The EPA versus Arlo Guthrie

It is well understood that pretty much all members of the Guthrie family of musicians are staunch liberals, but when listening to Alices Restaurant tonight, I realized that if Obama wanted to know what is wrong with his whole approach to things, he doesn't even have to talk to a conservative, he just has to talk to ole' Arlo Guthrie:

Now it all started two Thanksgivings ago, was on - two years ago on Thanksgiving,
when my friend and I went up to visit Alice at the restaurant, but Alice doesn't
live in the restaurant, she lives in the church nearby the restaurant, in the
bell-tower, with her husband Ray and Fasha the dog. And livin' in the bell tower
like that, they got a lot of room downstairs where the pews used to be in.  Havin'
all that room, seein' as how they took out all the pews, they decided that they
didn't have to take out their garbage for a long time.

We got up there, we found all the garbage in there, and we decided it'd be a
friendly gesture for us to take the garbage down to the city dump.  So we took the
half a ton of garbage, put it in the back of a red VW microbus, took shovels and
rakes and implements of destruction and headed on toward the city dump.

Well we got there and there was a big sign and a chain across across the dump saying,
"Closed on Thanksgiving."  And we had never heard of a dump closed on Thanksgiving
before, and with tears in our eyes we drove off into the sunset looking for another
place to put the garbage.

Here you have it, a small naive (and the narrator of Alices Restaurant is VERY naive) gesture of friendship on Thanksgiving, and because no one can be at the dump guarding it, the dump is closed.

We didn't find one. Until we came to a side road, and off the side of the side road
there was another fifteen foot cliff and at the bottom of the cliff there was another
pile of garbage. And we decided that one big pile is better than two little piles, and
rather than bring that one up we decided to throw our's down.  That's what we did, and
drove back to the church, had a thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat, went to sleep
and didn't get up until the next morning, when we got a phone call from officer Obie.
He said, "Kid, we found your name on an envelope at the bottom of a half a ton of garbage,
and just wanted to know if you had any information about it." And I said, "Yes, sir,
Officer Obie, I cannot tell a lie, I put that envelope under that garbage."

Not finding any available bureaucracy, they use their common sense outside of the bureaucracy, and do something that seems reasonable. The officer, never available to help them sort this out at the beginning of the story, is now suddenly very very available to sort them out.

After speaking to Obie for about fourty-five minutes on the telephone we
finally arrived at the truth of the matter and said that we had to go down
and pick up the garbage, and also had to go down and speak to him at the
police officer's station.  So we got in the red VW microbus with the
shovels and rakes and implements of destruction and headed on toward the
police officer's station.

He's available for fourty-five minutes to talk about the "consequences," after the fact, and schedules an appointment to see them in person, having never been available to prevent the problem to begin with. Why? Because it was Thanksgiving, and he's entitled to not talk on Thanksgiving.

Now friends, there was only one or two things that Obie coulda done at
the police station, and the first was he could have given us a medal for
being so brave and honest on the telephone, which wasn't very likely, and
we didn't expect it, and the other thing was he could have bawled us out
and told us never to be see driving garbage around the vicinity again,
which is what we expected, but when we got to the police officer's station
there was a third possibility that we hadn't even counted upon, and we was
both immediately arrested.  Handcuffed.  And I said "Obie, I don't think I
can pick up the garbage with these handcuffs on."  He said, "Shut up, kid.
Get in the back of the patrol car."

And that's what we did, sat in the back of the patrol car and drove to the
quote Scene of the Crime unquote. I want tell you about the town of
Stockbridge, Massachusets, where this happened here, they got three stop signs,
two police officers, and one police car, but when we got to the Scene of the
Crime there was five police officers and three police cars, being the biggest
crime of the last fifty years, and everybody wanted to get in the newspaper
story about it. And they was using up all kinds of cop equipment that they had
hanging around the police officer's station. They was taking plaster tire tracks,
foot prints, dog smelling prints, and they took twenty seven eight-by-ten colour
glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one
explaining what each one was to be used as evidence against us.  Took pictures of
the approach, the getaway, the northwest corner the southwest corner and that's not
to mention the aerial photography.

After the ordeal, we went back to the jail.  Obie said he was going to put us in the
cell.  Said, "Kid, I'm going to put you in the cell, I want your wallet and your belt."

Not only has "Officer Obie" encouraged them to, in the future, lie and cheat when he should've known that without their "kindness" he could have not done his "job", instead of simply giving them a good yelling and telling them to pick it all up, he has to make a scene, bring in all the police cars and airplanes and special teams, do massive investigative work wholly unnecessary to the situation at taxpayer expense, and then, when finished, throw them in jail as a reward for their original honesty and with no seemingly good reason.

And I said, "Obie, I can understand you wanting my
wallet so I don't have any money to spend in the cell, but what do you
want my belt for?"  And he said, "Kid, we don't want any hangings."  I
said, "Obie, did you think I was going to hang myself for littering?"
Obie said he was making sure, and friends Obie was, cause he took out the
toilet seat so I couldn't hit myself over the head and drown, and he took
out the toilet paper so I couldn't bend the bars roll out the - roll the
toilet paper out the window, slide down the roll and have an escape.

Undertaking more rash and unneeded steps, and adding additional uncomfort to the individuals life, for no apparent reason except the "Precautionary Principle," better known as cowardice.

Obie was making sure, and it was about four or five hours later that Alice (remember
Alice? It's a song about Alice), Alice came by and with a few nasty words to Obie on
the side, bailed us out of jail, and we went back to the church, had a another
thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat, and didn't get up until the next morning,
when we all had to go to court.

After all these herculean efforts and expenditures, for a long time in jail, the fellows are bailed out.

