- (YellowTimes.org) -- As we head into the season of big
storms, I am reminded of an earlier time in my life when my young bride
and I saw storms as a source of adventure. We would put to sea on windy
October nights, in search of new experiences.
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- Where youth sees adventure, maturity sees the consequences
of poor judgment. More than once, we were plucked, cold and wet, off of
a rocky beach by elders of superior judgment. We would regale them with
soggy tales of our waterborne "bad luck," in exchange for a ride
in the back of pickup truck to the nearest roadside phone box.
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- My late father-in-law was a navy man, a WWII lieutenant
commander. His strongest word of advice to me, as I put to sea with his
daughter, was "always trust your compass." The most common problem
for green sailors, he said, was their tendency to lose confidence in their
compass. When you lose sight of familiar landmarks due to weather, especially
at night, your mind fills in the darkness with false images. You see what
you want to see, not what's really ahead of you.
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- This sailing story is an obvious metaphor for our nation's
present predicament. America is adrift, under gathering storm clouds, and
we seem to have abandoned our moral compass, demoting it to history's footlocker.
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- The presidential speechwriters understood the inspirational
powers of guiding principles when they scripted George W. Bush to tell
an Arkansas audience: "The great strength of this country is not really
our military. The great strength of the country is the people of America.
The great strength of the country lies in the hearts and souls of our citizens,
people who are willing to serve something greater than materialism and
selfishness; people who are willing to serve something greater than yourself."
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- The founders of our Republic created a guiding instrument,
a collection of carefully crafted documents, to lead us through the darkness.
Sampling the collected wisdom of the best western thinking of their time,
they produced a list of principles that, while not a perfect instrument,
should have led us inexorably toward the light of human progress, and away
from the darkness of anarchy.
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- These thoughtful early Americans crafted documents that
inspired the world with the relatively new idea that the proper role for
government was to protect the God given inalienable rights of human beings.
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- When the founding fathers were finished with their original
constitution, some thought their instrument was good enough. One of these
people, Alexander Hamilton, felt that no specific guarantee of basic freedoms
needed to be enumerated, because basic liberties "must altogether
depend on public opinion, and on the general spirit of the people and of
the government. If the people want those freedoms, it will have them."
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- On the other hand, James Madison and others still felt
unprotected against the whimsy of public opinion. Madison wrote that rights
solely dependent upon majority public opinion could be extinguished when
public opinion changed. This argument prevailed and the First Amendment
was subsequently adopted.
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- "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment
of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the
freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably
to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
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- Writing in the conservative Jewish World Review (31 Dec.
2001), columnist Nat Hentoff recounts this history and then concludes that,
"had George Mason, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson and others not
successfully lobbied for adding the Bill of Rights to the Constitution,
our liberties would be uncertain, as they were during the time of the Alien
and Sedition Acts of 1798 (which were denounced by Jefferson), the First
World War, the 1920's Red Scare, and the reign of Joe McCarthy."
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- Unfortunately, Alexander Hamilton's prediction was also
proven right, so our liberties are still quite uncertain. In spite of the
First Amendment, the preservation of our basic liberties still depends
upon the whims of public opinion.
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- A people who are too timid to trust their moral compass,
or too fearful to resist the comforting certitudes of self-anointed holy
men, will soon find themselves lost in a fog of moral chaos. Today, the
ship of state is steered by demagogues who strategically place magnetic
lies of propaganda around our moral compass, to force the needle to point
wherever it profits them to take us.
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- Among other things, they have reversed the course of
our history. Thanks to their tinkering, the role of the state is now to
restrict and contain the liberty of its citizens, to parcel out human rights
as special favors to those loyal subjects who kiss the king's ring.
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- Our government now corrals those who would petition it
for a redress of grievances, herding the petitioners into so called "free
speech areas." Meanwhile, right wing "patriots" are granted
a ration of freedom to hang their banners throughout our public spaces
proclaiming "unity" with His Majesty.
