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.

Those who do not learn from the past are destined to….

Most people don’t realize that the Bill of Rights is actually the foundation of capitalism, and that capitalism was the remedy for the early socialism that was codified in the Mayflower Compact – which totally didn’t work and nearly wiped out America in it’s first generation. It sounded great in theory but when it got down to the guys in the buckle hats and shoes, it didn’t work because they didn’t work. Nobody did anything. It was the “Let the next guy do it” syndrome and, of course, the next guy was saying the same thing so nothing ever happened. And the Native Americans had to come to the rescue of these “do nothings!”

So in terms of socialism, America can say “Been there, done that.”

William Bradford, the governor of the Plymouth Colony, quickly found out that when everything was shared -from responsibilities to rewards-  and outcomes were assured, no one, who could do more, did more, because they wouldn’t get more for their extra effort, and people who didn’t do anything still got something, so it quickly devolved down to no one doing anything.

It was truly atrophy of the economic muscle.

Although Socialism feeds our emotional needs and seems less threatening than other forms of government, it lacks certain dynamics of basic Economics which renew and refresh the consumption of resources and labor. In short, human behavior erodes the self-sustainability of Socialism. So as an English Prime Minister once said, “The problem with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.” – or corn!  Although, in the early colonial days it wasn’t called ‘Economics’, it was called survival. This flaw in the self-sustaining dynamism was revealed. At the basic level Economics is survival. Today we can no longer appreciate that because our existence has been layered by the advancement of our society till it becomes like the pea under a pile of mattresses. We are so far away from our last meal, so far away from the last shelter, so far from last resort, that we don’t feel it or fear it. We now regard economics as an intellectual endeavor. But when we had a bushel of corn and 500 people, economics suddenly was survival. So the math (economics) of a bushel of corn to feed the 500 people became an economic formula of life and death.

It’s hard in this modern day, when the poorest American enjoys a higher standard of living than 75% of the 7 billion souls on Earth, to even imagine the scarcity of the basics, the essentials, the imperatives that challenged our forefathers. We are so blessed now that we would never, ever, appreciate the subtleties, realities and hardships of the founding of this nation. Yet, the reason for the Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, The Bill of Rights, the reason why the Articles of Confederation were totally inadequate and why socialism crushed the spirit, are all etched into those documents with the watermarks of poverty, death, sacrifice and nobility of our early nation. I fear these underlying reasons will never again be fully understood by American’s today who have not been challenged in the basics.  In a way, I see a cycle. One that is coming around, that by losing sight of our founding, we condemn ourselves to return to the conditions which created the tyrannical political environment which fomented revolution in the first place.

The question is, if our economic system falters, by either excessive debt, excessive spending, excessive cutting or excessive taxes, will the average American feel the pain of the founders? Will they seek the same freedoms all over again, strike outgainst tyranny, re-establish the individual as inviolate and fight a war to free themselves? Or will they avoid all that by just dusting off the Bill of Rights and the Constitution they already have and reading them.

I Love A Parade

This is a very important election for New Yorkers. They will be deciding who will tie up their traffic for the next four years.
– Barack Obama

Recently during Superstorm Sandy, Mayor Bloomberg respectfully requested that the President come nowhere near New York City. That’s because a presidential visit has an inordinate impact on the infrastructure and connectivity of the City on the best of days. During a storm, it would have been positively lethal. The mayor was 100% right.

As Mayor Bloomberg alluded, to live in New York is to curse the President. Especially when you’re in traffic. Even more especially when you’re watching the meter in your cab go past the $20 mark because a cop three blocks away has cordoned off your street in order for the president to get from one hotel to another. And you sit back and you think: Why are we doing this?

As written elsewhere in this blog, my first exposure to anything presidential was in 1968 when Lyndon Johnson flew over my head in the blue and white Air Force One 707 (Tail number 26000). Just seeing the plane created a sense of awe and wonderment, and since those early days I’ve been hooked by all things presidential.

That doesn’t stop me from thinking critically, though. Is this visit worth spending millions of dollars in security? Is it worth tying up all this traffic? Why put up with this terrible impact on the City of New York’s ability to generate wealth for an entire day? And why are streets blocked off for hours even after he’s passed? No one has ever explained that one to me.

And then I begin to wonder if he is even in that limo. Wouldn’t it make more sense to drive