Happy New Year -- Save the Republic Before It is Too Late!

Nearly 150 years ago, a small slice of elite planters in the southern portion of the then United States convinced the majorities in their respective states that the people who lived in the states north of them were their enemies, and that those same fellow Americans were in some kind of conspiracy to threaten their freedom. Often stated privately but rarely in public, that allegedly threatened freedom was their perceived right to own human beings as slaves. But it was more than that. It was actually their insistence on expanding that right to transplant their slave institutions to territories in the United States, as well as the right to bring their slaves freely to other non-slave states without loss of their chattel property.
This slaveholding elite was so articulate and fervent in its oratory that they convinced the vast majority of non-slaveholding poor farmers to join in their cause to separate from the United States of America and form a self-styled slave-holding republic. Most of these political sermons were actually delivered in church from pulpits that preached the right and duty of black slavery. Southern science tried to demonstrate that blacks were an inferior race of humans. The reading of Northern newspapers and magazines that did not share this view was discouraged and sometimes banned from mail delivery.
There was in fact a Northern abolitionist movement, but it was small, poorly organized and disdained by most Northerners who held little interest in changing Southern institutions, even if there was a certain disapproval of the “peculiar institution”, as slavery was referred to at the time. There was opposition to the spread of slavery to the territories, but the objections were more economic than moral. It was the determination to limit the spread of slavery that Lincoln ran on, not its abolition. Yet the Southern elites used Lincoln’s election as the linchpin to launch a bloody war that over four years claimed the lives of more than 600, 000 Americans. And when it was over and the perverted Southern cause was crushed, the surviving elites fashioned a myth that claimed the war was never about slavery at all, but rather about states rights, the threat of Northern hegemony and the simple farmer versus the evil industrialist. Lies, all lies, but these legends and lies still live on in the south today and were resurrected quite nicely during the Civil Rights era to obstruct equal protection under the law.
What does this have to do with today, you might ask? More than you might think.
As the year 1861 dawned 145 years ago, the secession crisis was well underway, predicated by the lies underscored above.
As 2006 dawns for us, our nation has been hijacked by a set of latter day elites that have poisoned the minds and beliefs of a vast number of Americans. They have created an imaginary enemy (international terrorism, whatever that is), they have launched a war based upon deception (WMD’s, for example), they consistently re-name reality to suit their purposes (i.e. relax pollution standards and call it a “Clear Skies Act”), they decree that all media that does not echo their message is false and distorted (tainted with “liberal-bias”) and they routinely question the loyalty and patriotism of those who disagree. They invent conspiracies that do not exist (silly things like a liberal plot to abolish Christmas), they deny science (inventing “intelligent design” as a biology course, for example, or denying the reality of global warming) Their churches preach their dogma, and demonize those who see it another way, even attempting to turn the current battle against Al-Qaeda into some kind of Lord of the Rings style good vs. evil Biblical prophesy of Armageddon with the forces of Christ allied with Judaism against the Satanic might of a resurgent Islamic Caliphate – bullshit nonsense but they will sell it as fact!
That picture of George W. with a confederate flag is not real, but the true state of the union is far more disturbing. You might think you can enjoy your weekend and go back to your routine in 2006 with most aspects of your lives intact, but wake up: we have neo-fascists at the helm and they have their feet firmly on the pedal racing down the road to World War III – which, by the way, they think we can win! It’s a new year. At this rate it could be our last! Don’t be complacent. Speak up. Fight back. Oppose. Argue. Get punched in the nose if need be, but don’t be quiet.
Six hundred thousand Americans died in the 1860’s because a lot of Americans blindly followed a lie. With all due respect, open your eyes.