topic by
Truthbetold
7/6/2002 (8:53) |
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Liberty and Justice for all? They hate 'freedom'? Really?
If we ever doubted who were those elusive people that, as Emperor George intoned, 'hate freedom,' we need look no further than 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
(YellowTimes.org) – The Man spoke, and spat, onto us. There is nothing new in that. The Man usually spits on His listeners. We were disappointed nonetheless. We wanted peace and heard promises of everlasting war. We wanted democracy and heard the Emperor tell Palestinians who their leaders should be. We wanted liberty and heard blanket support for incarcerating Palestinians in concentration camps full with watchtowers, barbed wire and tanks. We wanted justice and heard the Emperor endorse Sharon's 'might is right' vision.
But what we lost in hope, we gained in moral clarity. If we ever doubted who were those elusive people that, as Emperor George intoned, 'hate freedom,' we need look no further than 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. That is the hideout of the people who hate freedom - Emperor George and his handlers.
The Emperor and his handlers are equal opportunity freedom haters. They hate the freedom of Palestinians to go to school and to receive medical treatment. They hate the freedom of Americans to consult a lawyer and contest the evidence against them in open court. They hate the freedom of speech, though they make exceptions for sycophants.
They hate the freedom of accessing information, because they think government is their private affair. They hate the freedom of breathing clean air and drinking clean water. They hate the freedom of, and from, religion, unless it is their religion, which is of course free to be pushed down everybody's throat.
They loath the freedom to sue corporations for damages and fraud. They get goosebumps when one mentions the freedom to unionize. They go postal at the very hint that some other nation would like to live free from U.S. control.
They also hate justice. In fact, they are the patron saints of injustice. You can get a lot of jail time for stealing a hundred dollars. But the penalty for stealing millions, apparently a common practice among the 'Friends of George' society, is that the Emperor will no longer play golf with you. That is, if you are caught. The Emperor himself used to be among the thieves when he made his millions in insider trading while selling access to his father.
One homicide may get you the death penalty. But if you kill twenty thousand innocent people, as Ariel Sharon did in Lebanon, Emperor George will call you a 'man of peace.' If your victims stood in the way of the Empire's pursuit of riches, the Emperor will give you a nice job, like he did John Negroponte, the U.S. representative to the U.N., who owes his position to his good services covering up massacres in Honduras in the 1980's.
The U.S. government spends billions of dollars a year, in fact most of its aid budget and a significant part of its oversee military budget, to arm and support four unpleasant and undemocratic regimes in the Middle-East: Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. All four countries use U.S. handouts to better oppress their population.
But Emperor George is fine with that. On the other hand, he fought hard to reduce the already miserly funds Congress planned to appropriate for containing AIDS, which kills 3 million people a year. Why save a child when it is more profitable to kill one?
No wonder the Emperor is so adamant in his opposition to a world war crimes court.
The speech of the Man should remind us of that old and easily forgotten truth: power concedes nothing without a fight. The New Deal wasn't given to the nation by Roosevelt. It was won by the struggles of the socialist and communist union workers, who put fear into the heart of the robber barons.
The Civil Rights laws were not given to the nation by Lyndon Johnson. They were won by people like Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and the thousands who swamped the South with their protest.
It wasn't Nixon who took America out of Vietnam. It was Vietnamese peasants, with some help from conscientious Americans, who kicked Nixon's ass so badly that he folded.
The one lesson to draw from the state of the Empire is therefore this: we haven't been kicking the Emperor's ass hard enough.
That lesson is a good place to start the celebrations of the Fourth of July. The idea of America is worth celebrating. No other country was founded on such magnificent ideas of liberty and justice for all. But these ideas were mere promissory notes, whose signatories never intended to honor. Whenever the people went to cash these promissory notes, as King so eloquently put it, they were turned down due to 'insufficient funds.'
The book of liberty and justice was not written by great and not so great presidents, generals, supreme court justices and politicians. Every victory for liberty and justice was won by the people, with the sweat and blood of those who did not take no for an answer, who insisted on cashing that promissory note, and who, in King's words, refused to believe that the house of justice is bankrupt.
And so, while the Emperor and his handlers spend their Fourth of July pondering the plans of their secret 'Death Star'-like weapons, while the Middle East burns, while Africa is wasting in disease, while the rights of all people, including Americans, are abridged and ignored, while the wealth of the world is pocketed by the swindlers who bankroll the Empire, we ought to be planning the next chapter in the book of liberty.
That chapter will begin, like all previous chapters, with the same unforgettable words: with liberty and justice for all.
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