A Gentleman’s view.

Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear Closing Remarks:

“I can’t control what people think this was. I can only tell you my intentions. This was not a rally to ridicule people of faith or people of activism or to look down our noses at the heartland or passionate argument or to suggest that times are not difficult and that we have nothing to fear. They are and we do. But we live now in hard times, not end times. And we can have animus and not be enemies.

But unfortunately one of our main tools in delineating the two broke. The country’s 24 hour political pundit perpetual panic conflictinator did not cause our problems but its existence makes solving them that much harder. The press can hold its magnifying up to our problems bringing them into focus, illuminating issues heretofore unseen or they can use that magnifying glass to light ants on fire and then perhaps host a week of shows on the sudden, unexpected dangerous flaming ant epidemic.

If we amplify everything we hear nothing. There are terrorists and racists and Stalinists and theocrats but those are titles that must be earned. You must have the resume. Not being able to distinguish between real racists and Tea Partiers or real bigots and Juan Williams and Rick Sanchez is an insult, not only to those people but to the racists themselves who have put in the exhausting effort it takes to hate–just as the inability to distinguish terrorists from Muslims makes us less safe not more. The press is our immune system. If we overreact to everything we actually get sicker–and perhaps eczema.

And yet, with that being said, I feel good—strangely, calmly good. Because the image of Americans that is reflected back to us by our political and media process is false. It is us through a fun house mirror, and not the good kind that makes you look slim in the waist and maybe taller, but the kind where you have a giant forehead and an ass shaped like a month old pumpkin and one eyeball.

So, why would we work together? Why would you reach across the aisle to a pumpkin assed forehead eyeball monster? If the picture of us were true, of course, our inability to solve problems would actually be quite sane and reasonable. Why would you work with Marxists actively subverting our Constitution or racists and homophobes who see no one’s humanity but their own? We hear every damn day about how fragile our country is—on the brink of catastrophe—torn by polarizing hate and how it’s a shame that we can’t work together to get things done, but the truth is we do. We work together to get things done every damn day!

The only place we don’t is here or on cable TV. But Americans don’t live here or on cable TV. Where we live our values and principles form the foundations that sustains us while we get things done, not the barriers that prevent us from getting things done. Most Americans don’t live their lives solely as Democrats, Republicans, liberals or conservatives. Americans live their lives more as people that are just a little bit late for something they have to do—often something that they do not want to do—but they do it–impossible things every day that are only made possible by the little reasonable compromises that we all make.

Look on the screen. This is where we are. This is who we are. (points to the Jumbotron screen which show traffic merging into a tunnel). These cars—that’s a schoolteacher who probably thinks his taxes are too high. He’s going to work. There’s another car-a woman with two small kids who can’t really think about anything else right now. There’s another car, swinging, I don’t even know if you can see it—the lady’s in the NRA and she loves Oprah. There’s another car—an investment banker, gay, also likes Oprah. Another car’s a Latino carpenter. Another car a fundamentalist vacuum salesman. Atheist obstetrician. Mormon Jay-Z fan. But this is us. Every one of the cars that you see is filled with individuals of strong belief and principles they hold dear—often principles and beliefs in direct opposition to their fellow travelers.

And yet these millions of cars must somehow find a way to squeeze one by one into a mile long 30 foot wide tunnel carved underneath a mighty river. Carved, by the way, by people who I’m sure had their differences. And they do it. Concession by conscession. You go. Then I’ll go. You go. Then I’ll go. You go then I’ll go. Oh my God, is that an NRA sticker on your car? Is that an Obama sticker on your car? Well, that’s okay—you go and then I’ll go.

And sure, at some point there will be a selfish jerk who zips up the shoulder and cuts in at the last minute, but that individual is rare and he is scorned and not hired as an analyst.

Because we know instinctively as a people that if we are to get through the darkness and back into the light we have to work together. And the truth is, there will always be darkness. And sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t the promised land. Sometimes it’s just New Jersey. But we do it anyway, together.

