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Inauguration and Empire, and Goodbye, Mr. Bush

statueofliberty-288See Justin Raimondo’s article about how far we have sunk since the days of Jefferson’s inauguration. “Having long ago morphed into Jefferson’s worst nightmare, the closer we get to the end, the more glamorous our inaugurals become,” writes Raimondo, who sees in this celebration of presidential power the signs of a bipartisan consensus on more war. And here’s Robert Higgs looking back on another imperial inaugural.

Four years ago, Bush’s critics raised objections to the lavishness of his second inaugural, while his supporters tended to defend the ostentatious celebration. I identified the modern presidency, with all its power, as the real problem, and argued that maintaining the inauguration in all its glory would be no controversy if the power of the presidency were scaled back to no more than what’s in the Constitution. The Jeffersonian and anti-Federalists were skeptical even of the power granted to the president back in the late 18th-century; since then it has been expanded and aggrandized so many times (Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson, FDR, Truman, Bush) as to render it completely unrecognizeable by constitutional standards.

There is a silver lining this time, which is that tomorrow marks the end of the Bush era. This was the presidency gave us:

• Two undeclared, unwinnable imperial wars, with hundreds of thousands of dead, including thousands of Americans, and many tens of thousands of Americans wounded, with the violence and occupations continuing to this day;

• Detention without trial or habeas corpus;

• A torture scandal and the institutionalization, from the top down, of “enhanced interrogation techniques” that offend basic standards of human decency;

• New precedents on “extraordinary renditioning,” whereby U.S. intelligence and military agencies hand off detainees to foreign countries where they are interrogated in ways that even the U.S. at Guantanamo will not use;

• Warrantless wiretapping of the citizenry conducted by the military wing of the government;

• Spying on peaceful political activists and putting many names on no-fly lists;

• The modification of Posse Comitatus and insurrection law to empower the president to order the military and national guard to impose order on the domestic population;

• More signing statements than any president before;

• Credit expansion that helped bring on the greatest financial crisis in many years;

• The largest expansion of welfare spending since the Great Society, specifically in the area of prescription drugs;

• The biggest bailout ever, so far, with frightening moves toward economic fascism in the financial sector;

• A doubling of the deficit and debt;

• The nationalization of airline security and the introduction of the color-coded terror system;

• The Department of Homeland Security;

• Sarbanes-Oxley and other posturing corporate regulation that hurts small firms while doing nothing to improve the economy;

• Signing McCain-Feingold into law, despite knowing it violating the First Amendment;

• The further nationalization of education;

• The 21st century version of the “unitary executive,” which concentrates ever more power into the presidency;

• Massive protectionism, secrecy, duplicity, socialism, corporatism, and growing reliance on police-state tactics;

• Terrible diplomatic blunders with North Korea, the Midle East and elsewhere;

• The failure to catch Osama bin Laden.

That’s all I’ll mention for now, but I might update this with more gems from the Bush years. It will be hard, in any event, for Obama to beat this record. But we shall see.

Source: Campaign for Liberty

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Strengthening or Weakening the Economy?

Ben BernankeThe economic situation continues to deteriorate this week as past and future bailouts were discussed on Capitol Hill.  The debate was over the accountability of already disbursed TARP money, and on whether or not to release remaining funds.   Banks that had already been bailed out before are looking for more money to fill the black holes that are their balance sheets, warning that they are simply too big to fail.  However, whatever ‘devastating’ consequences these banks are dreaming up and pushing on Capitol Hill regarding their own collapse will be nothing compared to the collapse of our currency if we keep debasing it through these foolish bailouts.  It should be that they are too big to bailout.  The world will not come to an end without this or that bank.  The most troubling thing to me is this rhetoric that only government can save the economy, and must act.  This is so counter-productive.

We must ask ourselves what strengthens this country, and what weakens it.

Government is a monumental drag on this economy.  Government at all levels currently absorbs about 35-40 percent of GDP, which is still not enough for its voracious appetite. While productivity is already overtaxed, the government routinely spends more than it takes in and makes up for the shortfall by constantly borrowing or debasing our dollars through inflation.  It pains me to think of all the opportunities for productive economic growth we have given up simply because our government is super-sized instead of Constitution-sized.  There are just a few constitutionally sanctioned activities for government to engage in, but it is so overstretched with unconstitutional encroachments that what it is legitimately supposed to do, it does very badly.  And yet we are to believe the solution to our problems is to make government bigger.  On the contrary, government makes our problems bigger.  The central bank’s meddling with monetary policy led to overheated lending, and now massive defaults.  The government used manipulative tax policy to distort the housing market which has had many unintended consequences, and here we are.  Government is quick to enact and slow to correct bad policy.  Yet in spite of government’s failures, it flourishes and grows, thanks to the continual bailouts from the unwitting taxpayer.

