Face and fight the small enemy within that's subverting and hurting America
 
Our ancient human past, early American history, Declaration of Independence, US Constitution, and Bill of Rights teach We the People how to fight and win big

by Dan Ruuska     (v.10.01.05)

What is and who are the homeland enemy? How harmful and illegal are they? How small and beatable are they? Executive-legislative-judicial federal powers, wealth-corporate power, Christian-Right religious power, and mass-media power -- separate powers supposed to be kept apart and thus harmless in order to protect and preserve our democracy and common well-being -- around 1980 began to consolidate into the unbridled right-wing power that controls and loots and hurts America today. They are the homeland enemy, the enemy within. They assault and wound the heart and soul of America: our democratic processes, representative governance, and all five categories of common well-being (listed in the first sentence of our Constitution): equal justice for all, domestic tranquility required for unity and cooperation, national defense and nation security, the general welfare of several kinds, and our liberties. They also harm our posterity, other countries and their people, and the environment. They block and distort truth, suppress whistleblowing and dissent, and neuter civic action and political opposition that would expose and stop their lawbreaking and harm. In the process they violate our Constitution in technicality and spirit to the core: the Preamble, Articles, Amendments, and foundation principles of separation of powers and separation of church and state. Their wealth-corporate core including the White House, many in Congress and the Judiciary, and the right-wing institutes, societies, foundations, and think tanks they fund total about 0.15% of the public, a half-million voters. The Christian Right and their hate groups total about 10% of the public, 30 million voters. The entire right-wing homeland enemy is a small group of people that is 100% vincible by conservative-and-liberal We the People during open and fair national elections.

Due to the homeland enemy's multiple deep wounds to our democracy -- that is, to our unity and cooperation, to our civics education, to our democratic processes, to our representative governance -- our methods of good citizenship that worked so well in the past -- reading and watching the news to stay informed, supporting just causes, working on vital issues, whistleblowing in the public interest, engaging in dissent, writing to our Senators and Congressman, and voting -- barely work anymore. The whole point. It frees them to do as they please with our country, with our citizens, and with our Treasury that we and our posterity fill for them.

In regard to corporations, the enemy within acts against the heart and soul of America. To a large extent the American Revolution was a revolt against monopolistic, government-subsidized, harmful corporate power. The tea tax Colonial Americans paid to Britain helped subsidize a monopoly owned by royalty and the wealthy, the East India Company, which received tax exemptions and tax refunds from the British government so it could engage in cutthroat rigged global trade against the Colonies. Which triggered the Boston Tea Party. Taxes on tea were in essence paid to a corporation which then hurt the Colonial Americans paying the tax. Today, our federal government collects money from taxpayers, and borrows it from tomorrow's taxpayers, and gives $800 billion a year to corporations in the form of tax relief and subsidies; on top of that they allow $300 billion a year in corporate tax cheating, and force the rest of us to pay 15% more a year in federal taxes to make up that difference. In return, those corporations hurt our nation and citizens in numerous economically-harmful and bodily-harmful ways, and they inflict similar wrong on other countries and their people which lashes back to endanger America.

They also act against the heart and soul of America in regard to religion. "[T]he government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion" became supreme law Law of the Land when it was written into the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli. (U.S. Constitution, Article 6: "all Treaties [are] supreme Law of the Land.") That affirmation of secularism and separation of church and state, supreme law written and approved by the White House and Congress and publicized by the press, was so uncontroversial no one objected. That took place a decade after the birth of our nation. In today's America, the White House and Congress and Judiciary and Christian Right, with assistance from Corporate America and our country's mass media, are stripping away secularism and combining church with state. Even the officer corps of our U.S. Military are dangerously turning Christian Right.

The Christianity of our nation's founders, a humane and hopeful mainstream Christianity as in today's America, sanctioned our Constitution's secular governance and secular humanity: We the People, the government of America and supreme power in America, as good human beings provide five categories of mortal goodness to ourselves and our posterity. That form of Christianity also approved of total separation of church and state. But in the late 1800s, a century after the birth of America, an inhumane and nihilistic new brand of Christianity emerged in Europe, Britain, and America: born-again Christian Zionism, the religion of today's Christian Right. That radical and loud minority sect -- America's mainstream Christianity is vastly larger and humbly quiet in comparison -- is very much at odds with our Constitution's secular governance, secular humanity, and separation of church and state. Their religion sees people as naturally bad. Our Constitution sees We the People as naturally good. If they acquire the full power they seek -- for America to have a Christian-Right government and Christian-Right soldiers to fast-track their "end times" prophecy that needs Armageddon levels of inhumanity in the Middle East -- even the well-being of the world and our posterity are at risk.