If you want to know why I’m here and want I want from you, I can only assure you this: you have already given it to me. Your presence was what I wanted.

Sanity will always be and has always been in the eye of the beholder. To see you here today and the kind of people that you are has restored mine. Thank you.”

A Congressman was seated next to a little girl on the airplane when he
turned to her and said, ‘Let’s talk. I’ve heard that flights go quicker if you
strike up a conversation with your fellow passenger.’

The little girl, who had just opened her book, closed it slowly and
said to the total stranger, ‘What would you like to talk about?’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said the congressman. ‘How about global warming or
universal health care’, and he smiles smugly.

OK, ‘ she said. ‘Those could be interesting topics. But let me ask you a
question first. A horse, a cow, and a deer all eat the same stuff – grass.
Yet a deer excretes little pellets, while a cow turns out a flat patty,
and a horse produces clumps of dried grass. Why do you suppose that is?’

The legislator, visibly surprised by the little girl’s intelligence,
thinks about it and says, ‘Hmmm, I have no idea.’

To which the little girl replies, ‘Do you really feel qualified to
discuss global warming or universal health care when you don’t know shit?

“Imagine if the Tea Party Was Black” – Tim Wise

Let’s play a game, shall we? The name of the game is called “Imagine.” The way it’s played is simple: we’ll envision recent happenings in the news, but then change them up a bit. Instead of envisioning white people as the main actors in the scenes we’ll conjure – the ones who are driving the action – we’ll envision black folks or other people of color instead. The object of the game is to imagine the public reaction to the events or incidents, if the main actors were of color, rather than white. Whoever gains the most insight into the workings of race in America, at the end of the game, wins.

So let’s begin.

Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some of these protesters —the black protesters — spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn’t like were enforced by the government? Would these protester — these black protesters with guns — be seen as brave defenders of the Second Amendment, or would they be viewed by most whites as a danger to the republic? What if they were Arab-Americans? Because, after all, that’s what happened recently when white gun enthusiasts descended upon the nation’s capital, arms in hand, and verbally announced their readiness to make war on the country’s political leaders if the need arose.

Imagine that white members of Congress, while walking to work, were surrounded by thousands of angry black people, one of whom proceeded to spit on one of those congressmen for not voting the way the black demonstrators desired. Would the protesters be seen as merely patriotic Americans voicing their opinions, or as an angry, potentially violent, and even insurrectionary mob? After all, this is what white Tea Party protesters did recently in Washington.

Imagine that a rap artist were to say, in reference to a white president: “He’s a piece of shit and I told him to suck on my machine gun.” Because that’s what rocker Ted Nugent said recently about President Obama.

Imagine that a prominent mainstream black political commentator had long employed an overt bigot as Executive Director of his organization, and that this bigot regularly participated in black separatist conferences, and once assaulted a white person while calling them by a racial slur. When that prominent black commentator and his sister — who also works for the organization — defended the bigot as a good guy who was misunderstood and “going through a tough time in his life” would anyone accept their excuse-making? Would that commentator still have a place on a mainstream network? Because that’s what happened in the real world, when Pat Buchanan employed as Executive Director of his group, America’s Cause, a blatant racist who did all these things, or at least their white equivalents: attending white separatist conferences and attacking a black woman while calling her the n-word.

Imagine that a black radio host were to suggest that the only way to get promoted in the administration of a white president is by “hating black people,” or that a prominent white person had only endorsed a white presidential candidate as an act of racial bonding, or blamed a white president for a fight on a school bus in which a black kid was jumped by two white kids, or said that he wouldn’t want to kill all conservatives, but rather, would like to leave just enough—“living fossils” as he called them—“so we will never forget what these people stood for.” After all, these are things that Rush Limbaugh has said, about Barack Obama’s administration, Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama, a fight on a school bus in Belleville, Illinois in which two black kids beat up a white kid, and about liberals, generally.

Imagine that a black pastor, formerly a member of the U.S. military, were to declare, as part of his opposition to a white president’s policies, that he was ready to “suit up, get my gun, go to Washington, and do what they trained me to do.” This is, after all, what Pastor Stan Craig said recently at a Tea Party rally in Greenville, South Carolina.