Big government has been tried and has failed miserably.  What we need now is small government, and freedom.  We need the freedom to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps again, as we traditionally do in this country.  But try to start a business or charity today, and you will understand how little economic freedom we really have left.  Freedom, not government, made this the land of opportunity.  Freedom laid the foundation that catapulted us to becoming the strongest economic power in the world.  The American people are strong and capable.  We can pull ourselves out of this mess.  All we need is for the nanny-state to get out of the way and allow us to do it.  Freedom is our strength, government is our weakness.  Only by recognizing this and unleashing our strengths will we solve the problems we face today.

Source: Dr. Ron Paul’s Straight Talk and Campaign for Liberty

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Freedom Force International

G Edward GriffinBy G. Edward Griffin

Freedom Force International is a network of men and women from all parts of the world who are concerned over loss of personal liberty and expansion of government power. They are not mere complainers. They have a plan to do something about it. They also share a common belief in The Creed of Freedom, which is a statement of principles that guide them in their mission to build a better world.

Totalitarianism is on the rise everywhere because advocates of big government have taken leadership control of the power centers within every society. Power centers are organizations and social groupings – such as political parties, labor unions, church groups, media centers, and professional societies – that hold political power based on their claim to represent their members and on their ability to lead public opinion. It has taken many years for them to achieve this dominance over society, but they have succeeded. It does no good to complain or to theorize about what should be done. As long as advocates of big government hold the power, nothing will change.

WE MUST NOT BE LIKE CATS
One of the most profound differences between dogs and cats is that cats focus on effects while dogs focus on causes. If you toss a pebble at a cat, it will look at the pebble. If you toss it at a dog, it will look at you.

In this respect, too many people are like cats. They are preoccupied with the details of their loss of security, freedom, and privacy, and they flutter like wing-clipped pigeons, complaining about this and that without knowing why these things are happening. By contrast, members of Freedom Force focus on the cause and work to eliminate it. The degeneration of civilization is not the result of blind forces of history operating beyond comprehension or control. It is planned and caused by a small but well defined group of people who believe this decline is necessary for what they fondly call The New World Order but which we recognize as high-tech feudalism in which mankind will be condemned to live in perpetual subservience to elitist rulers.

edgriffindoorhanging-288The identities of these elitists are known. They have names. They belong to organizations. They meet together to create strategies and they work jointly to implement them. They dominate the power centers of society. We will not escape their plans by looking only at what they are doing. We must focus on them and remove them from their present positions of power. Any other plan of action is doomed to failure.

That, however, is not enough. If we focus solely on the identities and personalities of those who are promoting the decline of liberty, we will be stumped by the fact that, even if we should succeed in removing them from their positions of influence, there are many more just like them waiting to step into their places. In the final analysis, it’s not the names and identities or political party affiliations of these individuals that matters as much as what they believe, what ideology they hold. Their ideology has a name. It’s called collectivism, a concept that government is master and people must obey. It’s to no avail to remove one collectivist from power only to replace him with another one – which has been the pattern for all too many years. It is time to stop acting like cats, stop being forever fascinated by the personalities and deeds of our leaders. We must be more like dogs and focus on the ideology of our leaders, because that is the cause of their deeds.

The solution is simple. It is to take back control of the power centers of society, one-by-one, just the way they were captured in the first place. Replace the collectivists with people who have no personal agendas except to defend freedom. This will unleash the vast human potential for prosperity and happiness that can be realized only in the absence of government oppression. However, to reach that goal, it will be necessary for those who cherish freedom to do more than complain and far more than just casting a vote every few years. They must reach for power. That is the reason for the motto of Freedom Force: Impotentes defendere libertatem non possunt, which is Latin for “Those without power cannot defend freedom.”

The Freedom Force strategy can be summarized as:
Don’t fight city hall when you can BE city hall.

eaglewflagbest-288The mission of members of Freedom Force is to shape public policy within their respective countries in favor of personal and global freedom. The method is threefold: (1) dissemination of ideological and issue-related information, (2) instruction in how to become influential within community and national organizations, and (3) instruction in how to lawfully and constitutionally convert that influence into public policy. Members seek to become change agents so they truly can make a difference in the world.

