An Angry American
Seeking the restoration of the Constitution
By Dorothy Anne Seese
[email protected]
Someone might say, "you had a delightful breakfast at
your favorite cafe this morning, the sun is shining in the Phoenix Arizona
metroplex, the temperatures are delightful, you're still able to live
independently even with your handicaps, and while your income is limited, you
aren't actually in need. Why are you angry? Why don't you just sit back
and enjoy the roses?"
I , Me, My ... what has that got to do with my anger? Is
it not obvious that beyond my personal life, it's ups and downs, the
pains and the medications, the money or lack of it, the conveniences I enjoy,
that I'm watching my nation go to Hell in a handbasket? Yes I am an Angry
American. I'm a Constitutionalist, one who believes in the visions of the
Founding Fathers, in liberty, in the FULL Bill of Rights, and all these are
being trashed. So just because I can go buy some red flame grapes from
whatever country is sending them to us these days (probably Chile) there's
nothing in America about which I can feel righteously angry? Friend, you
are what is wrong with this country if that's your line of thinking, so go to
the temple of the great "god" SELF and offer your incense.
I want to enumerate and elaborate on a few of my complaints,
the sources of my anger.
* American Media. Darned if they didn't
label everyone who opposed Bush's War as a leftist or a liberal, totally
ignoring the entire Libertarian and Paleoconservative Republican opposition!
We are neither leftists nor liberals, we are people who insist on
following the Constitution and never allowing our representatives to delegate to
the Executive Branch those powers granted exclusively to the Legislative Branch.
As far as I am concerned, the "war" against Iraq, or more
properly just the invasion of a sovereign nation (regardless of how brutal,
stinky and bloodthirsty Saddam & Company were) was an illegal incursion into
Iraq for a purpose that was never proven to be in our national security
interests, and when we invaded, we never found any weapons of mass destruction.
But we invaded, we have taken over, and we are promising the Iraqis their
own government as long as it meets with US approval. Am I supposed to
applaud this administration for that kind of unconstitutional action? Well,
I won't, and Teddy Roosevelt would agree with my anger, because he said this:
To announce that there must be no criticism of the President,
or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only
unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.
-- Theodore Roosevelt [1918]
Yet the White House, their media cronies and a lot of flag-waving
Americans who believed all the trash and disinformation on television thought
our "liberation" of Iraq was an act of courage and military genius on
the part of George W. Bush, new American emperor.
I am angry with the media, the Rush Limbaugh blabbing mouths, bobbleheaded Sean
Hannitys and other talking brainless heads who are paid millions to "hannitize"
or "limbaughize" the American public into rallying around the
president and his imperialist staff. In September 2001, this nation had
the world's sympathy and we could have used that opportunity to illuminate the
world on holding fast to freedom even in the face of a horrific attack by
someone. Instead, our government took over Afghanistan in search of an old
turbaned lunatic we haven't found yet ... but American troops are still in
Afghanistan, will be there until Hell freezes over and they're still dying there
from hostile fire. Bring our military home, I will thank you. So will
their families and friends. So will the Afghanis who are capable of
establishing their government in their own way, according to their own culture,
which is not western, United States culture and never will be. If
we're so interested in tolerance in our own country, why aren't we tolerant of
the right of other nations to have their own cultures, as objectionable as they
may seem to our western way of thinking? Generally we are very tolerant of
other cultures when they either have nuclear weapons to use against us, or they
have no oil or other resources we want. But I should go watch the bunny
wabbits and not be angry? I refuse.
* American Imperialism. There is a quote by Thomas Jefferson
that sums up in a few words my whole foreign policy and what was intended to be
America's foreign policy:
"Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations
-- entangling
alliances with none." --Thomas Jefferson
Please tell me why I should not be angry that America has engaged
in "entangling alliances" all over the world, at the cost of hundreds
of billions of American taxpayer dollars, only to become the most hated (but not
the most feared) nation on earth? We have not fought an honest war since World
War II. I know there are many who do not believe either World War I or II
were honest wars. Whether the Kaiser would ever have been a threat to us
or not, and the sinking of the Lusitania proved to be an honest act of war
because of its military cargo, did we really have a national security interest
in World War I? Or just the monetary interests of the elitists who still
form the "shadow government" that turns the legislative wheels in
Washington D.C.?
I do recall World War II as a child, and I am certain that Hitler's ambitions
would never have stopped at the conquest of Europe. Madmen never conquer
enough. Alexander the Great's conquests proved that. If he had not
died, he probably would have traversed India and gone into China. There
were indeed U-boats off our Atlantic coast, and Japanese subs off our Pacific
coast. So I will categorize World War II as necessary to our national
security interests and thus a "just" war, one legitimately declared by
Congress. However, the fact that we still maintain military presence in
all of the countries we either defeated or aided is ridiculous. Those
bases should have been closed and the US should have brought all its military
personnel home. What, in our Constitution, gives us the right to forever
occupy a vanquished foe? Nothing!
Since World War II we have not engaged in a single war with the intent to win,
nor have we brought our military home. We merely rotate the troops, but the
bases remain. Hence we have created endless "entangling
alliances" all over the flippin' world and then wonder why we're the target
of such terrorism. They're jealous of our freedom? That is absurd.