Imagine a black radio talk show host gleefully predicting a revolution by people of color if the government continues to be dominated by the rich white men who have been “destroying” the country, or if said radio personality were to call Christians or Jews non-humans, or say that when it came to conservatives, the best solution would be to “hang ‘em high.” And what would happen to any congressional representative who praised that commentator for “speaking common sense” and likened his hate talk to “American values?” After all, those are among the things said by radio host and best-selling author Michael Savage, predicting white revolution in the face of multiculturalism, or said by Savage about Muslims and liberals, respectively. And it was Congressman Culbertson, from Texas, who praised Savage in that way, despite his hateful rhetoric.

Imagine a black political commentator suggesting that the only thing the guy who flew his plane into the Austin, Texas IRS building did wrong was not blowing up Fox News instead. This is, after all, what Anne Coulter said about Tim McVeigh, when she noted that his only mistake was not blowing up the New York Times.

Imagine that a popular black liberal website posted comments about the daughter of a white president, calling her “typical redneck trash,” or a “whore” whose mother entertains her by “making monkey sounds.” After all that’s comparable to what conservatives posted about Malia Obama on freerepublic.com last year, when they referred to her as “ghetto trash.”

Imagine that black protesters at a large political rally were walking around with signs calling for the lynching of their congressional enemies. Because that’s what white conservatives did last year, in reference to Democratic party leaders in Congress.

In other words, imagine that even one-third of the anger and vitriol currently being hurled at President Obama, by folks who are almost exclusively white, were being aimed, instead, at a white president, by people of color. How many whites viewing the anger, the hatred, the contempt for that white president would then wax eloquent about free speech, and the glories of democracy? And how many would be calling for further crackdowns on thuggish behavior, and investigations into the radical agendas of those same people of color?

To ask any of these questions is to answer them. Protest is only seen as fundamentally American when those who have long had the luxury of seeing themselves as prototypically American engage in it. When the dangerous and dark “other” does so, however, it isn’t viewed as normal or natural, let alone patriotic. Which is why Rush Limbaugh could say, this past week, that the Tea Parties are the first time since the Civil War that ordinary, common Americans stood up for their rights: a statement that erases the normalcy and “American-ness” of blacks in the civil rights struggle, not to mention women in the fight for suffrage and equality, working people in the fight for better working conditions, and LGBT folks as they struggle to be treated as full and equal human beings.

And this, my friends, is what white privilege is all about. The ability to threaten others, to engage in violent and incendiary rhetoric without consequence, to be viewed as patriotic and normal no matter what you do, and never to be feared and despised as people of color would be, if they tried to get away with half the shit we do, on a daily basis.

Game Over.

Tim Wise is among the most prominent anti-racist writers and activists in the U.S. Wise has spoken in 48 states, on over 400 college campuses, and to community groups around the nation. Wise has provided anti-racism training to teachers nationwide, and has trained physicians and medical industry professionals on how to combat racial inequities in health care. His latest book is called Between Barack and a Hard Place.

Alex Jones
Documentary Filmmaker, Nationally Syndicated Radio Talkshow Host, Television (Alex Jones TV) Host

Alex Jones is considered by many to be the grandfather of what has come to be known as the 9/11 Truth Movement … Alex is known for not just talking the talk, but walking the walk … He combines his media presence with actual physical activism, a practice that once led to him being arrested on the personal order of George W. Bush!… Alex Jones has gained international attention for standing up for what he believes in. From the Italy’s La Prensa to the Wall Street Journal and USA Today, Jones has brought the information war to the mainstream print media worldwide, speaking out against tyranny in defense of the Constitution … Whether it be Bill Clinton or George W. Bush, Jones pulls no punches in bringing to light corruption on both sides of the political equation. He also points out that the left/right paradigm is a controlling mechanism to get people squabbling about issues of little or no significance. This is why he is respected by liberals and conservatives alike … Alex Jones to this day continues to expose those that seek to take away what made America great, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution and each freedom our founders fought and died for.

