The Individual Freedom Reclamation Amendment

Thinking about how religious people in the US, from diverse traditions, can reclaim our Nation from corporate control, led to a search of Catholic encyclicals.  One thing that keeps popping up in Catholic social justice – identical to things I have heard from many fellow Witches – is the dignity of the human person.  Although not widely known,  several encyclicals starting with Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum make it clear that the Roman Catholic Church opposes US-style capitalism just as much as it opposes socialism. In fact, it opposes any economic or political system which violates the dignity of the human person.  Given that many Baptist and Evangelical churches were deeply involved in the civil rights movement, I would think that many Protestants share this belief as well.

As the current pope has put it:

“the market has prompted new forms of competition between States as they seek to attract foreign businesses to set up production centres, by means of a variety of instruments, including favourable fiscal regimes and deregulation of the labour market. These processes have led to a downsizing of social security systems as the price to be paid for seeking greater competitive advantage in the global market, with consequent grave danger for the rights of workers, for fundamental human rights and for the solidarity associated with the traditional forms of the social State.” – Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate

One problem in the Western world is that corporations – in legalese, “non-natural persons” – are recognized as persons by the legal system. This enables large amounts of capital to be used in ways no human person could muster: to control media, depress wages, and eliminate the “social security” net (not speaking solely of the US agency called “Social Security”.)

To restore the dignity of the human person as superior to capital – as is the belief of many Pagans, as well as many Christians – I think the following Amendment to the US Constitution might be appropriate:

ARTICLE (?).
1. No Right, stated in this Constitution, shall apply to persons other than Natural Persons, unless specifically granted to persons other than Natural Persons.

2. Section 1 of this Amendment shall not apply to the Powers of Congress as enumerated in Article I, Section 8 of this Constitution.

3. For the purposes of this Constitution, and all laws and regulations made subject to it, the phrase “limited Times” or other like phrases shall be construed as one-third of the average lifespan of a Natural Person citizen of the United States. Said lifespan shall be calculated on a decennial basis by the Social Security Administration or successor agencies; if said agencies cease to exist the national Census shall be modified to determine said lifespan.

4. Sections 1- 3 of this Amendment are curative and shall apply immediately to all treaties, laws, and court decisions now standing.

Quote updates 12/9

Bill Schneider:

“An Obama job approval rating of 79 percent — that’s the sort of rating you see when the public rallies around a leader after a national disaster. To many Americans, the Bush administration was a national disaster.”

http://http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/12/09/Obama.poll/index.html

Honorable William O. Douglas, U.S.S.C. (1898-1980):

“We must realize that today’s Establishment is the new George III. Whether it will continue to adhere to his tactics, we do not know. If it does, the redress, honored in tradition, is also revolution.”

http://www.oyez.org/justices/william_o_douglas/

Sandra Lee Dennis:

“We begin to resacralize sexuality by acknowledging its shadow side of destruction and death, the dark Eros whose importance we may yet grasp.”

http://www.infibeam.com/Books/info/Sandra-Lee-Dennis/Embrace-of-the-Daimon-The-Ecstatic-Promise/0892540567.html

Senator John McCain (R-AZ):

“Senator Obama and I have had and argued our differences, and he has prevailed. No doubt, many of those differences remain. These are difficult times for our country, and I pledge to him tonight that I will do all in my power to help him lead us through the many challenges we face. I urge all Americans who supported me to join not only in congratulating him, but offering our next president our good will and honest effort to find the necessary compromises to bridge our differences.”

http://mccain.senate.gov/public/

William Jefferson Clinton:

“We just had the biggest redistribution of income upwards in the last eight years since the 1920s, and we know how the 1920s ended.”

http://www.clintonlibrary.gov/

If the House Republicans don’t believe President Bush anymore…

… when can I expect to see the Republican House members introduce a bill for an immediate and total pullout from Iraq?

Quote Updates 9/22

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT):

“If an institution is too big to fail, then that institution is too big to exist.”

http://sanders.senate.gov/

Walter Kittredge (1863):

“Many are the hearts that are weary tonight, wishing for the war to cease; many are the hearts looking for the right, to see the dawn of peace.”

http://www.merrimackhistory.org/Walter%20Kittredge.htm

Anton Szandor LaVey:

“It’s too bad that stupidity isn’t painful. Ignorance is one thing, but our society thrives increasingly on stupidity. It depends on people going along with whatever they are told. The media promotes a cultivated stupidity as a posture that is not only acceptable but laudable.”

http://www.satanicchurch.com/content/9-sins.aspx

Brendan Cathbad Myers:

“When most pagans think of ethics, they usually think of the Wiccan Rede — a highly utilitarian idea which has nothing to do with virtue. I’d like to change that.”

http://www.wildideas.net/cathbad/

Ken Sanzel:

“Not every story has a point. Sometimes you just bend spaghetti to watch it break.”

Leave Georgia, pretty please, Czar Putin

My grandfather, the late Andrzhei Antonovich Dzialtvo, fled Lithuania with his family around 1902, when he was about four years of age.  It was during one of Russia’s periodic invasions of countries around it, which Russia has engaged in as a regular hobby long before Europe even noticed the Americas existed.

It’s also long-known that asking the Czar – whatever he goes by, Czar, General Secretary,  President, or Prime Minister – to stop invading gives the guy a good belly laugh.

So this is what I’ve suggested by phone to my Congressional Representative, the Hon. Christopher H. Smith (R4-NJ), and one of my Senators, the Hon. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), in a call made to each of their offices:

• The President of the United States of America should immediately recall his ambassador from Moscow and reduce relations to a chargé d’affaires level;
• The State Department of the United States of America should issue a warning to all American citizens in Russia to promptly leave Russia;
• The President of the United States of America should, by Executive Order, immediately declare a suspension of all trade with the Russian Republic.

