildings--sedate, moderate, hollow--but as they really were: passionate men fighting for a radical new idea, the vision of a nation governed by THE PEOPLE rather than the aristocracy of wealth or spiritualism. They would be horrified at the way the country has slowly returned to what it was before the War for Independence--a country ruled by the economic and political interests of foreign nations at the expense of its own citizens.

Not so long ago, President Bush justified his war in Iraq by claiming that to “cut and run” would mean that all of our soldiers who had died in that war would have died in vain, but what about all of the patriots who fought and suffered and died in our very first war, the war which separated us from England and made us a nation in our own right? And what about the second war in 1812 in which England tried to reclaim America as a British colony--will we allow those who fought and suffered and died in that war to have died in vain also?

But there’s another, much more pragmatic, point which I haven’t seen brought up anywhere (if I’m wrong, I’d appreciate someone pointing it out): assuming Mike Huckabee and his followers succeed in making this a “Christian nation,” what KIND of Christian nation will it be? There are a multitude of sects which fall under the generic heading of “Christian” from which to choose--Catholic vs. Protestant being the biggest one, but under the Protestant category, you have Baptists/Southern Baptists, Methodists, Seventh Day Adventists, Mormons, Unitarian, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Pentecostal/Evangelical and others. The faithful of each of those sects will passionately defend the most minute difference between themselves and the others, even when the significance of such minutiae escapes the rest of us. Would we see them battling it out for supremacy in a competition for not only the hearts and minds of people but for their bodies as well, in the form of government agents enforcing attendance at religious functions and regulating whatever behaviors the ruling religion bans or requires? Would candidates for the highest office in the land have to compete in Old Testament-like contests of “My God is better than your God,” in which the winner is determined by surpassing his rivals in the performance of miracles and wonders like altars lit by fire from heaven and the raising of the dead? No doubt the crowds would be entertained by such spectacles, but do we want our spiritual leaders reduced to the level of any talented Las Vegas showman or Hollywood special effects crew?

And what about the freedom of religion guaranteed under the First Amendment? What about the right to belong to whatever church--or to no church at all--which best fulfills our spiritual needs? Will we be compelled to change churches according to whichever church the next Political Pope (or whatever we would call the holder of the office we now call the President) belongs to? Or would we follow the Catholic model and have Popes who reign for a lifetime?

Even if I am wrong in thinking that we would ever see HOLY wars become CIVIL wars, the men who founded this country believed that the separation of church and state was vital to preserving both religious and civil freedoms, that encroachment by either into the areas rightfully belonging into the other would result in tyranny--they would certainly be shocked and outraged at the way that people like Mike Huckabee invoke them to promote a cause they would have completely opposed. And Mike’s claim that “most” of them were clergy is ridiculous--if not outright dishonest: there is no formula by which 1 out of 56 can be considered "most" of anything.

In the words of one of those Founding Fathers:

I am for freedom of religion, and against all manœuvres to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another. — Thomas Jefferson, Philadelphia , 1799

Get It Right, Mike

I know I already wrote on this subject once, but the fact that people are still spouting off the nonsense that the founding fathers built this country with the intention that it be a “Christian nation,” I decided to do a little research on the subject. After all, Mike Huckabee (who, as a minister, should be held to the highest ethical standards) wouldn’t keep using the idea and wouldn’t have so much support if the idea didn’t have some basis in fact, right? Well, after only fifteen minutes of online research, I came up with this:

