WWAFD: A QUESTION OF FAITH

What Would America’s Founders Do?

Not long ago there was a very popular bumper sticker that simply had on it WWJD. It simply translated as "What Would Jesus Do?" Simple—yet very profound. It was a challenge to Christians to return Jesus to the core of their religious beliefs by getting them to think about how he led is life and the lessons he left behind. It meant placing Christ above their particular church and recalling what actions he had taken as he confronted issues before him. It meant you had to be proactive in your involvement with others around you and not just show up on Sunday. It called upon Christians to examine the doctrines of their churches and compare that doctrine with the vision Jesus sought to leave behind.

That vision boils down to one golden rule—"DO UNTO OTHERS AS YOU WOULD HAVE THEM DO UNTO YOU."

It is remarkable how hard that simple phrase is to live up to. It means setting aside our greed and sometimes our instincts for self preservation and come to the aid of others. It requires us to be better than we often are.

I don’t know who came up with this particular piece of wisdom—WWJD—but I think I understand where it came from.

There is too often a separation of church and Jesus. The church is an institution designed to promote the beliefs of its members or the vision of its founding members. All to often there is more of the church members vision than Jesus in the congregations approach to issues. The slogan was designed to combat that.

In American politics today we are suffering from a similar dichotomy. We have many political parties and movements that are pledged to move their agendas forward. Almost all claim that they are speaking to the vision of the founders of this nation yet all too often it is their own warped vision that is substituted.

Therefore, I propose a new bumper sticker with a new slogan—WWAFD. It is time for Americans to wake up and realize it is time to start asking "What Would America’s Founders Do?"

It took me a little while to boil this down because my first thought was WWOFFD. However, "Our Founding Fathers" I quickly realized had two major problems.

First there is the sexism inherent in "Founding Fathers". It is true that for the first 130+ years of this nation—with the exception of the state of Wyoming—women were relegated to the status of second class citizens without even the right to vote. This was especially galling for women when the Civil War ended and black MEN were given the right to vote. At least on paper. It would be another hundred years before the practice of admitting them to the polls would achieve major resolution.

Those who enforced this racism and sexism quoted the words of the law written by the Founders but ignored the Vision of the law they left us.

The Founders of our great country left us two vision statements to go by, one in the Declaration of Independence and one in the Preamble of the Constitution.

From the Declaration we have:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

And from the Constitution:
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

These both point to the Founders’ vision of an America where all people are indeed treated as equals and a place where the rule of law prevails. It is a utopian Vision and one which the Founders realized could only be achieved by gradually stripping away our human tendencies toward bigotry and confrontation and replacing them with understanding and cooperation.
They were unable to extend rights to slaves in their day because it would have torn the new country apart. But they left a Constitution which could be amended over time to finally grant these rights to all—even women—in the future.

That is why I realized I needed to stop referring to "Founding Fathers" as though Molly Pitcher, Betsy Ross, Abigail Adams, Martha Washington and so many more had made no contribution to this nation’s founding.

The second problem I quickly realized was the use of "Our". This would be very egotistical since America is only one of many countries who recognizes a set of Founders. It was time to be specific and use our name proudly.

And so we come to "What Would America’s Founders Do?"


The Ongoing Revolution

To believe that the American Revolution ended with the removal of the British or with the adoption of the Constitution is too be very naïve. The Vision of the majority of our Founders of a nation where all people were treated with equal respect and opportunity and the power of government flowed up from them was not shared by all.

From the beginning there has been a hard core group of individuals who thought that power was rightfully theirs and America should have adopted its own form of aristocracy, or at least meritocracy, with social classes established by the size of one’s bank account. They have done everything they could to water down the Founders’ Vision and keep it from coming to fruition.Much of the time they have attempted to fog the vision of the People with smokescreen arguments such as "America is a capitalist country" or "America is a Christian country" or similar drivel designed to drive wedges into the general populace and keep them divided against their common interests.

For the first 150 years of its existence, the Founders’ Vision was put on hold as we expanded our national boundaries and underwent the throws of the Industrial Revolution where the power of the People was gradually usurped by the power of the Corporations. Money trumped humanity and, more importantly, the Vision of our Founders.

There were moments of brilliance such as when we threw off the yoke of slavery and Abraham Lincoln provided a beautiful understanding of the Founders’ Vision when he defined America at Gettysburg as, "government of the people, by the people, for the people."

