What Gives Me The Right

It's time again for me to exercise one of my basic American rights, the Freedom Of Speech. I'm happy to say I still can, but lately I feel like I need to keep my fingers crossed.

Patriotism certainly is in fashion this year in America. As a loyal American I'm always ready to celebrate our democratic freedoms each July Fourth. Need I remind you what a luxury that is around the world and down through history? Perhaps I should because we're so spoiled here that we hardly notice our freedoms. We hardly vote. We hardly speak up about injustice. We sit by mildly, sucking our beers as we watch Resident Bush performing sleight-of-handout tricks for the rich. That is when we are not too busy watching Let's-Fool-A-Bunch-Of-Sycophantic-Babes-With-A-Fake-Millionaire on TV.

How did we come to this state? Maybe the downfall of American society began when Petticoat Junction was allowed on TV. Sure, most regular 'Mericans never got the joke in the name but I am certain it started us down that slippery slope toward our unpresidented state. Sorry, unprecedented state. Wait, maybe I got it right the first time!

And beyond that there's ... Oh, you want me to explain why Petticoat Junction caused the downfall of society? You mean it's not obvious? It's because that show polluted the minds of decent god-fearing youngsters in places like Arkansas, that's why. Remember how it started off with a closeup of three petticoats draped on the edge of a water tower? And then the train whistled and three pretty country girls popped up from inside the tower to retrieve them? What in tarnation was going on in that tower? Daydreaming about Billie Jo, Bobby Jo and Betty Jo got all the hick kids in Arkansas hot and bothered, instead of thinking about normal things like slopping the hogs, shooting squirrels and making sour mash. It isn't surprising that those youngsters grew up to be womanizers. And later one them got himself elected President! Then in spite of an otherwise good record for his Administration, his womanizing got him near tossed out. Which allowed the opposition just enough leverage to throw the next election into the Supreme Court, which then brought that Tool of a Texan to power. See how these things work? We'd still be the apple of God's Eye if it weren't for that durn sitcom!

And what gives me the right to saddle the citizens of Hooterville with responsibility for our Pirate President? Sheer First Amendment Orneriness! I can say anything I want to and by the way, thanks for sticking with me through this month's obligatory silliness. Unfortunately the real reason for having Dubya in the White House is not so funny. Go get yourself a copy of the movie Unprecedented and call me in the morning.

Anyway, we are incredibly lazy in our duties as American citizens, but still we say we love our American Rights and Freedoms. The worship of Freedom has been deeply programmed in our culture, but it seems that Security trumps Freedom in practice. Many of our rights have been dismantled by the so-called Patriot Act, which passed with nearly zero debate after 9-11. Now the Administration says that there wasn't enough power in it. In the name of Security they want to dismantle more of our rights with the new Patriot II Act. But it's okay folks, most of you never use those rights anyway! Only criminals use them to thwart justice!

Yeah right! You see, most of our rights are concerned with how much power the government can exercise over you, and thank goodness we don't have to invoke them too often. Everyone's instantly thankful for them as soon as they get busted for something though. Even the people trying to pass Patriot II who, say, had a few drinks too many before the drive home. They know their rights! They're nut shaying nnythin wischout console, a cowsillor, a turny, a damn lawyer preshent! So why are they trying to abridge the rights of everyone else?

But surely we can trust the government not to bother law abiding citizens, can't we? Don't look now but there ARE people being denied their rights and hauled away. Well who cares about that? It's always an immigrant that talks and dresses funny, not one of US. Think so? Then how about Brett Bursey, a protestor from South Carolina charged with "threatening the safety" of Bush when all he was doing was holding a sign that said "No War For Oil"? Sadly, there are also stories of Arab-Americans, often longtime residents, suspected of terrorism and being hauled away and held indefinitely, without charges and without trial, not even given a single call. You'll find their stories safely tucked away on page 23 of the daily news, if they are reported at all.

Why does the government need these new powers anyway? They say it's to better track down terrorists in our midst. The strange thing is that they have always had the right to investigate people suspected of a crime. All they have to do is go to a judge for a warrant to search or wiretap. Is that asking too much? And what about all the military style courts - courts without appeal, courts that can order the death penalty - that Patriot II wants to set up? And why should non-citizens have no right to a fair trial when they are accused? As if we never had any home grown terrorists! Didn't these people ever hear of Tim McVeigh?

Like most people I dislike it when alleged criminals walk on a technicality, but it's in these seeming miscarriages that our freedoms are preserved. Any dismantling of the rules of evidence is a terribly slippery slope. The thing is that even if they are suspected terrorists, they should be accorded all of the regular rights. We are big enough not to break our own rules in times of duress aren't we? Isn't that part of what makes us the Good Guys?

A few weeks ago on NPR a conservative columnist, Paul Rosenzweig, said that whenever our civil liberties were curtailed in the past, even by virtuous men like Abraham Lincoln in the Civil War and FDR in World War II, the "pendulum" has always eventually swung back. His point was that we shouldn't worry about this temporary rollback of our rights. He's right in a way, they always have eventually returned; the problem is that he made it seem effortless. In fact our liberties were won back only through long and steady agitation to win them back. The people who take them away LIKE BEING IN CONTROL; they never give them back easily. That's why we must guard them so jealously; Security should not trump Freedom.