They are angry at our hegemony, our imperialist ambitions and
multinational corporate interests. That's why they hate us. And
that's why this nation can never feel the safety it felt before World War II.
Or perhaps prior to the Korean Conflict when our intent to meddle became
obvious to the world.
* American Anti-Constitutionalism. Someone asked me the other day
what I thought of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. This person is an
internet friend whose views closely parallel my own, so I facetiously replied,
"Nice documents, should be preserved in some national museum as relics of a
great experiment in liberty that failed." Yet underneath the flippant
reply was this anger aimed at those who take the oaths of office to uphold the
Constitution (which includes the Bill of Rights and further amendments) and
think nothing of overriding, ignoring, twisting, or judicially perverting the
original wording and intent of the Constitution itself.
One of my Christian lady friends, during the height of the airline fiascos, said
to me on the phone, "well we have to give up some liberties in order to
have more safety and security." She claims to be a Republican, but
she is a twit. Since she is 73 and not a well woman, I did not get into an
argument with her. But I heard echoes of her statement all over the
nation, blaring out of the propaganda machines we call "the media"
(whether radio or television). She bought into the notion promulgated by
an imperialist, Constitution-ignoring administration that it is perfectly all
right, in fact necessary, for citizens to surrender their liberty to the
government in exchange for "security" -- as if national security
demanded any surrender of our constitutional guarantees. If I had wanted
to be nasty, I would have told her that Hitler would have loved her attitude in
1933 Germany. I didn't. It isn't easy for me to hold my tongue, but
after all, she isn't the only stupid American to buy into that hogwash and call
it prime rib. I wish she were!
Do Americans learn the Constitution any more? Do they know their
Bill of Rights? Do they understand the meaning of liberty and the intent
of the Founding Fathers in establishing a nation where the representatives are
to represent the people and not the special interest groups, the shadow
rulers comprised of the filthy rich globalists, and the giant bureaucracy that
the people cannot possibly monitor and control? Worse yet, does anyone
care? After all, I had my choice of restaurants this morning, all that was
required of me was to be able to pay the tab. Am I not therefore
"free?" God help us!
* Neocon Centrists and RINOS. Neocons and RINOS (Republicans in Name Only
and generally one and the same individuals) are anti-Constitutionalists. They
are imperialists, and differ from their liberal counterparts only in strategy to
arrive at the same result: a new world order or global governance.
They do not give a confederate dollar about the Constitution or the Bill of
Rights as long as they can display the documents, take the oaths and do as they
please, fooling some of the people all of the time. As a long-time
Republican (I voted for John F. Kennedy in 1960, largely because I detested
Richard Nixon) it pains me to see Bush-campers believing one of the most
dishonest presidents we have had, and one of the most imperialist. He is openly
imperialist, and his followers adore and follow him for things that would have
turned them into a raging lynch mob if Bubba Clinton had tried to pull that
junk. Now Clinton was a scuzz, but he was a public scuzz, and we loved to
tear him to pieces. We also had no equivalent of John Ashcroft to fear, or
his jackboots who listen to our every keystroke if we do not agree with the
plans, programs and actions of George W. Bush, the New American Emperor.
In 1964, with Kennedy assassinated, my head a bit clearer (although I still
detested Nixon), I voted for Arizona's Barry Goldwater and became what was then
known as a "Goldwater" Republican. That stood for small central
government, small taxes to support it, few federal "programs" that
Reagan correctly described as being the closest thing to immortality on earth,
and Tenth Amendment states' rights (exclusive of forced segregation). History
records that Lyndon B. Johnson won the election, pushed his "Great
Society" onto a confused public and began a program of federal expansion so
heavy that America and its economy are about to implode under the weight of our
own bureaucracy.
Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) stands nearly as a lone voice against the evils of the
neocons and RINOS. If he were to run for president, he would meet with the
same fate as Bobby Kennedy ... some "lone gunman" set up to take the
blame for the work of expert snipers with friends in very high places.
Other than Ron Paul and the true members of his Liberty Caucus, the Lew Rockwell
crowd and the free, thinking Patriots of America, will anyone stand up for what
is right ...a return to a Constitution and Bill of Rights? Are there
enough thinking people in this nation to realize that with the entire world
against us, we're all lemmings headed for the precipice and into the sea? That
our great nation and its wonderful resources will belong to someone else after
the rubble is scraped away?
If only it were our "freedom" of which the world was jealous, they
would not have the kind of hatred they do toward the United States. They
might consider us ugly Americans, or gluttonous eaters and selfish, indulgent
fools, but they would not be firm in their determination to obliterate us.
It is our hegemony, imperialism, and insistence on being the dominant
force in the world, imposing our culture and our corporate interests on everyone
in the world, that makes us the nation in the crosshairs.
So I am angry. To support the reasons for this further, this essay can be
ended with two quotes from our founders that we should really take seriously.
"...no free government, or the blessing of liberty, can be
preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation,
temperance, frugality, and virtue, and by frequent recurrence to fundamental
principles."
George Mason, Virginia Declaration of Rights [1776]
"When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things,
shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render
powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as
venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated."
Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Charles Hammond [1821]
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