Unconventional Sources

With the election of Barack Obama, Americans have assumed a new habit of passivity: Hope has become hoping that people in Washington D.C. will make things better. The thing is that while ordinary folks sit around and hope things get better, there are corporations and powerful organizations with paid lobbyists going to work in Washington D.C. every day to make sure that things don’t change.

If there is to be hope, we have to stop just hoping, and begin acting. We can’t count on elected officials to do what’s right. We have to force them to do what’s right, by taking action ourselves to help create the kind of public pressure that elected officials cannot resist.

That’s what the people at Force Change had in mind when they created their site, a place that informs citizens about environmental policy so that they’ll understand enough about environmental issues to apply intelligent pressure on the government and private organizations to make a real difference. Thanks to the people at Force Change. We’re reading.

Unfortunately, it’s not a contradiction in terms. From his support of so-called “clean coal” to his continuation of faith-based initiatives, from his trickle-down stimulus package and his continuing Big Brother spying programs, Barack Obama is turning out to be rather anti-progressive in many of his policies.

Many progressive Americans are getting fed up. They expected something better from Barack Obama – that he would bring real change, and not just a slogan.

Thus: Progressives Against Obama

A quick thanks to Privacy International for the rather grim picture of privacy around the world. We here in the United States are marked black, which translates into: Endemic surveillance societies.

We in the USA are now in the same Big Brother category as Russia and China, thanks to the warrantless wiretapping that began under George W. Bush and now continues under Barack Obama. This map shows the privacy ranking for 2007, but the situation became even more grave in 2008, with the passage of the infamous FISA Amendments Act, which gave amnesty to telecommunications corporations that helped the White House create an immense electronic surveillance network that gathers all electronic communications by foreigners and by Americans, targeting journalists, soldiers, aid workers, government whistleblowers and who knows what other groups. Barack Obama voted in favor of this Big Brother spying system, and has said that he intends to keep on using it.

I know that doesn’t fit with the Obama as savior narrative, but it’s a fact.

In times past, when economic times have gotten rough, many people have had a little something to fall back on to cushion the blow: The garden. Gardens provided vegetables and fruits for a fresh, healthy dinner, and extra produce could be sold for a little extra money.

What have people got now? Lawns. Lawns provide… grass… which we don’t have sheep or horses or cows to feed on any more. Lawns also require mowing, so we have to buy lawn mowers and gasoline, spending money for something that gives us no more benefit.

In this economic recession, people would benefit a great deal from converting their lawns into gardens. They would benefit from a prominent example, but what do we see when we look at the White House in Washington D.C.? We see a great big lawn, productive land going to waste.

Eat the View is a movement coordinated by Kitchen Gardeners International, encouraging the White House to plant an organic vegetable garden for all to see. Go on, and take a look, and get inspired.

An American has to have been determined to be ignorant not to know what’s happened to the Constitution of the United States of America under President George W. Bush. The individual rights that are guaranteed by the Constitution have been thoroughly violated by the Bush White House, which announced that the Constitution’s rules were merely suggestions that would need to give way before the needs of the moment. It was declared that the President is above the law, and above the Constitution itself.

Torture and Big Brother spying programs against peaceful Americans were begun. The power of arbitrary imprisonment without a trial or even habeas corpus was announced. Freedom of speech and assembly were curtailed. Church and state were mixed.

Now, Barack Obama is becoming President of the United States. Will all that change? Will the Constitution’s authority be restored?

Unfortunately, restoring our constitutional rights isn’t as simple as electing a new President. President Obama will have the same powers as President Bush, and it’s up to Obama, and to the Congress, to pull back presidential power so that the Constitution can regain its proper place.

Will Barack Obama act to bring the Presidency back under the law? Will President Obama respect the Constitution?

It looks uncertain. For all his talk of change, the closer that Obama gets to the Oval Office, the more reluctant he sounds about cutting back on the authoritarian powers established under George W. Bush. Obama suggests that secret torture prisons may not be closed, espionage against Americans may not end, and church and state will continue to be mixed.

We cannot simply trust President Barack Obama to obey the Constitution. We need to do our duty as active citizens, and push Obama to bring the White House back under control.

That’s why, on Inauguration Day 2009, there will be a Pro-Constitution Inauguration Demonstration. The parameters of this political demonstration are simple: On the parade route, outside the Department of Justice, at the southwest corner of 9th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW, at noontime (plan to get there early to really get there on time), Americans who love the Constitution will assemble in a place reserved with the cooperation of the National Park Service. They will come with small signs, buttons, t-shirts, etc., with messages urging Barack Obama to comply with his Oath of Office, and uphold the Constitution.

More information about the 2009 Inauguration demonstration for constitutional rights.

Earlier this morning I wrote about the lawsuit to remove Rick Warren from the Constitution. Rick Warren’s involvement in performing an official government Christian religious ritual is a clear defiance of the Constitution’s guarantee of freedom from religious tests for public office, as well as a violation of the separation of church and state.

There’s a related resource that I left out of the article, though: A petition by atheists to remove Rick Warren from the Inauguration, not just because Warren’s activities establish government religion, but because Rick Warren has been an opponent of the Constitution’s promise of equality under the law, campaigning for a new theocracy in which only Americans who believe in his God are allowed to become President.

All in all, this Rick Warren seems to be a nasty extremist.