Alex Jones broadcasts nationwide on the Genesis Communications Radio Network. More information on the broadcast can be found here. http://www.infowars.com/listen.html

This ruggedly handsome Texan has been featured in such publications as The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Dallas Morning News, The Los Angeles Times, The Austin-American Statesman, and The Austin Chronicle, Alex Jones has created a powerful platform in an attempt to re-create a Bill of Rights, freedom-orientated culture in the face of an ever more federalized and security-obsessed America.

In the Summer of 2000, Alex successfully infiltrated Bohemian Grove, meeting place for the global elite in an ancient redwood forest of northern California. This was documented by World of Wonder in their Secret Rulers of the World series, shown in the UK on Channel 4 and aired nationwide in the US multiple times on the Trio Network.

Alex’s documentary, Dark Secrets: Inside Bohemian Grove, features the infiltration plus the history of the Grove. http://infowars.com/bg1.html

Jones has produced fifteen documentary films to date exposing the police state, the New World Order and government sponsored terrorism.

Jones predicted the 9/11 attack in a July 2001 television taping when he warned that the Globalists were going to attack New York and blame it on their asset Osama bin Laden. View the clip here: http://www.prisonplanet.tv/articles/august2004/082604alexwarned.htm

Since 9/11 Jones has broken many of the stories which later became the foundation of the evidence that the government was involved.

After helping BBC journalist Greg Palast break major stories Palast publicly thanked Alex (http://www.infowars.com/print_palast.htm) for being the only radio host to pay attention to W199I, a leaked document concerning FBI protection of groups linked to Al-Qaeda.
“This guy is a national treasure, a light breaking through the electronic Berlin Wall of the US media establishment.”

- BBC Reporter Greg Palast

In early 2002 Jones also spearheaded the campaign to repeal the Patriot Act with his Save The Bill of Rights Campign. (http://www.infowars.com/resolution_resist_tyranny.html) Now hundreds of towns, cities and states have thrown out this unconstitutional law

THE FACTS – JUST THE FACTS! – Of the 3 dozen below how many will you hear during the campaign?

1- The United States has lost approximately 42,400 factories since 2001. About 75 percent of those factories employed over 500 people when they were still in operation. Source: The American Prospect

2- The United States has lost a total of about 5.5 million manufacturing jobs since October 2000. Source: The American Prospect

3- The United States has lost a whopping 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000.

4- As of the end of 2009, less than 12 million Americans worked in manufacturing. The last time less than 12 million Americans were employed in manufacturing was in 1941.

5- In 1959, manufacturing represented 28 percent of U.S. economic output. In 2008, it represented 11.5 percent. Source: The American Prospect

6- Ten years ago, the United States was ranked number one in average wealth per adult. In 2010, the United States has fallen to seventh. Source: Zero Hedge

7- The United States once had the highest proportion of young adults with post-secondary degrees in the world. Today, the U.S. has fallen to 12th.

8- American 15-year-olds do not even rank in the top half of all advanced nations when it comes to math or science literacy.

9- In America today, consumption accounts for 70 percent of GDP. Of this 70 percent, over half is spent on services. Source: Economy In Crisis

10- In 2001, the United States ranked fourth in the world in per capita broadband Internet use. Today it ranks 15th. Source: MACLEANS.CA

11- In 2008, 1.2 billion cell phones were sold worldwide. So how many of them were manufactured inside the United States? Zero.
Source: The American Prospect

12- The television manufacturing industry began in the United States. So how many televisions are manufactured in the United States today? According to Princeton University economist Alan S. Blinder, the grand total is zero.

13- Printed circuit boards are used in tens of thousands of different products. Asia now produces 84 percent of them worldwide.

14- Manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry is actually lower in 2010 than it was in 1975. Source: Businessweek

15- One prominent economist now says that the Chinese economy will be three times larger than the U.S. economy by the year 2040.

16- According to a new study conducted by Thompson Reuters, China could become the global leader in patent filings by next year.