1. George Washington--deist (a sect which basically accepts the idea of a Divine Creator, but rejects most “Christian“ doctrine.)
2. John Adams--Unitarian (not deist but used deist terms in his writing)--rejected orthodox Christian doctrine of the trinity and the divinity of Christ. Supported the separation of Church and State.
3. Thomas Jefferson--deist. Rejected pretty much all Christian doctrine, accepting only Jesus’ moral teachings, but not his divinity or his virgin birth. He believed it was necessary to keep a separation between Church and State to prevent religious tyranny by allowing any Church to receive State sanctions.
4. James Madison--(with Thomas Jefferson) wrote the Bill of Religious Rights, which was acted into law as the Statute for Religious Freedom on January 16, 1786 and is still in effect today as part of the Constitution of the State of Virginia.
5. Alexander Hamilton--orthodox if somewhat indifferent Presbyterian. Made jokes about God at the Constitutional Convention. He didn't seem to care much one way or the other, but he certainly never supported the idea of a "Christian nation."
6. Benjamin Franklin--deist.
7. John Jay--Trinity Church, New York; the only one to support any kind of State sponsorship of religion--but only insofar as to bar Catholics from holding public office. In a famous quote within a letter to John Murray dated October 12th, 1816, the Chief Justice wrote, "Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest, of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers."
   

The 1797 Treaty of Tripoli, ratified by Congress with little or no debate or contention (in fact, the document was read in it’s entirety on the floor of the Senate on June 7, 1797, and unanimously approved), clearly reveals the founding fathers' intentions that Church and State be separated, stating in Art. 11.: As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries. (Note: Today, instead of “Mahometan,” it would read “Muslim.”)

Section 1 of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom states, in part, “That to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion, and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency, is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty, because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his opinions the rule of judgment, and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own; that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government, for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order; and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.”

I know it’s a little hard to follow, but it is basically a mandate for the separation of Church and State on the grounds that government interference in religious matters tends to end in the restraint of religion and that civil rights do not depend on religious beliefs--essentially that what a person thinks is no business of the government, only what he does.

The point to all of this is simply that if you’re going to run for President of the United States of America and you’re going to use the ideals and principles of the men who founded those United States, then you should at least do them courtesy of not making a mockery of those ideals and principles by turning them inside out. And the ideals and principles of the Founding Fathers was not to create a “Christian nation” but to create a nation free of religious restraint or compulsion. Get it right, Mike, or get out of the race, because your shameless exploitation of the spiritually innocent (if historically ignorant) members of your following is unworthy of the Office at best. And if it’s any indication of the path you would take if elected, I can’t help but shudder at the fate of our nation at the hands of another hypocritical wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing.

Censorship

Words are such simple things, nothing more than an arrangement of letters that we use to represent a thought, thing or feeling. No word, in and of itself, is "good" or "bad"--what's "good" or "bad" is the way we use those words. Just like there is no "good" or "bad" language, only "good" or "bad" USES of language: good when used to express thoughts and ideas, or to communicate ideas, bad when used to hurt people or to control the way they think or behave.

Take, for example, the recent hullabaloo over the use of the "N" word--the word itself is nothing more than a corruption of the Latin word for the color black, but we have turned it into something we can use to denigrate one particular race of people. There are words used in just such a way to denigrate virtually all the races of people on this planet but no one is trying to ban any of those--I wonder why? I hate the word myself and have never used it, but I think the effort to ban the word is misguided as best--after all, it's just a word. It seems to me that what the people behind the proposed ban really want is to ban the ugly and hateful and hurtful feelings the word evokes, but simply removing the word from the language won't accomplish that--simply removing the word won't eliminate the thoughts and feelings the word is used to express and if people can't use that one word to express those thoughts and feelings, they'll just find or create another one, which makes the whole process of censoring the word as huge a waste of time as censoring any of the other words that express strong--particularly negative--emotions.

We NEED words that shock our sensibilities, that make us angry, because human beings are emotional creatures and without words that evoke strong emotions and provoke us into actually examining our cherished beliefs and ideals, we tend to fall into a dangerous complacency regarding those beliefs and ideals until they become set in stone and hope for any progress in our emotional, intellectual or spiritual development wastes away. Without words that challenge us to examine ourselves and the "truths" we hold, we devolve into a mass of conformity devoid of even the merest spark of brilliance which could lift humanity out of it's stagnant mediocrity. Complacent people are easy to control, order is easy to enforce, and the authorities don't have to do much of anything other than "ride herd," which is the way they want it--but would you really want to live in such a world? A world of grays rather than one of blacks and whites and bright rainbow colors? A world with no art because every expression of inspiration, regardless of the medium, will eventually offend someone and must therefore be censored until it loses the very essence of the original inspiration? Ever spend much time in a room where everything was the exact same color--say a room that was all white, from the floor to the ceiling and everything in between? How long do you think it would take to go insane, simply from the lack of anything to contrast with the mind-numbing sameness? Or from listening to a voice droning on and on without ever saying anything that catches your ear and makes you really LISTEN to and THINK ABOUT what the voice is saying?

