The North Coast times-eagle., July 01, 2002, Image 1

TIMES
NORTH
iNVsix i n â
COAST ?
In a dark time the eye begins to see
JULY 2002
-Theodore Roethke
50CENTS
VOL24NO1
INALIENABLE
RIGHTS ARE
INEVITABLE
OBLIGATIONS
BY MICHAEL PAUL McCUSKER
“You say that freedom of utterance is not for times of stress,
and I reply with the sad truth that only in time of stress is freedom of
utterance in danger. No one questions it in calm days, because it is
not needed. And the reverse is true also; only when free utterance is
suppressed is it needed, and when it is most needed, it is most vital
to justice This state is in more danger from suppression than from
violence Violence, indeed, is the child of suppression. "
-WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE
“This strange nation we have become, all helmet and wallet
and no brain or heart. ’’
-IVAN DOIG
PAUL LACHINE
1
The theft of the Presidency of the United States by
a born again Federalist Party is probably not the worst blow to
the disintegrating democracy but it is a major setpiece for a take
over of constitutional government by a powerful minority that
from the very beginning of the Republic has insisted that liberty
is the property of the elite and that the rest of the population
must be made to serve its interests.
These newly reconstructed Federalists share a
constrained interpretation of the Constitution; its rights and
privileges belong to the wealthy and propertied, its dues and
obligations to everyone else. They would like to suspend the
Bill of Rights and believe that what they call the ‘original intent’
of the framers of the Constitution (who were all white propertied
and/or mercantile males) should be its only interpretation.
It is an absurd and dangerous notion, contrary to the
actual intent of the Constitution’s authors to make it broad and
flexible enough to reflect future problems and ideas they knew
they were unable to anticipate or too contemporarily divided in
opinion to immediately resolve, among them the large move­
ments to emancipate slaves and women.
The rigid concept of original intent is religious in its
implication that all progress of intellect, thought and purpose
ended with the instance of the Constitution’s origin. As with
fundamentalist Christianity and its continual censure of liberal
heretics and abhorrence with liberation theology, the U.S.
government under the unelected President* substitutes its own
brand of secular/divine authority to subvert evolutionary political
process and shifts constitutional government rapidly and mark­
edly to the right. George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney
and Attorney General John Ashcroft form a sort of Monarchical
Trinity that is determined to center all power at the top. Disguis­
ing their intent with patriotic platitudes and exigencies of war,
they order resurrection of government police powers (reminis­
cent of the ‘Red Squads’ of Attorney General A Mitchell Palmer
during the early post-World War 1 era) to monitor and dictate
the political, social and private lives of the rest of us.
Our ancestors who wrote the Constitution knew very
well that governments swallow the rights of their citizenries
and that the natural inclination of authority is to concentrate
and perpetuate its power by any means. Reflexively government
subverts the rights of all but its ruling classes, even if the system
originated to provide rights to the governed. The laws of the
Constitution simply make it more difficult for the leaders of
government to make the rest of us so completely their subjects
While we commemorate the development of political
rights and liberties over the centuries, through displays and
ceremonies around such documents as the Magna Carta which
gave barons rights against kings in 1215, and this year’s 226th
anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and 211th of
the Bill of Rights which gave rights to the common people and
in particular protects minorities from the tyranny of majorities,
we witness a calculated reversal of this progress Ritual public
celebrations of rights and liberties are usually signals of their
insignificance or loss through usurpation and decay. Political
rights or liberties won by one generation are usually eroded by
successors who take them for granted and do not realize how
rare and necessary they are Calculated fears of enemies lead
to abrogation of civil rights. Dialogue succumbs to what is safe
to say or think.
You never really know how far you’ve come until a
reaction sets in, and the more specific targets of inquisition
are those that moved farthest from traditional control. The
movement to nouveau Federalism shows up in five critical
areas: diminished freedoms of speech and press; imposition of
religion into affairs of state; increased suppression of civil rights
of women, racial minorities and the poor (and consequently
everybody else); curtailed judicial rights synchronous with rising
police powers; and continued trickle-down and flood-up of the
nation’s wealth
Manipulation of media and entertainment might have
paradoxical consequences if opposition to the government is
the only political growth in the next few years.Thomas Jefferson,
whom the Federalists loathed and reviled for his mobocracy’
tendencies, admitted in the Declaration that people will absorb
a lot of punishment before they strike back, but inevitably they
will even if at present they are preoccupied with The American
Way of Life and anxiety it is under attack by envious alien
religious fanatics At some point the society will shake off this
period of intolerance and repression like a bad dream.
