A state of emergency

I'm smart... but I'm not a genius. I dabble in economics, deal in history, breathe and eat rhetoric and florid prose written in the past to stir and to quell men... but what am I? To hear the people talk, I'm a troublemaker, a writer of simple pulp to attempt in my own vain way to mete out my viewpoints on a weary world, and dole out my whining upon people who are too weary to listen.

Well.. that's too bad. Some illusions are real. Some come from the shadows when you've dismissed them to look you in the eye, and grin at your foolishness when you realize you're alone with them.

What bogeyman am I whining about today? What demon comes out of the shadows? What do I see today that few others look at? It's the very things you're looking at. The things you try to explain away, to deny, to cover up for the sake of your conscience.

You look around, saying 'someone should do something about the high fuel prices', and 'somebody should do something about the manhole cover' and 'why doesn't anyone do anything about our crime rate'? And even so you demand new sentences from the government, supplicate for their proteciton, and ask for more in the name of security.

And now we're in a state of emergency. Our fuel supplies grow more threatened, our money buys less and less, and we look around the nation at the high crime rates and the juvenile delinquents, and wonder how we got here, then shrug, dispiritedly, and say 'someone should do something about this!'.

We look at a government that is growing more intrusive, more powerful, at the specter of terrorist, sex offenders, and ignore the men in the faceless battle helmets who are here to 'protect you'. We cower in fear before the government as it does less and less, and the power gets concentrated into the same hands.

And as our money drops in value, our food does as well. Cheaper substitutes are placed for more expensive goods, and gradually corners are cut in food safety and preparation. Our vehicles are made with less durable parts, our toys are made with materials often toxic, our land becomes less secure under the new eminent domain rules, and still we cry out “Someone should do something!”

My question is.. who the hell is this someone, and why should they do what you're unwilling to do for yourselves? We put people into congress to represent us, and find out 94% of the bills are passed without debate, without question, often without vote and without even being good enough to read them, and still wonder how we got here!

We pass laws that are contrary to the stated purpose and intent of the constitution, break down the safeguards to that constitution, the separations of the powers granted to the federal government by that constitution, and all in the name of security, and 'At least somebody is finally doing something!'

Meanwhile we come to more and more resemble the nation we fought against during the Second World War. How so, one might ask? Well, that's sadly easy to define. More and more corporate interests are being placed in government. More and more secular verbiage is going into that same government. The government itself has launched a program under FEMA so the priests will help maintain order by preaching that the government is doing what is right.

At this point, are you secure? Are you even looking at what I'm saying? When the federal government is hiring private corporations who are answerable to no one and giving them immunity, is that more secure? Is it more secure when the Army can be called out for any reason or no reason to maintain the 'public order'?

When you have to worry about your neighbor turning you in for 'disloyalty', when you have registries of malcontents and persons of interest who have never gone through a trial?

When your homes are no longer sacrosanct from the government who protects you, are you safer? When they can seize all your assets in the name of 'protection', take your labor by executive order, and determine where and when you can live, have families, travel, and how you must travel...

Is that really protection?

How do you take back that power? The answer is simple.. the implementation is not.

We have to remember that power is granted by the people, with certain assurances. Those very assurances are our recognition of our rights, under the bill of rights, and of other rights which were not listed under the constitution.

The constitution is not simply a document.. it is a repository of limitations on the federal government, a contract written with the people of the United States, and with the states... and equal restrictions upont he states as regards the people and the Federal Government.

We must insist upon our rights, priviliges, and immunities granted under the constitution, and enforce them. We must awaken and cry out with a voice, enough is enough!

The bogeyman isn't under the bed anymore.. it's rifling the armory, and going through your tax records, your medical records, and preparing to collar you like an animal and fit you with a muzzle to shut you up.

So you can't afford to shut up, sit down, and claim that somebody should do something. You must do something. Get involved. Make the changes you want to see. Tell your congressmen and senators that this isn't working. Tell your presidential candidates and president that you've had enough of the status quo, and it's time for new change..

Tell them you've had enough of the rampant inflation, the excessive spending, the indentured servitude of the next generations. Tell them you've had enough rising taxes, rising food prices, oil prices, and you want actual production capacity in this country again. Tell them that they've gone too far in their zeal for terrorists, and that they've gone too far in their assaults on your rights to 'protect' you without offering any kind of real protection.

They offer smoke and mirrors. It's all they have. Shuffling the issues from one hand to another and trying to hide them in the swap. They lose billions of dollars a year in the Defense Department, but heaven save you if you miss a dollar on your income tax.

They spend billions on prisons, then declare more and more things to be life sentences, while they create industries in the prisons that feed them back money. They create new departments daily in order to keep shuffling the money, to disguise the paper trails, and eventually it has to stop.

Are you willing to do something? Are you willing to risk everything you have in order to make a change? Do you really have anything anyway if they can take it from you at any time at gunpoint, imprison you without a trial, and hold you and torture you until you confess to whatever they want you to?

It's time for 'somebody to do something' We have a state of emergency... our president declared one, and we're in a constitutional crisis. To put none too fine a point on things, every thing that the constitution guarantees, and that the Founding Fathers discussed as being inviolate.. are being violatedl. From privacy to interstate and international travel, to due process of the law and lack of cruel and unusual punishments, to the right to be free from the onus of society once your debts were paid by prison time, to the ability to keep and bear arms, the ability to vote, have been one by one destroyed in a tide of orgiastic legislation designed to continue pushing us down to subjugate.

If we mean to be free... and to keep those ideals strong, we must speak. We must tell them exactly where they have failed.

And they will push back. They will want to cow us into submission, like the firefighters in New York, the shoulder-strikers of San Francisco. They will try to silence us, imprison us, and eventually may attempt to kill us.

Shall we oppose them with force of arms? No... that is not the path set before us, as that will only strengthen their position and resolve. We must oppose them, not with weapons, but with the weight of opinion, the condemnation. They will reveal themselves for who they are.

And then comes the highest trial of conscience. Do we continue to speak? Do we fight what we perceive as injustice, in the face of further, personal injustice? Do we continue, even though it may well cost us all we hold dear?

The world cannot bear that revelation. When resistance with no force is met with force.. that condemnation will ring the foundations of the Earth like a bell, the blood crying up from the ground.

We must thus fight, not with strength of arms, where they are strong, but strength of character, where they are weak. We fight lies with truth, illusions with fact. It will cost a great deal of pain, of heartache... and eventually, should the attacks grow severe enough, perhaps our blood, and our lives.

But if that is what is required... that is the battle I must take. Even if it starts with one man, that man must step forth with dignity, honor, and respect, to make for himself the world as he perceives it should be.

People say the government 'ought' to do something. I say that the government 'ought not' do things that it has agreed never to do. This is ought.. this is the government's debt to us, for the powers which we have ceded.


I do solemnly swear to uphold and sustain the Constitution of the United States, against all Enemies, Foreign and Domestic, and to bear true faith and alliegance to the same.

The government also swore that oath.. and that doesn't just bind them to the powers.. but also to the duties, and restrictions.

And when the government forgets... a steely resolve is ever felt among the people of America. It is a resolve that ignores color, that ignores race, ignores gender. It is a resolve for freedom, even at the cost of our own lives.. as our conscience demands.