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- Forty-nine percent of Americans surveyed in August, by
the First Amendment Center of Arlington Virginia, responded that the First
Amendment goes "too far" in protecting our basic rights.
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- In reporting this phenomenon, CBS News observed "the
survey also found a significant dip in the number of people who believe
newspapers should freely criticize the U.S. military about its strategy
and performance. Fifty-seven percent were supportive this year, compared
to 69 percent in 2001."
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- Our President, who prefers to address us with simplicities
as if we were his children, said: "I remember some children asking
me, how can we be attacked? Who would want to hurt America? The answer
is, people that can't stand freedom. They hate the thought of a nation
being tolerant about religion. They can't stand that we're allowed to worship
freely in America. That bothers them. It bothers them that we can have
good, open and honest political discourse. It bothers them we've got a
free press. It bothers them that we are the beacon to freedom, so when
people look around the world for what freedom means, they look to America,
and that bothers them."
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- Those foreign devils who hate our freedoms must be feeling
much safer now, because nearly half of us have decided that our historic
freedoms aren't worth spit, much less are they worth any personal inconvenience.
A growing minority would happily abandon our principles in order to avoid
the emotional discomfort they experience whenever they hear their fellow
Americans express dissenting opinions about America's mythical greatness.
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- Most of us have quietly accepted our new restrictions
on freedom from search and seizure, and even upon the freedom from unlawful
imprisonment. More importantly, we haven't objected to the new role for
central government, that of royal dispenser of rationed liberties. We seem
to have abandoned the philosophy that the state should be our servant,
the protector of universal rights and liberties.
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- We have been brainwashed to fear and loathe the disharmonious
noise created by a truly free people. We nervously embrace our new confinement
because it quiets our doubts, and shuts out the dissonant howl of free
political dialogue.
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- Our smothering peace and quiet is a product of bipartisan
efforts. Conservatives and liberals alike may flutter their fans in mock
disapproval of each other's petty sexual adventures, but their real outrage
is saved for those ill-mannered colleagues, like Barbara Lee, Dennis Kucinich,
Robert Byrd and Cynthia McKinney who ask impertinent questions about our
missing moral principles. Liberals and conservatives agree that we common
citizens should never be encouraged to think for ourselves, nor should
we be encouraged to judge our superiors by any set of universally cherished
principles.
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- Our President was probably sincere when he talked about
the power of a people armed with principles. America's military would be
no match for those "people who are willing to serve something greater
than materialism and selfishness," he said. He and his handlers must
prevent us from developing such an empowering set of principles.
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- The systematic destruction of our self-confidence began
with the adoption of Orwellian language to confuse us about the meanings
of words. The words "freedom" and "patriot" attached
to any government program now indicate that its function is to suffocate
the spark of liberty. From Operation Enduring Freedom to the so-called
Patriot Act, we are expected to shut up and to obey, without question,
the call to 'Unite America' under intimidating new rules of forced consensus.
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- The new 'American Spirit' holds out the promise of a
strange new kind of freedom. Henceforth, we will be freed of the burden
of having to think for ourselves. We now teach our own children that mere
citizens are too stupid and too ill-informed to exercise independent judgment
about important matters of state. Our Royal Sovereign knows best. Thanks
to a vast intelligence network of domestic informers and foreign spies,
he alone has access to secret information that makes sense of the ungrammatical
nonsense he spews forth publicly as he tromps from schoolroom to schoolroom
for photo-op politicking.
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- The protracted assault against our common language is
merciless. The words 'free markets' are now understood to mean markets
operating within striking distance of America's newest array of military
bases. New strategic outposts of occupation forces are popping up like
a pox across the face of the planet, to encourage local puppet regimes
to continue offering most favorable terms to American corporations interested
in their natural resources. Iraq is about to receive a dose of this pox
Americana, to 'free' up its oil market.
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- In foreign policy, our doublespeak and our total lack
of principles leads to neurotic promiscuity and rotating bed partners.
