Liberty Without Borders
In the early days of the Internet, there was a dream. Shared by geeks, hippies and other true patriots, the dream was that information would be shared without having censorship or spin, citizen to citizen, worldwide. The citizens so informed would be thus united without borders artificially dividing them would be empowered to work together toward progress, freedom, equality and justice everywhere and for everyone. When a Russian coupe attempt failed against Gorbachev in 1991, the Internet helped keep the unfiltered news flowing from a nation whose official news outlets were under the control of the plotters.
With five days left in the countdown to no confidence, we turn to a vision of the future which is actually very old: as old, at least, as our republic. We want liberty, and we want it unencumbered and unfiltered. As Gonzales twists in the wind surrounded by information he cannot stop and which belies his every word, perhaps the 21st century has truly begun.
If we believe in our own liberty, we can make it so.
Point of no confidence: March 21, 2007
Point of no return: January 10, 2007 -- Bush announces the surge
When I started this series, Congress had not yet convened. Bush was dithering on whether he would listen to the Iraqi Study Group. Saddam Hussein was executed and the MSM pundits were trying to make it sound like that was justice. Support for impeachment was subdued on Daily Kos with many Kossacks still unconvinced it would be a good idea given the potential backlash politically.
What a difference 75 days makes.
Signs Of The End
This countdown is to a point where the Government would clearly be in a state of no confidence, driven by the People, who reached that state last November. The symptoms which would demonstrate that condition would be manifest as one or more of these actions:
- Filibuter-proof majority in the Senate
- Veto-proof majority by both houses of Congress
- Resignation or impeachment of political appointees, especially a cabinet member (and especially members of the Texas Mafia like Antonio Gonzales)
- Resignation or impeachment of the Vice President
- Resignation or impeachment of the President
If we could reach one or more of these points, I surmised, then the unraveling of the Administration's lock on power would begin, as happened with Nixon. My fear, however, was that if we really reached that point, we would not be ready to effectively and immediately capitalize on it -- to engage a discussion among citizens in which we could project a progressive vision of the future in which Administrations like those of Nixon, Reagan and both Bushes could be prevented from ever happening again. It is not enough to be proven right about the depravity of these power-mad cabals of industrialists and politicians -- such a state of no confidence could afford us the chance to finish the work started after Watergate but aborted by the election of Reagan in 1980. But the window of opportunity so created, as we learned after Watergate, will be short and easily squandered.
We stand at that threshold now. Barely. But we will go further before the window of opportunity opens wide. How much further, we cannot tell. But the Overton window of no confidence will advance at least a little further before the 2008 campaign sucks the oxygen out of the political air. Now is the time to hone our words and prepare our ideas. Those citizens now in shock as their world view -- in which these Administrations really weren't as bad as all that, are proven to be worse than they imagined -- need hope we can get back to the path of progress and unity and freedom again. Those citizens need our help to snap out of it and get on with the work of progress toward a realistic and better future in which liberty is our shield against the collapse of the great experiment called the United States of America.
The New Normal is gone, an illusion born of fear, anger and a lust for blood. Normal is what we make it to be, together, or not at all. If we want it to be normal to live in freedom again, free of Government spying and prying and prancing and breast-beating, we can make it so. If we want it to be normal to show citizens of the world we are not afraid to fly in our own planes without having to strip naked and be interrogated or imprisoned without reason or due process, we can make it so. No one else can. Only We The People have that power.
Into The Breach
Liberty is an idea which has been born, and extinguished, many times in human history. The United States of America, armed with the Constitution and the Bill Of Rights, set out to ignite that flame and hold it forth forevermore. That bold and audacious experiment goes against human nature, many say. It cannot be achieved in its pure form, the "realists" say.