The enemy within's wealth-corporate base consists of a half-million voters, 0.15% of the public. During the past quarter-century, by wooing and winning over a Christian-Right base with similar values in regard to controlling and exploiting and harming people here and abroad, the right increased their election-day clout 50-fold to 30 million voters, 10% of the public.

The executive, legislative, and judicial branches of our federal government, by fusing themselves into a single federal power that serves wealth-corporate and Christian-Right interests, violate separation of powers. And separation of church and state.

Republicans and Democrats who occupy the White House and Congress are red and blue flavors of the same political monopoly that serves wealth-corporate and Christian-Right interests in exchange for billions of wealth-corporate campaign dollars and millions of Christian-Right votes. Reds, who have a pious and moral and patriotic image, as public servants act more unlawfully and inhumanely than blues. That liberalness of Democrats -- the way they comply with our Constitution's supreme law and secular humanity better than Republicans do -- is why they're treated so harshly by the hard right and corporate media.

Also around 1980, the enemy within began to create a national right-wing persuasion machine. They combined advertising, public-relations, journalism, and entertainment into "communication" that serves advertising clients and aims of the right and not the public interest. They stripped the FCC's fairness doctrine and public-service requirements from broadcasting which gave rise to right-wing hate broadcasting and radical-right religious broadcasting. They removed the FCC's restrictions on media consolidation and then merged broadcasting stations and other types of media companies into a few giant media corporations which conglomerated with multinational corporations who, together with the political and religious right, control America's mass-media content including the news. White House propagandists and political operatives supply PR-designed content to newspapers and broadcasters who falsely present it as real news. They force public broadcasting to shift to the right. Today all forms of mass media -- print, radio, television, film, news and entertainment, corporate-owned and public-owned -- operate like a giant right-wing persuasion team, aided by their ruse of being "Liberal Media." As a result, America no longer has a free press, that is, a press that is free to report the existence and dangers of the illegal enemy within that threatens our nation today.

If the press of 1776 was as repressive and dishonest as today's, our Declaration of Independence -- perhaps the greatest document of dissent ever written; more than half of it is a strongly-worded list of injustices inflicted by Corporate England -- never would have seen the light of day.

That consolidated wealth and power, and their media machine, are a 10% minority. They control, exploit, and hurt America's 90% majority.

As explained throughout CivicPowerUSA.org, all of this can be fixed. The plan -- a four-element big-picture full solution -- comes from our ancient human past, early American history, Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution, and from today's real patriots: independent journalists and other good people and groups not allowed into public light because they are threats to the right. Included in the fix are several reforms to restore and grow democratic processes and representative governance. One is mass-media reform. One is campaign-finance reform -- no more campaign contributions -- where 100%-public-financed political campaigns costing each taxpayer $50 a year, to create a $7 billion pool of public money to spend on federal political campaigns every year, would in the end save the average taxpayer $15,000 a year in tax and corporate fleecing. Study the other reforms also.

The enemy within is a recent flare-up of the ancient wealth-and-power disease. Off and on throughout the ages wealth and power consolidated, went berserk to grab and horde even more wealth and power, and in the process committed harm within and beyond its home borders. The history lesson? Keep wealth and power in careful check, or else suffer the dire consequences. The Framers understood and feared this political disease, and tried to prevent it from ever flaring up in America by writing into our Constitution multiple supreme-law national defenses against the disease: "insure domestic Tranquility" so that citizens are able to unite and cooperate to fight the disease, "provide for the common defence" against the disease, "no religious Test[s]" to prevent religion in public servants and all other members of the public trust from feeding the disease, trial by jury as a direct citizen check against unjust prosecution and unjust courts and unjust law spawned by the disease, freedom of speech and freedom of the press to sound alarms about the disease and call for action to stop the disease, and separation of powers and separation of church and state to prevent the separate components of wealth and power from consolidating and growing into a political disease that could hurt our country, citizens, and posterity.

The enemy within is "right," not "conservative." True conservatives and true liberals are as progressive as our wise and humane Constitution. In sharp contrast, the right massively violates our Law of the Land as if in sympathy with the enemy of 1776. Right wingers and true conservatives are as different as night and day.

The right and their mass-media machine, 10% of our population, cleverly manipulate the American public to pit conservatives and liberals, the 90% majority being hurt by the right, against each other so they can't see or fight the right.

Those divide-and-conquer actions violate "insure domestic Tranquility" that We the People need to be able to unite and cooperate to carry out our Constitution, including to defend America against the enemy within. How vital is that supreme law? The Framers placed it in our Constitution's first sentence directly after our nation's first supreme law, "establish Justice," and immediately in front of "provide for the common defence," our third.

