“Equality and the Fourth of July”
Editing, excerpt, brief commentary for TIN by Carolyn Bennett
This is why the greatness of papers and people of the past must
be perceived as promise, potential, seed awaiting our fulfillment on
behalf of all people──not merely for the Jeffersons and Madisons, or even the Lincolns
and Douglasses. Joseph Kishore writes poignantly, powerfully, truthfully on the
wish and reality of America this July 4th.
“The Declaration of Independence marked a major turning
point in history, not only for the people of what would become the United
States of America, but for the entire world. In announcing their irrevocable
break from the British monarchy, the founders sought to realize in practice the
great progressive conceptions of the Enlightenment.” But “The American
Revolution,” he says, “was a bourgeois democratic revolution. Neither it nor
those who led it could transcend the social conditions of the day. As such, the
historical event could not live up to the ideals that its greatest proponents
laid out. Nevertheless, the American Revolution—and, in particular, the
Declaration of Independence—resonated in every subsequent progressive episode
in American history. Indeed, it was to ‘the proposition that all men are
created equal’ that [America’s sixteenth president] Abraham Lincoln [1861-1865]
would refer four score and seven years later in delivering his famous address
on the battlefield at Gettysburg in the midst of the Civil War to abolish the
barbaric institution of slavery—the Second American Revolution.”
Inequality faces Do-nothingism
Existing today is recklessness, a rabid madness assailing the social,
political and cultural well-being of America (and not only America) as leaders
and a partnering cabal makes a mockery of principles seeded in the great
declaration of 1776.
Amid disastrous conditions, Joseph Kishore continues, “There
are vague, insubstantial and insincere calls for ‘something’ to be done; some
among the wealthy speak nervously of ‘pitchforks’ on the horizon.” But the something rising from any quarter amounts to nothing. Faced with a massive growth of
social inequality, official discussions around this phenomenon are virtually silent on “the fundamental cause of inequality, capitalism.”
Within the framework of the existing political and economic
system in the United States, Kishore says nothing can nor will be done “to
reverse the ever-more extreme concentration of wealth.”
Patrician/Fraudster-class rules
“…The aristocratic principle has been reborn,” Kishore says;
and “if the current rulers could, they would reestablish titles and ranks of
nobility, the official proclamations of privilege—and no doubt there are some
who are already conspiring to do so.”
A U.S. president becomes a
multi-millionaire solely on the basis of his political career. The Congress of
the United States is populated by scores of multi-millionaires. On the nine-judge
U.S. Supreme Court sits eight multi-millionaires. Media, paid millions annually for
their faithful service, peddles propaganda that serves the interests
of the state and the corporate-financial elite; and the “American aristocracy grows
rich largely through financial fraud.”
No aspect of American policy escapes the aristocratic
principle. “Globally, it finds expression in unrelenting militarism, a criminal
foreign policy based on plunder and conquest. With increasingly reckless
abandon, the American ruling class has launched a series of wars, leaving
disaster and chaos in its wake. More than ten years after the invasion of Iraq
laid waste to one of the most advanced societies in the Middle East, U.S.
troops, drones and military aircraft are once again heading back—even as [Washington]
stokes war with Russia over Ukraine and China over energy-rich regions in the
South Pacific.”
Answering the begging question what to do, Kishore concludes, “The fight for
social equality today requires the conscious struggle to put an end to
capitalism and establish a socialist system based on public ownership.” He
says “it is the international working class that [must be] the true inheritor
of the egalitarian ideals and revolutionary traditions” called to mind on Independence
Day USA.
Promise awaits fulfillment
“…We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all … are created equal, that they are endowed by
their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life,
Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments
are instituted among [us], deriving their just powers from the consent of the
governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these
ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute
new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its
powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety
and Happiness.…”
Sources
“Equality and the Fourth of July,” Joseph Kishore at World
Socialist Web Site, July 4, 2014, http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/07/04/pers-j04.html
Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of
America, in Congress, July 4, 1776
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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