This is my first diary post; so, I've given great thought to the learning moments in my life and read a number of posts in the Daily Kos.  A moment from my past:

A mere handful of people read my diary yesterday, "Freedom is not just another word for nothing left to lose" thus illustrating, if not proving my case that America is on life support, heading for the grave if we do not act immediately to change our mindset of blind adherence to authority.

An enemy is one who wages a two-fold war against your mind with propaganda and brainwashing and against your physical body with the intent to harm, maim, kill, subjugate, conquer, control, or enslave you and all of your substance. This enemy whereof I speak, is totalitarianism, despotism, police state, and slavery. Call it by whatever name or label you wish. They all result in freedom's suffocation, starvation and death. Follow me under the fold for the rest of this call for the dead to awaken and rise up...

Wonkette summedup Jonah Goldberg's column today in LATimes as a "paean to the God of shit" and that pretty much sums it up.
Here's how the column starts:

There's a weird irony at work when Sen. Barack Obama, the black presidential candidate who will allegedly scrub the stain of racism from the nation, vows to run afoul of the constitutional amendment that abolished slavery.

And I honestly can't claim that the column gets any better from there on.
Mr Goldberg claims that because Obama's plan for college loans comes with "strings attached", it constitutes "involuntary servitude".
Go figure!

This is dumb enough but it goes further.. much further..

Let me get this off my chest. Jonah Goldberg is Tool. And big, pasty, WATB tool. In an Op Ed in today's LA Times, Goldberg equates Obama's call to service as, I shit you not "Forced Servitude". He even bandies about the "slavery" word, but denies making the comparison. I can't wait for the good folk over at Sadly, No! to get a hold of this.

It used to be a tradition in the United States to have public readings of the Declaration of Independence on the Fourth of July.  People would gather in the public square with some local notable or promising student standing in front of the assembly, Jefferson's timeless words in hand, to read out clear and loud: "When in the course of human events..."

It's not a bad tradition, nor is the Declaration a bad document.  I particularly like this part:

governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed [and] whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government.

I'm not so thrilled about this part:

He has excited domestic insurrection among us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.

One hundred fifty-six years ago, the abolitionist and escaped slave Frederick Douglass offered his own thoughts on the importance of the Independence Day holiday.  After the flip, the entirety of his remarks.

We all know that John S. McCain III, just like George W. Bush, was blessed enough to be born into the right family with the right name.

Not only was his father a famous four-star US Navy admiral (John S. McCain, Jr.) but so was his grandfather (John S. McCain, Sr.)

Now, I do not begrudge anyone because of thier luck of being born into a dynastic family.  

Even though the Founders rid us of ancient heraldric birthrights of peerage and royalty, wealthy and powerful families continue to provide for thier decendents generations after their deaths.

We have plenty of examples in American history besides Bush and McCain like Kennedy, Roosevelt and many others.

But the McCain name goes a little further back than Admiral McCain Sr.

"It's a historic night!"  "Barack Obama is the first African American to become the presidential nominee of a major political party!"  

Watching the cable news pundits on Tuesday night make their obligatory references to the slavery and the civil rights movement, many of them as casually as if they were checking off a "to do" list at the grocery store, I wondered - what actually goes through the mind of someone who is not a descendant of a historically oppressed minority when they think about slavery?

Even if you have watched Roots and the PBS specials on slavery, it was more of an outsider looking in kind of experience if you weren't black.  American culture has been very good at de-emphasizing this part of our history, transmogrifying this human horror story into a type of temporary exile, its effects to be sloughed off as easily non-slave descendant as a prison sentence.

So I figured - since we have reality shows about everything else - why not slavery?  

When Mrs. Edward Beecher reflected on writing to her sister-in-law, the seventh child of a Protestant preacher and the wife of a clergyman, upon the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, she said this to that sister-in-law's son, Charles Edward:

"I remember distinctly saying in one of [those letters], 'Now, Hattie, if I could use a pen as you can, I would write something that would make this whole nation feel what an accursed thing slavery is.' . . . When we lived in Boston your mother often visited us. . . . Several numbers of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin ' were written in your Uncle Edward's study at these times, and read to us from the manuscripts.'"

The sister was Harriet Beecher Stowe, the book was Uncle Tom's Cabin, and the serial novel began its 10-month run in National Era on this date in 1851.

