[HSList]Freedom

[TIMB...@aol.com]

In a message dated 5/19/98 11:25:50 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
dho...@Moneynet.COM writes:

<< If Sam Adams(and friends) could see us now! What we have now us just a
"frog in the pot" scenario...things get worse slowly. I would not call call
this democracy
alive and well. Sure there are some pockets of functionality and some
significant
victories but all you have to do is look at the huge buracurcies set up both
nationally and
internationally >>

It seems to me that we have to place our current view of things within a
proper context or we can become media slaphappy and victims of American
statistical efficiency. The media certainly has changed over the past 30
years. Journalism is now about pure sensationalism. If all one did was watch
TV news, for instance, one would be afraid to leave the house and certainly
would not fly or ride a train. In reality, however, flying is much safer than
it was 30 years ago and it is safer than walking across an average city
street. In order to assess democracy in America, it seems to me, we must
compare democracy today with democracy yesterday. Only thirty years ago,
police everywhere felt quite free about beating up suspects and most black
Americans could expect kangaroo trials. When I first came to America in 1964,
my family spent a month touring the country. I was amazed at the way rural
Southern black men would not look me in the eye. I will never forget that as
long as I live. Full grown, mature men who shuffled and dealt even with me a
boy with head bowed. I heard a few Hazard Kentucky men tell my father that
they had no trouble with Black people in Hazard County because they know a
hangin is just around the corner. "We go our way. They go theirs." At an
off the highway rural restaurant, the locals eating there stopped eating when
we came in and they stared at us and discussed us the entire time we were
there (my mother is Japanese, my father is Spanish). I just do not run across
things like this anymore. When I was young, employers could treat workers
just about any way they wanted. I remember an electrical parts factory strike
where company trucks drive right through picket lines, pushing workers aside
and injuring a few. The union could not get local authorities or the Fed to
take action against either the company or the drivers.
We have problems. We must continue to down size government but the
system still works. We have to make ourselves heard and we have to make sure
we vote. Our democracy never came out of the bottle complete. For the first
50 years, most people could not vote. For the first 65 years slavery was
legal. For nearly 100 years after the civil war peonage (de facto slavery)
was legal in the South. Since most people are not aware of peonage, let me
explain. Peonage is a system supported by force of law in which certain
people are kept in a condition of servitude through debt or imprisonment.
Right after the civil war, many former slaves were "hired" on as share
croppers by their former masters. They were overcharged for their seed and
supplies and\or overcharged rent. The objective was to see to it that they
could never quite get out of debt. Where the law came in is that Blacks could
not leave the land so long as they owed their landlord money. Sherifs
arrested violators and returned them to the land. Most Northern states
cooperated with Southern peonage laws right up to the 1960s.
All accused citizens have a right to a lawyer even if they cannot afford
one. Suspects have a right to have their rights read to them so they know and
are aware in the heat of the moment what their rights are. These are all laws
new since 1960. President Carter's last act as President was an executive
order stipulating that bureaucrats were to be polite and respectful to
citizens. When they are not, letters of complaint written by citizens are to
be permanently filed in the offending public servants employment file. Three
such letters form different citizens within a certain period of time requires
action against the public servant. Many freedoms have been extended to women.
The right not to be harassed by employers. The right to equal pay and several
others. Children have been given the right to be treated humanely, a right
they did not have until after 1948 and was not widely enforced until the
1960s. The list of improvements is long. Yes, we have problems. But it seems
to me that there are more people with more freedom today in America than when
I first came here. There is certainly more freedom than there was for the last
two centuries. It was not even 100 years ago that a factory owner could feel
quite free to hire thugs called Pinkertons to beat and shoot to death striking
workers. Children could be forced to work long hours in mines until they were
crippled for life. We must be ever vigilant and we have issues to work on but
democracy is alive and well in America. Or so it seems to me...
Tim B.

[TIMB...@aol.com]

In a message dated 5/20/98 6:56:40 PM Eastern Daylight Time, b...@webtv.net
writes:

<< We
have, as a people, the power over oursleves, just, not enough people are
using that power. We have to take action ourselves and stop letting
others take the reigns. >>

This is what worries me. Too many people, for too long not even bothering to
vote or take any action. We do have some fascinating action taking place in
the form of an underground economy. Here where I live there is a vigorous and
growing underground economy. I consider it a tax rebellion and rebellion
against excessive government regulations.