"Always let your conscience guide you and you will never fail or fall".
Cicero's injudicious maxim said,"salus populi suprema lex esto" (De Legibus, III, 3.8) -"Let the welfare of the people be the supreme law!"
Of course, Bush-Cheney, et al, most probably never read any of the works of the greatest orator in Roman history(and probably think the only Cicero that ever existed was Maximus Decimus Meridius's personal assistant in Gladiator), although they followed his maxim almost verbatim in the Bush Doctrine of preemptive, perpetual war, torture "to save American lives" mantra, and other acts of tyranny that would probably make the real "little boots" Caligula blush green with envy.
This diary is a culmination of a few days worth of work. My labor of love and devoted service. Call it what you desire and do with it what you must. Just let your conscience be your guide. Mine is telling me I've been up all night and I better go to bed and get some sleep. But I shall return(I think). It's a long one, so I divided it into parts...
I disagree with the late Great Marcus Tullius Cicero , who as a Roman co-Consul had an affinity for declaring martial law and for infamously putting Roman citizens accused of CT's to death without trial.
Thankfully, Markos (evidently) isn't an ardent reader of Cicero as well, but CT's here do get to similarly suffer Cicero's fate of banishment. His last words before losing his head and having his tongue cut out were: "There is nothing proper about what you are doing, soldier, but do try to kill me properly." Quite ironic, actually. They always say the pen is mightier than the sword. Not always, it would appear.
I say "let the supreme law be letting your conscience, your heart, and your guts teach you the difference between right and wrong and endeavor to persevere to always do what is right and just for all the people, not just for yourself or the state".
That's where my internal compass-or conscience guides me, and it's my default arbiter of justice. It's as simple as looking in the mirror and asking yourself: Was it right? Or was it wrong? No matter where you live or move to, there's no escaping one's own self. No matter how much you try to hide from anyone else, you can't run fast enough away from this one truth: you will always be you. Seems simple enough for me. But I am a fallible and imperfect man with a heart as big as Texas, whose internal compass sometimes fails, not because it is itself flawed, but because I am inherently flawed.
I have a governor and so do each of you: The law is our school master to bring us to point of not having to be reminded constantly that disobedience of a just law has its righteous consequences, but the Law isn't human itself having any conscience or heart--or being crafted by other fallible men-- it is sometimes more politically-expedient than humane. But our internal compass teaches us all that nothing has as many dire consequences as obeying-or disobeying an unjust law dictated by the wills and whims of tyrants. So, there is indeed a price to be paid for failing to know the difference between right or wrong. How many times have we all said, "My guts were trying to tell me not to do this or that, but we went against our guts anyway, jumped off that bridge because everyone else did, and got in deep way over our heads and almost drowned"?
The law was never meant to oppress us, to subjugate us-or was it intended for any government to beat us over the heads into submission with it, by the subversive, slippery tongues of deceitful men using guile and sleight of hand to resurrect the dead bones of monarchy, nepotism and shady backroom deals, and calling it freedom. Neither was is it to be used as a tool of government oppression, whose whips held in the iron-fisted hands of tyrants or despotic governments whose only function they serve is to lash our backs until bleeding crimson and the muscles and tendens severed to the bare bones, our eyes crying until our tears become droplets of blood, we having endured a long chain of abuses beyond all hope for redress, we find their answer is not the shelter and safety of freedom, but instead, we find we have become their enemies, ***"homegrown terrorists" standing accused of treason, for the simple act of exercising our Constitutional rights to peacefully assemble and dissent, our alleged thought crimes, then becoming all the evidence required to turn our words into a prima facie case ex post facto, our words alone even enough to convict us and imprison us as enemies of the state. All of these things being thrust upon us for merely begging on bended knees that the wrongs done in our names be righted.
[And if you think that your thoughts cannot be used by your government against you, or if you have any doubts left that police state isn't already but one "national emergency", one Congress, and one presidential signature away, consider this bill that came within a hairs-breadth of being enacted in 2007:
Text of H.R. 1955 [110th]: Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007(aka, the Thought Crimes bill)
Sponsored by Rep. Jane Harman and passed by a lopsided 404 Ayes, 6 Nays, 22 Present/Not Voting.
Read the full text here:
http://www.govtrack.us/...
This bill never became law. This bill was proposed in a previous session of Congress. Sessions of Congress last two years, and at the end of each session all proposed bills and resolutions that haven't passed are cleared from the books. Members often reintroduce bills that did not come up for debate under a new number in the next session. ]
Nor is the purpose of the law to justify turning us into murderers and torturers by extension, or both liars and thieves when we enable those posing as sheep in wolves clothing to use it as cloak to escape the long arm of justice. So vile and despicable were those acts of tyranny committed by the Bush-Cheney war criminal regime, in the minds of some they dare not be uttered lest the majestic marble columns of this republic come crashing down! But, the bitterest of pills are the not always the ones that cure us, but the ones that plague our consciences, those turning us from honorable men and women who eschew evil and resist unto death, the shedding innocent blood on Bush's or any potus' black gold god's altar of war, into wild beasts!
Standing by silently holding their coats for them, and staying just as mute as we are complicent in our "looking forward "-not backward, all the lies they told to wage their aggressive wars, in predator-droning unarmed civilians, human experimentation, mass murders of hundreds of thousands of "insurgents" who refused to in the words of Cheney to "greet us as liberators", the Abu Ghraib prison rapes and tortures, razing towns and cities to the ground won't go away by closing our minds to the reality that there isn't enough "turning the page" in the world-or soap to whitewash the truth.
