Look Barry, you're the president. I get it. You'd like your citizens to be loyal to the country you lead, because it makes your job a lot easier. I haven't read your biography, so I don't know if you've ever been exposed to any political ideas outside the two-party system. If you haven't, that's okay, that's a rarity in the United States. Not your fault. But you're not a dumb guy. I know you're very well read, because I remember seeing photos of you during the 2008 campaign carrying around Goodwin's "Team of Rivals" and Zakaria's "Post-American World." Those are fantastic books. However, I'd hate to sound like one of those Tea Party fucktards, but I really think you should go back a little further and read a little about the American revolution. Now don't read David Barton, he's the "historian" the Tea Party really likes. He makes shit up. Thanks to propagandists like him, Americans think the revolution was tame, civil struggle led by FOUNDING FATHERS (tm) who won by standing in a circle holding hands. Judging by this proclamation you just issued, I'm going to take a guess and assume you think that way too.
This period was the golden age of radicalism in America. Obama's proclamation begins: "More than two centuries ago, our Founders laid out a charter that assured the rule of law and the rights of man." Yeah? Well what about everything that happened before the Constitution was written? It didn't just appear out of thin air. Do you think the patriots who destroyed all those boxes of tea -- property they did not own -- were good, law-abiding, "loyal" citizens? They tarred and feathered tax collectors, and tore down homes of governors brick-by-brick, years before the war even began. It was ugly, it was gruesome, and it was terrible, but all of it needed to happen. America was founded on radicalism and dissent.
I mean, really. I don't think you understand this whole "freedom" concept. My computer's dictionary defines freedom as "the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint." I don't appreciate you telling me who I should declare my allegiance to. Here's a quote from Roderick T. Long.
“The Pledge of Allegiance was written in 1892 by the nationalist socialist Francis Bellamy. The term ‘allegiance’ refers to the duty of obedience and subordination that medieval serfs owed to their feudal lord – their ‘liege.’ The American founders, by contrast, waged and won a revolution against the Old World idea that we owe allegiance to our governments; the United States was founded on the opposite principle, that our governments owe allegiance to us. The founders would have been horrified to learn that two centuries after the American Revolution, schoolchildren would be forced to recite loyalty oaths to the government. The Pledge of Allegiance is one of the most blatantly un-American documents ever written.”
And as of May 1, 2012, President Obama's Loyalty Day Proclamation joins those top un-American documents. Just say it out loud. "Loyalty Day." It's fucking Orwellian.
The proclamation ends: "NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim May 1, 2012, as Loyalty Day. This Loyalty Day, I call upon all the people of the United States to join in support of this national observance, whether by displaying the flag of the United States or pledging allegiance to the Republic for which it stands."
No. Paine said "The world is my country" and I'm not pledging allegiance to any fucking government. Governments are necessary evils at best. They are nothing more than artificial entities, and people always hold the right to abolish them whenever they become destructive. This is straight out of the Declaration of Independence, and it's probably going to get me put on a list. I keep saying that America was founded on "radicalism." But the idea that all human beings should be free shouldn't be considered "radical" at all. What's truly radical and dangerous is the leaders of a corporatist government telling me that I'm loyal to them without bothering to ask me for my consent. What's radical is those leaders perpetuating lies to invade countries and massacre countless thousands in the name profit and global influence, and then say they're doing it to make people "free."
I'm pissed off. This shouldn't be such a big deal, but I'm fucking pissed. As always, Mumia expresses my anger better than anything.
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