Any system of government, no matter how well designed, can be subverted. Ours has withstood much but I think we are in more peril of losing our constitutional rights to a kind of creeping totalitarianism than we have ever been before. How can I say that? Because the countryside seems to be awash with PRAISE for these actions. Take a listen to the lyrics of a current hit country song, "Beer For My Horses," by Toby Keith with Willie Nelson:

It's time the long arm of the law put a few more in the ground,
Send them all to their Maker and He'll settle them down,
You can bet He'll set 'em down.

...Cause Justice is one thing you should always find,
You got to saddle up your boys,
You got to draw a hard line,
When the gunsmoke settles we'll sing a victory tune,
And we'll all meet back at the local saloon,
We'll raise up our glasses against evil forces, singing,
Whiskey for my men,
Beer for my horses.

Please tell me this song was recorded for Halloween because it's nothing short of SCARY. For sure it isn't about Freedom and due process! Seriously, it has some other lyrics about stringing people up and then going to the saloon again. Vigilante justice and liquor, what a combination! It's too much like a song that the KKK would play at a lynching.

And what's Willie Freaking Nelson doing on this track? Maybe he thinks that he'll make so much money from it he'll climb up into Bush's no-more-taxes-you're-too-rich bracket and finally be free of his IRS bills.

So what gives Toby Keith the right to write such a revolting song? The same thing that gives me the right to speak out against it. I'm sure country fans will snort and say that Toby and Willie are just having some good clean fun, that he recorded it for all our brave boys in kevlar overseas. Yeah sure. I just can see some of them, full of hoo-aa espirit-de-corps, playing this song in the barracks and then in a Jack Daniels fog deciding it's all in good fun to kill anyone they please because God will sort them out.

I don't know, maybe our soldiers have a right to blow off some steam with whiskey and beer. I don't envy the tough position they've been put into, after all, it seems like the house-to-house fighting that many of us feared before going into Iraq is finally happening, in spite of Bush declaring the hostilities over. SOMEONE'S pretty still damn hostile over there! As I write it's 63 dead, plus hundreds wounded. And that's soldiers, who knows how many civilians have been hit? It's just a matter of time before the "peace" claims more lives than the war. How long will it be before even the military admits this was all a huge mistake? Even if Bush started drinking whiskey and beer again it's hard to see how his decisions would be any worse.

Surreally, in spite of songs like this and strife overseas, life goes on in America, the ball teams are all playing, the traffic is choked in the same spots every morning, new action movies, beer and Indian casinos are hawked from every speaker, screen and billboard.

And speaking of normal activities, Representative Randy Cunningham of California recently introduced this year's model of the Flag Desecration Amendment to the Constitution. He says it makes him sick when people hide behind the First Amendment. (To which John Stewart said, "We're hiding because we're worried about getting shot by the folks hiding behind the Second Amendment.") Well, I'm sure a new law is just the ticket, Randy! No Big Government here, right guys?

Actually I love it when the right wingers trot out flag burning amendments every couple years. I write some of my best stuff when I reply to them! This year I finally realized that flag worship is IDOLATROUS. That's right! They are the same Christians who're in favor of posting the Ten Commandments all over the place, but the funny thing is that they don't realize they are breaking two of them! To call the crime "desecrating" is to say that the flag itself is sacred, which goes against "You shall have no other Gods before me." The flag qualifies as a "graven image" and there's a commandment on that too. Talk about American Idolatry!

Don't get me wrong, I love our flag; I just don't worship it. Maybe to correct all this flag idolatry we need a flagless Pledge Of Allegiance. Perhaps one that goes like this:

I pledge allegiance to the land of the United States of America and to the values for which this Republic stands. One nation, of many heritages, yet indivisible, a champion of peace, liberty and justice for all of Creation's children.

There now, that wasn't so bad was it? Actually even if there was a constitutional amendment against flag burning I'd abide by it as long as I could still write like this. If I ever tried to make a political statement by burning a flag, well then I'm sure it would be over something I felt strongly enough about to go to jail for.

It would be nice if life was as simple and flag-fume-free as it was in Hooterville, but that place never existed except on TV. Likewise, Happy Iraqis greeting our boys may have been mostly staged for TV too. But our rights are real, and I'm still allowed to write things like this today, but that pendulum certainly does need a push back in the other direction about now.

Things like the recent Supreme Court decisions on the rights of gays and affirmative action tell me there's still hope we can reverse this paranoid swing to the right. There are real patriots all around who love this country and the constitutional values it stands for; I have faith we will work this out together. But keep those cards and letters against Patriot II coming in any case. WE NEED THEM.

Make no mistake, defending our Freedoms takes constant work. Right now I'm going to go back into the Closet and lie down because I've got to get up and defend them some more in the morning. Think I'll go to sleep and dream awhile of Billie Jo, Bobby Jo and Betty Jo, about the three most All-American country babes that ever were. Thanks for reading and until next month the Closet is closed.

(C) 2003 - Rusty Pipes

Official Disclaimer:

Well we're up in the north of this great land of ours
And maybe it's true we don't grow country stars
But the publisher wants to let it be known
These opinions are Rusty's and Rusty's alone

And the editors nervously nod and agree
They're shaking like leaves and it sure seems to me
That they might speak their minds about our ruling class
But Toby Keith's boot would end up in their ass