Our Most Important Struggle Remains: "To Be Self Evident"

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

04 July 14

he greatest time bomb ever laid beneath history was laid 238 years ago today.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

They knew they were doing it. They knew a lot of things, of course. They knew they were committing what the entire rest of the human history would have reckoned to be treason. They knew they were formally declaring war, although there is no declaration of war present anywhere in the document they signed, and they knew the formidable nature of the military arrayed against them. But they also knew they were committing themselves, and the nation they were seeking to form, to a constant redefinition and expansion of the nature of freedom. They knew they were leaving themselves, and the nation they were seeking to form, wide open to charges that they had pronounced a cause of rebellion while guilty of the same offenses against Nature and Nature's god of which they were accusing a feckless monarch and his blundering ministers. (At his most acidic, Samuel Johnson wondered, ""How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?") The New England merchants and smugglers knew it. The Pennsylvania Quakers knew it. The slaveholders of the South knew it, and they knew it so well that they had a passage critical of the institution of slavery excised from the document that was written by one of their own. But they knew it anyway, and they were scared to the depths of their sin-wracked souls. The document was silent on slavery, but slavery was assumed in every syllable.

As the late Pauline Maier wrote:

"The Americans were destined to receive criticism enough for asserting the "inalienable" rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" while themselves owning slaves. Some people recognized the contradiction and were ready to move toward greater consistency between principle and practice, but so monumental a change as the abolition of slavery could not be accomplished in a moment. For the time being, it was wise at least not to call attention to the persistence of the slave trade and to the anomaly of American slavery."

So out of the document went slavery, and in the document, slavery stayed, tick-tick-ticking away until it detonated, 87 years later, on the hills of southern Pennsylvania' And 100 years after that, Martin Luther King, Jr. stood on the National Mall and explained in terms so plain and firm as to command the world's assent—which was the charge put on the authors of the document in the first place—that something better must be built from the bloody rubble.

In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

The explosive in that time bomb is not yet exhausted. There have been small detonations throughout our history. You can hear them every time freedom is extended and every time it changes form as it moves forward. There also have been small detonations throughout our history every time we fell short of the promise of those words, the promise that is the essential charge in the device.

How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty from the jailers of Guantanamo, from the keepers of the black sites, from those willing to hand our inalienable rights to faceless men in the cubicles of the intelligence bureaucracy? How is that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty from paymasters of torturers?

The time bomb laid beneath history 238 years ago is a time bomb of pure conundrum, and the people who put it there knew that the essential engine of democracy is paradox, noble bluffs to be called, high-minded promises in savage conflict with each other. And they knew that, too, all of them, when they piled the dirt atop the time bomb they had laid beneath history, wiped their hands daintily, and walked away.

Happy Independence Day.

Listen for the small explosions. Listen for them well. They call us home.

Celebrate the Revolution - And Keep It Going

By Bill Moyers and Bernard Weisberger, Moyers & Company

04 July 14

he Glorious Fourth is a day to let ‘er rip, be as red-white-and-blue as you like, hang out the flag, join the parade, keep an eye on the sky where those fireworks are bursting in air. Start early: pop a Sousa into the sound system, turn up the volume (not too loudly out of respect for the neighbors) and eat breakfast in march tempo. Later there’ll be hot dogs and potato salad, ball games to watch and the evening festivities on the Mall on PBS. And, if there are kids of all ages around and grown-up guests, or just the two or one of you, read aloud — or repeat from memory — the opening paragraphs of the Declaration, up to the Bill of Particulars of the King’s “usurpations and abuses.” Cherish the sound of those words — “the separate and equal station to which the laws of Nature and Nature’s God entitle us… unalienable rights…life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness…consent of the governed…laying its foundations on such principles…to guarantee their safety and happiness,” that last word used in the 18th century sense of “well-being.”

But on this particular 7/4/14 don’t deny the reality that insists on breaking in. We’re being dragged back into the chaos of the Middle East. We are engaged in a “war on terror” that places security over liberty with the uncritical and tacit consent of too many people. We’re told that we’re a superpower and a superpower can never retire, even if it must become a “snooperpower.” Is that the “separate and equal station” among nations that the Declaration referred to? On this day in 1981 Ronald Reagan declared that “putting people first has always been America’s secret weapon.” Tell that to Wall Street titans, hedge fund managers, multinational CEOs and the US Chamber of Commerce for whom profits over people has become a mantra. Here at home “We, the people” are losing that ongoing battle in all societies between wealth and commonwealth as inequality blooms, the middle class withers and the poor are still with us, their numbers growing.

How do we restore the sense that it’s still terrific to be American?

Start with that other publication of 1776, Common Sense. Yes, admire, respect, cherish the words of the Declaration. But allow yourself to be set on fire by the blunt, fiery salvos against the “royal brute of Britain” fired from the pen of Tom Paine. It’s not just because he was such a tremendous journalist and propagandist, who spoke the language of the ordinary folks from whom he himself came. No, not just that. It’s because Paine understood and gave voice to the essential and potential radicalism of the American Revolution.” We have it in our power,” he said, “to begin the world anew!!” America’s was the first large-scale application of the idea of revolution. Resist the seductive idea of some historians that the Constitution was first and foremost a kind of conservative reaction to the free-swinging proclamation of human rights in the Declaration, that it made rules, set boundaries, protected contracts and property rights (including property in Negro slaves) and deliberately made the Senate a conservative assembly, serving longer terms and not elected directly by the people.

