What is happening today is the same thing as what has been happening since the dawn of human civilization -- the concentration of power in the hands of a few. Our system of government was designed to be a system of checks and balances so that one group of people would not get too powerful. Our country was envisioned as a place which would engage in a systematic process of liberation and growing freedoms. Instead, we have a government and a system today that instead is designed to reward the powerful corporatist interests and barely keep the people alive just enough so that they can fuel the Oil Empire. Religion is hijacked to justify massive crimes against humanity and used as an excuse to justify the means.
Those of us who have opened our eyes see it for what it is -- a struggle by the people against the powerful. Back in the 1870's, 1880's, and 1890's, following the Civil War, the powerful interests established Jim Crow, corporate personhood, and xenophobic immigration laws. It was all part of the same mentality -- to create a society of winners and losers where one group of people would always be in the upper classes and one group of people would always be in the lower classes. Backed by lies, hate, and a total lack of regard for human life, these forces set up a system where the rich would get richer and the poor would get poorer and this country would transform itself into a Empire.
With the rise of the Bush I and Bush II eras, the Empire has turned itself into full form -- an oil empire whose goal and objective is domination of the world's oil resources and cheap labor to maximize profits. The monster is out of the bag, so to speak. The Neocon ideology of protecting a far-right Israeli government, preemptive warfare, and invasion and occupation is in full force with Libya being a pawn in the game. This ideology respects no laws, only making use of them when expedient. Libya is merely the latest example, seeing that it was an action which was done without the approval of Congress and seeing that we were aiding and abetting some of the very people who were fighting our troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, and supporting the very organization that attacked our soil on 9/11. And now, the Neocons are demanding that we expand our Oil Empire to include Syria.
We must do what people from Moses to Christ to Julian to the many "heretics" who were executed for their beliefs in the Middle Ages to the millions of Black slaves to the millions of Holocaust victims to the millions of Latinos to King, Gandhi, and others like them did -- struggle against the Empire. They believe in a society where there are winners and losers, where people are blamed for being poor. We believe in a society where everyone has a chance to succeed. They believe in a society where there are all these scary brown people such as immigrants, Palestinians, Arabs, Blacks, and other such people are to be feared and shunned. We believe in a society where all people should be treated equally regardless of race, religion, creed, gender, political belief, sexual orientation, or class. They believe in a society where if you believe in basic human decency for immigrants, you are somehow unpatriotic. We believe in returning to our roots as a country as a refuge for the poor and the persecuted. We have the policy of open borders to thank for our very existence as a nation.
They believe in a society which plays off one group of people against another. We believe in solidarity with immigrants here in the US to the Tibetans in China to the Native Americans trying to protect their way of life against powerful corporatist interests. They believe in a society of anarchy where might makes right. We believe in the rule of law, in institutions such as the UN and documents such as the Constitution. While it is not perfect and while it is stacked so that the five major powers of China, Russia, France, the UK, and the US have most of the power, it is still our best hope for applying the rule of law internationally.
We need to build a society in which basic human freedoms are respected, where we can create a process of constantly expanding peoples' basic freedoms, and live up to the basic principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that our country was envisioned as. Everyone has got to choose which side they are on -- are we on the side of the powerful corporatist interests which care nothing for us besides the bottom line? Or are we on the side of the average people, small businesses, and families who are just trying to make ends meet? Which side are you on?
Many human freedoms that we take for granted here in the US are not to be found in the rest of the world. For instance, it is 15 minutes from here to our county seat. That 15 minutes would take hours to navigate through in Palestine given all the military checkpoints, soldiers, roadblocks, and war zones, assuming it is even legal for you to go. There are places in Mexico where you can't go to the store without running into various military checkpoints. There are places in Israel where Bedouins have been living for thousands of years where they live in fear every day that Israeli bulldozers will bulldoze their homes away. There are people all over the world who are being imprisoned simply for writing on a blog like this one. Here in the US, we take a place like Daily Kos for granted; in China, such a community would not be possible given the massive Internet censorship that is taking place over there.
The people who fight for better living conditions in Wisconsin, the people who fight for full equality for the GLBT community, the people who fight for the Palestinian people, the people who fight for immigrants' rights, the people who fight for stronger unions, the people who fight for a free Tibet and the right of all people to self-determination all are fighting the same enemy -- the same corporatist, jingoistic, and militaristic interests that we have fought since the beginning of civilization. Whose side are you on?
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