And say these people succeed in their efforts to ban this one word--what would the consequence be? Would the libraries have to purge their shelves of anything containing that one word? Would publishers have to refuse works submitted to them if they happen to contain that one word--even if it's only used once--or filmmakers? And what's next? The precedent will have been set--what's to stop them from removing any word or expression of art that makes us uncomfortable or provokes original thought? No matter how well intentioned the effort is, ultimately the result is the same.

Numbers Don't Lie--But the People Who Use Them Do

Whenever the media starts talking about polls and poll numbers and such, treating the results of this poll or that poll with all the seriousness of a scientific study, it makes me wonder if anyone really understands the poll process and how meaningless such things actually are. I used to work for a market research company and I've seen firsthand how the process works. Whenever the media starts spouting off about the results of this poll or that poll, I always wonder about the questions asked and how they were phrased because I know from experience how much of a difference even a small change in wording can make in the results achieved. I also wonder WHO the questions are being asked of, because that also has an effect.

People have an innate respect for numbers (numbers don't lie), but understand little about how the same set of numbers can be used and manipulated in a wide variety of ways, depending on the way they are categorized (numbers don't lie, but they'll say anything you want if you torture them enough)--for example, the way government agencies "adjust" their statistics by including or removing certain groups of numbers depending on the goal they are trying to achieve. For example, the way the FBI includes certain categories of crimes in their statistics to inflate the crime rate when they want to justify a demand for more money, but delete those same categories when trying to prove how well the agency is doing in reducing the crime rate. Or the way the government ignores certain groups of homeless people by claiming that they aren't REALLY homeless--it seems they only count the number of people who are actually sleeping in parks and on sidewalks, not those who may have any kind of transient housing (apparently sleeping on some one's couch and stashing your belongings in a corner qualifies as having a home).

Or labeling someone a sex offender, without explaining exactly what the offense was--was it an actual rape or child molestation, or was it simple a case of "playing doctor" taken to an absurd extreme? I know a man who will be forever tagged as a sex offender because he was caught playing you-show-me-yours-and-I'll-show-you-mine with a neighbor girl--he was all of 11 years old and the girl (whose mother had him arrested) was 10. I remember that man every time the MSM plasters some one's name and face all over the screen as a dangerous SO without explaining exactly what his crime might have been.

Now, there is also the matter of how the questions are formulated. When I was doing phone surveys, we would be given a list of questions and told to ask them exactly as written--no explanations allowed, even when the question did not make sense. In longer surveys, certain questions might be repeated but in slightly different form, so that a different answer might be given--thus cancelling out the answer previously given. Or they might ask a series of what could be called "leading-the-witness" questions, designed to elicit a particular answer--say Candidate A commissions a poll to find out how many votes he can expect to get in a particular area. His poll gives a choice between himself and three others, which we'll call Candidates B, C, and D and asks which one you are going to vote for.

Say the results come out like this: Candidate A--10, Candidate B--20, Candidate C--30 and Candidate D--40. Obviously, this is not the result Candidate A wanted, so he starts fiddling with the questions--eliminating B, C, or D from the list, hoping the people who would have voted for that candidate will pick him instead, or include different candidates which he knows have little popular support, which will inflate his own numbers. Or change the question to one about platforms rather than the candidates themselves, adjusting his own platform until it matches what people seem to want--regardless of his actual position on the issues.

