The President Speaks: Thanksgiving

On this fourth Thursday in November we give thanks to God for the comfort and prosperity we in America have. We give thanks to the Pilgrims who took a leap of faith, making a perilous journey to a new continent. We also thank our Founding Fathers who were wise to know the proper time to rebel in order to more fully take advantage of their energeticness.

There are others we must thank – the industrialists who planned our systems of interconnectedness; the relentless laborers whose faith in God, America and property brought their bosses dreams to reality.

To round this off we must thank our civil rights leaders who challenged America to truly be religious, to truly be philosophical, to make our interconnectedness spiritual and our drive something that does not annihilate others.

Our focus should be on God. Without tremendous faith in God America would not have been the beacon of the world for so long and we would not have the wealth we have. America was the shining light of the world politically, economically and religiously no matter the extent of our injustices.

We were a balanced people. But we have come further and further from God. Our national leaders have become corrupt. Business and American citizens have become greedy.

Our religious leaders have made a mockery of religion and have abused their positions. Our injustices are no longer something that one can overlook, for there are so many at the same time in all areas of society.

Our faith remains, but it is a faith in expectations. We no longer have an agreement with God that what is most important is our goodness and our willingness to know when we have enough money, success and comfort.

We were wise and humble. We knew that if we were good and not greedy, and we failed in our financial goals, we would be blessed on earth with our goodness and in heaven with God. We knew that if we were good, not greedy and successful we would be extremely lucky and blessed.

Our good points were so powerful they overshadowed our immense evil. This shows you how great Americans were and how seriously so many Americans took words like honesty, truth and integrity.

Often people criticize the Pilgrims as being puritanical. But they were not.

We are. We do not value people who are humble and live simply. We say they are not realistic.

We have a relentless need for money, property, cars, a young image. When somebody says this insanity has to stop, that person is not listened to.

Our godlessness is far more dangerous than the religious conviction of the Pilgrims and the narrowmindedness of the Puritans. They made tremendous sacrifices and constructed stable communities.

We destroy our communities. Any sacrifice we make when young is to live a selfish life at middle-age when we should be combing talent, energy, sharing and good will.

We must regain our integrity. We must rebel against our last fifty years of greed.

God can help us do this. But we will need strength and wisdom. For when we begin to sacrifice our selfish desires to build communities and enhance our relationships, we will realize how unfree America is, how much we do not trust one another, how afraid we are.

We will be tempted to become frivolous again, not out of greed but out of terror. A greater sacrifice will be needed.

We will need to take risks like the Pilgrims did to attain religious freedom, like the Founding Fathers did to be free of a corrupt government, like our civil rights leaders did to attain freedom in their own country.

We need to regain our souls. We need to attain freedom in our own country. If we have the courage and wisdom to do this we will have something to humbly be thankful for.

Our wisdom can begin now. Let us eat lightly this afternoon, so after thanking God that things are not worse here, we will set out to make America once again the beacon to the world.

The President Speaks: Memorial Day

This afternoon we commemorate Memorial Day.

Originally we observed Memorial Day to honor those who died in the Civil War. But as America engaged in more wars, it became our obligation to remember the militrary personnel who died in them.

I want first to talk about the Civil War. It was the event that shattered America’s image of itself. One historian wrote that people who had been raised to ask God for the grace to be a martyr, to die for His goodness without being violent, were called upon to be killers.

It was no longer just plantation owners and professional soldiers who were violent but one million or more men. As so many people said afterward, we lost our innocence, the belief that nothing bad could happen to us – especially something caused by ourselves.

Think what wars do. The Civil War made us realize we had stooped to the barbarism we always associated with Europe.

World War I destroyed the freeedom of movement between countries. In the United States civil liberties were removed. If you criticized the war or America’s foreign policy, you were arrested.

After World War II, rather than glory in our freedom we continued to wage war. Criticism of the mililtary and of foreign policy was dangerous. One could be branded a traitor for criticizing the nuclear arms race.

Our prosperity allowed us to forget the government’s suspicion of us. We trusted each other. We did not live in fear.

With Vietnam came division among us we had not experienced since the 1860s. The Vietnam War made America feel that we failed, that not only did we lose, we were wrong and we deserved to lose.

We became confident in the wrong way. We glorified drugs and cheap sex. We disrespected authority.

We felt that since the war was lost and also unjust, the government would learn its lesson.

While the government was supposedly learning its lesson, Americans abused personal freedom with as few qualms as those who waged the Vietnam War.

Then two Iraq wars revealed that we as a nation had not learned either a moral lesson, a political lesson or a constitutional lesson from Vietnam. Americans embraced each Iraq war, though each was unnecessary.

The sad thing about the Iraq wars was that our consumerism could not cancel out the government’s disrespect and mistrust of us. We lost our trust in each other at the same time we lost most of our civil liberties.

We were not able to see that if the government does not want you to be free, the next step is it won’t want you to be comfortable. The government that wants you afraid will eventually want you hungry.

Somebody just shouted, What’s the point? This.

War destroys civil liberties. It creates mistrust and cynicism. Our wars are claimed to be fought for freedom, but with each war people become less free.

In these cynical times it is easy to dismiss those who died for freedom because now we have little freedom. It is tempting to say their deaths have been a waste.

Likewise, those who passionately celebrate Memorial Day refuse to recognize how unfree America is. It is very difficult for my administration to try to bring freedom back to America and to keep the hawks in check.

We need to realize that battlefields are only one place where freedom is defended. The function of a battlefield is to protect freedom from foreign armies. Our heroes did their part.

We must do ours.

Fight for freedom at city council meetings, at the state legislature, at the offices of senators and representatives. Tell them you do not want to take loyalty oaths or be filmed all the time.

Meet with police departments and justice departments. Tell the officials their officers will be shot if they enter your house because they think you are suspicious. Tell them you will not answer questions about your neighbors.

But it isn’t just confrontation that preserves freedom. It is also lilfestyles. Our way of life does not preserve and encourage freedom. I read in a financial newspaper that democracies only work when citizens are not greedy.

I take this to mean if citizens are greedy, they do not pay attention to government.

When we decrease our shopping, as well as our fear of each other, we will start to feel what it’s like to be free. Then we will realize the military and law enforcement have attained too much power, that we foolishly assumed more laws and surveillance would protect us, that we are more afraid every year.

On this Memorial Day I want you my fellow citizens, to think about our heroes in a different way. If diplomacy fails to restore freedom, you owe it to them to dismantle our police state – physically, even if you have to strangle your brother who is an officer for Homeland Security or your sister who sells surveillance equipment to DHS.

The nation is in a crisis. There is no innocence to lose. Only gullibililty, deception and constant cowering.

If we do not rise against this police state, America will have failed, and will have failed with great cowardice, our courageous heroes.

Bottom of the ninth

Players know how close they came to heaven.
Godlike for a while,
They pass with a smile.
What a great life to end.