17- Back in 1980, the United States imported approximately 37 percent of the oil that we use. Now we import nearly 60 percent of the oil that we use.

18- The U.S. trade deficit is running about 40 or 50 billion dollars a month in 2010. That means that by the end of the year approximately half a trillion dollars (or more) will have left the United States for good.

19- Between 2000 and 2009, America’s trade deficit with China increased nearly 300 percent.

20- Today, the United States spends approximately $3.90 on Chinese goods for every $1 that China spends on goods from the United States.

21- According to a new study conducted by the Economic Policy Institute, if the U.S. trade deficit with China continues to increase at its current rate, the U.S. economy will lose over half a million jobs this year alone.

22- If our trade deficit with China increases at its current rate, the U.S. economy will lose over half a million jobs this year alone. Source: Economic Policy Institute [PDF]

23- As of the end of July, the trade deficit with China had risen 18 percent compared to the same time period a year ago. Source: Economic Policy Institute [PDF]

24- The United States spends approximately $3.90 on Chinese goods for every $1 that the Chinese spend on goods from the United States. Source: The Economic Collapse

25- One prominent economist is projecting that the Chinese economy will be three times larger than the U.S. economy by the year 2040. Source: MarketWatch

26- In the 2009 “prosperity index” published by the Legatum Institute, the United States was ranked as just the ninth most prosperous country in the world. That was down five places from 2008.

27- The economy of India is projected to become larger than the U.S. economy by the year 2050.

28- From 1999 to 2008, employment at the foreign affiliates of US parent companies increased an astounding thirty percent to 10.1
million. During that exact same time period, U.S. employment at American multinational corporations declined 8 percent to 21.1 million. Source: Tax Analysts [PDF]

1. Non-Marital Sex

Non-marital sex was remarkably unrestricted and prevalent during the late colonial period, especially in the rapidly expanding cities of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. European observers often remarked on the “astonishing libertinism” of 18th-century America. Lower-class saloons, which filled the early American cities, were the centers of the first American sexual revolution, and prostitutes, who often plied their trade in drinking establishments, were its vanguard. But the Founding Fathers initiated a crackdown on non-marital sex during the War of Independence. Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and delegate to the Continental Congress, authored a series of sexual manuals for the new nation in which he declared that indulgence in bodily pleasures, “when excessive, becomes a disease of both the body and mind.”

2. Homosexuality

Historians have found evidence of rampant sodomy on buccaneer ships during the Golden Age of Piracy in the early 18th century. The pirates who settled in American port cities helped create something that, were we to see it now, we would call gay liberation. Anyone walking the streets of early American cities might have seen men exposing their penises, the 18th-century trans-Atlantic code for men seeking partners of the same sex. In 1784, a newspaper in Philadelphia described effeminate “fops,” “resembling men in nothing but their shape,” filling the city’s public spaces. Same-sex intimacy was not exclusive to men. A French visitor was shocked by the number of women in Philadelphia who “are not at all strangers to being willing to seek unnatural pleasures with persons of their own sex.” Though sodomy was often severely punished in the early colonial period (the term “homosexuality” was not invented until the late 19th century), prosecutions for same-sex relations declined sharply in the 18th century. The anti-sex crusade launched by the Founding Fathers drove many of these people underground, as prosecutions for committing “unnatural acts” increased markedly after the Revolution.

3. Divorce

Because marriage was largely unregulated during the colonial period, divorces were frequent and easily obtained. During the era of independence, women fled their husbands in great numbers. Thousands of advertisements were placed in newspapers by men reporting that their wives had left them. But spurred on by the Founding Fathers, during the early national period the states enacted laws that tightly and specifically regulated divorce. This ended the 18th-century trend of self-divorce. No longer could an unhappy wife or husband simply walk away from a marriage. Courts refused to grant a divorce to a woman who did not demonstrate that she had been a faithful and obedient wife and a victim of her husband’s mistreatment.

