WE DIDN'T START THE FIRE

As part of my continuing quest for knowledge into the mixed signals of just who is God backing in the upcoming U.S. Presidential election (see my August 16th, 2011 blog post) WHAT IF GOD WAS ONE OF US.

I decided to dig deeper into trying to decipher a clearer answer.

"In God We Trust" was adopted as the official motto of the United States in 1956. The phrase has appeared on U.S. coins since 1864 and on paper currency since 1957.  

Naturally, not to be out done, one of our distinguished State's of permanent confusion, hanging chads and tolerance for all, in 2006 also adopted "In God We Trust" as the official motto of Florida, God Bless them all in confirming that our Country worships greed and money. 
                 
          WE DIDN'T START THE FIRE

                                     

This fire of self righteousness, proclaimed by those always somehow in private communication with a higher, hidden Power, aimed at destroying those least able to fight back, has been going on for Centuries.


Anyway, I was wondering what everyone is usually referring to when they mention God Given Rights. I don't really have the references, or a list to back it up. Anyone? Chapter, verse, and version of Bible? Nothing there. Is God speaking to these politicians again and ignoring the rest of us who can't seem to hear any God talking?

All of this leads me to a brief sampling of the endless current declarations by politicians, supporters of just about anything, using the expression "our God given rights". It is used almost as regularly as "God bless you" when somebody sneezes. 

But in truth it also reflects the current attitude in the Western world, more specifically in the U.S., to the false legitimacy of that which are self proclaimed proofs of certain personal, ideological agendas, as deemed somehow given to us, approved by God. 

Take Sarah Palin, the fountain of knowledge and universal incoherent poster child. Palin, this past year lashed out at Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" program to help curb childhood obesity by helping kids eat well and stay active.

Palin said,"Take her anti-obesity thing that she is on. Instead of a government thinking that they need to take over and make decisions for us according to some politician or politician's wife's priorities, just leave us alone, get off our back, and allow us as individuals to exercise our own God given rights to make our own decisions and then our country gets back on the right track."

Erich Pratt, the director of communications for Gun Owners of America, said “Why should the government be in the business of telling us how we can defend ourselves?”

Mr. Pratt added: “These politicians need to remember that these rights aren’t given to us by them. They come from God. They are God given rights."

When leaders in a Government, or candidates for political office, their supporters, advocates invoke the phrase "God-given right", I get real pissed off. 


What the hell is a "God given right", have you ever seen one?

God given rights are sometimes called Natural Rights, those possessed by Man under the Laws of Nature, meaning under the laws of God's creation and therefore by gift of God.

The laws of nature rules with an iron fist, we do not vote for nature, we cannot control nature, and natures word is final. Kind of like a dictatorship.

Was Hurricane Katrina, or the recent devastating earthquakes,Tsunami in Japan, New Zealand, an act of nature? Yes. Were they an act of God? No. 

Of course, unless you are an Insurance company, then it is considered an act of God, as only they can explain so as to avoid paying claims for covered damages.

The convenient use of God as the answer or as our forgiver is a problem we humans have, we need someone, something to sometimes thank, and other times occasionally blame and to forgive us our sins.

Is education a God given right? 

Food and water and shelter, are these also God given rights? 

Is a job a God given right?  


Assuming without the ability to earn money a person will die from lack of proper nutrition, medical care, proper shelter and clothing, are these God given rights? If so then why are they not shared and given to those in need?

If there is a God, would an almighty, all knowing spirit allow humans to treat one another in the cruel,  insensitively disgusting, merciless manner we do today? 

The religious right. What is right? who is right?

Does "might make right" or "right make might?"

  

There was a time when being President and being God's Instrument to heal a broken World were, if not mutually exclusive, well, the job requirements were slightly different.

Go ahead, reflect on these personal so called God given rights and the rights of others as well. Words scribbled on a piece of paper, our Constitution and Bill of Rights.

IS LIFE a God given right? If you believe as I do, you do not need to justify the right for humans to live by invoking the name of God.

Is God a creation or the creator? Is God merely a forgiver and a forgetter, or a healer and a savior? 

Are we each unto the likeness of God OR more importantly do we act god like?

