BE the State!

Last revised 02.15.08

This introduction to CivicPowerUSA.org bares America's dangerous subversive problem that began to flare up around 1980 ---- the right wing (10% of the public), a consolidation of American wealth-and-power protected and served by its media machine that disguises the right as "conservative" and the media as "liberal," has breached the homeland/national security of America's self-governance and five kinds of public good and is taking huge sums of financial and well-being wealth, and supreme self-governance power, from conservatives and liberals (90% of the public) ---- and illuminates the surefire full solution ready and waiting in our Three Charters of Freedom.

THE PROBLEM

America's wealth/corporate power, executive/legislative/judicial federal powers, spy/blackops/military power, red/blue political-party power, mass-media power, Christian-Right religious power -- powers wisely kept separated in the past in accordance with our Three Charters of Freedom -- around 1980 began to consolidate into a right-wing juggernaut for taking and hoarding wealth and power.

In 1787 and 1791, the founders of our republic wired a homeland-security system into our Constitution and Bill of Rights: several provisions of supreme law designed to prevent American wealth-and-power from ever consolidating and then taking wealth and power from and harming We the People like consolidated British wealth-and-power did as documented at length in the central section of our Declaration of Independence. The Framers created this extensive homeland-security system to eternally prevent the national security of America's self-governance (free and fair democratic processes, truly representative governance) -- and the national security of America's five categories of public good listed in the first sentence our Constitution (equal justice for all, domestic tranquility needed for unity and cooperation toward self-governance and public good, common defense of self-governance and public good, general welfare of many kinds, liberty and its privacies and freedoms) -- from ever being breached by America's wealthy-and-powerful citizens. Two centuries later, the unthinkable happened: in pursuit of wealth-and-power happiness for themselves, consolidated American wealth-and-power and their media machine erased our knowledge of, subverted, and shut down America's founding homeland-security system. (To rediscover and reactivate the system, see THE SOLUTION herein.)

The consolidation's members, as a team, during the past quarter century gradually and stealthily breached the homeland security and national security of America's self-governance and public good. And today they freely take financial wealth, well-being wealth, and self-governance power from the American public, and during that process of taking wealth and power from their own people they take many thousands of homeland lives annually as collateral damage. They act similarly against other nations, and the blowback hurts America. The more they morph our government of, by, and for We the People into a government of, by, and for Wealth and Power, the more the world suffers also. With information-control, deceive-and-manipulate, divide-and-conquer support from their media machine they spin it down, cover it up, trick us to help, and have already made sure our current methods of democracy cannot possibly stop them.

In the 1980s they removed the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Fairness Doctrine and many FCC public-service requirements from broadcasting, and they loosened FCC restrictions on media consolidation, which gave rise to right-wing hate radio, Christian-Right religious broadcasting, and right-slanted mainstream media content especially our news. The members of today's mass media -- instead of serving America with principled free speech, instead of protecting America as a vigilant free press -- block and distort vital information that America needs to be able to function with principled self-governance and bountiful common well-being. And they single out and pillory whistleblowers and dissenters who dare expose any of the right's myriad violations of our democracy, public good, and Law of the Land: violations of our democratic processes and representative governance, violations of our five classes of common good, violations of our Constitution's Preamble and Articles and Amendments. They blend advertising, public relations, journalism, and entertainment into deceptive and manipulative "communication" designed to protect and serve the right -- including to trick citizens to esteem and assist the wealth-and-power that's hurting them and their families and futures -- "communication" they steadily inject into our public mind with mass media they control: print, radio, television, film, increasingly the internet. They influence our universities to teach and grant degrees in those "communication" skills. They built that Information Monopoly and Persuasion Weapon -- that advertising/PR/news/entertainment, print/radio/TV/film/web Media Machine -- for the ancient right-wing purpose of taking and hoarding wealth and power.

"[T]he government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion" became "supreme Law of the Land" in 1797 without controversy. Two centuries later, a right wing and their media machine arose and altered the meaning: they removed the words "not in any sense" -- which empowered the Christian Right, an aggressive unChristlike brand of Christianity born a century after 1776, to begin merging church with state.

