The Pen is Mightier than the Empire!

I just wanted to wish everyone a happy and reflective Independence Day.

We often forget the extreme bravery it took for those 56 colonists to sign the Declaration of Independence and tell the most powerful man in the world;

“Take your British Empire and stuff it! – Oh, and by the way, King George, here’s my name, you know where I live.”

British Troops hunted many of the signers down and tortured them to force them to renounce their pledge. Not one of them renounced their conviction to liberty or the commitment of their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to the cause of freedom, even though for some it was a horrible death.

Before the Declaration, everyone who was living on Earth or had ever lived did so at the pleasure and under the tyrannical yoke of a King, Potentate, Dictator, Emperor, Pope, or other “Men” who granted rights to their subjects and solely decided how the masses lived, and how they died.

America, as declared on July 4th 1776, broke with that worldwide, centuries-old practice of oppression by declaring the radical notion that people had the right to be free. In today’s terms, the Declaration instilled a “firewall” into the human program, namely the idea that rights come from above, be it God, the Supreme Judge of the world, the creator, the Laws of Nature, and of Nature’s God or whatever else you hold it to be, but not, repeat NOT, another man or men. And no man or group of men can take those natural-born rights away from any human.

This year, it is crucial for all of us to reflect on our Declaration’s firewall and the message our Nation was founded on.

“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.”

Here follows a list of the First Americans. They who mutually pledged to each other their Lives, their Fortunes, and their sacred Honor.

FYI, the youngest was Edward Rutledge, 26, and the eldest Benjamin Franklin, 80.

Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton 
North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr. Arthur Middleton 
Massachusetts: John Hancock 
Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton 
Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross 
Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean 
NewYork: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris 
New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark 
New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts: Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry 
Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery 
Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott 

Remembering What Didn’t Happen…

Here’s What Didn’t Happen This Morning:

We didn’t wake up to another long daily speech by “Four” instilling in us the national purpose. There was no weekly push to identify and register undesirables.  There was no report of skirmishes with the Empire on its eastern borders overnight.  Especially in the Yamoto mountain range, just past the Mississippi River. We did not hear that, as of today, the national Youth Orientation requires all 14 – 17 year olds to now wear the new brown shirts that have been ordered by “Four”

There was no news report that the council had raised the taxes on Jews, Free-Blacks, Gypsies, and Homosexuals to a seasonally adjusted high. Also the little town of Twin Oaks, Ohio wasn’t machined gunned by the Goring Division’s elite Shock Troop unit, killing every last man, women and child in a 20 block “ghetto” area, an ordered response by “Four” to the “Undesirable’s “ uprising that killed five Policemen of the State.

And best of all, we weren’t forced to listen to the exploits of Four’s two sons as they partied and ate their way through Himmler University, formerly Oxford over in the old London area of the New Deutschland.  The smaller of the two offspring, Enrich Hitler, who, as we are constantly reminded, shot his girlfriend’s dad when he found out he was one quarter Jew, (Enough already we’ve heard that a thousand times…) had recieved, as usual, all A’s in his grades like a good little wunderkind.

That would have been today in The New Reichland, or as it used to be known The United States of America, before we lost World War Two. The German Third Reich (…may it reign for a thousand years) winning the east part of the new fatherland, and by treaty, the Japanese new kingdom of Shōwa existing in the most western states.

The great cleansing occurred from 1948 thru 1960 with Former American citizens, who rejected their new authoritarian overlords, and refused to speak only German, the new national language, were systematically and efficiently eliminated by the Fuehrer’s Purification branch. (The over 38 million bodies evaporated using the glorious Nazi uranium reactors, first created towards the end of 1944 during the Great Victory of the Third Reich (…may it reign for a thousand years).

The one party, National Socialist Government assures all it’s loyal citizens that the unrest fomented in the troubled west, the Japanese held nation of Shōwa, named posthumously after the great axis ally Hirohito, will be crushed by a new weapon, the Stuka V26 Drones. Chancellor for life, his right and correct self; Adolf Hitler the Fourth, cited his beloved great-grandfather, Hitler the first, (…may his memory live for a thousand years) by stressing the that the New Aryan blood lines, the fruit of the great victory shall not perish under the boot of those Japanese Imperialist who are not satisfied with the award of the western part of the continent.  There was no comment from the emperor’s palace in New Edo (formerly Los Angeles.) Also, the state office for news and propaganda reported normal relations with our Italian neighbor to the south, Messico d’ Il Duce. The former Mexican nation granted to, and named after, our ally in the Great Victory, Benito Mussolini.

