We can, we must do better than the limited performers who hog center stage
From Ron Boyer’s August Truthout Interview with Justice Party U.S.
presidential candidate
Rocky Anderson
Excerpt, editing by
Carolyn Bennett
This is some of what Rocky Anderson had to say on the state of this
union and what’s required to overcome the oppressive status quo in United
States leadership from Washington
SERIOUS PROBLEMS, seriously flawed leadership
 |
| Rocky Anderson |
“Our nation,” the United States of America, in the past dozen years,
Rocky Anderson says, “has been transformed in extraordinarily tragic ways.
[Those in positions of power] have utterly eviscerated the rule of law
We have engaged in wars of aggression — wars for which there has been
no coherent explanation.
Debt is completely out of control.
We have a military-industrial complex with a stranglehold on our
government.
 |
| Bought government is bad government |
At the core of almost every public policy failure, an explanation is
found in the adage ‘follow the money’ because our Congress and the White House
have been purchased lock, stock and barrel by wealthy corporate interests.
Republican and Democratic Parties have colluded in creating the
corrupt, perverse system that has led our nation to this point.
Beyond acceptance of the unacceptable
In the past twelve years, we have come to accept government invasion of
privacy that in an earlier era would have outraged American citizens. The idea
that the executive branch of government has the power to round people up and
hold them indefinitely without any semblance of due process is a clear sign of
totalitarian governance.
 |
| Abuse of these is never acceptable |
Complacency of the American people, a seeming acceptance of the
unacceptable — violations of the U.S. Constitution, enormous abuses of power —
is, perhaps, the most frightening aspect of the crises in America.
There is a crisis in the United States concerning our democracy and fundamental
constitutional values. Correcting the problems requires a common knowledge on
the part of the people and taking on the problems with depth of concern and
activism that equals the severity of the problems.
Are we going to continue being a nation that goes around kidnapping,
disappearing, torturing, and in some instances even murdering people?
Are we going to continue to be a nation that engages in aggressive wars
to take over the resources of other nations and dictate to them how they are
going to live their lives?
Are we going to continue to be a nation that suppresses not only people
in other parts of the world; but our own citizens, denying them any security in
terms of rights of privacy and their own personal security?
Anderson says, there is no question in his mind “that we need a major
new alternative.”
SERIOUS CHANGE toward forming a more perfect union, establishing
justice, ensuring domestic tranquility, providing for the common defense, promoting
the general welfare, securing blessings of liberty to ourselves and our
posterity …
Rocky Anderson offers alternative
Constitutional powers and war:
If Congress had lived up to its constitutional responsibility to determine
whether the facts justify going to war, we would have never gone into Vietnam.
We would never have been in Iraq and very likely we would not have been in
Afghanistan.
Compliance with the war powers clause of the U.S. Constitution would
keep us out of disastrous wars.
We as a nation and a people seem to have completely lost sight of the illegality of aggressive war — a
military attack against a nation or nations that have neither attacked nor was
about to attack the aggressor nation.
Anderson says concerning wars “fought in our name”— wars that have
devastated families and loved ones of U.S. military personnel and other country
nationals — that he favors “a fact-finding investigation where the truth can
finally be laid out for the American people.”
He says, “There must be some kind of accountability…. The truth must
come out — not only in connection with the commission of these wars, but also
the lies that led us into the wars. At least history should hold the people
involved accountable.” Members of the U.S. Congress who, against the
Constitution of the United States, delegated to the executive branch the power
to take our nation to war must be held to account.
Citizens must take action to place a check on abuses of power and make
certain that government takes the necessary action to deter those actions in
the future. The responsibility falls on all of our shoulders to reverse the
incredibly dangerous trend facing the United States.
Domestic affairs
Elections: We need a public
financing system, significant campaign finance reform.
The role of money in our campaign system is in large part responsible
for reducing U.S. democracy to plutocracy — the control of our
government by the very wealthy. The legislative branch must reverse Citizens
United.
Rule of Law: We must honor
and recognize individual civil rights and liberties, desist in detaining people
indefinitely without charge, trial or habeas corpus. Restore and uphold the
rule of law, due process, the promise of the nation’s founders.
Healthcare: Denial of
healthcare and the resulting human casualties are the consequence of the
corrupting influence of money from the for-profit insurance and pharmaceutical
industries.
Among industrialized nations, the United States is a world leader in
deaths of newborn babies for lack of pre- and neonatal care, maternal deaths
for lack of health care coverage, and deaths of people with diabetes.
We need to provide essential health care for everyone. Leadership from
the very top is needed to turn things around.
Beyond fear of “spoiler”
Power of people, courage to choose
Every generation has the enormous responsibility to preserve our
republic, to preserve our constitutional system of government, including the
system of checks and balances — to stand up against an imperial presidency that
assumes so much power for itself and undermines the power of other government
branches to hold in check abuses of excess power, Anderson says.
Every progressive era, every social movement, he recalls, “came about
because of the tenacious activism of people taking to the streets, pushing
elected officials to do the right thing.…”
The current era offers both challenge and great opportunity, Anderson
says; and as citizens and moral actors, “we have an obligation and opportunity
to reverse the dangerous course on which power and abuse of power have set our
nation.”
We must “get beyond our timidity and assert ourselves if we are ever
going to see the kind of change that is necessary for moving in the direction
of democracy and away from plutocracy.” As a powerful people, he says, Americans
can pick up the tools and organizing strategies used in earlier eras “to
overthrow America’s “dictator, the corrupting influence of money.” Exert our
will “to demand the restoration of the rule of law, a return to constitutional
values.”
There are alternatives, choices on national election ballots — if citizens take the leap of political courage
to choose. http://www.politics1.com/p2012.htmWe can choose to simply move the players (Republicans and Democrats) around and sustain the corrupt system in which big money calls all the shots or we can finally organize and take action together to choose a very different way.
This is a perfect time, Anderson says, “for third parties to come
together under one unified banner, perhaps set aside some of our differences
and join in providing the kind of option the majority of the American people
want to see in elections.”
He says he “would be very pleased to work with the Greens, the Peace
and Freedom Party, the Progressive Party, with the Libertarian Party, with
Independents — with people of all stripes — thus allowing real choice instead
of creating several different factions and limiting the choices to small
parties on either the left or the right of the political spectrum.”
Anderson envisions bringing people together; focusing on major
common concerns, and common aspirations.
“We the people … do ordain and establish this
Constitution for the United States of America” [From
the Preamble 1787]
Sources and notes
“Justice Party Presidential
Candidate Rocky Anderson Speaks Candidly on the Crumbling State of the Union”
(Ron Boyer Truthout Interview), August 26, 2012, http://truth-out.org/news/item/10766-a-road-less-traveled-presidential-candidate-rocky-anderson-speaks-candidly-on-the-crumbling-state-of-the-union
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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
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