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I WANT MY COUNTRY BACK
BY REVEREND BILLY LLOYD HULTS
“I’m tired of fundamentalist preachers.
I want my country back.
-HOWARD DEAN
I too, want my country back. I want my
Constitution back. I'm tired of watching my civil rights
being destroyed in the name of Homeland Security.
I want Congress to take back the right to declare
war that it unconstitutionally granted to the executive
branch.
I want the Supreme Court to uphold the
Constitution it is sworn to defend and define by
making every vote count in every election.
I want my vote back. I don’t want some
computer program that I can’t access to tell me
who won and who lost an election
I want my land, my water, and my air back.
I’m sick of seeing it sold to the highest bidder.
I want the media back as a voice of the people,
not just a parrot for the corporations that want us to
be consumers not citizens. I want Edward R. Murrow
back and I. F. Stone and Walter Cronkite. I want the
Fourth Estate to do its job in a democracy; to inform
the electorate
I want our troops back home. I want our mili
tary to serve with honor and to defend democracy,
not attack other countries because we fear what they
might do or because they have something we want —
like oil. I want our children to stop killing children in
other countries.
I want my flag back. I’m tired of seeing it used
as a weapon and a symbol that separates our people
rather than uniting them.
I want my pride in my country back. I want
to be able to hold my head high when I say I’m an
American. I want the respect of the rest of the world
back. I want my country to once again be a beacon
of hope and example to the rest of the world of what
freedom and democracy can be, a model for the
future, a leader in human rights, a demonstration
of what tolerance and patience can accomplish.
And I want my money back. I want taxes to be
paid equally by all Americans. I want government
contracts to be bid on, not granted to cronies. I want
corporations to pay their share and not be allowed to
use offshore mail boxes to cheat the American people
out of the services they need and pay for.
I want the churches to return to the business of
making peace rather than making money and making
laws.
I want my time back. I don’t want to have to
take the time to march in the streets to let my govern
ment know how much I disagree with how it is running
the people’s business.
I want my country back!
The Reverend Billy Hults is editor/publisher of the
Upper Left Edge, which is on sabbatical. Howard Dean is
a former governor of Vermont and a Democratic candidate
for President in 2004 “I have been looking at the candi
dates,” the Reverend Billy says, “and believe Howard
Dean has the best chance of beating the current occupant
of the People's House I also think he has the best chance
of turning this country around and giving it back to the
people. I urge others to find out more about him for them
selves. I also encourage everyone in this country to get
involved in the next Presidential election. It will probably
be the most important election in our lifetime."
MARITIME MUSEUM
VISIT THE MUSEUM SHOP
IN ASTORIA, OREGON
I
MATT WUERKER
HORATIO ALGER ON CRACK
BY DORIS HADDOCK
7 would rather be exposed to the inconveniences
attending to liberty, than those attending too small a
degree of it.”
-THOMAS JEFFERSON
People who have an educated view of what is happen
ing in the world understand that U.S. policy is not serving justice
or peace, and they understand that the world’s environment is
now gravely endangered by official U.S. policy. It is frustrating
for these people to sense that, after several decades of dumbed-
down education and constant media misinformation, they are
now a minority in America, or at least that is the way elections
are turning out.
Most people, in fact, want the environment protected,
and they want the U.S. to be an agent of justice and peace in
the world. Turning that real majority into a political majority will
be difficult, but the prospect should be encouraging to those who
care.
One strategy that ought to be considered is appealing
to the American right. The present assault on the Bill of Rights
by the military-industrial complex ought to and can create a
common cause between the more thoughtful members of the
right and the left. Those on the right who feel who feel that
their powers have been undermined — the power to raise their
families according to traditional moral values, for instance —
need to understand that the only way to protect a family now
is to preserve personal freedom, save the human scale of the
economy, and save the very environment.
What we are seeing now from the far right is not
conservatism at all. It is fascism: the imposition of a national
and worldwide police state to enforce a narrow world view that
enriches and empowers the few at the expense of the many,
and gives no respect or honor to other cultures, ways of living,
or opinions. To call that conservatism is a crime against the
memory of America’s great and true conservatives, who might
think that government ought to be less involved in daily life
than we old liberals do, but who nevertheless stood for the core
American values that today’s leaders undermine at every
opportunity.
We are living in the harsh world invented by a handful
of corporate raiders whose values are completely foreign to
the fairness and moderation that had so long served as the
proper foundation of American success and the American
dream. This new world devolved as if from a virus, and the
new business hero, a Horatio Alger on crack, did very well.
A Darwinian system of corporate survival assured the most
carnivorous, rather than the most responsible, have risen
to lead our most powerful commercial organizations. These
super wealthy predators, through their political patronage,
control both political parties. They control Congress and the
White House.
If we Americans are split into two meaningful camps
today, it is not right versus left. The two camps are these, the
politically awake and the hypnotized — hypnotized by television
and other mass media that dangle packaged candidates and
oft-told lies, people who are suckered into forking over their
own best political interests.
It is all done to politically prolong the open season on
anyone, conservative or liberal, who places morals over profit,
as the billionaire corporate takeover artists bag their catch for
the day. And in their bags are our freedoms, our health care
futures, our old age security, our family time, our village life,
our small businesses on Main Street, the middle class itself,
and our position of honor in the world.
Political success is often a matter of empowering
people. The instincts of the American right are not evil — they
are all for moral living and family strength. And they are good
fighters. We have different views of the role of government,
but we can arm-wrestle over that in good humor after we have
together saved the world from the forces of greed and corruption
that are our common enemy today.
Doris Haddock, aka 'Granny D', walked 3,200 miles
across America to draw attention to the need for campaign
finance reform. She has sixteen great-grandchildren. Her
article has been reprinted from Orion.