Freedom Force is a global brotherhood of the most enlightened and dedicated people in the world. We are building an international network of leaders who, in spite of differences in nationality and culture, are in solidarity with the principles expressed in The Creed of Freedom. We now have members in sixty countries, and the number continues to grow. (See flags below.) Nothing like this has happened before in history. It is a powerful force that cannot be stopped. Welcome to the Brotherhood of Freedom.

Source: Freedom Force International

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Dialogue Across Ideological Divides

gandhiprayerforpeace-432By DeAnna Martin & Susan Partnow

At the recent National Conference on Dialogue and Deliberation, we attended a panel of speakers who consider themselves “conservatives” to help us understand why dialogues seem to narrowly attract “progressives” and especially of a certain age, white, and middle class.

We want to share some of the things we heard and lessons learned to consider the implications for Conversation Cafes and similar endeavors to dialogue across divides.

First, there are certain fears that tend to turn conservatives off to dialogue. These fears create barriers to showing up if they feel they have to:

1)     Give up the Truth. If dialogue assumes all truths are relative, it is an unwelcome environment for someone who has fundamentalist convictions about right and wrong.
2)     Be coerced towards some hidden agenda. Questions come up about what the ultimate goal of dialogue really is: to convince me of something? To get me involved in some sort of larger social change? Is there really an authentic space for conservative views?
3)     Be changed. Perhaps this is connected to a hidden agenda to convince me that my views are wrong?

One way that individuals in the evangelical community have found their way through these fears is by engaging in what they call, “convicted civility.”  Individuals engage in dialogue, sharing candidly about where they are convicted, from their place of The Truth, while the other seeks to understand “living the friendship, not the argument.’

We learned that conservatives may be turned off by how the dialogue is framed. Particular triggers for conservatives are words like:

  • “Sustainability”  Is there some intent to coerce me to become an environmentalist?
  • “Global warming” versus a more conservative framing “energy security”
  • “Community organizing” ˆ is code for someone telling me what to do, I don’t need to be organized.
  • “Consciousness” should only be used in a boxing match to assess is he conscious or not.
  • “Progressive” implies you’re more evolved than me, I’m stupid.
  • “Grassroots” must mean a Trojan horse end-run around the system
  • “Civic engagement” must be some kind of agenda you want everyone to get involved in.

Second, there are certain values that shed light on what conservatives find important. By looking at these we can understand better how to appeal across divides to bring people together.

Some of the values expressed by panelists were:

  • “Self-Governance” I am responsible for myself, my family and my community all within a democratic republic.
  • “Personal Responsibility” when dialogues emphasize government as the only answer, rather than each of us making up our own minds about how we can take care of ourselves, our families, and our neighbors.
  • “Voluntary cooperation” or coercion of any kind, whether that be an expectation to come up with something we all agree to or a hidden agenda to convert, is the antithesis of this.

So let’s consider these insights as they relate to how we go about our Conversation Cafes and other dialogue efforts.

Frame & Identify Issues We Have in Common
Dialogue can be framed as a desire to understand and know each other and must include all aspects of the self, including religious values. We must find nonpartisan issues we all care about, such as transparency, integrity, and accountability. These issues might stem from where there is a felt need to link political will with deliberation, then be careful about how decision makers are involved in the cycles of discussion and be transparent about everyone’s commitment and role in the process.

Be Careful about Liberal Blind Spots
Taking our cue from the trigger words shared previously, we must find language that doesn’t assume we intend to evolve people to a particular end, organize them, or that limits our scope for what and who is ultimately responsible. Cultivate humility. Be willing to let go of our own agendas and accept that we have more to learn and understand.

Define Dialogue as Part of Broader Civic Engagement
Respect that each of us is self-governing and we are self-governing together.  Be open to seeing the free market as civic engagement, i.e. in a free market businesses are figuring out what people want and providing it. Dialogue in our civic engagement is about integrating the values of the republic with the needs of the republic.

Emphasize Non-Coercive Outcomes
Dialogue as an end in itself, not about reaching some pre-determined outcome. Just the talking is valuable without the pressure to generate some kind of agreement or shared outcome. Sell the mapping of the issues, rather than an outcome; deeper understanding, empathy, and connection to what this issue looks like from many perspectives. So the outcome is discovery. Mutual respect and appreciation,  humanization. Self understanding to be more personally responsible. Emphasize that it’s not about seeking change.