My purpose is not to debate the existence or non-existence of God, but as any person that is or has been involved in a struggle for rights, justice, equality can tell you, these are hardly ever just given away to people and, even less so, by heavenly intervention.

What would have happened if people through history had laid back and said: "right now all I can expect from life is to live and die in utter misery while working for a rich lord of the land, and my children and grandchildren will probably fare no better. However, I know at some point God will do something about it, so I won't worry." The World would be a very different place, and not in a good way.

In fact, quite a few people, just in the history of the U.S., would respectfully disagree with the "God given right" notion. 

Starting with the founding fathers of this country, secular men who understood that Church and State should never mix, knowing that through history the Church has seldom taken the side of the poor and oppressed.

Would there have been a Declaration of Independence and a Revolutionary War if the colonists had felt that it was okay to continue submitting to the will of a distant king, because God would intervene when he saw fit? 

The Constitution reflects our founders views of a secular government, protecting the freedom of any belief or unbelief.

The historian, Robert Middlekauff, observed, "the idea that the Constitution expressed a moral view seems absurd. There were no genuine evangelicals in the Convention, and there were no heated declarations of Christian piety."

Maybe Rick Perry is the candidate we need. Could be it’s not that he’s actually dumb. Perhaps he only wants to look that way. 

We don't like people to be too smart. They might put something over on us. Based on our SAT scores, if we're not actually dumber than we used to be, we're certainly unsmarter.

Our average critical reading skills in America have declined, apparently causing many of us to mistake the Bible for a scientific text.

Rick Perry says, God “doesn't require perfect people to execute his perfect plan". Here we go again with God given rights.

So Rick Perry must keep his head as empty as possible to prevent sound distortion when God reveals to him, specific God given rights. The sense that Perry is a humble, flawed instrument, listening directly to words from the Most High is therefore a special gift given to him by his Lord.

Traditionally, these are all traits reserved for prophets and psychopaths or, these days, Republican presidential candidates such as Perry.

He may act dumb but not when it comes to his lavish personal needs.

With child poverty rising sharply in Texas, while Texas kids go hungry, Gov. Rick Perry is living a luxurious lifestyle on the taxpayers money.


Since 2000 (the year Perry became governor) the number of Texas children living in poverty has climbed 17 percent, even as the state has gutted spending on programs for kids. Currently, an astonishing 1 in 4 Texas children lives in poverty. The infant mortality rate is also up 10 percent since 2000.
 

Perry demands steep sacrifices from ordinary working people while living a luxurious taxpayer funded lifestyle.

Perry's rented mansion for example is 6,386-square-feet, sits on more than three acres, has five bedrooms, seven bath rooms, pecan-wood floors, a gourmet kitchen and three dining rooms.   

While Texas is facing an eye-popping $27 billion deficit, Perry is spending more than $9,000 per month in taxpayer's money to live in one of Austin's most upscale estates. That is one of his "God given rights", what a caring guy, a humble, simple public servant, doing the Lords work.

Michele Bachmann recently took note of the magnitude 5.8 quake that rocked the Washington area and whose effects were felt beyond New York City. She also cited Irene, which hit the United States as a Category 1 hurricane before traveling up the East Coast to Canada, leaving an estimated billions of dollars in damages and almost two dozen reported deaths.

“I don't know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians,” Bachmann said to supporters. “We've had an earthquake; we’ve had a hurricane. He said, 'Are you going to start listening to me here? Listen to the American people because the American people are roaring right now. They know government is on a morbid obesity diet and we've got to rein in the spending.' ” HMMMM ... "God given rights", that only Bachman is privy to because she is such a truly worthy person.


Did God end slavery? Or did the lives of hundreds of thousands of soldiers who died fighting have something to do with it? 


Did God bring about the end of the Holocaust but couldn't stop it from starting, or did over 60 million human beings have to die first before World War 2 was ended?

Was all this a huge waste of millions of lives, because it was already in God's schedule to eventually grant all of the above as part of "God given rights"?

Watching the current, modern day disintegration of our world, lack of justice, and the erosion of human values from the comfort of our living rooms, it's hard for many to think that the regression of society into an inhuman, hateful, cruel, indifferent, toxic cesspool has anything to do with us.

Denial and illusions of contentment is the subtle enemy. The truth is that unless something happens that threatens our individual livelihood, we don't feel compelled to react. 


