Frankly, I laugh at a part of the title of this post. “Power to the People” is a common sign seen at mass demonstrations, based upon the lie that the people somehow lost power and that power needs to be returned from wherever it went, to the people, whoever they are. The people in a democratic society already have control over the government. In fact, the government cannot take the power of the people away because they fear the populations they have abused, like all tyrants in history.
Consider for a moment the blue whale. The biggest mammal on earth swims in the ocean and can grow to be around 100 feet long and displace 200-tons. Does the ocean rely upon the whale, or does the whale rely upon the ocean? The answer is obvious; the blue whale, as massive and majestic as it is, depends upon the ocean for survival. The same is true of the government! The government cannot survive without the people, just as the blue whale cannot survive without the ocean. The consent of the governed can be given and taken from the politicians as the people decide. Hence, tyrants fear the people they oppress, all while enjoying the spoils of oppressing the people.
Every revolution in history started when people believed they had reached the point of no return and took upon themselves the power of self-rule. The French Revolution, the American Revolution, the various feudal fights across Ireland, Britain, and Scotland, the multiple Chinese and Russian revolutions, India, Israel, etc., all are boiled down to this simple and inescapable fact. When the people have had enough, the politicians fear and scramble, then they are held accountable, and the people claim the powers of self-rule. Until the people forget their parents’ lessons, the fight for freedom, the liberties of self-rule, and begin to vote in oppressors, the cycle begins anew.
Hence, I laugh at all the fools and tools that carry these signs, for they know not what they want, nor do they accept the responsibility they claim they desire. I have seen signs proclaiming “Power to the people!” in various languages, various wordings, and in Maoist and Marxist ideologies since I became aware of the world. I detest these simpering tools and fools who spout their Mao, their Marx, and Stalin but reject the responsibility and the damage these societies create. The clowns and puppets wearing Che Guevara on their clothing make me wonder about the chess pawn axiom and how the pawns are the first to die in battle.
When Hillary Clinton came out wearing her Mao jacket, I understood the consequences of choosing better politicians from those able and willing to run for public office. More, I understood the need for cleaning the house when a politician runs amok and needs to be removed from office. I have learned to detest those who consider politics a game, and even worse those who “play the game” with the people’s liberty and freedom while abusing the citizenry!
I make clear the following, repeating myself only for emphasis. I do not care about your political flavor or leanings. I only care about keeping the United States of America a free Republic, under God, for my children’s children to enjoy. Political parties come and go, politicians come and go. The liberties and freedoms of the US Constitution will only endure by making better choices at the ballot box, raising our voices in city councils and school board meetings, and demanding those who desire to oppress being held accountable before a judge and jury.
President Abraham Lincoln gave America Proclamation 97. Take a moment to read this very short but powerful proclamation, and consider living this proclamation this 30th of April 2021. What would happen if all the people who love liberty, who call themselves Americans, regardless of belief, obeyed this simple proclamation as a prayer for help against the tyranny and oppression we are now experiencing?
Is not the government’s mandates and policies for COVID-19 as oppressing and freedom stealing as a civil war? Would your answer change if, because of their money, specific populations of American’s were allowed to forgo the COVID mandates? Simultaneously, those who do not equal in financial strength are treated to the harshness of government tyranny. Is not the National Debt, State Debt, City/Town Debt, and School Board debt sufficient to enslave and punish those not born because the politicians have allowed funded and unfunded loans to be borrowed in the people’s name? Are these chains of captivity not life-stealing enough to pray for forgiveness and beg for a reprieve?
What about the forced illiteracy imposed upon the people by the politicians now long dead, who despised a literate people and demanded that their liberties be stripped through ignorance? Is this not a sufficient reason to plead to a power greater than you or me for supplication and divine interference? To plead for an end to this misery caused by generations of politicians from all parties who had robbed, cheated, blinded, and harmed us long before we were born.
I had the great privilege of reading the history surrounding Proclamation 97. The President knew not what else he could do as a mortal man to end the American Civil War. So, driven to his knees by the loss, the shattered lives, the destroyed families, the national debt climbing to fight the South, the President looked to the one hope he knew could help. More importantly, when proposed to the Senate, the Senate approved the measure. With a careful understanding of the timelines, a person can begin to see the Civil War changes that brought a swifter conclusion to that bloody affair after the National Day of Fasting. Can we stand to be accused of doing less by our Children’s Children at this tragic and pivotal moment in American history?
Every religion I have studied, including atheism, recognizes there is power in fasting, even if the power is only better health. While atheism does not realize a higher authority than self, and prayer to an atheist is a joke, every other religion I have studied holds a similar bond to fasting and prayer. Recognizing the need for help from a greater power, realizing that the problems have grown too large, but still those problems need resolution, a person can go to a source for inspiration, guidance, and solace. I suggest repeating the National Day of National Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer, as laid out in Proclamation 97.
Let us, the citizens of America, stand together, kneel together, supplicate together, and arise stronger for the experience of being unified in asking for forgiveness and for divine assistance from the hands that made this country great. Let us join in a national day of supplication for relief from what the government has become, the great millstone about our necks. When a company wants to declare a new culture, specifically towards becoming safer, they declare a day, and they set apart that day as a “Safety Standdown” to teach, train, and launch a new culture. Well, America needs a new political culture, one where Liberty is First in every freedom-loving person’s mind, where liberty and literacy can find fertile soil in the mind and heart to grow. Where from the wrongs, right might begin to prevail.