Demonstrate Value in Terms of Enhancing Social Capital
Dialogue creates opportunities for connections where none existed before, which builds the health and vitality of a community ˆ essential to safety and security.  Express how  conversations with others gives life to the expression, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

Listening to our Conservative speakers and panelists was stimulating, mind opening and humbling. We hope sharing these thoughts with you will serve us all in broadening our conversations to include more diversity of thought, which will ultimately serve us all in moving forward in this complex world.

Source: http://transpartisan.wordpress.com

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Obama’s Inner Circle

Obama VictoryBy Victor Thorn

FOR TWO YEARS, Americans have heard an unrelenting mantra of change emanating from the campaign trail. But now that President-elect Barack Obama has begun forming his cabinet, we’re seeing a cadre of more deeply entrenched insiders than any administration that has preceded it.

In regard to key foreign policy advisors, all three of Obama’s selections either initially supported the Iraq war, or still do. On the economic front, each appointee maintains a close relationship with the triad of Ben Bernanke, Robert Rubin and Alan Greenspan—as well as bailout engineer Henry Paulson. Barack Obama himself is a Council on Foreign Relations member, has strong ties to Zbigniew Brzezinski, and participated in a clandestine meeting with Hillary Clinton at Bilderberg member Diane Feinstein’s house at the time when 2008 Bilderberg members were congregating only a few miles away.

Below is an overview of Obama’s top 14 selections to date. When considering their collective histories, a trend becomes clear, proving that the more things change under Obama, the more they stay the same.

1. TIMOTHY GEITHNER – TREASURY SECRETARY

Bilderberg, Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, president and CEO of Federal Reserve Bank of New York, director of policy development for IMF, member Group of Thirty (G30), employed at Kissinger & Associates, architect of the recent 2008 financial bailouts, mentored by Lawrence Summers and Robert Rubin.

2. PAUL VOLCKER – ECONOMIC RECOVERY ADVISORY BOARD

Bilderberg, Council on Foreign Relations, North American chairman of Trilateral Commission, Federal Reserve chairman during Carter and Reagan administrations, president of Federal Reserve Bank of New York, G30 member, chairman Rothschild Wolfensohn Company, key figure in the collapse of the gold standard during the Nixon administration, longtime associate of the Rockefeller family.

3. RAHM EMANUEL – CHIEF OF STAFF

Member of Israeli Defense Force, staunch Zionist, senator, Board of Directors for Freddie Mac, member of Bill Clinton’s finance campaign committee, made $16.2 million during 2.5 years as an investment banker for Wasserstein Perella. His father was a member of the Israeli Irgun terrorist group.

4. LAWRENCE SUMMERS – NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL

Bilderberg, Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, treasury secretary during Clinton administration, chief economist at World Bank, former president of Harvard University, Brookings Institute board member, huge proponent of globalization while working for the IMF, protg of David Rockefeller, mentored by Robert Rubin.

5. DAVID AXELROD – SENIOR ADVISOR

Political consultant whose past clients include Sens. Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Christopher Dodd; main Obama fixer in the William Ayers and Reverend Wright scandals.

6. HILLARY CLINTON – SECRETARY OF STATE

Bilderberg, Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, clandestine CIA asset used to infiltrate the anti-war movement at Yale University and the Watergate hearings, senior partner at the Rose Law Firm, key figure in the Mena drug trafficking affair, architect of the Waco disaster, implicated in the murder/ cover-up of Vince Foster, and many other deaths.

7. JOSEPH BIDEN – VICE PRESIDENT

Bilderberg, Council on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senator since 1972, member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, current chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, strong Zionist sympathizer who recently told Rabbi Mark S. Golub of Shalom TV, “I am a Zionist. You don’t have to be a Jew to be a Zionist.”

8. BILL RICHARDSON – COMMERCE SECRETARY

Bilderberg, Council on Foreign Relations, former U.S. congressman, chairman of the Democratic National Convention in 2004, employee of Kissinger Associates, UN ambassador, governor of New Mexico, energy secretary, major player in the Monica Lewinsky cover-up with Bilderberg luminary Vernon Jordan.