All true, but the Constitution set no religious or property qualifications for any Federal office, gave the power of the purse to the chamber elected directly by the people of the states, guaranteed to them a “republican form of government,” abolished hereditary aristocracy, proclaimed in its Preamble (conveniently ignored by the political and financial powers-that-be) that it was “We, the People” who ordained and established the Union, in order, among other aspirations, to “promote the general welfare.” That was new and dazzling in 1787 and it began to clear the ground for beginning the world anew, setting the pace for democratic revolutions that burst into being around the globe, and pushing Americans themselves to keep expanding the zone of freedom.

Think on these and of Paine’s sparkplug role. Then summon his spirit to remind yourself that we can, if we really care, pick up the broken thread of democratic zeal. We are not a people content with a yellow stripe down our backs. We know the difference between compromise and surrender of ideals. We are not of a nature to be contented with “the lesser of two evils.”

So on Friday supplement your reading of the Declaration of Independence with a passage or two chosen from Common Sense or Paine’s later work to rally the weary Continental armies, The Crisis. You might like to visit your local library, take out a copy and do likewise on our nation’s 238th birthday. And start fighting back!

How?

Recognize that for all of us, these, too, are the times that try our souls. Be peacefully but persistently aggressive. Demand of your representatives at national, state and local levels: either they deliver their votes to break the Money Power or they don’t get yours. Nothing less will get their attention. This weekend and in the coming elections they will be showing up in person; find out when they will be where you live and turn up to challenge them. Don’t wait for some far-off organization to send you a petition. Get off the couch and picket their home offices. If you are ignored, or they protest that your defection will lead to their defeat, remind them of the advice of General Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox of Revolutionary fame: “We fight, get beat, rise and fight again.” That’s why the Constitution provides for frequent elections, new chances to turn opinion in your favor. And that’s why it ensures your right to be as demonstrative as it takes to be heard. Don’t leave it to others. Be as immovable on your side as the tea party is on theirs and don’t shrink when the corporate media and partisans on the cable channels and talk radio equate you with them as “extremists” and sing their love songs to “centrism.” Write to the editors of your newspapers or what is left of them, go see them, call on the heads of the networks and tell them to fire their carnival barkers for the one tenth of one percent who have bought our government, or at the very least open their pages and their mikes and cameras to genuine debate with bona fide reformers and radicals of many stripes.

Make your first absolute demand an amendment to strip corporations of their personhood, nothing less. The Supreme Court isn’t sacrosanct either; Congress can change its size and the scope of its jurisdiction. Remind your representatives and senators that Citizens United can be reversed.

And watch those state legislatures, where revolutions — of right or left — can get started. Make so-called “off year” elections meaningful; get to know your state legislators, follow the example of North Carolina’s “Moral Monday” protestors, demand of your local news outlets more news of what’s being done in your name in the state capitals. Declare your opposition to legislators in bed with ALEC, Big Money’s spin machine and treasury that’s enacting the legal agenda of corporate control of our economy and our lives, one law at a time.

Take direct action: it’s your right. Boycott restaurants that won’t pay minimum wages to their staffs the way the black citizens of Montgomery boycotted their segregated buses and won. Eat at home and put the money you save into the campaigns of candidates who take no corporate money and will vote for public financing of elections. Don’t wait for new parties to form, for organizations to draft platforms. Deny your dollars to food industry conglomerates that push sweet and fattening drinks on your kids. Make the Almighty Dollar your weapon instead of theirs.

Be as passionate and involved as those populists of the First Gilded Age who wrested hymns from their original context and gathered to sing battle songs against Mammon. Christianity began as a radical religion of the lower classes. Remember the Hebrew prophets of old: Jeremiah, Amos, Isaiah and their poetic and pulsing cries for social justice. Speak out in your churches and congregations of whatever faith, or in your professional and social clubs. Be willing to work with others who disagree with you on social issues but recognize that inequality is an equal-offender crime; it poisons the lives of pro-choice and anti-choice, gay and straight, black, white and brown with cold impartiality. Parade, picket and protest wherever figures of power and authority gather to plan new devices of enrichment for the few at the expense of the many. If the police attempt to herd you into “protest zones” far from the action try the old radical but nonviolent tactic of refusing en masse and filling up the jails.

Off the wall? Too extreme? Our situation is extreme; this is no time for summer soldiers and sunshine patriots. Even a sensible billionaire like entrepreneur Nick Hanauer gets it. “The oldest and most important conflict in human societies,” he says, “is the battle over the concentration of wealth and power.” Of capitalism he writes:

It can be managed either to benefit the few in the near term or the many in the long term. The work of democracies is to bend it to the latter…We should never forget that, or forget that the United States of America and its middle class made us, rather than the other way around. Or we could sit back and do nothing, enjoy our yachts. And wait for the pitchforks.

The tea party gets its strength from the commitment of members who see themselves as fighting an oppressive government run by social engineers. They’ve got the right idea but the wrong villains and their successes only deliver us into the hands of government owned by robber barons. What we need this Independence Day is to take aim at that “long train of abuses and usurpations” visited on us by monied interests, invoking as the Declaration tells us, our right, our duty to “throw off such government and provide new guards for [our] security and well being.”

We haven’t come this far by crawling on our knees. Stand up – and reclaim the patriot’s dream.