But all too often the People lost control of those they elected to represent them as they fell victim to the temptation of the dollar and desire for reelection. Unions were sacrificed on the altar of "Capitalism" as economic disparity was used to divide the people. The south adopted the notion that somehow separate could be equal as they used race to divided the people. Any difference—national origin, gender, race and creed, just to name a few—were used to turn the people against one another and diminish the Founders’ Vision.

Then came a man called Franklin Delano Roosevelt who championed the People and worked hard to put the power of money back in Pandora’s Box. And largely succeeded.

The New Deal was the Real Deal for America. Unions were recognized and the People were rewarded with the 40 hour week and benefits like sick pay, health insurance, vacation and pensions. Controls were placed on out of control financial institutions to stop the usury and speculation that led to the Great Depression. Safety in the workplace, our kitchens and our medicine cabinets was insured as departments were set up to inspect the safety of the shop, the processing of our food and the production of our pharmaceuticals.

The middle class took off as never before and more people than ever were living the Vision of our Founders. We had the knowledge (thanks to an excellent public education system), the leisure time (thanks to the forty hour week), the financial wherewithal (thanks to union wages and honest financial institutions) and stable communities (thanks to local businesses with strong ties to their communities and strong sense of community good) to be able to look around our communities for things that needed fixing. We started to make real inroads to ending sexism and racism and made great efforts in cleaning up pollution and holding those responsible accountable for their actions.

Maybe we were too successful.

The enemies of the Founders’ Vision took the time to regroup, take over a political party and attempt a coup to finally strip the People of their rights and wrest from them the reins of power without making their intentions clear until it was too late.

Using Ronald Reagan as their spokesman and taking over the leadership of a Republican in tatters after the resignation of Nixon and the defeat of Gerald Ford, they sought to break up our communities and strip us of our economic resources and replace education with indoctrination by using the time honored strategy of divide and conquer.

The first lie the spread was "Government is Bad".

This was a real blow to the psyche of a People who had come to understand that the People were the Government. By repeating this slur they essentially got People to question themselves.
This was followed with "problems are too complicated for easy answers" which gave permission for the People to skip their role of provided due diligence and oversight of solutions offered by those elected to public office. A further separation of People from Power and the insidious negation of those involved in grassroots politics by dismissing them as naïve.

When the partnership of the People and those elected to represent them started to fracture, these hard core traitors were right there to proclaim that "the best model for Government was that of the Corporation. Government was too bloated with handouts to those lazy poor people and welfare mothers who kept having babies and collecting welfare. The People were being robbed by high taxes to provide for scofflaws to continue their parasitic ways. The New Deal was bad and its restrictions on finance and corporate activities needed to be removed so that we could reclaim prosperity."

Talk about wedge issues. The only thing these anti-American Fascists had in common with the "common" man was an interest in not having their pockets picked. However, their goal was to pick those "common" pockets and shift wealth to the wealthy so they could continue to buy Power that the Founders had no intention of giving them.

But, in the best traditions of P. T. Barnum, they wrapped themselves in the flag and acted as though we should get down on our knees and thank them for their "patriotism". And many People did while these self proclaimed "neo-conservatives" laughed all the way to the bank as we continued to reelect them to office so they could continue plundering us.

They took over the sources of the Peoples’ information by ignoring the Sherman Anti-trust Act and allowing monopolies to own our radio, TV and newspaper outlets. Information has been gradually replaced by propaganda while our once proud public education system has been stripped of funding and the teaching of critical listening and thinking skills and the roles of the citizen and government, has been replaced by a focus on rote memorization and conforming with the Fascist message.

At the Crossroads

So that is where we find ourselves today. We must decide if America will continue down the road of Fascism while dousing the torch of democracy or will we remember the Vision of our Founders and live up the to promise as we did under the New Deal.

The purpose of WWAFD is to get the People to once again wake up, find that which we have in common and put a lid on the moneychangers who seek the demise of our Founders true Vision.
It is time to end welfare again—the kind of welfare ushered in with Ronald Reagan and the fascist wing of the Republican "neo-cons"—corporate welfare replete with its handouts to business and the wealthy and get back to the business of America—creating equal opportunity and engender equal respect for all.

Please feel free to respond to these general comments and let's get the dialogue for America's future under way.

Until my next post remember:
Get Up! Get OUT!! And GET INVOLVED!!!