July 4, 2007 Independence Day

EDITOR\PUBLISHER: A.V Krebs E-MAIL: avkr...@comcast.net TO RECEIVE:
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A 21stCENTURY POPULIST DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE Patriots who
believe in the rights, wisdom or virtues of the Common People

WHEN IN THE COURSE OF HUMAN EVENTS, it becomes necessary for We the
People to dissolve the political bonds which have connected us with
another, and to assume among the Powers of the earth, the separate
and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Natures God
entitled us, a decent respect to the opinions of humankind requires
that the People should declare the causes which impel us to that
separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men\women are
created equal, that we are endowed by our Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the
Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights Governments ---
of the people, by the people and for the people --- are instituted
by the people, deriving their just powers from the consent of the
governed.

Whenever that Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends,
it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to
institute a new Government, laying its foundation on such principles
and organizing its power in such form as the people shall seem most
likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Whenever a long train of abuses and usurpations are designed to
reduce us to an absolute Oligarchy, it is Our right, it is Our duty,
to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for our
future security.

Our nation is in a crisis. Our Constitution is being trashed, our
infrastructure is crumbling, the education of our young neglected,
the environment trashed, the lives of young men\women are being
wasted in an illegal war, and the welfare of our veterans jettisoned.
We are creating enemies all over the world while Our government is
using fear to stay in power, enriching itself at the expense of
present and future generations.

We live in a society where our government seeks to impose upon its
people an economic, social, political and ecological order designed,
not to serve the People, but rather one that is self-serving and
monopolistic in character, and which has created a gigantic
Military-Industrial-Congressional complex that permeates our entire
social, economic and ecological environment.

Such has been the patient sufferance of the farming, working and
producing classes in our nations rural and urban communities, and
such is now the necessity which compels us to declare that we will
use every moral and democratic means, save a resort to violence,
to overthrow our fascist despotism and to insure that the common
good is served by adherence to the ideal of equal justice under
law.

THE HISTORY OF THE MODERN CORPORATE STATE has become a history of
repeated injuries and oppressions, all directed to establishing the
impersonal as the dominant institution within our society. The
corporate state has carefully schemed to protect and insure its
privileges and powers. It has successfully managed to protect its
interests by cloaking itself as a person within the language of the
14th Amendment of the Constitution, while at the same time manipulating
that Document and its Bill of Rights to its own selfish ends.

By establishing economic growth by means of corporate priorities,
corporate elites and banking elites, not simply having a disproportionate
amount of power and influence, have acquired at the same time such
power and influence rarely being part of public discussion such
that the public can question it and interrogate in a concrete way.

By successfully coercing politicians, in the name of corporate
socialism, it has established a huge corporate welfare system
composed of billions of dollars in tax abatements, tax preferences,
grants, inflated contracts, bailouts and a never-ending number of
subsidies to industries and corporate agribusiness.

By promoting its own selfish financial interests it has pitted
workers against workers, race against race, national-born citizens
against immigrants, cultures against cultures, men against women,
young against old, class against class.

By using such empty promises such as greater productivity, cost
management, and efficiency, it has endangered the health, safety,
and economic livelihood of thousands of our workers and family
farmers while its executives have remunerated themselves well beyond
reason and equitable standards.

By creating an extravagant and wasteful Military-Industrial-Congressional
complex, of dubious value in protecting the people from terrorism,
and endangering our national security, it has deprived Our nation
of the necessary funding for important domestic programs and
infrastructural needs --- such as universal health care and a
challenging public education system, essential to our survival as
a nation.

By misleading its own people into believing that we have not only
the right but the obligation to be an imperial nation in a
multi-cultural, multi-religious world, it has enabled thousands of
parasites, the gamblers in the necessities of Life, to use such
wars and the threat of threat of such wars for the purpose of
exacting exorbitant profits working not to beat an enemy, but to
create more billionaires.

By using bribery, political action campaign money and honoraria,
primarily designed to unduly influence and favor our law makers,
it repeatedly has betrayed the true interests of the People to the
degree that we now have one ruling political party beholden to the
same corporate paymasters.

WE THE PEOPLE, therefore, aspiring to live in a truly democratic
republic, assembled and conscious of our Populist tradition appeal
to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions,
do solemnly declare that we will use not only all lawful and peaceable
means to free our ourselves from the tyranny of the corporatist
state and its monopolistic ideology, but will create a Populist
movement designed to humanize Democracy.

Reflecting on recent history one can justifiably measure the success
of the late 18th Populist Revolt by the manner in which corporate
America subsequently reacted so viscerally in the century that
followed, For the hallmark of that revolt was that both family
farmers and industrial workers defiantly proclaimed that one cannot
have political democracy without economic democracy.

While economic democracy was a stated goal, as members of the Farm
Alliance stated in their Omaha Platform of 1892, it also represented
a rebellion against the American political party system of that
day. In order to restructure the nations financial and political
structure, the Populist revolt came to reject both major political
parties, which it accused of being in harmony with monopoly.

If populists in alliance are to replace todays corporatist culture,
we must adopt an ideological framework built on aggressive advocacy
and create a movement culture, Such a populism must be characterized
by an evolving democratic culture in which people can see themselves
working together and aspiring to a society conducive to mass human
dignity.

We must also recognize clearly the imminent dangers of the corporatist
culture and educate and work together to bring that corporate state
under democratic control.

Thus, rather than isolate and concentrate on a myriad of issues,
modern populism must focus on the system, for the system has become
the issue. In proceeding to build the sequential process of democratic
movement-building we can learn valuable lessons from our Populist
ancestors.

We must develop horizontal communication between groups of
Populist-oriented people and individuals both within our own
communities and nations and then advance an effort to build an
international populism. By teaching each other what each of us
learns and knows and what mistakes we have made --- we can develop
what can be described as movement forming. In developing such a
system of communication we also create a forum and environment
whereby we can continue to attract masses of people --- the movement
recruiting.

Keeping in mind a commitment to the creative nonviolence and the
democratic process, and remembering that Populism seeks to replace
corporate power with democratic power, We can begin a culturally
unsanctioned level of social analysis --- the movement education.

Finally, 21st century populists, in alliance, can create an
institutional means --- not by forming another political party ---
where new ideas, shared now by the rank-and-file of a mass political,
social and cultural movement, can be expressed in an autonomous
political way --- the movement politicized.

WE THE PEOPLE MUST ACT NOW. We may not achieve all our objectives
but we must constantly strive toward doing so. We owe it to our
children and to their children. We must join forces and arouse the
here-to-fore silent majority. If we stand together on mutually
accepted moral and democratic principles, we can change the world
into a better place for all life.

THAT TO THIS END WE HEREBY DECLARE ourselves absolutely free and
independent of all past political connections. We will give our
suffrage only to such men and women for office as we have good
reason will use their best endeavors to the promotion of these ends,
and for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on
Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our
fortunes and our sacred honor.

[This Declaration is derived from the works of Thomas Jefferson,
Cornel West, A.C. Townley, Lawrence Goodwyn, J. Glenn Evans and all
those populists who have believed and sought to promote the democratic
ideal. Final draft composed and written by A.V. Krebs.]

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