Our social conscience has become increasingly atrophied from lack of exercise and the brainwashing by those who prey on our weakness to seek answers from others, instead of from within our own self.

In politics, If "God giveth and God taketh away", are GOP/Tea Party legislators then working in God's name when they try to pass bill after bill that threatens the well being of U.S. citizens by using lying distortions of big government, budget deficits supposedly caused by disabled persons, the elderly, middle class, the poor, you, and me? 


When those who oppose their views are shot, hated, degraded,  demonized, vilified, is that  part of the"God given right" given to them?

Should Union workers in Wisconsin, elsewhere, and other non union employees stay home and not fight against legislation, edicts, rules that seriously hinders their right to be treated fairly? 

If a working class American can't even receive basic benefits, but billionaire corporations get away with dodging taxes, does that mean God is against unionized and non unionized workers, but is saying it is the "God given right" of CEOs to make 344 times what their employees make? Is the increasing social and economic inequity in the U.S. therefore by God's design?

A country should never cease to learn or grow, ours has stopped  doing both. Part of that growth requires us as citizens to speak out and defend the hard earned rights that we enjoy today from that invisible government, whether you believe these were provided by God, or by people who decided to not sit and wait for their rights to come down from the sky.   

Yet in reality we blindly follow the things we learn from history which is that we learned nothing, except to repeat making the same mistakes. Darwin's theory of evolution is correct, only the fittest survive and the ones that do, write our history. These are the survivors, the conquerors and the victors of war. 

Ever heard of a dead person writing history? Jesus Christ did not write about himself, neither did Moses, Abraham, Buddha, Mohammed, or Abraham Lincoln, Hitler, Marie Curie, Ghandi and many other figures of history.


Wall Street, which bristles and pouts that the president of the United States isn't sufficiently nice to it because he dares to point out that its mortgage securities schemes tanked the economy, will pay record salaries, bonuses again this year. All the while, those CEOs will whine, when they're not laying off more employees, or outsourcing to India to boost the value of the stock options from which they're compensated.

The small legitimate companies, creative entrepreneur's, and technical innovators, who actually create new jobs, can't get loans. Banks won't loan them money as its "too risky", these very same financial institutions that are propped up by a $700 billion dollar taxpayer bailout in taxpayers money, plus about $12.2 trillion in Govt. financial commitments, despite the fact that these very same Banks melted down financially by their own self induced fraudulent schemes never considered their actions as "risky". 

The big firms and hedge funds classified as "small business'' by politicians, politically labeled as phony "job creators", who instead, mostly create "shareholder value,'' are happily stashing the cash.

And they all feel entitled, not just to get praise from the president and raises from their shareholders, but also to unlimited, strictly anonymous, influence in our elections. 


Why should they be held accountable for the TV commercials they're buying? Our government is officially for sale to the highest bidders. The fat cats who've grown bored with simply buying politicians are vying to rule us  themselves.

As we enter the final year before elections, where we will be bombarded night and day with media ads, sound bites, debates, all the bull shit about who to vote for, remember one crucial fact before you choose or don't choose who to vote for: Why would God if seriously interested in the U.S., give us such a miserable choice of presidential candidates? 

Maybe it is part of Gods master plan where we get what we deserve. 


For, it is not how many times you attend your chosen House of Worship, how often you pray, not even what God tells you to do if you are on two way speaking terms. It's not about your knowledge of the bible, or even how many "god given rights" you can recite.

I believe the true answer is that it's all about the countless personal, moral, ethical, every day, righteous decisions, actions, we each make about how we live, or want to live, the way we treat others, especially those in need, that really will shape our fate as a society. 

Take it or leave it, you have to live it all in real life, no way to get around it. Do we have the courage and honesty to stop the fires and heal the evil? Not likely.


That is the message being sent to us, and it is just so much easier for most people to fake it by simply ignoring everything, or electing lying, hypocritical, corrupt politicians that they can blame everything on, or who will find others that can't fight back to dump it on, rather than get involved in the saving of our children's future.

It is very true that "We didn't start the fire

It was always burning since the world's been turning.
We didn't start the fire. But when we are gone
It will still burn on, and on, and on, and on...".

If you think America is increasingly Third World -like now, you ain't seen nothing yet.