the pursuit of happiness

(first: Doesn't this propaganda photo remind you of "The Triumph of the Will?" only in living color? Also, while I'm off on the happiness pursuit next week, check out some of the new links I posted on the right.)


I heard someone say recently, that Thomas Jefferson was the first politician to ever incorporate the WORD 'happiness' in an official document, that being of course, the Declaration of Independence.
1776 was the first time the small personal concern of average men was inserted into the language of state. The American Revolution was not fought and died for by two state commanded armies. It was an uprising of people against a state. Oppressed common people were roused from their slumber by that promise of liberty to pursue happiness.

The military-industrial complex of corpAmerica calls uprisings like the American Revolution asymmetrical warfare, as if it was a bad thing for small poor grassroots groups of common people to stand up with their bodies against tanks and missiles and bombs. See Tiannemen Square, or Palestine, or Occupied Iraq.

Nowadays, that kind of unrest would be put right down. You can't even disparage the symbols of state without being called a traitor. Americans today say in polls that they are gladly willing to give up their rights for the veneer of safety, even if they must know that there is no more safety now than there was in Y2K.
But ask yourself, what has this state done for you lately, for your pursuit of happiness?
Are you getting a good return on your investment?

The people defeated the state that time. But after the rich guys, our founding fathers, got together and wrote the Articles of Confederation to bind the states together for economic purposes, and then the Constitution was written to give structure to the government, the common people were still VERY UNHAPPY.

The farmers and mechanics had gone home after the war, to be sure, but rebellions, strikes, uprisings and anarchy by huge (for the day), angry, outraged groups of common men scared the shit out of the ruling class.

See, we still had a ruling class of what today would amount to millionaires.
And they had written the rules for themselves. And common people, who had just bled and died for the ideal of liberty, understood what was being foisted on them.
Good bye to the old boss, hello new boss.

This is how the Bill of Rights was born. The political class of wealthy rulers were in jeopardy and they were forced to codify RIGHTS, in writing. The Bill of rights is a contract between the ruling class and the people.

If you want to go back to the old boss, but this time under the overwhelming power of a high tech, data mining, all encompassing, DNA cross-referencing, mistake making, crony rewarding, prison building, crowd controlling, phone tapping, computer spying, corporate Big Brother... then let them shred your contract, your Bill of Rights.

If they can so slickly sacrifice the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of other nations to the profitable corporate war machine, what makes you think they will not turn to feed on us?