Planet Waves | July 02, 2005 - from Jude I live in the Heartland -- in the Ozarks, SW Missouri, USA. This is the land of lakes and trailer homes and city-shy hillbillys and tourists and poverty and craftsmen ... in the state of KC barbeque and blues, grazing cattle and soy-bean fields, and the belligerent Show Me attitude [and state motto] typical of it's most famous citizen, Harry S. Truman. There are pockets [hollers] here where you completely, and with a shock, leave the 20th century ... notice I didn't say 21st, we haven't aspired to that yet. I have to laugh when articles refer to the near-nonexistent "hinterlands" of America ... that's where I plunk my bones. I call it the Pea Patch. Here in the Pea Patch there are fireworks set off on the tiny island in the middle of the lake every year. There is traditionally a craft fair in the town square of the nearby county seat ... pop. under 400. It's remarkable what crafters are willing to sell their skill and time for, here -- for bargain hunters, it doesn't get better. This is about "handmade/homemade" -- quilts, jams and jellies, garden produce, doll-making, woodworking -- lots of American flag themes ... lots of patriotism-inspired lawn ornaments, red/white/blue pot holders, and, of course, eagles galore. This is also the weekend when the "city folk" are down in droves, so the square was abuzz when I got there today. Hidden among the laberynth of booths and tables were two places of interest -- one was the Democratic table, with people I know ... they're well-meaning and lethargic, but I don't fault them -- it's a small pond and they tread carefully least they get drummed out of the tribe. Another was a small booth raising funds for our Dem. Congressman, Ike Skelton. It had bumper stickers for sale, and I browsed. A handsome older woman with long flowing gray hair told me prices. I admired the "A villiage is missing it's idiot" sticker ... she said it was $3. As I reached for my purse, I noticed another. "That one's only $2 -- different suppliers," she said. I said, "I think I'll have to go with this one -- they won't hear the first, but perhaps they'll hear this." When she handed me change, she said, softly, "I have that one on my car. I don't know what this country is coming to." I bought the one that said, "Hate is NEVER a family value." The same way that hearing the Star Spangled Banner or America the Beautiful chokes me up now, for different reasons than it always has before, Independence Day is painful to me. While fireworks have always delighted me, now it's difficult to look up into the night sky filled with colorful "bombs bursting" and not think "Iraq" ... or gaze farther up into the heavens without thinking "Star Wars." But last night I watched the third part of the PBS special on the American Revolution and it cheered me some. So many in's and out's -- so many different opinions -- so many different classes ... but all united for freedom. The concept of the "citizen soldier." One British report said that, "They seemed a new people, a new breed of human." When the Mother Country finally gave up [due to public opinion and lack of treasure at home, I might add] one soldier commented on how sad it was to leave his fellows after eight long years ... "and no one can know our suffering." Our citizen soldiers, no less than our Founding Fathers, were committed, were faithful to the struggle despite the sacrifice required of them. We owe -- we pay back, now. One of the "truism's" I tell people who are interested in Course in Miracles as opposed to religion is that "God has no grandchildren." Our relationship to the Divine is one-on-one ... it's not inherited, it's not "low maintenance" -- it's very personal, about as personal as it gets. That's true of freedom and democracy, too -- it's not low maintenance and today this generation, We the People, have to prove it yet again. I'm posting an article below from another spot in the Heartland -- it's from the Ravenna/Kent [Ohio] Record Courier, and -- trust me, I've been there -- it's a dinky little rural spot too. The middle of America is not all red, not all asleep, not all unaware. We all love our country and on this weekend we are reminded how She came to be, and the sacrifice that authored Her -- reminded that we are still engaged in a struggle for Her Soul -- reminded that Red v. Blue is a myth, that in the Heartland there are those who work for Her deliverance on a small scale much as others work on a [louder and] broader one. We're all in this together. So to all you American's out there, I wish you a Happy Fourth of July from the Pea Patch -- and may God bless America with remembrance of Her integrity, Her responsibilities and the highest aspirations of democracy. Peace ~ Jude Independence, Freedom, Democracy & the Presidency Caroline Arnold Friday, July 1, 2005 by CommonDreams.org http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0701-22.htm Without democracy, you have no understanding of what is happening down below; ... you will be unable to collect sufficient opinions from all sides; there can be no communication between top and bottom; top-level leadership will depend on one-sided and incorrect material to decide issues ... it will be impossible to achieve unity of understanding and unity of action, and impossible to achieve true centrality of purpose. * This