America Under Attack

I was a participant in the Occupy Knoxville march this past Friday. I have been known to speak my mind on matters close to my heart; peace, intolerance and poverty to name a few. Today GOP leaders called my constitutionally protected freedom Un-American.

I have been involved in trying to make America a better place since I sat in Brother Richard's Government class at St. Augustine Dioceses High School in Brooklyn, NY. It was here my politics were formed. In 1968, the world was exploding, riots in the streets, the Viet Nam war raging, and Europe was tense from Russia’s invasion of Czechoslovakia. Friends of mine were getting drafted and sent to Viet Nam, some came home in body bags, some came home to racism and bigotry, some came home so messed up heroin became their best friend. I was a year away from learning my fate.

I knew the war was immoral long before I stepped foot in Brother Richard’s class. My Catholic education certainly cemented that philosophy in my soul. There I learned to think for myself, question authority and that knowledge is power. I also knew our government was not always right and people ordinary people have to take a stand and say so. Acts of civil disobedience are necessary in a true democracy and people need to test our democracy to make sure it is working for the people.

I marched on Wall St then and when I was marching down Market Square this past Friday I was expressing my constitutional rights of speech and assemble. Both of these freedoms are not just guaranteed they are in the Bill of Rights. The founding fathers thought so important the first ten amendments have their own designation.

The Freedom to speak your mind and to speak it with people who think like you are two of the reasons we demanded our freedom from England. Today, GOP leaders called people expressing their opinions as Un-American. If they think speaking out against the government is Un-American then do they believe our founding fathers wrong? Do they believe we don’t need these freedoms?

What the GOP said today is the same thing the Right wing said in 1968. The same verbiage is spewing out of their mouths. Their rhetoric is as hypocritical as is their memory. These are the same people who condoned Tea Party Republicans expression of the same constitutional rights just a couple of years ago.

I am protesting because the Government is broken and it is not governing. The GOP and the Democrats have let the Middle class down for the last 40 years. They both have sold the American Dream down the river for power and wealth. The Middle class has lost ground since 1970. Today the disparity between the rich and the middle class is at the same level of disparity as of 1929.

The disparity of wealth was a direct cause of the Great Depression. As the wealth of the 1% grows there is a correlating depression of wealth on the remaining 99% of Americans.

Dr. Jeffrey Sachs in his book “The Price of Civilization” (Sachs, 2011) “At root of America’s economic crisis lies a moral crisis: the decline of civic virtue among America’s political and economic elite.” These words resonate when you see an America in decline, an America with 56 million people living in poverty, and another 50 million living one pay check away from poverty.

I was born in the 1950’s, the golden years of America. The 1950’s were a time of exploration, building, and a beginning of the end of social injustice. There is not a Republican or Democrat who will argue the fact America under President Eisenhower was the greatest decade of America. It was Eisenhower who built the interstate roadway system. It was under Eisenhower’s Department of Justice that ended segregation in the South. It was the Eisenhower administration that started NASA.

President Eisenhower was a Republican. He had a social conscience. He loved his country. He was a true leader. The middle class grew to its all time highest percentage of people ever in the country. There were jobs. Americans worked in factories, and in plants building things that were shipped everywhere in the world. America had the highest standard of living of any industrialized country.

The federal tax rate during from 1950-1959 was from 17% - 84%. There was no talk of big government. The government was responsible for building our way out of the Depression, beating fascism and rebuilding the American infrastructure and economy.  

Dr. Sachs is so right, in his premise “The Price of Civilization.” What are you as an American willing to pay for our American Dream? Are you willing to let corporations control our government? I am not. I am not ready to roll over and die like the GOP wants me to do. I am not going away and I will never stop speaking out against the government as it is today.