By enlisting and empowering a religion with a shared aim -- acquisition of power -- America's consolidation of wealth-and-power grew their membership from a half million to thirty million during the 1980s, and thus their power during elections and influence over the elected by more than fifty-fold.

As we watch the popular Red vs. Blue Show -- how red and blue are different democratic choices, how red and blue compete against and fight each other -- behind the scenes red and blue collude to serve consolidated wealth-and-power. For example. In 1987 the Republican Party and Democratic Party co-founded the Commission on Presidential Debates, a private corporation funded by wealth-and-power donors to both parties. It operates under the guise of being a taxpayer-funded federal commission, shields red/blue candidates from hard questioning by the public, shuts out candidates from other parties, all to cement their red/blue monopoly grip on power, all assisted by the right's media machine. As our elected representatives, reds and blues both help the right take immense financial wealth, five kinds of well-being wealth, supreme self-governance power from We the People -- reds more so than blues -- causing collateral homeland death in the process. Vote red or blue, either way the right wins.

Our usual methods of good citizenship and active democracy -- including reading and watching the news to stay informed, writing letters to the editor and blogging on the web, working on self-governance and common-good issues, whistleblowing in the public interest, engaging in principled dissent, contacting our Senators and Congressperson, supporting our favorite political party, voting in every election -- barely work anymore.

A generation ago, rapidly consolidating homeland wealth-and-power began to reverse America's two centuries of socioeconomic progress -- including by transferring huge sums of financial wealth from the poor and middle class, and from our posterity, to corporations and the well-off -- which is why the American Dream has become less and less reachable for more and more Americans.

How severely have the right and their media machine crippled our democratic processes and corrupted our representative governance? To what huge extent have they hurt our equal justice for all, our domestic tranquility needed for unity and cooperation toward self-governance and public good, our common defense of self-governance and public good, our general welfare of many kinds, our liberty and its privacies and freedoms? What are their numerous stealthy methods of mass mining our financial wealth? During the process of taking our wealth and power, what kinds of collateral homeland death do they cause? For all the answers, study CivicPowerUSA.org.

How much money -- grand total and per taxpayer -- do they take from us yearly? How many homeland lives do they annually take as collateral damage? Continue reading this introduction.

To assure a stealthy breach of our homeland/national security, and an easy heist of our wealth and power, the right wing and their media machine weakened America's ability to detect and fight their betrayal. During the late 20th century they purged more than half of our Declaration of Independence from our public education and national consciousness, the charter's entire long central section that describes exactly WHY We the People revolted in the late 18th century: to stop and reverse war on self-governance and public good by consolidated wealth-and-power. They erased our knowledge of the extensive homeland-security system the Framers wired into our Constitution and Bill of Rights: the many supreme-law defenses against U.S.-government takeover by U.S. wealth-and-power. They deadened our awareness of our supreme power and supreme responsibility, as We the People, to provide free and fair democratic processes, truly representative governance, and five kinds of common good to ourselves and our posterity -- and as part of that treason they put to sleep our "provide for the common defence" power and responsibility to be alert for and fight off subversion and harm by American wealth-and-power and how it BEGINS with free-speech, free-press whistleblowing and dissent as principled and fiery as Paine's Common Sense (January 1776) and Jefferson's Declaration of Independence (July 1776). They devised a narrow meaning for "homeland security:" safe from foreign terrorism, but not from harm by American wealth-and-power -- collateral homeland death at the rate of at least sixteen 9/11s annually, systematic theft of $2 trillion a year from citizens, harm to much of our other public good, harm to all aspects of our democracy. They shrank the meaning of "national security:" from the whole security of our self-governance and five classes of common good, to security they provide with spy/blackops/military power and rising police-state power. They twisted our "national interest:" from ensure the public interest won by revolting against and defeating consolidated wealth-and-power -- principled self-governance and bountiful common well-being of, by, and for We the People -- to ensure the wellness of the consolidated wealthy-and-powerful who subvert our self-governance and usurp our public good through a rigged market-based democracy they trick us to think is real American democracy. They lobotomized the Social Contract from our public mind: in return for our paying the price of self-governance -- steady and strong civic/social responsibility, eternal vigilance and effort and taxes -- We the People, and our posterity, receive the five immense well-being benefits listed in the first sentence of our Constitution since 1787 -- "Justice," "domestic Tranquility," "common defence," "general Welfare," "Liberty" -- the common-good bedrock of our "more perfect Union" and American Dream. They smoke-and-mirrored away the supreme intent of, and supreme responsibility for, American law: all laws must be "made in Pursuance [of]" the principled self-governance and five classes of public good ordained in our Constitution; laws that license wealth-and-power to hurt self-governance and public good are illegal laws that have no place in America and must be expunged by We the People who have supreme power and supreme responsibility to do so. Those are some of the ways the right and their media machine softened up America -- cleansed the WHY from our Fourth of July, undermined our founding defenses including freedom of speech and of the press, perverted our nation's purpose, crippled our supreme power and responsibility, blinded us to loss of self-governance and public good -- to take our wealth and power.