Let us honor a national day of fasting and prayer and see how fast divine assistance arrives! Let us throw off the chains and shackles and prove to ourselves that we have not and are not helpless beached whales, but the mighty and powerful ocean of voices screaming we will not allow liberty to die!
© 2021 M. Dave Salisbury
All Rights Reserved
The images used herein were obtained in the public domain; this author holds no copyright to the images displayed.
Personally, I am tired of soft speakers who speak platitudes and inwardly are ravening wolves. Pres. Obama spoke softly, carried no sticks, drew red lines without consequences, and America is far worse for having had him as a president. President Clinton also spoke well; but, severely lacked morals, courage, a sense of honor, and America suffered. Both President’s Bush spoke well but lacked intestinal fortitude, grit, backbone, and ultimately were bad presidents for America. President Reagan had grit, spoke eloquently, was respected, and was a bastard whose enemies honored him and feared him. President Trump for all his good qualities is plain and abrupt. But, inwardly he has a spine of iron, and demands accountability first from himself, and then from those around him. Recently, I heard President Trump referred to as a “Bastard of a Bully!” I think we need to elect a few more bastards. People with grit in their teeth, iron in their spines, tongues that can lash and whip, and hands with calluses from doing actual work.
As an independent thinker, armchair historian, and a morally upright citizen, I have been doing more work every election to scrape the shield of whipping cream off the crap sundae the electorate is handed, and know who is being offered for election. The more I scrape, the more worthless those running for office appear. Terry Pratchet is quoted as saying, “He was the sort of person who stood on mountaintops during thunderstorms in wet copper armour shouting ‘All the Gods are bastards.’” That is the type of person America needs in political office. Not the namby-pamby, wishy-washy, flim-flam artists, but people who insist that the government needs to be smaller, thus consequentially more flexible in crisis. We need people who have suffered under the rule of bureaucrats and beat the hell out of them to achieve, despite the bureaucracy. We need more grit!
What is “Grit” you might ask; well, since America has not seen a lot of grit, please allow me the opportunity to describe this precious commodity. Grit is a positive, cognitive trait based on an individual’s perseverance of effort combined with the passion for a specific long-term goal or end state. At least, that is what the academics call grit. Of all the people America remembers who have had a positive and long-lasting influence upon American culture, John Wayne is near the top, and if anyone embodied grit, it was John Wayne who is quoted thusly, “True grit is making a decision and standing by it, doing what must be done. No moral man can have peace of mind if he leaves undone what he knows they should have done.” In understanding grit, I have oft called upon T. S. Eliot, “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”
America, I think it is time we learned a valuable lesson where the selection of politicians is concerned, “Be a good enough person to forgive the losers elected in the past, and smart enough to never trust them again with political office.” America has lived the words of Soren Kierkegaard, “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to accept what is true.” It is true, at all levels of government, poor choices have been made, rotten and unintelligent boobs have been placed in power above their ability. In the military, we called this “being promoted to a person’s maximum level of incompetence.” Well, this is an election year, and we will have another next year and the year after. We have been cheated and abused by the smooth-talkers long enough. Let us elect some true bastards!
General George Patton was a bastard; but, he is remembered for being the biggest bastard of them all in WWII, and when the chips were down, he won by being the biggest, grittiest, most hated bastard America had ever sent to war. I suggest ripping a few pages from General George Patton and Ayn Rand’s book, and electing people who have trod the gristmills of life with bloody feet and callused hands, who live the following: “The question isn’t who’s going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me!”
It seems fitting that on the Fourth of July, a remembrance of what a statue is should be described, and penned for all the world to see, to read, and remember. The world has recently witnessed the violent and unhinged protestors tearing down statues. Witnessed spineless elected officials taking statues down for every reason but the truth, and we have seen violence when the ignorant mob has been refused. Like spoiled children without a stern parent to correct behavior, the world has watched; but, does the world remember what a statue is?
The statue of Christopher Columbus so hatefully despised, rudely treated by mob violence and elected official stupidity was erected not as a monument to a man, but to commemorate the birth of an idea and an ideal that became these United States of America, a Free Republic if we can keep it. Christopher Columbus was a man, the same as those in the mob, he had light and dark inside him. Who is his judge, who is his jury pool, who has the power to judge his actions; not I, nor the mob who despises and defaces the likeness of a person who achieved greatness through sacrifice. Thus, through sacrifice, the Great American Experiment was launched. Throughout time immemorial, the current generation has built monuments, statues, to honor the sacrifice that has brought about greatness.
The difference between these early domestic terrorists and today’s domestic terrorists, is not that they won, but that they sacrificed for the idea, they gave all not for a statue or a holiday, they gave all for something better and hoped their sacrifice would be remembered. Look at the riots in Watts, no statues were erected, the land is blighted, the area almost ungovernable, and nobody remembers the names of those domestic terrorists that started the riots in Watts.
Just as the mob chooses to be angry, indifferent, and ignorant, so we must choose at this hour in America. Do we choose to stand, remember, and honor, or do we allow this American Republic to end like Rome before it when faced with a similar threat from domestic terrorists? What is a statue, it is a visible commitment that declares for all the world, “Not on my watch will your sacrifice be forgotten, your heritage besmirched, and your honor be for naught!” Not on my watch will America fall to the byzantines amongst us, who have chosen ignorance and passion over logic and reason! Not on my watch will your statue fall without mourning and a burning desire to see your statue returned to its place of prominence and glory!
DNC-Consulting 