4. Dancing

Visitors to early American lower-class saloons saw white men fiddling Irish reels and black men pounding out driving African rhythms on hand drums, rattles, and wooden blocks. They saw whites, blacks, Indians, women, and men dancing wildly on wooden floors. The hybrid, flagrantly sexual sound created in saloons was the first American urban party music, and it helped lay the basis for jazz, rock, and hip-hop. The Founders did not approve. “I never knew a good Dancer good for any Thing else,” John Adams said. Of the men who danced well, they gained neither “Sense or Learning, or Virtue for it.” Adams was appalled by the gyrations of a white man he saw dancing in a tavern with a “rabble” and “Negroes with a fiddle. . . . His Air is absurd and wild, desultory, and irregular, as his Countenance is low and ignoble.” Benjamin Latrobe, the “Father of American Architecture” who designed the United States Capitol, saw whites performing the Virginia Jig and called it “the excess of detestability.” John Quincy Adams was “monstrously severe upon the follies of mankind,” most especially dancing. Given the Founders’ feelings on the matter, it seems reasonable to conclude that the Continental Congress’s 1774 declaration to discourage “every species of extravagance and dissipation,” which was widely interpreted as including sensual dancing, formally established the American citizen as rhythmless.

5. Leisure

Typically, workers in the first industrial factories decided when they would show up and when they would go home. Long afternoon periods of eating, drinking, and sleeping were taken for granted. And the three-day weekend was the norm. Workers in many of the first major industries were normally paid for six days of work, but on Saturday they drank beer all day while on the job. The drinking usually continued through Saturday evening and into Sunday, so that on Monday the workers were usually unable and unwilling to work. This created a wonderful but now forgotten American tradition called “Blue Monday” – a workers’ day of rest following the Lord’s day of rest. Most importantly, simply by being lazy, early American workers established the idea of the weekend. Few things bothered the Founding Fathers more than the belief that leisure was a good thing. “Of all the cankers of human happiness, none corrodes it with so silent, yet so baneful a tooth, as indolence,” Thomas Jefferson told his daughters. “Determine never to be idle.” Benjamin Franklin told Americans that they should work all hours of the day in order to be virtuous. He wrote in Poor Richard’s Almanack: “It is the working man who is the happy man. It is the idle man who is the miserable man.” Benjamin Rush recommended the banning of all activities that led to “habits of idleness and a love of pleasure.”

6. Children’s Play

The pleasure culture of early American cities extended to children, who enjoyed a rapid growth in the manufacturing of toys in the 18th century. Following on the pro-work, anti-leisure ideology of the Founding Fathers, the authors of children’s textbooks pummeled their young readers with injunctions to work hard and avoid play. On the first page of a standard, early-19th century school primer was a poem warning, “Satan finds some mischief still, for idle hands to do.” And Noah Webster’s American Spelling Book, which was the best-selling textbook of the 19th century, instructed its young readers that “[a] wise child loves to learn his books, but the fool would choose to play with toys.”

7. Gambling

America’s love of gaming was born in saloons, where wagers were made on every conceivable contest of chance or skill. Benjamin Rush recommended the elimination of horse racing, cockfighting, and Sunday amusements, which led to “gaming – drunkenness – and uncleanness,” as well as general debauchery. John Adams blamed the sensual, aimless culture of a monarchy for “so much Cards and Backgammon; so much Horse Racing and Cockfighting.”

8. Sports

Henry Laurens, a president of the Continental Congress, at one point hoped for defeat in the War of Independence, which he thought would bring an end to the love of sporting amusements among Americans. To Lauren, sport was a prime indicator of a doomed society. He believed that the Olympic Games “and other fooleries” had “brought on the desolation of Greece.”