It happened before. Today's homeland enemy -- consolidated American wealth-and-power, the right-wing juggernaut often disguised as "conservative," and their media machine, the right-wing shaper of our public mind often disguised as "liberal media" -- is taking wealth and power from citizens much like the right-wing consolidated-wealth-and-power enemy of 1776 did. Offenses committed by today's right-wing enemy are identical in character to those listed in the central section of our Declaration of Independence: the waging of war, by unbridled consolidated wealth-and-power, against self-governance and public good.

True conservatives and true liberals are rooted in our Constitution; they strive to build and secure principled self-governance and bountiful common well-being. The right wing is rooted in acquisition of wealth and power at the expense of others; they commit the kinds of wrong and harm that set off the American Revolution.

Unlike before, today's right-wing foe is disguised as friend and is winning big with feeble resistance from the well-armed public they are busily taking wealth and power from.

THE SOLUTION

Size up the enemy and identify their vulnerabilities. Their wealth/corporate core -- including their key people in Corporate America, Washington D.C., intelligence and the military, the red/blue monopoly, and mass media -- has a half-million members, 0.2% of the public. Their enlisted Christian-Right core has 30 million members, 10% of the public, who want divine rule and end times for America and -- in mutual cooperation with the wealth/corporate core -- work against the purpose of America defined in our Constitution's opening sentence, a bright future of principled self-governance and bountiful common well-being of/by/for We the People and our posterity. That toxic alliance operates like this: the worse the avarice and inhumanity by the wealth/corporate core here and abroad, the more strongly the Christian Right supports it because they believe it speeds arrival of the end times they yearn for -- which according to their faith will end America and We the People and prevent our posterity, and their own posterity, from ever being born -- and as payment for that support the wealth/corporate core provides the Christian Right with domestic and foreign policies, saber-rattling and war, laws and public money, judge appointments, court decisions, and sterling public image they want (just like the wealth/corporate core rewards itself). An example: the more destructive and deadly and drawn-out the Iraq war, the more money for wealth/corporate war industries who pocket as profit about half the $10 million an hour we taxpayers spend on the war as of July 2007 -- we pay less than 5% of it to our troops -- AND the greater the satisfaction and might of the Christian Right who fuel the Iraq war and Support Our Troops to fast-track their bible-prophesied Middle-East upheaval preceding end times. The Christian Right's aggressive/nihilistic/inhumane brand of Christianity, a small radical undercurrent kept below Christianity's surface by its main flow for ages, broke loose and emerged into the world in the late 1800s, a century after the American Revolution, and was not the religion of America's founders nor is it the religion of today's 200 million hopeful/humane conservative and liberal Christians (mainstream Christianity is about six-times larger than the Christian Right); the wealth/corporate core's media machine obscures the Christian Right's recent origin, unChristlike character, and small size by disguising the sect as timeless and traditional, exceptionally moral, and large and popular. The toxic alliance can be broken like this: neutralize the wealth/corporate core of the right-wing juggernaut including its media machine by applying our Three Charters of Freedom, and the power of the Christian Right dies also. The linchpin holding all parts of the wealth-and-power consolidation together consists of 537 elected federal representatives, 0.0002% of the public, who violate our trust by serving wealth-and-power clients at the expense of We the People and our posterity in return for wealth/corporate campaign cash (transmuted into protected free speech by judges they appointed) and a bloc of Christian-Right votes (made effective by the right's suppression of voter turnouts). That corrupt red/blue heart in Washington D.C. pumps wealth and power out of the public and into the consolidated-wealth-and-power few. 270 million conservatives and liberals being plundered and hurt by the right, 90% of the public, can replace that corrupt heart with a principled one.

