Why Frank Buckles deserves to lie in honor in the Capitol.
It’s not because he’s the last veteran of WWI to die. It’s because he was the last survivor of an event that transformed this nation and the world. He was the tie to a time before.
As a farmer and citizen soldier Buckles was a veritable embodiment of the ideals of Jeffersonian democracy. The symbol of our Democratic Party, the mule, derives from one man tilling the soil on the farm he owned, dependent on no one. His taking up of the sword upon the call of his country, and his return to the farm afterwards embodies Republican values as deep and old as the Roman Republic and the founding of our nation. His passing deserves to be noted by the entire nation, for his passing is in a very real sense the symbol of the death of values and perspectives that made this nation what it became and what the Republican Party and we all once honored: the City on the Hill to which all humankind aspired.
Today we stand on the brink of final transition from Republic to Empire, from the increasing power of progressive democracy in Buckles’ time of sacrifice to a time of its growing decay and replacement by increasingly powerful executives both corporate and political, bent only on their own self-enrichment and exercise of power. When Boehner and the Republicans of this era refuse to acknowledge the passing of this man, they simply confirm the contrast between what Buckles and the nation were, and what we are now.
Before WWI the US did not have an apparatus of state oppression at the federal level. The Military-Industrial complex that WWII hero Dwight Eisenhower warned us against, and which dominates our politics and economy and distorts the politics and economics of the rest of the planet as a consequence, did not then exist. The constant interference in the affairs of other nations was held then to be a habit only of the monarchs of countries whose forms of government and behavior we Americans explicitly rejected.
WWI saw the erection of federal authority that threw even elected officials out of office in its search for those who opposed the policies of a newly empowered imperial state. The globalized military industrial complex we rue today established its roots in the necessities of our first international war. The Palmer Raids on union members and “socialists,” driven by corporate Democrats in what was then to a very large extent a very different Democratic Party, characterized the rejection and fear of revolutionary change that once was touted as the essential character of our Revolutionary nation.
There are Democratic Party officials still who heed the call to protect corporate interests more than Jeffersonian ideals. The Republican Party is almost wholly a corporate front for the Military-Industrial complex that Eisenhower presciently saw as a threat to our democracy that was as dangerous as Soviet communism. It turns out that the Military-Industrial eternal war complex has become a more lasting essential threat than the USSR, for soviet communism is dead while the vampire capitalism of the Military-Industrial complex is increasingly sucking the life from our economy and suppressing the democracy which is the very core of the American Dream.
Buckles was a citizen soldier who served his country in an army formed for the purpose and active for the duration, then he returned to farm and field as did most of his fellows. Our Revolution opposed the standing armies of imperial monarchs; today we have a permanent army of occupation, not just across this country but on hundreds of bases in dozens of foreign states. America spends more than the rest of the planet combined on “defense.” But defense of what? The actions in Wisconsin and Ohio and Indiana by Republican governors determined to roll back our freedoms of assembly, association, and the right to petition, rights as ancient as the Magna Charta, are but the latest tactics of the corporate state to reduce us to peonage. They wish to force us all into becoming feudatory to their own corporate patrons who have completely usurped our judicial and electoral systems. They seek to impress us all into a permanent and obedient army of cannon fodder for their corporate cronies. We peons are to be pitted against one another for their personal entertainment and enrichment. Their goal is to wipe out the last vestiges of what Frank Buckles and the doughboys fought to make the world safe for.
The Palmer raids and other WWI oppressions by the state were the assertion of untrammeled state power over individual freedoms that today are embodied in the horrific treatment of another man who serves his country and who honors values Buckles embodied, Bradley Manning. Our silence in his treatment, and in the denial of suitable honors to Buckles, are but silent complicity in the death of our American ideals.
When I was young, a member of the first freshman class to enter university after the Vietnam War, the lessons we learned about abuse of power and imperial over-reach seemed crystal clear. A people made aware of their betrayal by those they elected had risen up in righteous anger and driven men shrouded in deceit and obsessed with calculations only of power and corporate interest from office. Nixon and Johnson had conspired to send Americans to die in wars they knew we could not win and should not fight. They both were driven from power involuntarily.
I watched these events on a television owned by a WWI veteran from whom I rented a room while attending college. Ray Sowers, that WWI veteran, was a Republican, as was I at that time, but we both rejoiced when democracy overturned the deceit and betrayal of our fighting men by Richard Nixon. Ray Sowers, just like Frank Buckles, knew what he had fought for in WWI. It was not to establish a state of permanent war and step by step repression of our freedoms. Neither he nor I voted for Ronald Reagan, and I am confident were he alive today he would never have cast votes for any Bush or Boehner. We knew who really honored the sacrifice of our fighting men and who did not. We knew who wanted to make the world safe for democracy, and we knew who wanted to sell it lock, stock and barrel to the corporatocracy. That is why today I am a Progressive Democrat (and not a Corporate Democrat or Republican—Corporate Republican is a redundant phrase).
When Nixon resigned hope bloomed that America would choose a different path and return to its values of independence and integrity, eschewing the paths of war and imperial intervention. Alas, that was not to be, and today we are far down the paths toward making the world and even our own nation unsafe for democracy.
Boehner’s refusal to acknowledge the death of this man is the embodiment of the betrayal of American values by those who have been elected to lead us. His actions show how far we have been led astray from the real values of the American Revolution. All the pseudo-Revolutionary garb and distorted history of Tea Party fanatics and corporate-statist “Christians” notwithstanding, this man and the party he leads have truly betrayed our Revolution and our nation. Corporate Democrats who conspire with him and his kind are also traitors of the patriotic working men and women of this nation. They may wrap themselves in the flag, but it is actually a white flag of surrender for they have surrendered our values and sold out our ideals to the highest bidder.
I am heartened by the brave stance of the 14 Wisconsin state senators and their families and staff members who are sacrificing so much to stand as final bulwarks against the loss of truly essential freedoms of us all. The union men and women and progressive Democrats opposing the Republican sellout must have our support. I hope every reader of Daily Kos contributes to their support in every way they possibly can, for our American freedoms are under attack. Beck’s fantasy conspiracies and Fox’s cynical “news” shows are deliberate diversions, the actions of con men to draw our attention elsewhere while all we own is stolen from us. The shame is that Fox is owned by a man whose father as a journalist investigated and uncovered a conspiracy of incompetence and power that killed thousands of Australians unnecessarily at Gallipoli in WWI. That WWI event transformed most Australian’s views toward the state and corporations. Murdoch is a traitor not just to the America that accepted him as an immigrant; he is a traitor to his father’s journalism and the country of his birth.
All the histrionics of Murdoch’s hired henchmen cannot mask this betrayal of American ideals. All the tears Boehner may shed are but crocodile tears veiling his determination to dismantle the last remaining vestiges of Buckle’s era of progressive democracy. It is an act of ignorance, arrogance, and disdain for the democracy he was elected to serve. By his attempt to ignore the death of an honorable American soldier and farmer, he reveals his own dishonorable soul.
Please also see the diary by blonde moment for actions to take and links. I apologize to blond moment for publishing on the same topic, but as someone who lived with a WWI vet and was deeply affected by him, I strongly feel this man and this event deserves more attention.