But at every point in our short history when liberty was expanded, we have prospered. At every point when we restricted or compromised it, we have had our darkest and most dangerous days. Those who want to hold us back from increasing our liberty have other interests of their own. In this series, we have seen exactly how the vast right-wing conspiracy (VWRC) has grown for over thirty years after being pruned back by the Sixties, and we have examined their interests in detail:
- Political, economic and social power under their control (the neoconservatives, They 1)
- Religious, moral and ethical power over those who do not believe in the myth of America Is A Christian Nation (the dominionists, They 2)
- Unfettered weapons trade furthered, fueled and obscured by black markets in drugs, slaves and private contractors taking over the functions of public service, while constantly pressuring our elected officials to wage undeclared wars and keep the People clamoring for blood and vengence within and without our borders -- Pumping ammunition and weapons into every corner of the planet and every neighborhood of our nation (the military-industrial complex, They 3)
They3, as a unifying force for hatred of liberty and justice in our bosom, does not have any interest in the experiment the Founding Fathers & Mothers conceived from the roots of the Enlightenment. In the 1980s, we called them The Secret Government, and they evaded justice by the pardons of the first President Bush and the complicity of Congress. In the "Good" Iraq War, the first President Bush declared it the New World Order. During political exile in the Clinton years, they called themselves The Project For A New American Century, the Vulcans and the Federalist Elves. Whatever names given to them or taken by them, They3 fear the liberty of their fellow citizens. In exercising that liberty, They3 see their own superiority, power and wealth taken away to be divided among people equally. They3 see people believing in God, or nothing at all, without restriction. They3 see their precious investments in weapons and captive markets "on the dark side" (to sell whatever they want to our friends and enemies without investigation or repercussions) coming to an end. They3 see citizens allowed to walk in freedom -- citizens who They3 want imprisoned or enslaved to their will. All this They3 sees, and it enrages them. Let them rage, but heed them no longer.
They3 fear the media will be used to expose their hypocracy and taint their perfect image. They3 fear power and wealth being taken from them and then used against their interests. They3 fear the rest of us. For good reason. We The People are the only force which can stop them.
Last week, the tipping point was reached. Last week the People's constant, building anger over being ignored after last November's elections finally broke through. Scooter Libby was convicted by his fellow citizens, and the trial exposed his masters. The Inspector General of the Justice Department revealed the lies the FBI and the Attorney General had been telling a credulous Congress too self-interested to expose it themselves. The plight of our veterans smashed the pretense that flag-waving bombast has anything to do with patriotism.
We now stand in the breach blown through their fortress walls. Like our forebears and for our descendents, we must not pause or fail now. Our liberty is at stake and our future is in the balance. Into that breach we must plunge, and do so without dithering or fear. Whatever any of us do for the cause of liberty will be right. Whomever opposes us to protect their hegemony over others is wrong -- and, when we reclaim our democracy, damned.
Over The Ramparts
They3 are the source of our misery, not a sauve to ease it. They3 created Noriega, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Ladin and a worldwide network of criminals and thugs and madmen and drug cartels during the Cold War. When the Cold War ended, They3 turned on these "assets" and stripped the people of their nations of their liberties. As long as They3 stayed outside our borders, We The People, by and large, ignored They3's excesses. But the rest of the world wasn't enough for those whose thirst for blood and power cannot be slaked.
9-11 provided They3 the opportunity to create a permanent war economy; to recall all citizens to a patriotic state Christianity in the "Third Great Awakening"; and to seduce the middle class to ignore the poor with the promise of becoming rich enough to retire early and exploit all the resources on the planet without guilt or shame. Our role in this "war on terrorism" was to consume even more. Our input on these policies was to wave the flag and "support our troops" by getting out of the way and shutting up. Our place in politics was to let the Mean Old Men go to The Dark Side for us and to turn a blind eye to whatever they do in our name while there. Was, but no more.
People without real liberty lose any sense of hope or purpose. People stripped of free speech and thought are left to wander through glittering malls where nothing new interests us because no one is innovating any more. People in such a state are abandoned to schools where teachers have to buy their own materials, to hospitals where care stops when the insurance runs out and to police officers who have lost the ability to tell the difference between their neighbors and criminals. After starving the beast for thirty years, the social safety net catches too few, shunting the mentally ill into prisons and the poor into jobs where part of the training is how to buy food stamps. Food banks now run year 'round trying to make up for a vicious, heartless government shirking its responsibilities, listening to right-wing pundits yelling at the poor and wishing they would just die and go away.
But those pundits make their living from the willingness of those same people to vote as ordered. So "compassionate conservativism" was born -- smiling and saying there is help while washing their hands of any responsibility for gutting education, social services, worker protection and medical care. They3 are now facing a People without recourse because all the slack is gone. When nothing else can be taken away, there is nothing left to lose. They3 are now doing everything in their power to avoid seeing themselves in the mirror We The People are holding up to them -- because in their secret heart, they know what they would see.
Over the ramparts we must now go. The walled enclaves of privilege and false honor in which these pundits and politicians now live can no longer be justified, nor should they. Their greed is no longer, and really never was, good. It wasn't good for them. It certainly wasn't good for us. It is now obvious it wasn't good for the rest of the world. Once the paragon of human rights and the hope of freedom around the world, now we have been reduced to a third-world status on measures that matter:
- infant mortality
- percentage of citizens insured
- savings per citizen
- debt per citizen
- recreation time vs. working hours
All too often, our leadership now is in measures that are shameful:
- imprisoned citizens per capita
- energy consumption per capita
- greenhouse gases per capita
Our political leaders now demand our respect without earning it. They force us to make terrible choices in our daily lives which they, and their families, do not have to make. They expect us to believe what they tell us on television even when we see the lie behind their words with our own eyes.