::WARNING VERY GRAPHIC AND DISTURBING::-Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse photos posted at this link:
http://www.antiwar.com/...
On the contrary, these make us just as guilty by extension as the acts themselves are heinous, and just as culpable as those committing these vile, unspeakable acts done under the color of law-even if every single American in this nation stood hand-in-hand in agreement, in open defiance of the righteous laws declaring such acts war crimes and crimes against humanity. And only a nation of self-deluded, arrogant pride-filled, warmongers destined for the dustbins of history as mere commas no better than all the other indespensible men and nations buried in the cemetaries of antiquity, no more above the law and untouchable-or better than the other nations that preceded them who thought they were indespensible, too.
In spite of every good thing they ever did in the name of justice and honor and mercy before, they will only be remembered for the innocent blood they shed, and for the millions of human beings whose lives meant nothing to them; their victims were no less inconsequential than a whisper in a hurricane that couldn't make it change its course, either. Living life as though any means justifies the ends, just as long as American exceptionalism means our might makes us right, is not a life lived or freedom gained, but a sword laid against our own breast. Because nobody else can or will stop us, that doesn't absolve us from the guilt of not assuming the responsibility for our own actions or does it lessen our abject sense of failure for neglecting to control our own lusts for power and insatiable appetites for shedding innocent blood, stop the killing ourselves.
Why do we assume it's somebody else's job to take out our own garbage ourselves? Are we afraid what others may say or think about us if we admit we were wrong, and correct the situation? Or do we really believe all the propaganda and steady diet of lies we've gotten all these years? Or do we really believe that murder, arrogance of power, and empire are noble goals worth sacrificing every socially redeeming value we once lived by, every last shred of our national honor and respect we have, just to lose it all in the end, as long as we can achieve the temporary dubious security in the elusive attainment of world domination? A slave is always angry at his master and his master always has to watch his back, lest he fall upon him and slay him out of a gall bladder full of bitter hatred. The Nazis had their "good Germans", who thought lebensraum and world domination for their own thousand year Reich were noble goals worth defending too! And surely, unless I am among the most poorest of judges of our national character, I think that we, the very ones who tried, convicted, and imprisoned-or hanged all the war criminals who committed these most severe of offenses against humanity in WWII, are not worthy to be compared to them-or have we truly forgotten our way back home from the brink of collective insanity, becoming so heinous ourselves as to be not only judged by them, but to suffer the same punishment?
If I stayed silent, or refused to face the truth, I would deserve to have all those majestic marble columns I spoke of, fall on me. I think we are better than them, but I also believe our false pride and high-minded arrogance of lies are our worst enemies chasing us like ravenous wolves and seeking our lives, just as much as I believe that the truth is always our best defense to be held closer than a brother to our hearts. Nobody loves a bully, trusts a liar, turns their backs on a thief, or shows them mercy when they have mocked, scorned, and muffled other's cries of suffering, shouting at them: "no quarter", and turning the mere mention of the word mercy into a cesspool of innocent blood.
But for some, by virtue of the great position of authority they have excercised over us, have looked at the law as the yield sign or suggestion it is to them, as opposing the stop sign and demand it is for us. The law for them, is a convenience when it's a way to justify their means at achieving their own ends, and a worthless scrap of toilet paper to wipe their blood-drenched hands clean from facing the same justice that those who aren't warmongers, aggressors, murderers, and torturers like them, oblivious to the laws the rest of civilized society must live and die by, and face the justice the Constitution's sword of justice rightly demands from the rest of us who do not enjoy the same luxury to thumb our noses at the law, they assume their position of authority over us entitles them to flout.
That is, unless we would rather live like the beasts of the field in total anarchy, where might makes right and where the only law that is relevant or enforceable is the law of the jungle.
Rationalizing morality away is living the greatest of lies because it over-rules our consciences and lulls us into a false sense of being right, when the simple truth is we are dead wrong. And once being so deceived, this grave error in judgment turns us into the very monsters and terrorists we wanted to defend ourselves against, when we look the other way, thus irreparably harming the civilized society we sought to protect.
When any Head of State says waging aggressive wars based on lies for false missions for oil and plunder, torture, mass murder, human experimentation, wanton destruction and mayhem, and predator-droning unarmed civilians merely suspected of terrorism--are right, no matter how many times the law says the direct opposite, that all of these acts are dead wrong, then we have succeeded at nullifying the original purpose of the law, which is to point us to, and to keep us walking straight in the right direction, instead of headlong into the ditch of tyranny.
Because when the domestic or international laws governing the conduct of all nations in war and peace, when these just laws are not the supreme laws of the land, superior to any other living soul in this nation, then we are no longer a sovereign nation of laws applied equally to everyone regardless of race, sex, religion, creed, sexual preference, popularity, station, wealth by inheritance or abilities or social status; it means that unequal justice trumps any real sense of fairness, of equal, and impartial justice under law for anyone. And it means that we have once again, become a nation of subjects, serfs, and indentured slaves bound to obey the will of a new King, thus defeating the American revolution!
We have then perverted, subverted, and overthrown and shattered our nation's foundation: the rule of the law-not men, thus usurping its rightful place as our school master, whose vocation it is to demonstrate through the precepts of common law and common sense, showing us the difference between right and wrong. By making it a cloak to hide our brutalities and enable tyranny, we have succeeded where no foreign invading army ever has before, and we ourselves have made the rule of law null and void and to none effect, choosing to obey the will of merciless, unjust, and corrupt men who would be our masters, instead of free men, living under and by the rule of the law based on due process, and equal justice under law-no matter who they are or how high and mighty they think they are.