This summer, after we did the Truth Gathering in the Catskill Mountains, we all came away inspired, fired up. We saw something. We saw a future.
I got up to the Catskills early and did four days of constant, mantra-like promotion of the Truth Gathering. The experience of marketing the event in those small towns provided new insights.
I was able to connect to a soldier who had just done three tours in Afghanistan. I thanked him for risking his butt over there. Then I told him I was doing the same thing here at home. I told him I too loved the Bill of Rights, and that I needed his help now in this police state that rules by shock and awe.
I kept getting positive responses from people when I told them the Gathering was all about “peace activism through 9/11 truth.” If the U.S. government system can only go to war now through an artificial event, then this leads to a startling conclusion: if only a highly-charged emotive stimulus will persuade us to permit war, then that means the days of war itself are numbered.
What is the future of the USA, as a political influence on the world? Are we here, on this planet, to brutally display the same old enforcement of bloody empire? I say we are an original creation.
The U.S.A. was built to be a truth machine. We are a product of the Enlightenment. We were founded on that radical question that asked, wouldn’t it be better if we let a free-flow of information exist, so that the reason and light within us all could be allowed to be the supreme authority?
When you think of the history of the USA, don’t just remember the crimes our country committed in its bloody birth (slavery, genocide of natives, Hiroshima, etc.) When you think of the USA’s greatest legacy in the past 100 years, think Martin Luther King, and Cesar Chavez. Both of those American heroes used a kinetic form of direct action non-violence to quickly win massive gains for justice. It’s their legacy that is the future. Instead of a bloody empire, we need to become the country that is #1 at peaceful, enlightened conflict resolution. We can lead the world in what Gandhi called “truth-force.” YES this is the hard road. YES this is going to take all of the blood, sweat and tears that we all can muster. But this is how we regain ourselves, our moral dignity. This is how we rip ourselves off the path of torture, secrets, and war.
The Freedom of Religion clause in the First Amendment is a kind of anti-war document in itself. The interminable wars of post-Medieval Europe were largely based on religion. The first words of the First Amendment abjure the U.S. State’s preference of any one religion. We see here the Founders setting us on a trajectory towards peace and freedom.
Out of these bold, liberating ideas, we were able to form a multi-ethnic democracy. We were a new country, but also a new kind of country. We weren’t defined by a single national ethnic identity. Here, the people are sovereign, and the Republic rests on the consent of the governed. The Bill of Rights sought to limit state power so that democracy could begin to exist.
The problem is that the money-power in this country has become so potent, the people don’t know their rights, their freedoms, they don’t know the truth about world events, and they don’t know how to withdraw their consent. We have two political parties on the same side when it comes to all the key issues: war, torture, secrecy, Wall Street power, the Fed, 9/11 Official Story, etc.
Well, I can tell you one way you can begin to withdraw your consent. It’s to read the U.S. Constitution. There you see a reasonable blueprint for a peaceful country. You see a map we need to get back on. There, one crime and one crime only is deemed important enough to be defined: treason. The US Constitution defines treason as ‘levying war against the United States.’ After nine years of intense research, I can prove, and have proved elsewhere, that 9/11 was an act of treason. But even if that’s not your view, hear me out.
In 1863, the U.S. Circuit Court in California helped write the case law to elucidate this definition of treason, what “levying war” really means. The Court said, “The words embrace not only those acts by which war is brought into existence, but also those acts by which war is prosecuted. They levy war who create or carry on war.” (I added that emphasis on “create.”)
So that means, if there is any question about a “cause of war” we Americans are ordered by our founding charter to treat the question with exquisite care, with scientific rigor. Because war is so terrible, treason is the creation of war, through false means.
But instead of 9/11 being questioned, our media and government have bent over backwards to attack and censure the grassroots movement that has not only asked the right questions about the War on Terror, it has influenced US and world opinion with its skepticism.
That is not all the 9/11 Truth Movement has taught me. Over the course of nine years, I have seen the emergence of a new politics. The Truth Party is not something I “founded” so much as something that reflects an already-emerging political reality. The Truth Movement showed me that people on both the right and the left can and do unite against huge US government falsehoods. We have been inspired to take up the weapons of free speech against State Crimes Against Democracy. We have created the beginnings of a mass movement for peace, through truth. We have lived for freedom, through action.
Books on social organizing show that flat-hierarchy, grassroots movements are unstoppable. In Starfish and the Spider, the authors point out that people united around common values, are much harder to beat than movements or cultures reliant on lock-step authority. The ancient classic Art of War also says that a small organization will defeat a larger one if the smaller one has “the fullness” or the unity of spirit.
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