Oh, and their was three other things that didn’t happen today, “Four” (more properly, Adolf the Fourth) didn’t announce the new “Schwarz” tax regulations in which New Reichlanders will be taxed 500 Marks more for each of their Black servants and the new death sentences announced for those who mix blood with this or any non-Aryan species (including of course, Jews.) The Ministry of Purification held firm however, that unrepentant homosexuality after 10 years of State mandated re-education, still remains punishable by death.

NONE OF THIS HAPPENED…

because brave men and women fought and died to defeat this atrocity of human endeavor called the Third Reich and their allies the Japanese Empire.  That’s why Memorial Day is more than a day off, an un-official start to summer or a great sale day at the malls… Memorial Day honors those who gave up the rest of their lives so we wouldn’t live the rest of ours in The New Third Reich.

No one under the age of 50 today seriously thinks that this, or some dystopian version of it, would be life, as we know it in America today if we had lost the war. Let me assure you, World War II was not made for the movies. This wasn’t a small disagreement between two philosophies academically opposed. This was real hell. 70 millions of people died, at least 6 million men, woman and children exterminated by the “state” because of to whom and how they prayed (Jews), or whom they loved (Gays) or their low social status (Gypsies). Ten times more humans were uprooted, made homeless and lost everything.

Why? How? The forces of totalitarianism, enslavement and racism, (a small minority of the German people – but the ones with the guns,) started out in their quest to dominate the world using “blitzkrieg” or lightning-fast attacks with massive overkill and total destruction. In the end, these, “supermen” were fighting for their very existence. Their goal of domination and purification of the world halted when it ran up against the only place on Earth in the 1940’s that could stop them after Europe fell, The Untied States of America. Make no mistake, the NAZI dreamed of marching into Times Square like they marched under the Arc’ triumph in Paris. (Check it out on Google or Wikipedia, dude. They actually killed tons of innocent people and took over France!) Burning down the U.S. capitol and enslaving the liberty loving Americans was the goal of the entire Germany-Italy-Japan “Axis” war machine.

The only thing that stopped them, and saved Europe, and the World was the American and Allied Soldiers, PERIOD! They were men and women of every race, ethnicity and creed who fought the good fight. May their memories; the memories of the fallen who so nobly gave of themselves for our freedom… may their memory never wane for a thousand, thousand years.

God Bless their souls and God Bless America and you. Have a safe and reflective Memorial Day.

The Wall

Berlin Wall art on exhibit at 53rd St. in Manhattan. Click to enlarge.

In my novel, Hammer of God, a relic of the Cold War war-fighting machine plays a key role in a terrorist attack today. I grew up during the Cold War. It left an indelible mark on me, and probably everyone else who, as part of their school day, had to practice being immolated and turned into nuclear ash. Ostensibly as neat piles under our desks to make the clean up easier or why else have us duck and cover?

An iconic symbol of the Cold War was the Berlin Wall.  An actual concrete wall, which was built after World War II, to split the city into two parts. The East Germans lived on the other side, the side that was connected to the Communists, the Russians or in short, the Enemy.

In later years, when things changed, I remember a factoid that the average East German visitor to NYC dropped $23.22 a day into the local economy. A Japanese tourist spent $989 per day.

The reason for all this nostalgia is that, last night, I went to a restaurant located behind the Berlin Wall!  Albeit a piece of it, now residing in a plaza on 53rd Street in NYC. I was struck by the fact that the cheapest (and there was only one) entree on the menu was $37.50.  My appetizer alone cost my host for the evening, $25.00. So just the first course would blow the average East German visitor’s budget into dust.

That fact caused me to remember that nobody fired a single shot during the entire Cold War! In fact, it ended like a game of Monopoly. The other side just ran out of money.

So as dozens of Christmas Party goers who collectively dropped $1,200 to $1,800 per table on this one part of one night’s entertainment, passed by this huge chunk of concrete on their way in to the restaurant, maybe 1 in 10 knew what the hell it was.  And even smaller odds that it was America’s robust economy that defeated all the nightmares, terrorizing classroom drills and nuclear paranoia that gripped this country no so long ago.

Admittedly the restaurant goers I am writing about are the top end of business folks and well to do revelers and most of them are on expense accounts.  But still the irony was not lost on me.  That even though today America may be heading for a fiscal cliff, years ago we avoided the Wall.