We disgrace ourselves by snuggling between the sheets with murderous despots
like Saddam Hussein and the Taliban. Then like vengeful prostitutes, we
cut our clients' throats and steal their kingdoms the next morning. Yesterday's
'freedom fighters' are today's
- 'evil doers.' Yesterday's 'fight for freedom in Vietnam'
is today's 'unfortunate mistake.'
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- Moral consistency in America would inspire moral conduct
in others. As President Bush told West Point graduates this summer, "When
it comes to the common rights and needs of men and women, there is no clash
of civilizations. The requirements of freedom apply fully to Africa and
Latin America and the entire Islamic world. The peoples of the Islamic
nations want and deserve the same freedoms and opportunities as people
in every nation."
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- Unfortunately, our immoral conduct around the world inspires
imitation of a different sort.
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- Everyone, from our FBI agents to our well-paid Afghan
"freedom fighters," is playing our selfish game, selling their
shifting allegiances to the highest bidder. Our new Northern Alliance allies,
also known as yesterday's enemies, are now taking cash bribes for protecting
Al Qaeda soldiers from American capture (Christian Science Monitor, 12
Sep. 2002). Why shouldn't they? How can we possibly criticize this greedy
behavior?
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- Our unfaithful allies learned their profitable duplicity
by watching our examples. They know that tomorrow, our loyalty to them
will be switched off again. Tomorrow we will be lynching today's "friends"
and calling them "terrorists." Like most prostitutes, we don't
form many long term relationships with our bed partners.
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- We respect no lasting standard for measuring our deeds.
From international courts to international treaties, from yesterday's trade
agreements to yesterday's arms agreements, from the U.N. to the world conferences
on the environment and land mines, we refuse to be bound by any common
principles. We reject all proposed standards as being too imperfect, as
needing revision, or as being simply too expensive. Whatever puts money
in corporate donor pockets becomes today's definition of a good deed, and
the spineless standard of our public policy is bent to fit today's most
profitable deal.
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- Our lack of moral discipline is common knowledge around
the world. The historic myth of our moral greatness has been devastated
by technology. Information about new Afghan pipelines and about American
plans for redistributing Iraqi oil concessions no longer travels on horseback.
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- Anyone with an Internet connection now knows that we
cheered Saddam Hussein for bringing "stability" to a troubled
region and they also know that we furnished him with "72 shipments
of clones, germs and chemicals ranging from substances that could destroy
wheat crops - to a nerve gas rated a million times more lethal than Sarin."
(Buffalo News, 01 October 2002.)
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- The world knows that we are about to vaporize hundreds
of thousands of Iraqis because Saddam, the gatekeeper of the second largest
oil reserve, has been redefined as a destabilizing force and an imminent
threat to his puppet masters, just in time for our fall elections.
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- America once led the world with our ideals. Now we rule
it with our bloody club. At one time the world followed what it saw as
our shining example. Now we are shamelessly pushing and shoving the world
into our military prisons.
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- For most of the last century, America led the world,
because rightly or wrongly, the world thought we stood for something. The
world believed that, as Bush put it, we stood for something greater than
ourselves. The world thought we had the magic compass.
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- We have now begun the long slow process of defeating
ourselves from the inside out. We have openly declared our imperial right
to strike at will. Bush told the West Pointers that he has a list of "60
or more countries" that are about to feel the power of America's military
might, because those countries harbor terrorists who are not on our CIA
payroll. We no longer pretend to have any respect for the rule of law.
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- Let inferior powers waste their time staring at the compass.
Bush proclaimed, "In the world we have entered, the only path to safety
is the path of action." We are living in his action movie. He went
on to explain that by action he means "preemptive action," Commie
killing, not thoughtful course correction.
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- We are off to seek adventure, to find Osama, or Saddam,
or whatever evil creature we think we see on the horizon. We are franticly
tacking back and forth in the fog.
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- George Lewandowski is the Content Director for YellowTimes.org.
He lives in the United States.
- He encourages your comments: <mailto:glewandowski@YellowTimes.org>glewandowski@YellowTimes.org
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