Look out for errors in spelling, capitolization and grammer-- they're all here!
 

         In history, we find answers to the present, and directions for the future.

As Harry Lopez, author of the Rediscovery of America, asked his readers-- I ask that you imagine this.   We're lying in the hold of Christoforo Columbus ships, waiting for the morning to bring an end to the lives and cultures of millions of indigenous people.  We know our capitan has come here for gold.  We know our fellows can't wait to begin raping and killing and building their harems of ten year old girls.  We hear the exhortations that God is with us, and that this is the destiny of our race.  What will we decide our course of action is to be?  For most of those lying here with us, no such decision is required--they will follow faithfully to the end, and their souls will be corrupted.  As the sun rises--it is our choice.
    Today we are faced with similar choices.  Some will argue that the circumstances are different.  But the truth has never been allowed here.  Only bits and pieces of freedom and justice have been made available to select groups of the population and the bloody face of continued colonialism peeks out from behind the masks our leaders wear.
     It is their last gasp to hold to the imaginary vision placed in their minds by their forefathers, but even they will not admit to knowing the secret.  Behind the scenes, America has never been guided by an honorable vision.
     There have been many honorable men and honorable women, but the guiding forces have always reflected classes of priviledge, institutions of personal greed, and an unquenchable thirst for power disguised as progress.
     Why are so many Americans more devoutly committed to the patriotic rationalizing of the american ideal than they are to their supposed spiritual life?  Perhaps it is because those who have led in politics and business for the last three hundred years have stripped the guidelines of their spiritual beliefs from having any relationship to their daily decision-making.  They have manipulated their spirituality to allow them to justify whatever political/economic goal they aspire to as the will of the Creator.  They have relegated their faith to a back room they visit only occassionally, to assure themselves they still adhere to the value of conscience.
      For american christians, the historical jesus and his original teachings are often subverted in layers of discussion, interpretation and argument. The ethical supremacy of his revolutionary rejection of authority, institutionalism and arrogance of judgement is ignored and the swirling BS of 19 centuries of formal mythmaking waters down the strength and purpose of his visionary epiphany.  Our political leaders quote scripture and verse not to enlighten us to a moral and spiritual imperative but to discourage idealism and aspiration toward the purest virtue.   If pressed, they fall back on their dark-age historical perspective and mumble platitudes about human nature and the american myths they have come to worship.
      The United States, as empires go, has most certainly not been the worst-- but it's up there on the list.  If not for the painters, poets, and authors that created all the basic symbols american patriotism relies on, these truths might have emerged a century ago.
      Cris Columbus and the host of european sailers said to be first in the routes of discovery were actually far down on the list and hundreds of years behind.  The greatest cities of the 15th century were in the Americas, not Europe.  The first consensual democracies were in the America's six hundred years before the constitution of the US was drafted.  Medicine, mathematics, engineering and agriculture were flourishing in the Americas while Europe was suffering in the dark ages.  The Americas were not wild empty lands when the second wave of Europeans hit in the 1500's, but a charnel house of death.  There were more people in North America than in all of Europe until european gifted diseases destroyed up to 90 percent of the humanity that resided here. When the Nina, Pina and Santa Marie arrived, the coastlands of America were not wild untended fallow forests but heavily developed agricultural areas with a decimated and dying population.   When the american revolution began it was a rebellion unsupported by 70 % of the colonists.  Besty Ross did not sew the first american flag.  There never was a cherry tree and George Washington did not have wooden teeth  The men at Valley Forge were not starving nor were they freezing to death--  Washington used that story to cajol congress into giving him more money for the war.  The liberty bell was no where near Philadelphia during the inauguration of the country.  Native treaties did not last as long as the winds blow and the waters flow.   The Gulf of Tonkin incident which began the Vietnam War never happened--my brother was there.  The forces of Saddam Hussein were not poised at the border of Saudi Arabia before the war in Kuwait.  Iraqi soldiers did not pull out the tubes of incubator babies in hospitals, Kuwait hired a press company to use a Kuwaiti Ambassador’s daughter to lie in order to whip up the flames for Desert Storm.  The US has supported ten times as many dictators and terrorists to serve the interests of corporate capitalism than it has genuinely fought for democratic principles in the world.
       Native America did not develop the phrase “forked tongue” to describe american politicians and businessmen for no reason.  US leaders, government, media, and corporations have been lying to us, and the world, since the beginning.
       They destroyed the world of countless Native Nations in the belief that their race, culture, ethics, industry and religion was superior.  European-descended civilization, with an economic system dependent on never-ending growth and progress promised that industry, science and technology would result in a more peaceful, bountiful, happy and healthy world.  Yet everday we see evidence of a decline in families, ethics, morality and the quality of life and environment worldwide.
       The entire dream of america was intended only to serve the upper class white males and their offspring--period.  The wealth that has made us all fat and complacent comes from the incredible bounty of the american geography and the willingness of our leaders to ruthlessly pursue resources over the world necessary to our benefit.  This is the reason that we are revered and envied, as well as hated and despised, by the populations of the world.   Those who dream they have a chance to use our methods, or ride on our coat-tails--support us.  Those who realize they don’t have the resources to be us, or who do not wish too--oppose us.
      We are a modern empire, whose vulnerable underbelly of hypocrisy has been exposed; whose glorification of comfort and greed dominates our desire for an honest spiritual heritage so that our citizens turn to sex, violence and entertainment for their comfort.  We are a modern empire whose consumer ethic has turned into a system that produces unconscionable excesses and uncontrollable and dangerous wastes while 50,000 children worldwide die of starvation every single day.
      I hear the laughable american quote, “america—love it or leave it”.  But I was born here.  This is my land.  The government and the civilization are simply a thin temporary veneer drawn over the landscape. The bones of my relatives will be the grass long after the United States has passed into history.  I love the land and its people, and I continue to honor any veteran who has put him or herself in harms way--but the land and its people are not the government, nor are they its symbols.
     Those who demand obediance to patriotism are indistinguishable from other empires that flourished calling for the sacrifice of their young--not in service to the protection of their families and the truth--but for the preservation of corrupt and self perpetuating systems that treat human beings and the earth as if they are less important than patriotic rhetoric and unrealized ideals.   Ideals serve humanity in action, not in speechmaking.
     We were asked to contemplate alternatives to war for this discussion.  I  call again for a revolution of thought; a questioning and reevaluation of everything americans have been taught about the past, the present and the future.  Ending war between misguided fanatics is not a goal that can be accomplished quickly.  Only a systematic reconsideration of perspectives taken for granted in the roman descendant civilizations of this millenia can restore power to the people of western societies.
     I'll leave you with this question—and a parable
     How much would our world have to change ...
to place the power of giving the orders calling young men and women to arms
into the mouths of their mothers?

      Nothing less will be enough!
      In every earthly garden there are always deeply rooted weeds, that desire to dominate, which cannot be removed at the surface.  These are my words.  This war, these men, these fanatic systems, and these blindly patriotic ideals--on both sides of the conflict--are deeply rooted selfish patriarchal weeds.  Only a deep turning of the soil of this civilization can offer our children’s children the hope of peace.