Two of the many injustices to stop and reverse? The right-wing enemy within, aided and abetted by our nation's press and by a radical religious base, stealthily rob about $2 trillion from American citizens and future generations every year, and cause at least 50,000 homeland deaths annually.

Those two injustices are violations of just one of the Five Commandments of America enshrined in the first sentence of our Constitution: "We, the People... promote the general Welfare... to ourselves and our Posterity." The Preamble's five supreme-law directives of common well-being are revered by conservatives and liberals alike. But not by the right. Who violate them all -- establish justice, insure unity and cooperation, provide national security, promote the general welfare, secure liberty -- and much of the rest of our Constitution as well.

Another injustice? America, now run by the enemy within and not by We the People anymore, today has a higher percentage of its population in jails and prisons, mostly minorities and the poor and for minor offenses, than any other nation in the world. America's major offenders, well-off members of the enemy within, get off scot-free.

The right-wing enemy within -- by attacking and wounding America's democratic processes, representative governance, justice, unity and cooperation, national defense, general welfare, and liberty -- threatens America more than communism ever did and more than terrorism does today. They are the greatest threat to America's national security, that is, to the security of America's democracy and well-being. They are public enemy number one.

But America barely knows. Because the right erased true understanding of the U.S. Constitution and American democracy from our public schools and public mind, and thus created a dangerous weakness in our national security against threats from within. Because the right wears a pious, moral, patriotic conservative mask. Because our media, behind a liberal mask, will not report the right's wrongdoing.

Unfortunately, and extremely dangerously for America, basic understanding of how "Justice," "domestic Tranquility," "the common defence," "the general Welfare," and "Liberty" are the five common-good qualities of our "more perfect Union [the United States of America]" -- for all citizens and especially leaders to strive for -- no longer exists our public mind or guides public life.

In America we are free to seek fortune and pursue happiness and think and do as we please -- within the few limits set by the first sentence of our Constitution: we are not free to jeopardize or act against our principled self-governance, we are not free to endanger and harm others including individuals or the common good or our posterity, and we are not free to lose vigilance and NOT protect and preserve our democracy and common good. This is bare-basic good citizenship. With our freedom comes social responsibility. If we fail in that vital civic duty we will lose what America stands for and what America has accomplished, including our freedoms, to a new strain of the same wealth-and-power disease that Colonial America revolted against to create our nation. As if to foster that civic failure, as if to foster that loss of democracy and loss of common good, the right, through its many stealthy methods of exerting influence, has banned this old Civics-101 lesson from being taught and practiced in today's America.

Lesser injustices triggered American Revolution I.

American Revolution II, a long-overdue major maintenance and tune-up of our democracy, would restore and grow the principled self-governance and five classes of common well-being in our Constitution's Preamble. How? Carry out our Constitution's Articles, Amendments, and foundation principles in technicality and spirit. There is vastly more to our Law of the Land than freedom of speech and right to bear arms.

We the People can do it. Step one is to overcome the right's divide and conquer so we can unite and cooperate into a 200-million-strong conservative and liberal civic power, into a true American civic power.

Remember, the enemy within's wealth-corporate base is a mere half-million people, 0.15% of the public. They supply most of the money and influence that corrupt our federal government and harm our country and citizens. They include today's White House, most of Congress, and a growing portion of our Judiciary. They are tiny in number and vulnerable to our consolidated wrath.

Above is the preface to CivicPowerUSA.org. Continue on to the details and supporting documentation. And to the four-element big-picture full solution that would return true meaning to our Flag and delight the souls of our country's founders to no end.

It would begin as in 1776. A new version of the Continental Congress, operating outside of dominating government but inside of supreme law, issues a new version of our Declaration of Independence that lists all violations of our Constitution committed by the enemy within against our country and citizens, against the world and its people, against the environment, and against our posterity.

Regarding how the enemy within has violated "establish Justice," "promote the general Welfare," and "secure the Blessings of Liberty" -- and how, while committing those violations, they disobeyed our Constitution's Articles, Amendments, and foundation principles in technicality and spirit. Those injustices alone would dwarf the list of injustices in our Declaration of Independence. Attention all good lawyers. You have work to do.

So do all good citizens. Especially journalists, educators, clergy, political and business leaders, public-interest and civic-action groups, and everyone seeking to create a new political party that would arise from a new version of our Continental Congress that united and built up citizen forces and directed the American Revolution.

It would take courage like before. Dare to be American.