Saturday, July 3, 2010

Independence Day


When this country was founded, we commonly think words like freedom. But the largest freedom granted this country was the economic freedom. The 4th of July, is one of the largest most festive days of the year in our country, the creation of documents regarding civil rights are celebrated with a boom in the sky. Lives were lost in the War of Independence so that the producers, bankers, lawyers, large land owning farmers and owners of mills and factories could pay Britain the mother country nothing. The taxes imposed by King George did not fit the needs of those selling the goods being imposed upon. Take for instance Boston the tea party... lets just look at Tea at that time. Drinking water came from rivers back before sewers in areas without a well. Cities like London near Westminster ham polluted the Thames and the people in control needed a way to flavor and sanitize the water, Tea was thusly used to hydrate and keep good health. A highly prised commodity, tea became taxed, then it was sometimes called a tariff.

This tea was in the possession of British trade ships, if the US bought the tea it would flood the market, if the tea was dumped it would become more valuable on the colony. Sam Adams, whose father was a Minister and a Merchant, a man of the cloth both holy and green. He started a bank that issued currency to people could borrow against their land ownership. The true owner of the land then became the bank, like today with a mortgage where when the bill isn't paid the house gets sold to someone else after they foreclose. So the Adams family partly owned all the land in the area. The British government didn't like Gomez, couldn't stand his mustache , or Sam's father (Sr), and took back the land by dissolving the bank and making all issues of currency payable in Silver and Gold, some of which would be taken from the Adams Family... duh duh duh da 'snap snap'.

Thus the tea party, then the war, and the Anthem, and Valley Forge, and stories for Mel Gibson to make heroic movies about. The lore of the 4th of July is wrapped up in a big box of stars and stripes.

Lets step back from that box, why is Independence day not a day to celebrate the Emancipation Proclamation, when true freedom was granted to the people of our country, when the tyranny of our own government came toppling down. When the keys to the castle were given to the people who really one the war, not the soldiers, but the ones who made it possible for them to win. The people who made the guns and cannons, who took ore out of the ground and laid railroad tracks to ship those soldiers and weapons across the land. The states that tried to buck the tyranny of Lincoln, needed to be stopped. Yet that day is celebrated not with a Holiday, there is no national civil war day, the most decisive period in the history of our country.

I apologize for that claim with no factual basis for the labeling of 'most decisive', yet it felt appropriate to mention that our country is cyclical, challenging every hundred years or so the powers of its government.

What is the Government? In 500 words.
The government is anyone who gets paid from the money taken out of your paycheck, the government is the decider of budget, a annual amount of money collected in taxes, like a weekly allowance you receive over the course of Fifty Two of them. They 'The Govt' employ people through a budget, this is done at both the National and State Level, states rights are still being tested in the Supreme Court like issues of Gay Marriage.
The Government spent the most amount of money on Defense spending. The money received by the government goes to different areas of the economy, but the area with the biggest budget is Defense. And if the old sports adage that 'defense wins championchips' them we must be The All-Time champs, our defense is good if we don't count things like Oklahoma City, JFK, The Bonus Army as terrorist attacks. Our offense is pretty sweet as well, having been at war for most of the past 50 years as we built up arms for a possible war with communist countries. Like two jocks pumping iron in the weight room, seeming who could have the best arms possible, its not about winning on ideals and the philosophy for the best way to govern people. It was about the arms, and MAD.
Arms cost money and we never got it back after the fall of the Berlin Wall. There was never a huge drop off of money to the defense department. We had the wars from the death of Tito and the reign of

Milošević...


The war is paid for by us, you and I, we are the source of the money. Our paychecks could be itsy bitsy payouts of every government employee. If we wanted to celebrate the true meaning of independence day and the revolutionary war, we would do it April 15, the day we write the government a paycheck and they then immediately spend it with us absent mindless signing off on their use of power. The people who pay the biggest chunk of money to the government are the wealthy, if we broke down the President's paycheck and the payroll of the other Elected Bodies much of it would come from the moderately wealthy. The Bottom of the class triangle might pay a bigger portion of their area, but when your triangles area is crammed into a ghetto the size of a housing project, there is less to contribute/pay to the three triangles branches of power.
That triangle gets constructed on April 15th, the day we celebrate the meaning of Independence, we pay our taxes and therefore we get to vote on which rich person we elect into office.

The tea party wants to make a difference, boycott the 4th of July and start celebrating the 15th of April. Make 'Henry David Thererou' your grandest image of a freedom fighter. Celebrate George Washington Carver more then you do George Washington, promote the idea to love every work/occupation you do, even if it is working for peanuts. Shun big pimping and spending G's on nightime explostions

Remember the grandeur our countries slaves must have felt when we declared Freedom and broke the bond of The Mother Country, the largest Empire upon which the sun never set. Remember their same emotion as you gaze up into the sky and feel the boom rattle in your chest.

I think the american anthem would be more fun if it was Janis Joplin's "Me and Bobby McGee"
This is what people do to excersize freedom. March against a Law they don't like for MayDay.

No comments:

Post a Comment