Saturday, July 05, 2008
A DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE FROM THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Wednesday, 02 July 2008
[This article is from an anonymous woman now living in South Africa. It was sent to me by a third party, and I have no reason to believe that it’s bogus. In any case, I believe its relevance to the present moment is stunning.–Carolyn Baker, Editor in Chief of Speaking Truth to Power]
Simpulposted with Speaking Truth to Power
Through my signature below I hereby withdraw my consent to be ruled by the organization that has called itself the Government of the United States of America.
A government is empowered through the consent of the governed to serve a sacred purpose, namely, to create a bright and sustainable future for its people and a biodiverse garden of its region. This purpose is possible.
If a government no longer serves its intended purpose then it is proper that each individual formally withdraw his or her consent to be ruled by that government.
Through a consistent stream of actions the United States Government has proved itself to be corrupt, having turned away from serving its original purpose. The United States Government has therefore failed, and is de facto illegitimate. Consequently, all of its authorities over me are hereby removed and the United States Government is hereby disbanded in its entirety. All branches, the legislative, executive and judicial branches, including all offices and resources, political, military, informational and financial, are hereby disenfranchised and replaced by local, self-organizing, bioregional governments and currencies that promote sustainable infrastructures and demonstrably serve the principles of integrity, transparency, interdependence, consciousness and the sustainable well being of their entire ecology.
Human beings carry an inalienable responsibility for choosing to whom or what they pledge their allegiance. From this moment forward I no longer pledge my allegiance to the organization that has called itself the Government of the United States of America. We are dissociated. I disallow that organization to legislate, adjudicate, use money, or make agreements in my name, either nationally or internationally. I hereby withdraw my franchise from the United States Government and I no longer submit myself to its authority. I hereby abandon my United States Passport as worthless, null and void because through its own actions the United States Government has invalidated itself.
This document recognizes that the United States Government has
Irredeemably abolished itself by no longer fulfilling its true purpose. This document announces that I take my authority back from that failed organization. The United States Government no longer has authority to represent me, tax me, detain me, question me, or in any way rule over me. It can no longer take any actions in my name. From this moment forward I take back my autonomy. I hereby declare my independence from the organization that has called itself the Government of the United States of America.
Although I alone, without reason or circumstance, am responsible for my decision to withdraw my franchise and allegiance from the organization that has called itself the Government of the United States of America, I am willing to name examples of how this organization has betrayed the purpose for which it was originally created:
1. The Government of the United States of America (herein referred to as the Government) has consistently legislated in favor of a carbon-based economy that multiplies corporate profits while disregarding the increases in greenhouse gas concentrations to the point where the future of all of humanity is now seriously threatened by the consequences of global warming.
2. The Government has promoted the use of nuclear powered electric generation plants creating millions of tons of lethal nuclear waste products that can never be safely stored, and creating decommissioned power plants that remain radioactive for eternity.
3. The Government has abused its leadership position in the world by promoting fear-based military force as the international culture of America, rather than a culture of innovation, compassion, respect, and mutual support of humanity.
4. The Government over and over again, and still now is using illegal DU (Depleted Uranium) weapons and devices in direct opposition to signed United Nations agreements, degrading the United States of America to a renegade country, likely to have its leadership regime brought to war crimes trials and capitally punished.
5. The Government has promoted an unsustainable consumerism culture that multiplies corporate profits while devouring the future’s natural resources and producing mountains, rivers and seas of toxic unrecyclable wastes. The consumer economy never did have a future and still the government promoted it wholeheartedly.
6. The Government has promoted covert military actions and subterfuge that includes traffic in illegal drugs, illegal weapons trade, assassinations, illegal takeovers of corporations and governments, and ruthless competition rather than intelligent cooperation or creative collaboration.
7. The Government has allowed itself to be infiltrated and corrupted by corporate and elite regimes that now direct the branches of Government to serve purposes contrary to the true and proper purpose of government.
8. The Government has turned over control of the currency of the United States of America (the original world currency) to private individuals who manipulate it for their own personal benefit rather than for the benefit of the world.
9. The Government has promoted a system of education that keeps people stupid rather than developing their innate potential and well being so they can create satisfying lives, fulfilling relationships and loving families in the 21st Century. The Government has allowed corporations and organized religions to control school curriculums, and has permitted drugs, gangs and guns to define the school experience for many children.