Yet another factor is the human one--people lie, especially when it come to politics. This fact is only now beginning to be recognized by MSM, but only grudgingly, with the implications that the lying is borne out of racism--people don't want to ADMIT that they don't want to vote for a black man or a woman because racism and sexism are politically incorrect, or some other nonsense. Why is it that because someone who won't vote for Clinton they must be sexist (and not because they see Clinton as Bush-Lite), or Obama because they are racist (and not because he lacks experience in government)? Race and sex are simply ways in which the powers that be use the media to play on the people's sensibilities in order to divide and control--when are we going to see that and stop playing the game?

I was watching news coverage of the New Hampshire primary last night (what an ordeal, listening to all that blathering!) and I couldn't believe some of the utter nonsense coming out of the mouths of people who should know better.

First of all, the comments made about the racial composition--anyone who still claims that there is no racial or ethnic diversity there has obviously not been to Manchester in the last few years. The city, New Hampshire's largest (but not the capital, as John McCain called it--that would be Concord) is as racially and ethnically diverse as any comparably-sized American city, a fact clearly demonstrated during a quick walk down Elm Street (the main street through downtown) on a sunny afternoon.

Second, the suggestion that people in New Hampshire are so easily manipulated that they would change their votes based on who the MSM talking heads predicted would win--the "They say Obama's going to win, so I'm going to vote for Clinton," kind of nonsense. If there was anything I learned about the people there, it's that they decide their positions on things very early and it takes something like an act of God to make them change their minds. Yes, they are fiercely independent, but they are not so childishly independent as to change their minds about who they want in the White House out of pique because the press says they are going to pick this candidate or that one. Because the other thing I learned about them while I was there was that, in addition to being so fiercely independent, they are also fiercely stubborn, clinging to their positions with a tenacity that is truly amazing to behold--sometimes to a point that defies reason or common sense.

In fact, my biggest problem with them was that tenacity, that need to cling to their cherished ideals, even when it was patently obvious to anyone else that those ideals have been reduced to mere illusions. They are the most ostrich-like, heads-in-the-sand people I have ever met, refusing to see or hear anything that might challenge those ideals--try telling the average citizen in Manchester that 9/11 was an inside job and they will respond with the most convincingly blank stare you will ever see in your life. I knew a man who adamantly refused to see Fahrenheit 9/11 because he had some notion that just watching the film was somehow unpatriotic, but I could see in his face that he wasn't refusing out of patriotism--he was afraid he might learn something from it that he didn't want to know. And he is typical of the Republican voters in Manchester--some of the most determinedly uninformed voters I've ever come across. They vote the way they vote because that's how they've always voted and the facts of the situation be damned. After all, they voted for Nixon three times, and they voted for McCain the last time he ran, too. (They won't vote for Romney because they saw closeup what he did to Massachusetts.)

When President Bush visited the "Live Free or Die" State, protesters were confined to a tiny space across the street called a "Free Speech Zone," and arrested if they dared take one too many steps toward the other side--including one old couple who were simply trying to get to the restaurant next to the Radisson where Bush was without having even the slightest clue that he was there. No one, other than the protesters themselves, protested the imposition of these "free speech zones," no one else pointed out that the entire country is supposed to be a free speech zone, because no one wanted to see what was happening right under their noses.

Aside from all of that though, I was appalled at the way the media was making such a big deal about the whole thing. I mean, we're talking about a tiny state that a lot of people have never even heard of and I've actually met people who don't know that it's even part of the United States! If it's true that whoever the people there vote for end up being elected, then it has to be some kind of cosmic coincidence, because the people I met there are certainly not representative of the nation as a whole--not to the point that their choice for president has any influence over the rest of the country, anyway. And if it does, then God help us......

A Christian Nation

I keep hearing people (particularly the more fanatic elements of the religious right) keep spouting off about America being founded as a Christian nation, and that the founding fathers intended that it be a Christian nation. Are they serious?

The claim that America was founded as a Christian nation has merit only in that the first pilgrims to this country came here as Christians (let's forget for a moment the fact that they were persecuted as heretics and chased out of England by the established Churches). They weren't looking to found a nation per se, just a place where they could practice their own religion without fear--while denying that same right to anyone who followed.

