The wealthy, the powerful, the very government itself have all become one entity, aligned and organized against working people. They have created a system in which you are forever in debt, and through that debt you are controlled, enslaved. Through the law and the courts anything can be taken from us. We are not free, we live in economic Tyranny, and we must fight.
And that’s what they did, in 1787. They were former soldiers, farmers, working people, and had seen enough. They were the Shays Rebellion.
They were the Regulators.
The system was not broken. It was working as it was designed. It was Tyranny.
The people of Massachusetts were being jailed. Not for crimes as we would think of them, but for being in debt. The courts, and the law, were nothing more than an arm of the wealthy. They used this power to seize everything you had, and then threw you in jail when their bellies were full.
It was this greed that sparked the Shays Rebellion.
The Regulators took action. They shut down the courts that were being used to steal from citizens. They broke their friends and families out of debtor’s prisons. They marched, and they obstructed, and in the end they fought.
Who did they fight? The nation did not have a standing army. Eventually, the business interests of Boston hired a mercenary army to put down the Regulators. And, it worked. This army, hired by the wealthy, had ended the Shays rebellion a year after it began.
But, stopping the Regulators was not the end. Word had spread throughout the Nation that this small group of patriots had stood against the injustices that all working people were subjected to.
Whispers of revolution spread like wildfire.
The Bill of Rights was no more created by the founding fathers than a painter makes the sun rise over a stretch of beach. They only record what they see.
Daniel Shays, and the people of Massachusetts, made sure that their rights were seen by the founders.
To the founder’s credit, they wrote it down well.
Why is the Bill of Rights the first thing in the constitution?
They wanted to make sure that it was the first thing that the people saw, because they were scared, because if the people didn’t get what they wanted they were going to tear the fragile infant nation to pieces. That is why it is first. It is a concession by the ruling class, one they wanted everyone to see.
The founders didn’t give us anything.
They only made a concession.
Our rights are ours, no matter what games are played with words by the men in their isolated bubbles of existence.
Don’t stop pushing. They will hear our new generation of whispers.
They will hear them and they will concede. That is what they do.