By law, We the People have supreme power and supreme responsibility, are the government of America, are the State. So BE the State! Wield the arsenal of legal/moral weapons and tools in our Three Charters of Freedom to defend and mend America; the Framers armed and equipped us well. Stop the wealth-and-power juggernaut, and their media machine, from corrupting our Secular Humanistic Republic into a Theocratic Plutocratic Kakistocracy. Restore and grow and secure America's democratic processes, representative governance, justice, unity/cooperation, common defense, general welfare, liberty, and international good will.

A big-picture full-solution democracy weapon/tool for America -- CivicPowerUSA.org -- explains how. The surefire four-element plan is based on our Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution, and Bill of Rights.

In brief. See through the homeland enemy's cloak-and-spin deceptions including their patriotic/pious/lawful/moral/conservative/liberal disguises (such as how the Christian Right's heavily promoted pro-life caring for the unborn masks their unChristian, unConstitutional uncaring of the born AND masks the wealth/corporate core's massive taking of lives as collateral damage). Surmount the right's divide-and-conquer manipulations: how they orchestrate us to focus on and chase single-issue bits and pieces of their wrongdoing in order to prevent us from seeing and solving the whole problem as successfully as America's founders did; how they fragment the general public, and the public interest, into myriad self-interests and then foment those divisions to compete and clash (such as how they pit conservatives and liberals against each other); how they apply those two basic divide-and-conquer tricks so very effectively that even those who resolutely fight the right actually aid the right to achieve Divided We Fall; how they insure domestic discord, and not "insure domestic Tranquility," in order to topple United We Stand and produce Divided We Fall; how they fracture the combined civic power of We the People into tiny, competitive, divisive, impotent fragments of power so that each and every threatening civic effort in the true public/national interest can be singled out and easily brushed off or crushed by the well-organized full might of the small right wing and their media machine. Realize how deception and manipulation are weapons used against enemies and prey, how the enemies in the right's way are the law and humanity in our Constitution and international treaties, how the right's prey are the wealth and power of others here and abroad. React to the right's injustice in the normal and natural human way -- with moral outrage, then with unity and cooperation to stop and reverse the injustice -- as successfully as our nation's founders did; their moral outrage fills the ultimate document of dissent, our Declaration of Independence; they set "establish Justice," and "insure domestic Tranquility" needed for unity and cooperation, as the very first and very second supreme moral goals and supreme moral responsibilities of We the People. Team up conservatives and liberals into an overwhelming civic power; a single hot selling point would make that easy: every conservative and liberal taxpayer would annually save/gain the amount stealthily being taken from them by the right, an average of $15k a year. After reclaiming and rebuilding our supreme power and supreme responsibility, Elements 1 and 2 (explained elsewhere in CivicPowerUSA.org), proceed to fix America as resolutely as we created America, Elements 3 and 4. Neutralize the common enemy hurting conservatives and liberals and their families and futures -- the small and vulnerable right wing and their media machine -- that is, break up the dangerous wealth-and-power consolidation and then forever keep the right wing safely in check as the Framers intended and provided us with our founding arsenal of legal/moral weapons and tools for. Restore and grow and secure true American democracy: free and fair democratic processes and truly representative governance, a self-governance that lives and breathes the law and humanity in our Constitution, a special principled democracy far better than generic majority-is-right democracy AND hugely superior to our present market-based democracy that's heavily rigged by the right and their media machine to assure perpetual victory for the right; during this process America replaces its "rigged market-based democracy," a recent right-wing-installed form of democracy that enables homeland wealth-and-power to take wealth and power from citizens and prevents citizens from seeing and stopping that wrong and harm, with "real American democracy" that fosters principled self-governance and bountiful public good. Restore and grow and secure America's public good: all five classes of common well-being, our full range of Social-Contract benefits that enable the American Dream, the whole point of America.