weekend we celebrate our nation's independence from imperial rule, freedom, and democracy. This year we look back on 229 solid years of independence, and, despite some ominous symptoms, still exercise our basic freedom in vigorous arguments about freedom - what it is comprised of, which freedoms may be abridged , by whom and for what reasons. Because we generally agree that freedom is a necessary condition for democracy, we take freedom seriously. But what about democracy? We take for granted that we have the best democracy in the world, and hardly ever examine how we actually do it. Consider these examples: A few years ago the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) proposed permitting oil and gas drilling under a large drinking-water reservoir in NE Ohio. At the public hearing a citizen asked why the BLM would even consider the risk of contaminating the drinking water for 100,000 people. The BLM representative replied: "We take that risk because Congress says it our job". The citizen was outraged: "You aren't taking the risk," he said angrily, "We are." Around the same time Tim Hagan, then a Cuyahoga County Commissioner, made an eloquent plea at the Cleveland City Club for government help for the poor, the sick, and especially children. But a question about government mismanagement made him mad: "I can't understand," he said, "how people can talk about the government as if it were something totally outside themselves, for which they had no responsibility or obligation. If our government isn't doing the right things, we have to make it so that it does; we are the government, and we make it what it is. ..." More recently, President Bush, asked to describe his presidency, replied: "... it is a decision-making job; I make a lot of decisions ...." He also said "I'm a war president. I make decisions ... in foreign-policy matters with war on my mind. ... And the American people need to know they got a president who sees the world the way it is." This week, in anticipation of Independence Day, our President gave a speech about Iraq (referring five times to 9/11 and liberally sprinkled with the words "terror" and "terrorists") in which he asserted "There is only one course of action against them: to defeat them abroad before they attack us at home. ... Amid all this violence, I know Americans ask the question: Is the sacrifice worth it?" He then considerately relieved us of the need to think for ourselves and answered for us: "It is worth it, and it is vital to the future security of our country." He called on us to 'stay the course' of armed suppression that not only hasn't worked to end terrorism it has terrorized and slaughtered Iraqis and made their nation the world center of terrorism. How did we get in this fix, in a supposedly democratic nation, with our President making decisions for us, setting our priorities, spending our money, making choices for our children and elderly, risking our kids' lives in a war against a fiction, and spending our nation's wealth on a mission we didn't agree to? We are belatedly asking ourselves: what about freedom? what about democracy? We didn't fight the War for Independence for security. We sought independence so we could be free, so we could make choices and decisions for ourselves and govern ourselves in democracy. We are also asking "Would I risk going - or sending a son or daughter - to war in Iraq for an armed but ephemeral 'security' from terrorists?" And if we are not willing to take that risk, what choices do we now have? Author Robert Parry says we have only two: " ... continue to send [our] young soldiers into the Iraqi death trap and hope for the best, or build a movement for impeaching George W. Bush - and then try to make the best of a bad situation in Iraq." (http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0629-27.htm) Neither choice looks good. And hell, someone once remarked, is a place with no good choices. Bush has brought us to this place, using "one-sided and incorrect material" in his decisions; we have had no "unity of understanding" and no "true centrality of purpose." Our freedoms have been curtailed and our democracy has withered; even our independence has been degraded into security, as we engaged in the barbarity of a needless, endless war. Probably the 'least worst' choice open to us now is impeachment. As long as we have a President who makes decisions for us and risks not only our soldier's lives but democracy itself, we won't be able to fix Iraq. We must first set our own house in order. Democracy gives us the tools to do it, if we are willing to use them. Impeachment will be hard. Making the best of the bad situations in our own country and what's left of Iraq will be truly difficult, and creating new, good choices will require enormous work - work that can only be done by We, the People. * Chairman Mao. This column will appear in the Kent-Ravenna Record Courier on Sunday July 3, 2005 ++ Jude, the editor of Political Waves, is sharing the blog with Eric. You can subscribe to Political Waves (our all-politics news distribution list) for free at the link below. You'll receive between five and 10 news articles each day. You may write to Jude with your responses to her commentaries at moderator@planetwaves.net. Political Waves list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/political_waves/