Frederick Douglass' autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, is one of the best books that I've read and deserves to be read once, if not repeatedly. It provides a well-written perspective on how slavery impacted Americans, and displays the perspective of one of America's heroes. Furthermore the Narrative itself is of historical interest because of the role it played in the abolitionist movement.

While pondering Douglass' words, I realized that this book illustrates two sides of the revolutionary-era maxim "Live Free or Die".

Shock.  Disbelief.  Joy.  Follow me, and I'll tell you why...

It is understood that slavery and violence are both symptoms of a larger structural presence of inequality.  Based on this understanding, slavery and violence are both examples of tools of victimization.  What allows us to victimize others is our ability to think less of those we victimize, and to separate ourselves from those we victimize (Iadicola & Shupe, 2003).  Iadicola and Shupe discuss inequality as a social construction based on differences; these differences are physical, racial, cultural, intellectual, and psychological.  Further, the social construction of these differences manifests through systems of access to more subliminal social constructions such as political monopolies, rights, and privileges.  To the extent that we live and abide by a social order derived from the structure of these social constructions, we are institutionalizing inequalities.

Earlier today we had a Kos diarist claim that he/she overhead a Clinton supporter declare that ""What Howard Dean is doing now at the DNC is worse than slavery."  Before this afternoon I might have considered that a histrionic wail of hyperbole.  But as the events of the RBC meeting unspool before our very eyes, I think it's clear that one of the great tragedies of human history is currently taking place.  So, if you will indulge me, I thought I'd compile of list of things that Howard Dean, the DNC, the RBC, and Obama supporters are worse than.

Although there are now more people enslaved worldwide than at any time in human history, according to acclaimed human rights activist and leading expert on slavery, Kevin Bales, founder of Free The Slaves, an organization devoted to rescuing and rehabilitating slaves worldwide, as reported here:

...ending global slavery would cost between $10 billion and $15 billion, roughly ten percent of the amount the US government is sending out in tax rebates.

Some Things We Should Know About Modern Slavery:

According to Kevin Bales, author of 'Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy', "slavery" is defined as the complete control of a person through violence or the threat of violence for [Economic Exploitation], a situation in which the enslaved person is paid nothing beyond basic subsistence, and cannot walk away.

A "slaveholder" refers to the "new slavery" wherein one manages a person as a slave without getting caught.  A "slave owner" refers to "colonial slavery" wherein one owned a slave in the legal sense before the abolition of slavery.  The term that best describes new slavery is "slaveholder" because of the illegalization of slavery pursuant to Jus Cogens and other abolitionist reform efforts.

Disclaimer:  The following is opinionated ramblings and is to be taken to 'the google' before moving forward.  This is not to be considered the expert opinion of anyone, or necessarily even the truth.  Please do not consider it other than opinions.

:: ::

While some people are now aware that there's an international agreement (Basel 2) that is effecting the American economy, most people still don't know what's going on.  That's entirely understandable considering the organizations to be effected most greatly by the agreement are those who own and control our mainstream media (i.e. mega corporations).  

Little by little, the word is getting out that we are not in Kansas any more, because something has gone and rocked the boat.  But we still can't stitch the big picture together. What is really going on?  

I learned something today. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz--Florida Congresswoman and Clinton surrogate--doesn't know her history. In this, Wasserman-Schultz is not unique, of course. These politicians, these freaks, consistently get it wrong. And in getting it wrong they betray their lack of historical imagination. What is the Congresswoman's sin?

Update: My statement on the Irish is a little off. According to some posts below, the Irish immigrants I refer to are not the same as the Scots-Irish that Senator Webb discusses. I will definately do more homework on the subject and perhaps even pick up Senator Webb's book! Thank you for the informative posts.

There is a recent video on Huffingtonpost.com about Senator Webb's comments on the Scots-Irish voting bloc. After watching the clip, I was impressed by Senator Webb's nuanced analysis of this segment of the country. However, many of the comments to this article were negative. These posts exclaimed how insensitive the Senator's comments were. However, I do not believe Senator Webb was attempting to trivialize slavery, but simply offering an explanation for their votes and a solution for reconciliation.

The Rehabilitation Project Force, or RPF for short.  It is a little-known branch of Scientology's elite corps of followers.  However, it is where the elite go when they have fallen from the Church's good graces.  It is also one of the more controversial policies the Church has, and is (like nearly all of their policies) cloaked in the right to practice religion.

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them..."

--Karl  Popper  

More below the fold.