9. ROBERT GATES – DEFENSE SECRETARY

Bilderberg, Council on Foreign Relations, former CIA Director, defense secretary under President Bush, co-chaired CFR task force with Zbigniew Brzezinski, knee-deep in the Iran-Contra scandal, named in a 1999 class action lawsuit pertaining to the Mena drug trafficking affair.

10. TOM DASCHLE – HEALTH SECRETARY

Bilderberg, Council on Foreign Relations, former Senate majority leader, Citibank lackey, mentored by Robert Rubin.

11. ERIC HOLDER – ATTORNEY GENERAL

Key person in the pardon of racketeer Marc Rich, deputy attorney general under Janet Reno, facilitated the pardon of 16 Puerto Rican FALN terrorists under Bill Clinton.

12. JANET NAPOLITANO – HOMELAND SECURITY DIRECTOR

Council on Foreign Relations, Arizona governor, attorney for Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas hearings, U.S. attorney during the Clinton administration, instrumental in the OKC cover-up, where she declared, “We’ll pursue every bit of evidence and every lead,” described as another Janet Reno, soft on illegal immigration (i.e. pro-amnesty and drivers licenses to illegals).

13. GEN. JAMES L. JONES – NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR

Bilderberg, Trilateral Commission, European supreme allied commander, special envoy for Middle-East Security during Bush administration, board of directors for Chevron and Boeing, NATO commander, member of Brent Scowcroft’s Institute for International Affairs along with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Bobby Ray Inman, Bilderberg luminary Henry Kissinger and former CIA Director John Deutch.

14. SUSAN RICE – U.N. AMBASSADOR

Council on Foreign Relations, Rhodes scholar, campaign foreign policy advisor to presidential candidates John Kerry and Michael Dukakis, member of Bill Clinton’s National Security Council and assistant secretary of state for Africa, member of the Brookings Institute (funded by the Ford Foundation and the Rockefellers), and member of the Aspen Strategy Group (teeming with Bilderberg insiders such as Richard Armitage, Brent Scowcroft, and Madeleine Albright).

Source: Ashland Resource Center

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What Does $700 Billion Buy Taxpayers?

Elizabeth Warren

Fresh Air from WHYY, December 11, 2008 · Bankruptcy and commercial law expert Elizabeth Warren explains how taxpayer money is being spent in the financial bailout program. A professor at Harvard Law School, Warren chairs the oversight panel appointed by Congress to monitor the spending of the $700 billion bailout money. The committee issues its first report on Dec. 10.

Photo: Elizabeth Warren is the author (with her daughter Amelia Warren Tyagi) of All Your Worth. Harvard Law School

Source: NPR

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When Laws and Liberties Test Each Other’s Limits | NY Times

By Stephen Holden

“The End of America,” an unsettling documentary polemic about the erosion of civil liberties in the wake of 9/11, brings up matters many of us would rather not contemplate in the middle of a financial crisis and on the eve of a new administration. Federal laws enacted during the last seven years that threaten our constitutional rights, it reminds us, remain in effect.

The pointedly inflammatory film, adapted from Naomi Wolf’s book “The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot,” compares the Bush administration’s attempts to discourage dissent and to wield increasingly unchecked power to the events preceding the establishment of 20th-century dictatorships in Germany, Italy, Chile and elsewhere. Without explicitly invoking the word, it implies that since 2001 the United States has drifted toward fascism in the name of fighting terror.

Tightly constructed and fiercely one-sided, “The End of America,” directed by Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern (“The Devil Came on Horseback”), interweaves excerpts from a lecture in New York given by Ms. Wolf with film clips and interviews illustrating her contention that the rise of those dictatorships created a “blueprint” that the Bush administration, consciously or not, has followed.

According to Ms. Wolf, the first and fundamental tool for acquiring power is the manipulation of fear. In the shell-shocked post-

9/11 climate, the overwhelming public reaction to the Patriot Act of 2001, which gave law enforcement agencies expanded powers of surveillance, was mute acceptance of whatever was deemed necessary to keep us safe. Since then, she says, a color-coded system of terror alerts has been effectively wielded to keep us on edge.

From here, Ms. Wolf describes a 10-step program toward authoritarian rule that includes the creation of secret prisons where torture takes place; the deployment of a paramilitary force (Blackwater, which the film calls a contemporary American variation on Mussolini’s private army of “black shirts”); the development of an internal surveillance system; the harassment of citizens’ groups; and the arbitrary detention and release of ordinary civilians.

