It's time for liberal patriotic Americans to take back April 19th from the domestic and foreign terrorists. Long before Timothy McVeigh and the Tsarnaez Brothers committed their despicable acts, April 19th was celebrated in New England as Patriots Day. School children across America were taught about the Battle of Lexington & Concord on April 19th. Now it's remembered as the day David Koresh decided to kill his remaining cult members in a fiery inferno.
It's time true patriots take back their day. Patriot's Day celebrates when colonists decided to fight back against a government telling them to forget all this talk about liberty and democracy. Today democracy has a new opponent, fascism, in America.
MAGA Republicans shout about how they are going to make America great again. They're not the first. Rachel Maddow's "Ultra" podcast is a great source of info on the previous version during WWII. We are living through the second coming of that fascist movement or maybe it was just on the road touring, but either way the "Make America Great Again" movement is back in all its fascist glory. Only this time they want to be governing over a new reich in the USA.
For starters, we can make Patriots Day a national holiday. To celebrate, people should gather at their local state capitol buildings or local government offices with flags and placards proclaiming their faith in American democracy. It should morph into a day of celebration instead of a day to remember some of the worst tragedies in our history, the Murrah Federal Bldg. in Oklahoma, the Boston Marathon Bombing, and Waco.
Today, a glorious day in American history has been taken over by the enemies of democracy. Worst, these enemies of liberal democracy claim they are being inspired by our founding patriots. Bullshit! The founding of this nation is one of my favorite stories, from "Johnny Tremain" to "Hamilton". Even those patriots faced off against "militias" that opposed our constitutional republic.
The power of the federal government has been an issue for America since its founding. The first two recognized rebellions, the Whiskey Rebellion and Shays' Rebellion were about taxes. This shouldn't be an issue. The idea of a democratic republic recognizes the need for a common shared obligation. Ever since the earliest days of the republic, some people have been unable or unwilling to accept that when they voted for a senator or representative, they gave them the right to tax them and their neighbor to pay for common expenses, i.e. maintaining post roads, and Custom Houses... They also gave those same senators and representatives the power to pass laws to protect the rights of the individual over the government. MAGA Republicans apparently think that power extends to interfering with legitimate criminal investigations. That would be a violation of civil rights.
This is why we should take back April 19 from these domestic terrorists. It should be a day to celebrate our binding code of "E pluribus Unum", "out of one, many". It should be a day to celebrate our common ideals of liberty, freedom and democracy. It should also be a day reserved for national strikes.
The first nation we exported our form of liberal democracy to was our original ally, France. They adopted the motto, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or in French, "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité". When I think of modern, post WWII France, national strikes are a regular occurence. When I was protesting the draft, students in France were protesting against the conservative government of Pres. Gen. Charles deGaulle and the war in Vietnam. They recognized France's role in that war plus they wanted an expansion of their freedoms.
Our protests became armed conflicts with students being killed on multiple college campuses. In France their protests morphed into a national strike. They also don't wait for July and Bastille Day if the need arises. Like now, they are striking against changes to the national retirement age that bypassed parliament. Changes that take back rights won in those protests of the 60's.
The repeal of Roe v. Wade saw massive protests. They aren't the only recent mass protests in America. The day after Trump was inaugurated (I was part of that official audience decked out in liberal cause buttons), the women of America along with the men who love and respect them, marched for "Women's Rights". Following the mass shooting in Parkland I joined those amazing student activists in DC for "March For Our Lives".
"March For Our Lives" was the most impressive protest I'd ever participated in. I vividly remember when 20K students and their supporters descended on DC to protest Vietnam. I never made it to that, but I did join twice as many people at "March For Our Lives". Those protesters joined as many as an estimated 2 million worldwide protesting for gun safety.
As I've said before, women win rights. To that end, when Donald Trump's presidency threatened to take away a woman's right to choose, they nearly doubled the size of Martin Luther King's "March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom"(250 million). The "Women's March on Washington", the day after Trump was sworn in, had 470K attendees in Washington, DC and nearly 5 million worldwide.
And following the Trump Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade the protests and celebrations were worldwide. The majority of those protests were in favor of a woman's right to make decisions regarding her health. Coming on a Friday those protests grew throughout the weekend and might be the largest the world has seen.
These protests bolstered by the huge Black Lives Matter protests that took up an entire summer are threats to MAGA Americans. And they are fighting back. America now has a Congress where the majority of one political party is refusing to believe their own election administrator who said the 2020 Presidential Election was the largest and safest in American history. And that's an actual fact, not a MAGA alternate fact. This must change because Joseph R. Biden won the 2020 presidential election - going away.
I'll be writing to my current representative Rep. Kweisi Mfume, and asking him to introduce bills that do the following:
Make Patriot's Day a national holiday.
Bring back e pluribus unum, replacing the controversial "In God We Trust"
In the Pledge of Allegiance, replace "under God" with "out of many people"
I don't know about the reader but I'm sick of spending Patriots Day remembering terrorist attacks. I'd rather spend the day celebrating the democracy they attacked. It begins with you, get off the couch and participate in your participatory democratic republic.