That will get Vladimir Putin’s attention.  Calling for meetings and asking politely has not worked for dealings with Russia in over a millennium, and it obviously is not going to work now.

When I called Rep. Smith’s office, I was told that the Congress couldn’t do anything because Speaker Pelosi has declared a recess; I pointed out that the Representative was quite good at holding press conferences and could issue a public statement calling for these measures from the executive branch of the US government.  Senator Lautenberg’s office was a little more encouraging, and the staffer had a good laugh when I told him about Rep. Smith’s staffer trying to blame Speaker Pelosi for a possible inability for Rep. Smith to say anything publicly.

This is going to make it an interesting Olympic season, too…

Effective online activism

Last week, CNN profiled Leanna Elizalde, a cancer survivor who was basically not being allowed to participate in graduation because she failed to complete a course where the school forgot its responsibility to make reasonable accommodations.

This enraged me… so I went to a social networking site I’m on, wrote an explanation of the problem, and provided links and phone numbers for the school, the school district, the town, the state, and Federal authorities. I also got 3 other people with combined regular readers of about 40,000 to repost what I wrote. I suspect similar things happened across the US, because the school alone was receiving hundreds of calls per day (per news coverage), and by the end of the week, not only did they change the rules and allow her to write an English composition in lieu of the class, but allowed her full participation in the ceremony and gave her a real diploma. Plus, as a bonus, she caught the attention of a cancer survivor’s group that gave her $2500!

Feedback on the site indicated many people called or wrote. Chances are they would not have done so if I hadn’t provided the phone numbers and email links; there’s an 8-second attention span on the ‘net. So if you’re doing activism online, make sure you make it as easy as possible for other people to communicate your message to the appropriate authorities – the easier you make it, the more people who are likely to participate!

Recent additions to my favorite quotes page

Mark Di Ionno:

“Want to know why there’s no peace in the world? Spend a morning outside family court.”

http://www.nj.com

 

Tom Clancy (Executive Orders):

“We all know that the government does take more than it gives back. They’ve just learned to hide it. The federal budget deficit means that every time you borrow money, it costs more than it should – why? Because the government borrows so much money that it drives up interest rates. And so every house payment, every car payment, every credit card bill is also a tax. And maybe they give you a break on interest payments. Isn’t that nice? Your government gives you a tax break on money you ought not to have to pay in the first place, and then it tells you that you get back more than you pay out. Does anybody out there really believe that? Does anybody really believe it when people say that the United States can’t afford – not to spend more money than it has? Are those the words of Adam Smith or Lucy Ricardo?”

 

Joan Kovatch, Jr.:

“How do you avoid conditioned air, toxic gases, and the stress of being boxed? Get outside whenever you can. Park a bit farther away in the parking lot and enjoy the walk, even in the rain. You know you’re not going to die wet and soggy and frostbitten, you’ve got the resources to get home and change as soon as you want to. Enjoy the wet, the cold, hot, whatever. Walk around a park, get some exercise, enjoy your neighborhood.”

http://joanjr.blogspot.com/

 

John Sinclair:

“They don’t want people to know – or if they know they don’t want it acknowledged – that men have cocks in their pants, that women have tits and cunts under their clothes, that people can say and do whatever they want as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else, that their guns and orders and phony laws and honkie power are all bullshit, that there’s no way any common words can ‘shock’ and ‘corrupt’ kids who are really hip to the whole deal and who are instead shocked and hurt by the insane disregard for human freedoms that the police and other authorities practice as a matter of course.”

http://johnsinclair.us/10for2/

 

Barney Rosset:

“If the Americans, Dutch, British, and French persist in this attempt to rule other peoples in the world, which they have no right to do, then we are headed in a straight line for the third world war, because these people won’t stand for it. If it had not been for Gandhi in India, I feel sure the Indians would have killed countless thousands of English, but his leadership in nonviolence has saved a lot of lives. In return, the British put him in prison.”

http://evergreenreviewblog.blogspot.com/

 

Timothy Levitch:

“If it weren’t for the slight Dutch imperialism that went down on these streets, it is possible that Cookie Monster would have been chasing down biscuits his whole life.”

http://www.speedisms.com/

 

Isaac Asimov:

“Jokes of the proper kind, properly told, can do more to enlighten questions of politics, philosophy, and literature than any number of dull arguments.”

 

Rabbi Joseph Gelberman:

“Once there was a great rabbi who for many years had pondered a question, “Where is God?” He asked a friend who was also a rabbi to help him. His friend’s answer was simple, “Wherever and whenever he is invited—that’s where God is.”

 

xesce:

“The difficult task is to explain that depression does not necessarily indicate an inability to accurately assess one’s life and one’s potential to achieve a satisfactory quality of life. Also, that a person has a right to decide that the treatment options available are not right – or realistic – for them personally. “It is incredibly depressing if the only way you can prove that it’s that bad is if you kill yourself – if no one believes you suffer until you actually manage to kill yourself. “To address the idea that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem: things did not get better for me after high school. I am now 41 years old.”

http://xesce.net/qualityofdeath.html

 

Merri Lisa Johnson:

“Free love doesn’t always follow from a lack of self respect; there is something sex-hating in such an equation.”

http://preview.tinyurl.com/3yx38o

Click here for my favorite quotations page.

The US Atty General: Protecting our nation

CNN reports: “U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey Friday said he will not ask a federal grand jury to investigate whether two top Bush administration officials should be prosecuted for contempt of Congress.”

Somehow I think it’s more important to our national security to investigate government officials who may have lied to Congress than to investigate baseball players, but I guess I just don’t get the idea.  It seems it’s more important that US citizens have baseball players that can be trusted than it is to have senior Federal Government officials that can be trusted.