The film’s most disturbing moments are its accounts of James Yee, a United States Army chaplain at Guantánamo, who was accused of espionage and held in solitary confinement for 76 days before being released, and Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian telecommunications engineer, who was detained at Kennedy International Airport, then later deported to Syria, where he was imprisoned for a year and tortured. He was eventually cleared of charges of terrorism.

The seventh step, selecting key individuals for harassment, cites the Dixie Chicks and Dan Rather as prominent cases. The eighth step, the restriction of the press, focuses on the case of Josh Wolf, a journalist jailed for 226 days for refusing to turn over videotapes he made of police brutality at a July 2005 demonstration in San Francisco.

The ninth step, the equating of political dissidents with traitors, fleetingly examines the Bush administration’s floating of the word “treason” to describe The New York Times’s publication of classified information about the government’s monitoring of overseas telephone calls. All these middle steps might be described as examples of selective intimidation intended to inhibit dissent. The case histories are glossed over.

The final step in Ms. Wolf’s Top 10 is the suspension of the rule of law. She cites the refusal of Bush administration insiders subpoenaed to appear before Congress to testify in the United States attorneys scandal. The film ends on a note of stern warning: the 11th step might be the imposing of martial law.

If the film’s vision of the steps leading toward a homegrown fascist state qualifies as paranoid, there is still enough here to make you shiver. Could it happen here? Maybe. A little fear — not the collective panic that followed 9/11 — can be a useful thing.

Source: New York Times/Movies

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State of Jefferson – USA

Indigenous peoples were the earliest known settlers of this diverse and bountiful land – and others followed.

One individual, Gilbert Gable from Port Orford and others, including, members of the 20-30 club in Yreka, the Yreka Chamber of Commerce, the Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors, State Senator Randolph Collier and Judge John L. Childs of Crescent City made the most successful and most publicized attempt at creating a new state from the bottom portion of Oregon and the top portion of California.

There have been many attempts at forming a new state comprised of northern California and southern Oregon, but none has gained so much attention and retained it as the secession movement of 1941.

The abundant supply of minerals and timber in this region was largely inaccessible due to the lack of sufficient roads and bridges into the rugged mountain border country. The local pioneering people grew weary of unfulfilled promises from Salem and Sacramento to help fund sufficient highway projects in the region while building campgrounds in the cities where there were more votes.

Representatives from the mountain border counties involved met in Yreka, CA on November 17, 1941 to form an alliance to obtain federal aid for the construction and repair of bridges and roads. The Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors voted to allocate $100 to research the possibility of seceding from the state of California and joining the other counties to form a new 49th state. The Yreka Chamber of Commerce was very instrumental in persuading the Board.

The local newspaper ran a contest to name the new state and the winning entry was Jefferson. The winner of the contest pocketed $2 for his efforts. Yreka was designated the temporary state capital where the ‘State of Jefferson Citizen’s Committee’ was formed.

They proceeded to stop traffic on Highway 99 outside of town and handed their ‘Proclamation of Independence’ out to travelers.

Jefferson made the papers nearly every day, competing with headlines of Germany’s ravaging of Europe. The San Francisco Chronicle sent a young reporter, Stanton Delaplane, to cover the events. He traveled the rain-soaked roads to speak with locals to get a feel for the secession movement from their point of view. He got stuck in the mud down the Klamath River but that did not stop him from writing a series of colorful articles on the rebellion which earned him the coveted Pulitzer Prize.

On December 4, Judge John L. Childs of Crescent City in Del Norte County was elected governor. A torchlight parade complete with horses, marching bands and sign-carrying young people riding in trucks was held in Yreka followed by a ceremonious inauguration held on the courthouse lawn.

Hollywood newsreel companies were present to record the events, including the highway barricades. The State of Jefferson was off to a banner start.

The newsreels were to air nationally the week of December 8, but tragically on December 7th Pearl Harbor was bombed and the State of Jefferson rebellion of 1941 came to an end. The people of the region went to work for the war effort and good roads were eventually built into the backcountry to access strategic minerals and timber. These same roads have helped countless numbers of rural families make a living from the land that continues to produce abundant, quality natural resources.

The State of Jefferson ‘state of mind’ remains in the hearts and minds of people everywhere.

Source: Jefferson State

Resources:
Siskiyou History
State of Jefferson Website & Archives

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On Obama’s Victory by Marianne Williamson

America has had a non-violent revolution.