9. Drinking

During the War of Independence there was more than one tavern for every 100 residents of Philadelphia, the rebels’ capital (by contrast, there is now one alcohol serving business for every 1,000 residents in Philadelphia). In New York there were enough taverns to allow every resident of the city to be drinking in a bar at the same time. In Boston, liquor was sold at one of every eight residential houses. Though the Founders did their share of the drinking in early America, in public they attacked the practice during and after the Revolution. Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, James Madison, and Robert Morris were among many of the Founding Fathers who supported excise taxes on alcohol after the Revolution as a means to curb drinking. In 1784, Benjamin Rush published An Inquiry into the Effects of Spiritous Liquors, which became one of the most important of the Founding Fathers’ many anti-pleasure manifestoes during the early national period. Rush argued that drink and democracy could not mix. He also invented the idea that chronic drunkenness is a biological disease and that the only cure is life-long abstinence. “‘Taste not, handle not, touch not’ should be inscribed upon every vessel that contains spirits in the house of a man, who wishes to be cured by habits of intemperance,” Rush wrote. These claims became the basis not only for the temperance movement in the 19th century but also for the prohibition movement in the early 20th century, and the “science” of addiction treatment in the late 20th century. The idea of the modern-day rehabilitation center was also invented by Rush, who called for drunkards to be taken off the streets and locked up in a special asylum in Philadelphia called the “Sober House.” Not all Americans agreed with the Founding Fathers. The government’s attempt in 1794 to enforce the national whiskey tax in western Pennsylvania resulted in what came to be called the Whiskey Rebellion, when renegades all over the region not only refused to pay up but also tarred and feathered tax collectors.

10. Racial Integration

Lower-class taverns — the ones most frequently attacked by leaders of the new nation — were the first racially integrated public spaces in America. Black, white, and brown Americans came together through mutual desire centuries before the federal government brought them together by force. Although the law in all the colonies barred blacks from public houses, the law was more often than not ignored by tavern keepers, white patrons, and by free blacks and even slaves. Early court records tell of drinking establishments across the colonies that disregarded the color line. Typical was a Burlington, New Jersey grand jury’s charge in 1707 that a laborer named William Cale kept a “common house of drinking . . . and there received harbored and supported diverse vagabond and other idle and suspected persons of evil conversation as well as diverse servants and Negroes of the inhabitants of the town.” Occasional attacks by law enforcers did little to stem the inflow of various colors into American taverns. Again, the less “respectable” a public house was, the more likely it was to facilitate the mixing of races.

11. Fashion

Prostitutes pioneered many of the styles that became “respectable.” They were the first women to wear cosmetics, color their hair, and wear clothing that was considered fashionable. Slaves and free blacks — who were generally welcomed in lower-class taverns and brothels — were also known to dress “above their station.” But the men who created the “good” American citizen dressed him in homely clothing. “He appear’d in the plainest Country Garb,” said Benjamin Franklin. “His Great Coat was coarse and looked old and thread-bare; his Linnen was homespun; his Beard perhaps of Seven Days Growth, his Shoes thick and heavy, and every Part of his Dress corresponding.” The revolutionary scribe Joel Barlow warned in 1787 that “[w]henever democratic states degenerate from those noble republican virtues which constitute the chief excellency, spring, and even basis of their government, and instead of industry, frugality, and economy, encourage luxury, dissipation and extravagence, we may justly conclude that ruin is near at hand. . . . No virtue, no Commonwealth.” In 1843, Cornelius Mathews, the poet of “Young America,” described the “Man in the Republic” as living “With plainness in thy daily pathway walk/ And disencumbered of excess.” Women were instructed to wear dresses of “surpassing neatness and simplicity,” and respectable urban men were expected to become what a business directory in the 1850s called “the unknown knight, with his plain unostentatious black armor.”

Courtesy of the Utility Workers Union of America

to keep trade deals unfair to workers here and around the world

to continue to get good paying US manufacturing jobs offshored

to stop the development of green energy so that we continue to spend billions on Mideast oil

to continue to allow corporations like British Petroleum to exploit US natural resources and pollute our environment

to weaken US unions so they can treat parts of the US like the developing world

to keep the US buying imports from around the world rather than re-develop US manufacturing

to continue receiving secret technology such as that used in military arms manufacuting

to dismantle Social Security and turn the fund over to Wall St to be gambled with all over the world

to continue to allow US drug corporations to sell medicine developed here more cheaply in other countries than in the US

to continue economic treason