The Times That Try Tunisian and US Souls

   These are the times that try men’s souls. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered but the brave people of the nation of Tunisia threw out a tyrant four years ago and now terrorism has destroyed their tourist industry and the 40% unemployment of their young is threatening to trample down their hopes for democracy in their streets. The sunshine American patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the good things that his political system alone can give Tunisians, but the American patriot that demands that the Congress in Washington DC offer Tunisia immediately acceptance of it as the fifty-first state of the American union deserves the love and thanks of every man and woman in the world. Yes, Congress would make an offer that Tunisia may refuse for all the wrong reasons but make the offer anyway. Let America stand at last for something noble and good and let every American who hates tyranny be at least proud that they supported an act directly opposed to it. Tunisia may reject allowing the Coast Guard to run its  harbor and may not allow its possible new navy, the American navy, to station ships there. It may be against allowing the Federal Department of Justice to set up offices in Tunis and begin searching out corrupt politicians to put them in federal jails. It may not accept that Tunisian men and women will no longer have a state army and may have military careers only in the United States army which will buy lands in their state to station soldiers with advanced military technologies to defend and secure Tunisia’s borders from all foreign dangers. Every Tunisian citizen overnight would gain a second citizenship as new citizens of the United States with the right to live and work and vote in any one of fifty-one states, but Tunisians may reject that possibility because they may refuse to become a colony of America. (The government of America in Washington DC is not a state, is not located in a state, and does not have enough power to rule or colonize any state.) As the fifty-first American state, the dollar would become their currency and all the capital in all the nations of the world would look upon Tunisia, a new American state, as a perfectly secure place for investments creating the thousands of new jobs that young Tunisians need. But that may be rejected also even though the rejection can not be based on any logic and is ignoble. Tunisians would be able as citizens in a new American state to be elected as representatives to the Congress in Washington and to vote for president and run their state as before, their court system as before, their education system and their financial system as before, and experience an influx of new residents of their state from 50 other states and experience as well many other beneficial changes that may not happen if Tunisian politicians reject Congress’s offer. Tunisians may become again like most Americans merely sunshine patriots, but at least we Americans who stood by the good things our political system alone can offer the world tried. We were willing to do all we could to help Tunisians kick tyranny out once and for all and bring real democracy in forever.

Daniel McNeill with Thomas Paine, THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered...

Is Italy or Massachusetts More Sovereign?

    Italy has an enormous tax problem. Its government taxes absolutely everything it can for more revenue. Excessive taxes on businesses stifle expansion and employment. Widespread government corruption and the mafia take large chunks of public money. The only good thing about the absurd inefficiencies in its government is that at least some public money is recirculated justly into good hands as well as unjustly into bad.  Massachusetts does not need a broad tax base for revenues because some possible government functions, like having its own military and diplomacy or its own social security system, are handled by its citizens’ second government in Washington. It does not need to create a large recirculation of money  throughout its state economy by taxing extensively because federal taxes sent to Washington from fifty states create a gigantic continental-wide recirculation of money. Corrupt politicians in Massachusetts are tried and sentenced to jail in Federal courts by the Federal Department of Justice. The mafia is active in very few areas, is hunted down by Federal as well as State police, and is not a cancer in  government as in Italy. Who is more sovereign?Technically Italy. But Massachusetts possesses a more efficient sovereignty because its political alliance with Washington leaves it free to rule mainly over matters of immediate interest to its citizens and, more important, to face public problems that only a state with limited sovereign responsibilities can readily solve for the public good. The best public officials in Italy with the best will in the world  can not solve its problems. Massachusetts  officials can. Who is more sovereign in an efficient manner?  Massachusetts is as sovereign as it needs to be. Italy is totally sovereign and totally unable to function in a way that correctly manages its citizens needs.

Daniel McNeill

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Interested in the cultural, religious and philosophical meanings symbolized in the ritual drama of a baseball game? Go to Daniel McNeill’s book on the meaning of baseball The Theater Of The Impossible at Amazon.com or click on this link:

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Daniel McNeill’s book The United States of the World is at: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1499534639

A Fleeting Vision of Statehood and Sovereignty in Washington

   President Obama gave his last state of the union speech January 12  before persons exercising all federal powers. Supreme court members,  senators, congressmen, cabinet members, department heads of federal agencies sat before him. He held the supreme power over the military and diplomacy but all his other powers, like the powers of persons who sat listening to him, were limited by the Constitution or laws passed by Congress. No one present in the chamber of the House held total power. Imagine Vladimir Putin addressing a large assemblage of government officials in Russia. All the sovereign power of the Russian state is in his hands and whatever he distributes down to officials to exercise is absolute over all Russian citizens anywhere in Russia. The American president does not have the power to distribute down absolute power because various federal powers have already been established in the hands of persons he does not control directly by the separation of powers outlined in the Constitution.

   However the assemblage listening to the President appeared grand and, if understood correctly, it was grand. If somehow every hand present holding a bit of power could come together and form some absolute and coherent unity working as just one hand, we would have something like one sovereign government. It would seem as sovereign as Vladimir Putin’s government in Russia. However none of this unified power could be used absolutely to command at will every American citizen. It would be a unity creating a sovereign power with no base and therefore a useless sovereignty. However, while the President addressed his audience, an odd and fleeting unity appeared to him as a vision. For a while, for an evening, Washington seemed, with all its great powers gathered together, a sovereign state like every other state in the world. Then the meeting broke up. The vision vanished. The Washington government was again split into parts and the momentary illusion of being a state vanished also because the Constitution does not grant Washington enough powers to be a state. The fifty American states have the right under the Constitution to consider themselves sovereign states. But they were all absent and none of their governors were invited to hear a speech about the condition of their union.

Daniel McNeill

Political Correctness and Incorrect Political Organization

   We Americans have a fundamental moral and political duty: we must make sure that every foreigner in the world lives in a secure state with a national identity and we must also be politically correct in our behavior towards foreigners who come to live in America. Everyone in the world has a right to a national identity except Americans. Our duty is to keep the foreign national identities of peoples secure and vital whether they live in foreign states or in the united states. Since we do not live in a nation and have no national identity, it makes sense that we try to make all national identities in the world obsolete but we do the opposite. We support them. We pay taxes to our government to protect worldwide the integrity of foreign states and with it the national identities of their citizens.

   Our unique and revolutionary political and financial system is rooted in our government in Washington. Without it, the vast swirl of our union of 50 states would become a jumble of independent states each like a wheel of a car detached from a hub rolling anywhere and nowhere. But our patriotic loyalty to Washington can not give us a national identity since it was established by our constitution without the fully sovereign powers necessary to be a state. People leave some foreign state and come to America to live in one of our 50 states each without the full sovereign power necessary to be a national state. They automatically assume that the government in Washington which is not a state is nonetheless their new national state. We are mostly quiet about their error. It is not politically correct to tell them that they and their descendants have cut the ropes forever that tie them to some national state. It is better to encourage them to remain identified with some foreign race or some foreign identity while they live among us and gradually become like us nationless.

   We Americans will go on creating our various identities by the way we choose to live and work, free forever from the slavery of a life ruled by a fully sovereign national government. We are forced to obey absolutely no law created by any government with absolute power because no such government exists anywhere among the thousands of governments in our 50 states. But how long can we go on spending large portions of our wealth supporting financially and militarily sovereign governments with no worldwide consciousness? Can we support forever political leaders who use their sovereign power corruptly and hold their citizens like prisoners behind national borders that prevent the new creative identities possible for them in a global world that can not thrive without some new revolutionary political reorganization?

Daniel McNeill