This issue of the NCTE is the 23rd anniversary of
the Born Again Bird, resurrected from a three year crypt
a decade after the first moonwalk, which was heralded
by a message sent from space,“The Eagle Has Landed,’’
this Eagle’s first front page bannerline July 20, 1979.
A few articles from earlier issues are sprinkled
among current articles. Guess which they are, and
consider how much has really changed the past nearly
quarter century. Rachel Wynn’s poem on Page16 pays
tribute to all these years of the Times Eagle.
It is also the 150th birthday this year of one of
the nation's first and foremost celebrities, Uncle Sam.
Pages 8 & 9.
w
This cannot be overstated; it is the underlying motif
affixed to everything written or said about Bush, and is generally
understated and regarded as unpatriotic now that we are at war
Not only do we have an unelected President conducting an
undeclared war, it should also be remembered that Bush dodged
the war of his generation, as did virtually his entire staff who are
now the country’s war leaders
I
i
“The 1st Amendment has many enemies, including the
President,” Frank Wilkenson says, “but it will survive them all."
We are not a nation seeking liberty as our ancestors
once found necessary. We are instead attempting to preserve
what remains of functional democracy against domination by
cults of our own citizens who crave not only absolute domestic
power but Augustian world supremacy.
The problem is that religious fervor is transferred
to the secular nation. The Nazis’ favorite philosopher Hegel
thought people should be slaves to the state. The Flag, as
the state’s holy icon, must be sanctified and death to whoever
sullies it — not death for flag burning yet, but once denounced
as a criminal act, defiling Old Glory' in any manner moves into
similar realms of subjection and punishment
Wrapping God in the flag is as inappropriate as claiming
a nation under God Worship of the nation supplants God, and
invoking a vanishing deity is almost begging forgiveness for
transcending a spiritual all-Father with sanctification of entirely
human institutions. The pathological fusion of government and
religion results in unspeakable crimes against humanity as well
as a proscription of freedoms and personal rights and elevation
of a political priesthood into dictatorial governance
The new Federalists argue the 1st Amendment only
protects “expression" not the “conduct of expression ” That is
like saying we all have as many rights as we choose unless we
use them, which instantly constitutes abuse of them. It’s a topsy­
turvy world: the very people who demand obsequious obeisance
to the Flag are busily trampling on the rights and freedoms for
which it stands.
The so-called 'USA Patriot Act’ decreed after 9/11
essentially voids the 1st Amendment and at least three others
of the Bill of Rights (4th Amendment freedom from unreason­
able searches; 5th and 6th Amendment due process of law and
protection of life, liberty and property). The Patriot Act would
certainly criminalize our original patriots (who were, after all,
traitors and terrorists), and it demands we comply and actually
assist in the betrayal of principles those founding revolutionaries
fought for and established 11 score and 6 years ago
Quite disingenuously the U.S. refuses to acknowledge
jurisdiction of the newly convened World Court and avoids
ratifying UN sponsored international human rights covenants,
content to claim that our own democratic institutions are all that
matter in our conduct of world affairs
The Bush administration will prove whether indeed our
democracy is able to withstand the ravages of the usurpers and
that constitutional government will survive as it has in the past,
most remarkably in 1800 when the Federalists attempted to
impose their own unelected President on the country by tying
up the popular vote in Congress The Bush régime plows ahead
with its rigid agenda as if opposition doesn’t exist or count for
much, or is imputed as unpatriotic Our new emperor thinks he
can camouflage his oiligarchial demeanor by cutting a cloth of
Stars & Stripes for a priestly gown
It seems with an unelected President who has no other
constituency than his wealthy backers, the criminal corruption of
major corporations and the increasing result of greater poverty
to the already poor due to tax cuts that only benefit the wealthy
and are made up by scrapping essential social programs that
are the glue of society, that the main responsibility to maintain
the democracy is upon those who are its least benefactors.
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