A Call To Independence

"All those histories centered on the Founding Fathers…weigh oppressively on the capacity of the ordinary citizen to act. They teach us that the supreme act of citizenship is to choose between two white males of inoffensive personality and orthodox opinions."

Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States.

Examine the history of politics in America. It is a history fraught with corruption and fraud. From Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall to Richard Daley and the Chicago machine. From the Teapot Dome to the contrived energy crisis. From the railroad, steel and oil monopolies to Enron, Halliburton, El Paso Gas and Anderson Accounting. From the Gulf of Tonkin to Iran-Contra. From the Watergate Hotel to the great Florida election fraud. Six political assassinations in a hundred years. McCarthyism and the excesses of J. Edgar Hoover.

The election of 1800 is known by some as a reaffirmation of democracy in America, by others as the birth of the two-party system. Two hundred years of subsequent history have witnessed the enfranchisement of the poor, minorities and women, yet the form and shape of government remains unaltered.

In less than thirty years since the emergence of party dominance, we went from Jefferson, Madison and Monroe to the likes of Tyler, Harrison, Fillmore and Pierce. For every Lincoln and Roosevelt, there is a Rutherford Hayes and Quincy Adams. For every Woodrow Wilson and Kennedy, there is a Truman and Ford. We have charged our historians with the difficult task (more suited to Hollywood) of resurrecting the characters of Lyndon Johnson, Dick Nixon, Gerald Ford and George W. Bush. We are living in the age of information. The truth will out though it may take a hundred years.

What has gone wrong with a system that leaves us with the choice of a Zachary Tyler or a Franklin Pierce, a Gore, Kerry or a Bush? We are a nation born to greatness. Our educational institutions have produced some of the finest minds the world has known. Why have they so rarely found their way to the White House or the halls of Congress? Where has our political system gone wrong?

The system has evolved into two parties controlled by the same interests. It is a system that seeks out the corruptible and renders integrity a virtual disqualification. The system has settled in its current mode. It is content with mediocrity. It embraces mediocrity. The mediocre are more easily manipulated and controlled.

It is time for change but change will not come in the form of a white knight. We have had white knights before. They are vilified, abused, tarred and feathered. They are often assassinated. Even if they succeed in some small measure, their tenures are brief. The system overwhelms and prevails.

It requires more than the one for meaningful change; it requires the many. As the ever-evolving Senator Hillary Clinton once said, it takes a village. It takes a community. It takes a society of like-minded individuals united in purpose and cause. Tom Paine once said, "It is not in numbers but in unity that our strength lies." The American nation is an extended family in crisis – broken, dysfunctional, divided. It has no unifying cause or purpose and the reasons are many. They extend back to our very roots.

What kind of a family tree begins without a mother? We do not believe the misogynist propaganda that behind every man stands a woman. Whatever influence she possessed was superseded by her daily duties. In the case of the founding fathers, she supervised a work force of servants or slaves and, in her spare time, raised a family.

There were no women amongst our founders. There were no blacks, no minorities, and no natives to the soil we claimed as our own. It was a founding that cried hypocrisy and declared by omission the superiority of white male Europeans. It was a founding that guaranteed disunity, division, and civil war.

Yet the founders had ideals. Was this what they intended?

Those who have studied the question know it depends on which of the founding fathers are addressed. Even the most progressive among them were generally racist and gave little thought to the representation of women. John Adams was a devout aristocrat whose mistrust of democracy was almost unrivaled, yet he was elected president. To him and his supporters (Hamilton, Arnold, Morris et al), direct democracy was indistinguishable from anarchy and anarchy was hell on earth.

If not for the first true Republicans (Paine, Jefferson, Franklin, Monroe, Sam Adams) it is unlikely that the democratic experiment would have been launched on this continent. Time and again they reminded their aristocratic brethren that it was the rabble, not the elite, who fought against the British. It was their bodies that lie buried in hallowed ground. It was their blood that paid the price of American liberty. It was the cause of democracy that roused their passions and spurred them to sacrifice. They would not have looked kindly upon a new American king.

So the founders were not united by philosophy or principle. They were united by necessity. The constitution they adopted was a compromise – an attempt to balance the principles of democracy against the interests of a privileged class.

Yet the founders had ideals.

Though unwilling to free his own slaves, Jefferson recognized that slavery was an abomination – a crime against humanity. Paine and Franklin foresaw the suffrage of women as inevitable. But there was only one enemy that attracted the wrath of virtually all our founding fathers and that was the emergence of political parties.

Just as Eisenhower warned against the military industrial complex, Jefferson warned us to beware the influence of political parties. Two hundred years later, it is long past time to heed that warning. We have seen the dirty underside of the American political system. We have seen principle and morality shuffled aside in the naked pursuit of power. We have seen influence and corruption boldly flaunted before our eyes. We have witnessed the poison of party politics invade every branch of government. We have viewed politicians embrace in the sinking mire and claim victory for democracy and praise the constitutional foresight of the founders. We have watched a media absorbed by the propaganda machine, spinning stories instead of reporting facts. We have seen what both your houses have wrought and it sickens us.

Let us finally hear the cry of the fathers for, despite their short sightedness, despite their flaws and limitations, despite all they did not or could not do, they saw clearly the nature of this beast. It is a monster so vast, so vile, so omnipotent, that we hardly know where to begin opposing it, yet oppose it we must. It is not a beast that will die of its own volition. It is a self-perpetuating machine, fueled by money, and so entrenched in the system that the people mistake it for the system itself. It is a machine that attracts people of power and influence and corrupts them absolutely. With every election its power is reinforced and the likelihood of its defeat is weakened.

We are still a young nation. It is still possible to reclaim the principles of democracy and the sovereignty of the people. For though it is powerful, the party system neglects the vast majority of the electorate. It survives through propaganda, by convincing the people that it represents not them but their interests best.

In the year of the great disenfranchisement (Florida 2000), we saw the truth. In the reprise (Ohio 2004), we were schooled in the fine art of defrauding the electorate. Now we must convince the people that there is another choice. It begins, just as it did for our founding fathers, with a declaration of independence.

It begins with a pledge: We will not support the machine. We will not join the major parties. We will not contribute to its causes. We will not vote for its candidates.

Let us hear the cry of the fathers. Let us heed the call of humanity. Let the cry go forth until it is joined by a thousand voices, then a hundred thousand more. Let it gather the strength of unity until it becomes a tidal wave sweeping over the land. Let it begin here and now. Let it begin with us.

The road to independence will not be easy. It will require patience and perseverance. We must be content to watch our numbers grow in increments. The republic was not established in a day and its reclamation will be no less difficult. But we may have this comfort and consolation:

Never has there been a greater cause: Democracy in America.

Jazz.

JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION. THIS ARTICLE REVISED FROM "CRY OF THE FATHERS" IN VOLUME ONE OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS).

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