The Tao of Spartacus Jones
The Tao of Spartacus Jones |
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For more than 200 years, generations of honest, decent men and women of all colors, all religions, all ethnic backgrounds, have struggled and fought and died trying to make America be in reality what we say we want to be on paper.
They didn't struggle, fight and die to protect the flag, or because the flag is sacred. They did it to protect the good things that flag is supposed to stand for: liberty and justice for all in a country governed by the people, for the people.
All the things that we believe in, our values, hope and dreams, are expressed in the Constitution, most particularly in the Bill of Rights, which sets very definite limits on government authority. The Bill of Rights is our heart and our soul. It's the best of ourselves. It's the part of us that is strong, compassionate and fearless, the part that loves freedom, worships truth, respects courage.
You could say that, more than anything else, the Bill of Rights IS America.
The President isn't America.
Not even a good president.
Certainly not the likes of a George W. Bush, inveterate liar, pathological cheat, simpering coward, swaggering bully.
I cannot believe that generations of patriots struggled, fought and died so that a George W. Bush could strut around like the Mikado, playing the pimp for every bloated corporate parasite on the body politic.
The President is not America.
The Bill of Rights is America.
Those "corporate interests" aren't America, either.
No corporation ever bled in battle.
No corporation ever got its head cracked on the picket line so we could all have a 40-hour work week and working conditions that didn't amount to wage-slavery.
No corporation ever took to the streets to demand equal rights for ALL citizens, got gassed, fire-hosed or set upon by dogs.
We The People do all the work, take care of the cows, do the milking. The corporations
just sneak in and skim off the cream.
Big Business is not America.
The Bill of Rights is America.
The Republican Party is not America.
And neither is the Democratic Party.
Or any other party. Or any particular number of parties.
The Congress isn't America.
The Courts aren't America.
The Bill of Rights is America.
Back in the waybackwhen, when I went into the service, I took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic. Every serviceman or woman, every congressman, every judge, and even the President takes an oath to uphold, bear true allegiance to, and/or protect and defend the Constitution. That includes the Bill of Rights, and we all know that the Bill of Rights is the important part.
Nobody ever wrote an inspirational patriotic song about the procedure for selecting
a senator.
I want to put this next part as simply as possible, because I don't want to lose anybody. I don't want anyone to misunderstand.
Either you bear true faith and allegiance to the constitution and uphold, protect and defend the Bill of Rights or you don't.
It's that simple.
If you do, you're a patriot.
If you don't you're not.
If you call yourself a patriot because you are loyal to the president, or think your country is always right, or think your country has a right to do anything to anybody any time any place for any reason, you're not a patriot.
You're a liar.
In fact, you're a damn liar.
More than that, you're a traitor.
I'm not exaggerating for effect.
I mean it.
Traitor.
Anyone who acts to subvert, contravene, contradict or undermine the Constitution betrays everything that makes America America.
This isn't a question of people of good will disagreeing about how best to fulfill America's dream of liberty. It isn't like two basketball clubs, one that prefers a zone defense and another that prefers a man-to-man defense. It's more a question of people who join a basketball club though they don't even like basketball and then they become officers in the club for the sole purpose of making everyone play football instead.
We're not just in a disagreement about how the game should be played or how to apply the rules.
George W. Bush and the so-called "neo-cons" want to play a different game entirely and it isn't football, although it does begin with an "f."
It's called Fascism.
Fascism is a system of government headed by a dictator who has complete power and forcibly suppresses opposition and criticism; it emphasizes aggressive nationalism and often racism, unifying government, religion and business interests.
If the similarity between George W. Bush's policies and assertions of power and Adolf Hitler's "to do" list doesn't send an icy shiver through your marrow, you need to put your flag down awhile and pay closer attention.
But the Constitution of the United States is not a fascist manifesto.
Indeed a Republic, wherein all sovereignty lies the people themselves, is just about the exact opposite of fascism, if there is one.
The neo-cons can't have it both ways.
You can't protect and defend the constitution and at the same time establish fascism.
The two are mutually exclusive.
So to get what they want the neo-cons simply would have to overthrow the legal government of the United States.
And that's exactly what they're doing.
What you and I have to do about it is equally simple, equally clear but not easy.
We must arrest, indict, convict and imprison every single one of them — Bush, Cheney, Rove, Gonzales — and every senator and every congressperson who has colluded with them. They are all conspirators in a grand criminal fraud — the War on Iraq — that has already resulted in thousands of deaths, Iraqui and American.
That alone should win each and every one of them a long walk down a short hallway to a small room with a needle.
We must seek them out, arrest them, indict them, convict them and punish them.
We must oust these murderous traitors no matter what it takes, no matter how long it takes, no matter what means we must use. Now that the neo-fascists — let's call them by their rightful name; they've earned it — control the legislature and the judiciary, as well as the executive branch, our options in terms of legal remedies are slim and none.
We cannot wait for yet another faux election to scratch our heads and wonder how the exit polls could have been so wrong. The fascists are the ones counting the votes.
It may sadly be that the time has finally come to "just shoot the bastards."
You know as well as I do what has to be done.
If we don't take the required action, God help us.
If we don't take the required action, God damn us.
