..."This is no time for ceremony. The question before the house is one of awful moment to this country. For my own part, I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery; and in proportion to the magnitude of the subject ought to be the freedom of the debate. It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at the truth, and fulfill the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country.
Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings.
Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the numbers of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation?
For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth, to know the worst, and to provide for it.
I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past".
Patrick Henry of Virginia March 23, 1775
Funny, how a machine gun on a tank doesn't care about your level of education, or even to which party you belong. Neither does a tyrant care if you love him. He wants your immediate obedience, nothing less. And he's willing to kill you to get that obedience, if necessary!
Your enemy doesn't really care how he conquers you, or wins the war. And yes, we are at war for the survival of this grand experiment in democracy called America. This methodology includes warfare against everything you value, everything you hold dear or cherish; the battlefield is of the wills and of the mind-or a physical one with terrible weapons of merciless violence.
America doesn't really know or even seem to care to know that they are at the tipping point, the crossroads of no return.
It really is irrelevent how the Bush neocons succeed as long as they do, the end nearly always justifying the means. To them, they would prefer that you live, a dead slave being of little use to them. A King without obedient subjects cannot rule his own kingdom or the rest of the world.
But make no mistake about it. Those seeking to overthrow our Constitution and this republic are in it to win and are willing to pay any price to win. Being nice to such a foe is a self-defeating proposition-and a very fatal one. Being nice to political enemies would be a noble goal, if your political enemies were satisfied with an electoral victory alone. But the stakes are a lot higher than that! They come for YOU!
I've ran out of words for our national leaders on both sides of the aisle who've surrendered to Bush. I've ran out of patience for their games and this is not a game to us like it is for them. It is about nothing less than our freedom versus our enslavement. FDR once said, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself". I think he capsulized their blinding fear today, which blankets their countenance like a thick fog, but which I liken to more like yellow-bellied cowardice, and running away in the face of our enemies.
I wonder how they sleep at night, or how they can look at themselves in the mirror each morning. Clouds without rain. Great swelling words, devoid of all substance, and unapologetically bringing us death, misery, and destruction, placing us all in harm's way, and giving little thought for the consequences of their collective treacheries.
If treason is by one betrayal, then multiply exponentially their offenses, because they have betrayed us into the hands of these despots repeatedly without ceasing!
I think of our Founding Fathers, and all the sacrifices they made. All for naught. Wasted tears, prayers, sweat, and blood. It would've been better for them had they never left Great Britain. Better for us perhaps that they were never born. We are not worthy of them-not by a long shot, as evidenced by what tyranny we have allowed to overthrow the inheritance they once gave all to pass on to us and leaving us our Constitution & freedom as a birthright. All it takes for evil men to prevail over us is for good men to do nothing!
Tyranny and despotism are the twin sirens, which I liken to a death siren beckoning our ship of state to crash into the rocky shoals of slavery and leading to our nation's death as a home for a free people. I'm nearly as out of tears as I am out of words!
I was considered by my teachers a "gifted"(I think cursed) student because I saved them the trouble; I taught myself to read and write quite fluently I should add, before attending the first day of formal schooling by the age of six, because I was a survivor of forced sodomy and rape for a whole year as a little 4 year old boy, my body enduring the scourge of invasion by someone else's body and I swore no one would ever rape my mind! I was already reading books, keeping journals and writing book reports, and had my own microscope with which to study my world, while most kids my age struggled with learning their abc's and colors.
But I digress. My neighbor slaughtered hogs as a sidebar to put bread on his table, ergo, when he saw a hog he saw bread. When I see a hog, I see pork chops. Today, when people see the illusion of freedom cloaked in beautiful diatribes of mind-numbing propaganda, I see the lies-and liars and call them what they are!
When most people today are working to live, I lived to work. When most people see America, they see a way of life while struggling to make ends meet. I see the end of an America that has become drunk with power, obsessed with money, hypnotized into complacency, and oblivious to the reality of its true destiny to the bitter end. Necessity is the mother of all invention. Peace is the protector of genius. Sleep is the enemy of reality. Death the enemy of life. Bush and his neocons of his "new and improved" Fourth Reich the avowed enemy of freedom, and the mortal enemy of them all!
Whom are we petulent Americans and just whom are our forebears? Were most of us descendents of slaves-or free men? Are we descended from conquerors or the conquered? Those among us who came from slavery fought for their freedom, broke the bonds of slavery and became free men. Many paved the road to freedom with the asphalt of their own blood!
Former slaves value freedom sometimes more than free men. Still, others who were free born fought slavery and the will of despotic men to remain free. We all mostly have our roots in Europe, Africa, or Asia, but we all our descended from some of the greatest empires that ever ruled the world. We all were descended from among the conquerors or the conquered.
In either case, the conquerors were not merciful-or nice to the conquered. Being nice then got you dead! Being nice now will make you dead slaves!
The whole truly is the sum of its parts, and we each have the DNA and blood of great civilizations coursing through our veins! As long as we are alive and free life has meaning. Being "nice" to the enemies of our freedom is analogous to slavery and death!
And I've found in life that no good deed goes unpunished, where it comes to negotiating with our enemies over our freedom. And I'm not the type of person who is nice when my oppressor is about to put a chain on my hands and feet-or a noose around my neck.
Being nice makes slaves out of free men, and destines us to discarding by our oppressors to the bottom of history's dustbin, and among of those severed heads of a people past conquered, because they thought being nice would stop their enslavement. It won't!
I will leave you today with the final passages of Patrick Henry's speech:
..."And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the House.
Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received?
Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss.
Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition comports with those warlike preparations which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation?
Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled that force must be called in to win back our love? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation; the last arguments to which kings resort.
I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlement assign any other possible motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy, in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us: they can be meant for no other.
They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose to them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable; but it has been all in vain.
Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves.
Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament.
Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne! In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation.
There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free--if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending--if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained--we must fight!
I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of hosts is all that is left us! They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary.
But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year?
Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house?
Shall we gather strength but irresolution and inaction?
Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot?
Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. The millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us.
Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave.
Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest.
There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston!
The war is inevitable--and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come.
It is in vain, sir, to extentuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace--but there is no peace. The war is actually begun!
The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms!
Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have?
Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death"!
Sic semper tyrannus!
