Freedom. To choose what will be sacred and divine.
Natural law. The understanding that your thoughts are your own and that no one else can own them.
Defined by philosophers ancient and modern, those are the foundations from which all our other rights and freedoms flow.
In America, we do not cede our right to live to any government, especially the governments of monarchs. We have the liberty to make any choice that does not usurp the rights of everyone to live.
The third right was the pursuit of property or material wealth. Thomas Jefferson changed it to the pursuit of happiness, which meant the same thing to many, but it was an expansion of American rights. Because slavery was a contentious issue that could not be resolved, which endangered the entire process of creating a Constitution and a sustainable national government, that substitution made it harder to claim a permanent right to own people as property.
And the convention delegates agreed to put off the answers to slavery questions for 20 years.
What drove them to that point was British money woes. Over a decade, a series of taxes was imposed by Britain’s government and resisted by American colonists. Some were rescinded and some were enforced by British troops. Printers and the press led that resistance, with shippers and other merchants joining into other acts of rebellion like the Boston Tea Party and boycotts of other British goods.
The argument was raised that Americans had no say in these impositions, no voice in parliamentary or kingly decrees. The cry against taxation without representation convinced enough Americans, led to the revolution and the subsequent formation of a new and unique government.
On January 6, 2021, none of those rights had been usurped or called into question by those who stormed the Capitol Building. None of the grievances against the King of England outlined in the Declaration of Independence were voiced by the participants, the violent ones or the passive.
They weren’t there to protest a loss of life, liberty or the lack of representation. They were there to block the representation of all the people. Some had the arrogance to call themselves patriots but all were actually Anti-American fakeriots. No essential liberty or right did they come to defend. They insisted one man should be king and all other elected representatives had to be neutralized. If they didn’t surrender to the demands of the violent mob, they would be lynched.
The King they were willing to kill America and Americans for convinced about 30,000 citizens to show up for this violent uprising. Each participant insisted their vote superseded the votes of 5,200 others. And this wasn’t a passive Bonus Army like the one that showed up in 1932, broke and destitute. The last time so many gathered intent on overthrowing our functioning government resulted in the Civil War.
And the chief instigator has been impeached for inciting this violent overthrow attempt. His first impeachment occurred as the result of his similarly motivated action, to break the laws of our country to maintain his hold on power, his singular obsession for the past 20 months. After he led his political party to an embarrassing defeat in the 2018 midterm elections, he and his advisers determined one potential Democratic opponent would be the hardest to defeat: Joe Biden.
And in addition to defying every norm of political engagement, he broke the law on numerous occasions to thwart the will of the majority, a majority that he has never had the support of in the past 5 years. And Joe Biden and Kamala Harris beat him.
Anti-fascists were the first to openly challenge this base of violent mobsters promoting the old discarded notion that one race of men should possess all the liberties and rights in our country. The anti-fascists were immediately dubbed ‘antifa’ and were reviled as race-traitors by the mobsters and their criminal fraudfather. Anti-fascists showed up of their own accord, aren’t directed to act at the behest of any leader, have not sought to overthrow the government or the laws or the elections of America. They’re simply motivated to block the efforts of violent racists head-on.
The effort to promote the myth that anti-fascists are terrorists has failed. The FBI statistics have made this clear. While anti-fascists have broken the laws on occasion, most have been disturbing the peace and curfew violations. Some have been charged with assault and one was killed by police seeking his arrest for an allegation of a single murder. One.
The president who wanted to be king is not the sole source of the outlandish and the proven dishonest claim that these are terrorists. Hundreds of others in his political party repeat the lie too. Some hold elective office, some are party hirelings, some hold influential positions in the media. Millions of Americans have been duped by this propaganda campaign. On numerous occasions in numerous rural locations, armed believers have shown up to events and non-events based on deliberately promoted rumors and lies that antifa was coming to commit acts of violence.
Antifa isn’t even a protest group. It’s a counter-protest group that shows up sometimes, typically where violent groups have announced they plan to demonstrate.
And last summer, when peaceful protesters were cleared by force at the orders of the wannabe king, our military leaders began making it clear that the use of the military against peaceful protesters was not permitted. Military and national security leaders - past and current - have emphasized several times since that troops will not be used to usurp First Amendment rights nor to overturn election results.
And yet, the Anti-Americans persist. The defeated president and his violent supporters, ready to stop the fake steal by stealing the votes of Black Americans in Georgia and Pennsylvania, Latino Americans in Arizona and women in multiple states who united to defeat him. 232 years ago, when the Constitution became the law of our land, the Blacks and Latinos and women weren’t allowed to vote at all. That’s what the rampaging mobsters were ready to murder for. Their version of ‘great’ that they wanted to return to again.
And they did this in the building that Black American slaves built. They cleared a forest, cut the stone from quarries, sawmilled logs, made and laid the bricks. One even figured out how to move the statue that tops the Capitol building’s dome. And they rebuilt it after the British burned it in 1814.
All the values established at the outset of our governing, all the rights gained since in multiple struggles. And they also came to steal the legacy and sacrifice of millions of American soldiers who fought for these rights and defeated the worst fascists in human history. President Dwight D. Eisenhower is the best known real leader of Antifa.
It shocked the conscience of the majority of Americans seeing some of the mobsters wearing shirts that said 6MWE (six million wasn’t enough). Six million Jews in Hitler’s death camps wasn’t enough for these mobsters. They thirst for more.
They came to make clear that Black Lives Don’t Matter. Jewish Lives Don’t Matter. Blue Lives Don’t Matter. Representative Government Doesn’t Matter. Only the President Who Tried To Be King Matters. They still don’t realize their leader thinks their lives don’t matter too. He sold them a lie about one election then his lawyers went to the courts more than 5 dozen times and told the courts something else. And couldn’t prove anything. Couldn’t block the votes of any states or anyone no matter which lie they offered.
How many in his gang of violent mobsters will he issue pardons to? But their lives don’t matter to him. They never did.
We are a much weaker country today. There are even worse paramilitary hate groups poised to strike us from within. While we barricade DC and state capitals, will they strike an electric grid, a transportation hub, a population center? Will they do it on Tuesday night while we sleep to rouse fresh mobs across the country to end America as we know it, as so many built and fought and died for?
I declare their lies self-evident. That all blood can equally be spilled. That among them are cowards, murderers and thieves in the pursuit of misery.
And in the representatives we all granted the power to tax us, there are cowards, murderers and thieves, too. Telling the same lies. Defending the carnage with the antifa lies, the BLM lies, the lies about science, the lies of electoral math destruction.
There may be worse days coming. There are worse enemies, domestic and foreign.
May be coming.
But there’s definitely worse truths coming. Our lives, liberties, rights, freedoms and pursuits will settle for nothing less. Truth and justice. It’s the real American way.
Be angry. Be ready. But also remember the lessons our Black brothers and sisters keep telling us.
They were kidnapped from their families and homes. They were bound, whipped, raped and murdered. Their children were sold off. They escaped and were hunted. They finally won their freedom. They won the vote and held office. Then both were taken away by the Anti-Americans. They were lynched and burned alive. They went to war against the global fascists and emerged as heroes. And they kept on coming.
They won the right to vote again and to hold office. They fought for educational equality and professional opportunities previously denied them. They kept on coming, kept on after the dream. Surrender was never an option, no matter what terrors, no matter what mob sizes they faced.
That’s also the real American way.
And we all have the natural right to choose.
The path is hard, at times unbearable. But the choice is easy.
Choose truth.
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And for dessert our special today is a Velvet Cake, a sweet reminder of the day Washington came across the Hudson. Bon appetit!