Begin like before. Create a new version of the Continental Congress, a broad-based national civic-action coalition operating outside the influence of Washington D.C. for the purpose of homeland/national defense against the right, to unite and build and direct citizen forces to fight the right; a likely spinoff would be a new political party, devoted to serving the entire public interest defined in our Constitution, which could easily defeat the red/blue monopoly betraying us. Organize the enemy's injustices into three categories. 1) How they violate our democracy: democratic processes, representative governance. 2) How they violate our five classes of common good: equal justice for all, domestic tranquility needed for a united/cooperative state of America, common defense of our whole self-governance and entire public good, general welfare of several kinds, liberty and its privacies and freedoms. 3) How they betray us: how they switched allegiance from America to a homeland version of the unjust consolidated wealth-and-power that triggered the American Revolution, how they breached the Framers' extensive homeland-security system that protected our democracy and common good from right-wing harm, how they deceive and manipulate to cripple America's ability and will to stop them. State precisely how the homeland enemy violates our Constitution's Preamble, Articles, and Amendments in technicality and spirit; include how their war on Iraq violates three treaties -- United Nations Charter, Nuremberg Charter, Geneva Conventions, all part of our "supreme Law of the Land" -- and therefore violates Article 6. List those injustices, and violations of supreme law, in a new version of our Declaration of Independence to ignite corrective revolt. It's all part of Element 1.

During Elements 1-4, apply our Three Charters of Freedom as weapons to fight and subdue the right, and as tools to heal the harm they inflicted on America. Unleash the homeland-security power in our First and Second Amendments: volley nationwide free speech and millions of symbolic flintlocks at the small and vulnerable homeland enemy. Eliminate their corporate personhood (it has no valid legal basis), remove their judges from the Supreme Court (our Constitution instructs how!), enact/enforce political-influence reforms (especially lobbying and campaign-finance and media reforms), all needed for America to have principled self-governance again and with it bountiful common good. Reinstate early American corporate law: corporations exist to serve the public, and are forbidden to hurt the public. Carry out the five secular moral goals listed in the first sentence of our Constitution -- our American Values by law -- which vastly surpass the human-to-human goodness required by the Ten Commandments.

Also, rediscover and reactivate our 1787/1791 homeland-security system. The Framers understood and feared humankind's ancient political disease -- wealth-and-power consolidates, flares up and inflicts harm on the public, compelling victims to revolt against and subdue the wealth-and-power that's hurting them -- and they took measures to prevent that wealth-and-power disease, that right-wing disease, from ever flaring up within our homeland and subverting and hurting America. They created multiple supreme-law protections and defenses against the disease, a robust homeland-security system to eternally ward off and suppress the disease: Democratic processes and representative governance to keep the disease in check and safely dormant. "[I]nsure domestic Tranquility" to maintain an undivided, undivisive We the People able and willing to unite and cooperate to fight the disease. "[P]rovide for the common defence" against the disease. "[N]o religious Test[s]" to prevent religion in public servants and other members of the public trust from feeding the disease. Trial by jury as a direct citizen check against unjust prosecution, unjust courts, and unjust laws spawned by the disease (for example, juries have supreme power and supreme responsibility to nullify bad laws -- laws NOT "made in Pursuance [of]" our Constitution -- such as laws that allow wealth-and-power to consolidate and take financial wealth, well-being wealth, self-governance power, and lives as collateral damage). Separation of powers, and separation of church and state, to prevent separate components of wealth-and-power from consolidating and growing into the disease. Freedom of speech, and freedom of the press, to sound alarms about outbreaks of the disease and to rally citizens to fight the disease. Surely our experts in Constitutional law can cite other inoculations against the disease. The Framers wired all these homeland-security measures into our 1787 Constitution and 1791 Bill of Rights. Beginning around 1980, the right wing and their media machine powered down America's entire founding homeland-security system. We can switch it back on.

Unite and cooperate to BE the State! Execute this long-overdue major maintenance and tune-up of our republic; the key is to again have a public trust the public can trust. CivicPowerUSA.org shows how; during Element 4 of 4 of the full solution, a new political party easily trounces the red/blue monopoly betraying America as We the People flood to the polls and replace the corrupt heart in Washington D.C. with a principled one. This homeland-security, national-security action by citizens -- to protect America's self-governance and public good from harm by American wealth-and-power -- is required by our Constitution: "We, the People... provide for the common defence" of America.

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