Without encountering agents of his state or government.
But a sorry cloud of tyranny has fallen across the land,
Brought on by the hollow men who did not understand
That for centuries our forefathers have fought, and often died,
To keep themselves unto themselves, to fight the rising tide;
That if in the smallest battles we surrender to the state,
We enter in a darkness whence we never shall escape.
When they raise their hands up our lives to possess,
To know our souls, to drag us down, we’ll resist.
Wat Tyler led the people in 1381
To meet the king at Smithfield to issue this demand:
That Winchester’s should be the only law across the land,
The law of old King Alfred’s time, of free and honest men.
Because the people then, they understood what we have since forgot:
That the government will only work for their own benefit.
And I’d rather stand up naked against the elements alone
Than give the hollow men the right to enter in my home.
Stand up, sons of liberty, and fight for what you own.
Stand up, sons of liberty, and fight, fight for your homes.
So if ever a man should ask you for your business or your name,
Tell him to go and —- himself, tell his friends to do the same.
Because a man who’d trade his liberty for a safe and dreamless sleep
Doesn’t deserve the both of them, and neither shall he keep.
I hope my fellow Amerikaner had a joyful, rebellious Fourth. I myself treated red lights like stop signs, and stop signs like caution lights. (Downtown Selma has a sick obsession with useless red lights: they’d make an anarchist of anyone.) I also spent eight hours on a porch with friends and family. (Fuzzy navels and cigars were also present, but I enjoyed the latter only in aroma and the former not at all.) I make a point of not posting on the weekend, but as a red-blooded patriot I could not let the Fourth go unobserved. I end with Walt Whitman, who speaks truth regardless of who is in power.
To the States or any one of them, or any city of the States, Resist
much, obey little,
Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved,
Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this earth, ever
afterward resumes its liberty.
You may look forward to Warren G. Harding.
Reading Freely 