10. The Government has promoted economy over humanity in a value system that shamelessly sponsors injustice, inequity, and slavery, not only in America but around the world, regarding people in developing nations not as brothers and sisters but as sweatshop slaves for producing cheap clothes and the latest technological devices.
11. The Government has designed cities and towns around automobiles and roads rather than around people, cutting people off from their own community and trapping people in suburbs that are not sustainable.
12. The Government has consistently sponsored an imbalanced budget and has accrued a national debt over one trillion dollars that future generations must somehow pay back, meanwhile losing track of an additional trillion dollars.
13. The Government has greedily destroyed the future of civilization by developing an infrastructure, energy, food, housing and transportation systems relying entirely on consuming vast quantities of hydrocarbons that exist in limited supply, thus building a dangerous house of cards that will now tumble down as oil, gas and coal supplies dwindle. If half of the war budget would have been redirected towards developing renewable power for the last twenty years, the entire country would be oil free by now.
14. The Government has promoted a diet of fat-saturated fast-foods, and hormone and antibiotic saturated beef, pigs, poultry, and dairy products that endanger the health and general well being of its people, ground water and farmlands. The Government has also promoted fishing grounds to be exhausted to near extinction, and promotes deforestation and dependence on pesticides and fertilizers that undermine foreign economies but makes huge profits for corporations.
15. The Government has promoted the so-called patenting and engineering of the genetic designs of life forms to be used for the profit of corporations while endangering the future of the humanity.
16. The Government has promoted the introduction of genetically modified organisms into the general food chain for the profit of corporations while endangering the future of humanity.
17. The Government has used military force, assassination, and political manipulation to overthrow other governments as a desperate attempt to control remaining oil supplies for the purpose of maintaining the illusionary value of a world petro-dollar to assure profit for the corporations rather than assuring a bright future for the people.
18. The Government has promoted a medical establishment that profits pharmaceutical corporations and has blocked the development of less profitable but more humanistic, holistic and intuitive healing modalities.
19. The Government has persistently implemented legislation and presidential orders to override constitutional rights, and has built and staffed over 600 new prison camps across the country prepared to imprison citizens who might be regarded as the enemy of Government.
These and other actions reveal that the United States Government has irredeemably abolished itself by no longer fulfilling its original and true purpose.
Uh-oh! I feel Archie’s Soapbox coming up:
The Imperial Urge seems to spring from the rabies-like social disease called capitalism, which starts as hairline cracks and eventually becomes the rot that brings down the whole community.
[“This is an Ownership Society.” Translation: “We own your ass.”]
“Community” is the original intent for the US sense of “Government:
“To secure [people’s inherent] rights, Governments are instituted among [the people], deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
This bit was drafted by a bunch of expatriates who, like the woman who wrote the 2008 Declaration, had become disgusted and oppressed by a colonial Empire. They too sought to dissolve bands that connected them to an Empire, and they suggest here something like the anonymous woman, except that she reframes the purpose for which “a government is empowered through the consent of the governed.” For the drafters of the original US Declaration, the purpose is to secure people’s inherent rights whereas for the 2008 anonymous expatriate, the purpose is more like a specific command: “to create a bright and sustainable future for its people and a biodiverse garden of its region.”
For myself, I prefer the more simply open-ended securing of inherent rights – as long as the rights secured ensure that no entity may claim as its happiness-pursuit right (for example) the right to encroach on any other entity’s inherent rights. When, as now, the out-of-control government in the US exerts itself to extend corporate “rights” to infringe on people’s life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, we’re supposed to do something about it, according to the original founding text:
“Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People . . . , it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
While I vehemently agree with the expatriate in South Africa regarding the sorry state we’ve reached, the value of localism, and the need for honoring diversity (e.g. biodiversity), founding premises like the ones cited here are important and consistent with the impulse evidenced in this 2008 Declaration.
As the cliché goes, “Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.”
* * *
PS: I am sort of ambivalent about localism. Multinationals and the Bigs (Big Pharma, Agribusiness, etc) oppress me, and I really like the folks right around here and the stuff they make. But this bloggie-deal and the internet in which it abides now reach way past local. WIthout the extra-local faculties of the internet, I might not have found treebu again. And we might not have found friends like you, Alice.
Have an explosive night.
xo
- A
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