No longer. Our eyes are open and our gaze is fixed on their prefidy. Watching Antonio Gonzales this week, no one was fooled any longer by the fools. These are not leaders, and this is not the Government We The People can tolerate any longer.
The Call Of Liberty
Liberty calls to us from our shared mythology. Tired and poor, we finally turn away from the illusions They3 have place before us on our flickering TV screens and the noise They3 have spewed from our radios. Huddled in masses, yearning to be free, we hold each other from the brink of bankruptcy and the poverty which awaits us only a few paychecks away. Cold and drenched in the torrents of evil trickling down on us from the elite of They3, we pray we will not get sick or lose our will because we cannot expect to be succored or given mercy any longer.
Liberty calls on us from our shared history. Stipped of the veneer of "compassionate" rhetoric, we now see They3 enriching themselves, empowering themselves and praising themselves without reason or propriety. Unencumbered by any sensibility of real human kindness and ignorant of the common weal of the People (who reads all that liberal crap any more, anyway?), They3 are now revealed fully and without decoration. They3 believe they have won eternal gratitude for their "charity". They3 believe they have earned the right to be wealthy while we are poor by the "divine right of the rich". They3 don't even try to hide it any more, so complete is their arrogance and certainty.
Liberty challenges us from our innermost souls. We knew Reagan was not a great man, but a petty salesman for an impossible world. But we didn't want to believe otherwise. We knew the first Bush Administration created invasions and wars in the service of oil fueled by arms sales above board and trafficing in drugs and slavery beneath it. But we didn't want to look away from the flickering TV images of shock and awe and the script of bloodless war and quick victories through "precision-guided munitions" where the grainy nose cameras showed the explosion but not the body parts. We knew we should have reached out to the rest of the world after 9-11 and deployed diplomats instead of soldiers to capitalize on the world's good will, thereby ending the threat of terrorism as it should be ended -- instead of starting an infinite domino trick of wars with no end in sight. But we wanted to feel sorry for ourselves and we wanted somebody to die for even thinking they could strike at us, God's Favored Nation that we believed ourselves to be.
Liberty awaits us. It is ours to reclaim, but only We The People have the divine right to do so. Political leaders cannot claim it for us. They say they can, but we know that is a lie, too.
No more. No more lies. No more neocon legends. No more credulity. They3 have taken our liberties from us, and They3 now stand between us and the prize. Now is time to speak out, to protest and to act. Those who stand to post and those who stand to protest stand together on the front line of the real war on terror and fear; a battle line moving through history since beginning with the stroke of a pen. It is now we who stand on that line, both the soldiers doing their best to win a war no one can define for them and those of us still here demanding that our Representatives end this Reign Of They3 once and for all.
Stand to post, brave citizens. Stand to protest, entranced no longer by the siren's song of They3. Liberty calls from the future. It is time to leave this passage of greed and false religiosity and madness for power without reason. To claim the prize, all we need to do is stand up -- but we must do it all together.
In liberty, there can be no borders. You cannot say there is liberty here but not over there. We can call liberty forth from each other, but we cannot claim it for ourselves and withhold it from another. If we believe in liberty, we believe in it everywhere and we bequeath it on each other without qualification.
Stand and claim the prize, America. It is your divine right as a human being and citizen of the planet. All you have to do is be willing to grant liberty to your neighbor without reservation. It is time, all together or not at all.
Stand up.
See you again in five days as the countdown to no confidence continues.
The Series
Introduction to the series
T-80: Inflection Points & Catastrophes
Owning the key moments of our time
T-70: False Doctrines
Centralized Authority, Pre-emptive War
T-60: The Powell Doctrines
The Powell Memo, The Powell Doctrine, They3, People7, The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy (VRWC), Overton hypercubes
T-50: Clean Out The Barn
T-40: Knowing The Right Path
T-30: Standing Up
T-20: High Noon In America
T-10: Ending The Gestapo Laws
Next: T-0: Karmageddon
Please feel free to use this as a common thread. Pimp your own diaries, links and ideas without shame, because I want to hear from you. Promote the words of others that our fellow citizens need to hear when the point of no confidence is reached. Identify inflection points, realized and gathering, that you see. This power is the power of the Internet, of this online community and of the People. Use it now as more and more citizens need real ideas and real debate. Prepare yourselves for the moment for which many of us have worked decades: a chance to finish the work left undone after the resignation of Nixon.
Crossposted at Progressive Historians