Consider the fact that the average household income in the United States is somewhere around $55,000 a year while the current base salary for a member of Congress stands at $174,000. Then remember that the $174,000 a year salaries for all 535 members of the US Congress, plus all the perks lavished on top are funded by taxes extracted from the industry of those whose household income averages less than 1/3 that of its “elected representatives”. It appears my fellows, that “we the people” have consented to the re-establishment of an aristocratic “ruling class” that governs every aspect of our being, funded by the confiscated fruits of our labor, and fortified by all the machinations of gerrymandering advantage available to protect incumbency from interference and influence by the governed.
Now consider the words of Frederick Douglass, one of our nation’s greatest icons for human equality and individual liberty, as he draws reference both America’s great Declaration of Independence and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address:
“We hold it to be self-evident that no class or color should be the exclusive rulers of this country”…”If there is such a ruling class, there must of course be a subject class, and when this condition is once established this Government of the people, by the people and for the people, will have perished from the earth.”
This Memorial Day weekend, let us remember not only the sacrifices made for Liberty, but also let us remember Liberty itself, what it looks like, what it feels like, what it is and what it is not. Let us look at the histories of those who have handed LIberty to [b]our[/b] generation still intact , and remember what Liberty requires of those who enjoy it as an “inalienable right”. On this Memorial Day weekend, consider true American Liberty and ask whether we actually know it or not and whether we actually still have it as a possession, or have finally traded the tenets of our great Declaration of Independence and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address for apathetic comfort and a false sense of security as “subjects” to what Douglass rightly defines as an “exclusive ruling class”.
…and then consider what “we the people” will do to get Liberty back so that we can at least hand it on to the next generation who will remember us some Memorial Day weekend.
Tags: Memorial Day weekend ruling class subject Frederick Douglass Lincoln Liberty
May 29th, 2010 at 8:06 AM
Thank you, that was beautifully stated ! Happy Memorial Day – and a Big thank you for all of the Veterans and men serving our country.