As to the claim regarding the FF's intention that this be a Christian nation, it seems to me that if that's what they truly wanted, they had every opportunity to do so while they were drafting the Constitution. Not only did they not do that, they went 180 degrees away from it, writing in protections against it--in essence creating a secular nation whose citizens could practice whatever religion they wanted without any governmental interference--either for or against.

So, to Mike Huckabee, who claims that this is, always has been, and always should be, a "Christian nation": I say that you don't know enough of the history of this nation to be president of it. If you knew enough about the ideals and principles of those great men who founded this country, you would understand how stupid such claims are and stop making them. And the people who support you scare me simply because it means that there are that many people in this country who obviously don't understand the dangers inherent in letting the Church--any Church--run the government. The Founding Fathers did understand that danger, which is why they didn't make this a nation founded on any religion--even the one to which most of them belonged.

Domestic Spying is Not New

It caused a big flap when people found out that the government is and has been spying on us ordinary citizens (without warrants, cause or restraint), and the President demanded immunity for the companies involved but I wonder if the President was demanding those companies be protected to keep us from finding out what they'd been doing at his behest, or if it was to keep us from finding out just how long the spying had been going on.





The truth is, the government has been spying on us at least since the Nixon administration (Shamrock), and Nixon was as concerned about protecting the companies (ITT, for one) who were helping him as Bush is now--and for the same reasons. Not because what they are doing is illegal and un-American (in which case, those companies could and should refuse to cooperate) but because they might refuse to help if they know they would be subject to proceedings in a civil or criminal court. It seems the only thing that has changed is the technology used to invade our privacy--Nixon could only dream of the kind of spyware our government now uses (email didn't exist then). It's been years since they've had to use an actual "tap" on a phone; now they can simply intercept the signal, which is much easier to do and much harder to detect. If such technologies had existed then, we might never have known just how corrupt and criminal Nixon's administration was because no burglars would have been needed to spy on the DNC in their Watergate offices. No burglars, no alert security guard, no arrests, no Woodward-and-Bernstein articles, no investigations, no Nixon resignation.





And why are these companies cooperating in such an illegal and un-American government surveillance program against its own law abiding citizens? For the most part, it's not out of any sense of duty or patriotism--it's for access to information about financial transactions made by the public at large and rival corporations which they can use to their own advantage. It's bad enough that the Truth in Advertising laws have been sacrificed to the Bush Administration's insatiable greed (along with so many laws enacted to guarantee us clean air and water, safe food and toys, fair wages and access to health care) so that corporations can mislead us about the safety or effectiveness of their products, now they get to read our bank statements, too.





My question is: why use corporate entities to do what the government itself has ample resources for? If it's really about terrorism and protecting us from the "evil dooers," I would think that the FBI would have the proper authority to do the spying--why use ITT or AT&T unless it is because the arrangement is mutually beneficial. If AT&T is profiting financially from the government's illegal and unconstitutional spying on us, then they should be subject to whatever penalties apply to such an egregious breach of our privacy, and our President's push to protect them from those penalties, only shows, once again, where his interests truly lie--not with the American people and their well-being but with the financial interests of his corporate masters.



With all of the attention being focussed on the NSA spying, though, I think people have forgotten that it's actually the FBI who has the responsibility for surveillance regarding American citizens within the borders of the United States itself. The FBI is under the authority of the DOJ and until relatively recently, the DOJ was under the control of a known Bush lackey affectionately (and now appropriately) known as "Gonzo." Gonzo has the same kind of reverence for Bush that John Mitchell had for Nixon (Mitchell actually claimed that, "By definition, it can't be illegal if the president does it."). With someone like that in charge of the agency responsible for keeping tabs on the populace, is it any wonder that the Administration felt free to spy on us however it pleased? And as far as I'm concerned, Mukasey is just another Gonzo. He doesn't seem to have the memory problems that Alberto did, but then he hasn't had the opportunity or the need, either. The fact that Bush picked him makes his suspect, as far as I'm concerned--Bush only nominates those who march in step with him, which means we need to watch him closely, too.