As long as there are historians writing about the United States, this moment of fundamental re-alignment of our national purpose will be remembered, pored over and analyzed. It will be seen as one of the shining points along the evolutionary arc of the American story. Yet it will never submit itself to being summed up in a nice little package that reason alone can understand.

“It’s been noted before that Americans get excited about politics every forty years.” Then, in the words of comedian Will Rogers, “We have to go sleep it off.”

We were certainly excited in the l960’s. And this is 2008; exactly forty years since the most dramatic and violent year of the Sixties decade: the year when both Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were literally killed before our eyes.

At that point, a generation of young people — looking much like the youthful army so out in full force today, only grungier — marched in the streets to repudiate an oppressive system and to try to stop an unjust war.

And then bullets stopped us. The shots that killed the Kennedys and King carried a loud, unspoken message for all of us: that we were to go home now, that we were to do whatever we wanted within the private sector, yet leave
the public sector to whomever wanted it so much that they were willing to kill for it. And for all intents and purposes, we did as we were told. According to ancient Asian philosophers, history moves not in a circle but in a spiral. Whether as an individual or as a nation, whatever lessons we were presented once and failed to learn will come back again but in a different form. For the generation of the Sixties and for our children, the lessons of that time — as well as its hopes and dreams and idealism — came back in 2008.

During our forty years in the desert, we learned many things. Then, we marched in the streets; this time, we marched to the polls. Then, we shouted, Hell no, we won’t go! This time, we shouted, Yes, we can. Then, we were so angry that our anger consumed us. This time, we made a more compassionate humanity the means by which we sought our goal as well as the goal itself.

In the words of Gloria Steinem, I feel like our future has come back. And indeed it has. For in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., No lie can last forever. What Bobby Kennedy tried to do, and was killed for trying; what Martin Luther King tried to do, and was killed for trying; what the students at Kent state were trying to protest, and were killed for daring to; Barack Obama and his army of millions of idealists with the audacity to hope have now succeeded at doing.

Praise God. Praise God.

And that praise to God didn’t just go out last night, when Obama’s election to the Presidency was finally achieved. That praise was part of what allowed the waters to part here in the first place. Millions of Americans have been deeply aware that this kind of historic and fundamentally positive effort has not gone well in the recent past, and the
spiritual understanding of this generation of Americans — an understanding not yet fully formed forty years ago — created an invisible light around the Obama campaign. How many people over the last twenty-one months have
posted, in their own way, angels to Obama’s left and angels to his right, angels in front of him and angels behind him, angels above him and angels below him. I know I have, and so has everyone I know. Hopefully we will continue to do so.

The Obama phenomenon did not come out of nowhere. It emerged as much from our story as from his — as much from our yearning for meaning as from his ambition to be President; as much from our determination to achieve
collective redemption as from his determination to achieve an individual accomplishment. And those who fail to recognize the invisible powers at work here — who see the external drama of a political win yet fail to discern the profound forces that moved mountains by moving the American heart — well, they’re just like Bob Dylan’s Thin Man to whom he sang, You don’t know what’s going on here, do you, Mr. Jones?

Back then, Mr. Jones didn’t know what was going on, but many of us did. We knew what was going on then and we knew what needed to happen; we simply weren’t mature enough and we were too wounded then, as people
and as a culture, to pull it off.

This time, we both knew and we did. We knew who we had to become and we knew what we had to do. The violent American revolution of 1776 entailed separating from another country. The non-violent revolution of 2008 — a
non-violent revolution that did not quite fail, yet also did not quite succeed in the l960’s — has entailed separating from who we used to be.

In the l960’s, we wanted peace but we ourselves were angry. This time, after hearing Gandhi’s call that we must be the change we want to see happen in the world, we came to our political efforts with an understanding that we
must cast violence from our hearts and minds if we are to cast it from our world; that we must try to love our enemies as well as our friends; and that when a genius of world-historic proportions emerges among us, we
cannot and we must not fail to do everything humanly and spiritually possible to support him. For his sake.. and for ours.

Having gone to a higher place within ourselves, a higher level of leadership began to emerge among us. A higher level of leader now having emerged among us, he calls us to an even higher place within ourselves. These two forces together can and will, as Obama has said, truly change the world. Having moved one mountain, we’ll now remove the ones that remain. With God’s help, yes we can. Yes we did. And yes we will.

Source: Ashland Resource Center