We walked in, sat down, Obie came in with the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy
pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one, sat down.  Man
came in said, "All rise."  We all stood up, and Obie stood up with the twenty seven
eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures, and the judge walked in sat down with a seeing eye
dog, and he sat down, we sat down. Obie looked at the seeing eye dog, and then at the
twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph
on the back of each one, and looked at the seeing eye dog. And then at twenty seven
eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of
each one and began to cry, 'cause Obie came to the realization that it was a typical case
of American blind justice, and there wasn't nothing he could do about it, and the judge
wasn't going to look at the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with the
circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to
be used as evidence against us.  And we was fined $50 and had to pick up the garbage in the
snow, but thats not what I came to tell you about.

Having gone to all this trouble to stack the deck against these young lads for his own personal benefit, his mechanations and manipulations fall apart against a single loose cog in the plan - a blind judge who will not be condescended in to sentencing by fancy pictures and paragraphs, quite a metaphor for our current Academic elites and their tendency to use "settled science" (LOL!) to rule anyone who disagrees with them unfit to speak. Thankfully, the judge can't see, much as the American Redneck was never overtaught to overrespect these dishonest manipulations and crass overreaches. "Blind Justice" indeed. In many ways voters are, when you get right down to it, a judge of elected officials.

They got a building down New York City, it's called Whitehall Street, where you walk in, you get injected, inspected, detected, infected, neglected and selected.  I went down to get my physical examination one day, and I walked in, I sat down, got good and drunk the night before, so I looked and felt my best when I went in that morning.  `Cause I wanted to look like the all-American kid from New York City, man I wanted, I wanted to feel like the all-, I wanted to be the all American kid from New York, and I walked in, sat down, I was hung down, brung down, hung up, and all kinds o' mean nasty ugly things. And I waked in and sat down and they gave me a piece of paper, said, "Kid, see the phsychiatrist, room 604."

Not caring one bit what they put people through or the pride or dignity of anyone, government agencies poke and prod and inspect, and says "yea or nay" without any regard to the humanity or sensible value of what they're looking at. They have their quota, and if it kills them, or anyone else, they'll fill it.

And I went up there, I said, "Shrink, I want to kill.  I mean, I wanna, I wanna kill.  Kill.  I wanna, I wanna see, I wanna see blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth.  Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean kill, Kill, KILL, KILL."  And I started jumpin up and down yelling, "KILL, KILL," and he started jumpin up and down with me and we was both jumping up and down yelling, "KILL, KILL."  And the sargent came over, pinned a medal on me, sent me down the hall, said, "You're our boy."

Didn't feel too good about it.

Although his job is to be a Psychiatrist, the shrink at Whitehall Street suspends his duty when he hears what he wants to hear, that being far more important then actually carrying out his job, much like Green Energy and Mass Transit engineers who apply standards and bigotries that would never consider outside of these sectors when analyzing the plans of the environmental left, selling out their professional integrity for the sake of an ideological warpath.

Proceeded on down the hall gettin more injections, inspections, detections, neglections and all kinds of stuff that they was doin' to me at the thing there, and I was there for two hours, three hours, four hours, I was there for a long time going through all kinds of mean nasty ugly things and I was just having a tough time there, and they was inspecting, injecting every single part of me, and they was leaving no part untouched.  Proceeded through, and when I finally came to the see the last man, I walked in, walked in sat down after a whole big thing there, and I walked up and said, "What do you want?"  He said, "Kid, we only got one question. Have you ever been arrested?"

Finally, after having jumped through all the hoops, a single malfeasance is found, a single problem or trouble in something that otherwise fits, much like the Cape Wind project in Massacheuttsets. From the link: "The decision signals further delays for the $2.6 billion project, which was under review for about a decade and which has struggled to find financing."

And I proceeded to tell him the story of the Alice's Restaurant Massacre, with full orchestration and five part harmony and stuff like that and all the phenome... - and he stopped me right there and said, "Kid, did you ever go to court?"  And I proceeded to tell him the story of the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with the circles and arrows and the paragraph on the back of each one, and he stopped me right there and said, "Kid, I want you to go and sit down on that bench that says Group W .... NOW kid!!"

A couple bad answers and the kid finds himself a virtual pariah, all for the minorest and most senseless of violations.

And I, I walked over to the, to the bench there, and there is, Group W's where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the army after committing your special crime, and there was all kinds of mean nasty ugly looking people on the bench there.  Mother rapers.  Father stabbers.  Father rapers!  Father rapers sitting right there on the bench next to me!  And they was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible crime-type guys sitting on the bench next to me.

Having given a bad answer, the organization, or individual, finds itself in a category that it does not fit, associating with those far worse then it is.

"Kids, this-piece-of-paper's-got-47-words-37-sentences-58-words-we-wanna- know-details-of-the-crime-time-of-the-crime-and-any-other-kind-of-thing- you-gotta-say-pertaining-to-and-about-the-crime-I-want-to-know-arresting- officer's-name-and-any-other-kind-of-thing-you-gotta-say", and talked for forty-five minutes and nobody understood a word that he said, but we had fun filling out the forms and playing with the pencils on the bench there, and I filled out the massacre with the four part harmony, and wrote it down there

Doesn't this sound a whole lot like the Healthcare Bill, you know, the one we have to "pass to find out what's in it?" (Madame Pelosi) And then, finally, of all great and horrible humiliations and slanders and acts of true hypocrisy:

("KID, HAVE YOU REHABILITATED YOURSELF?")

They have the gall to ask have we fixed ourselves, when they were the problem all along, when they have no right to judge, when they have done far worse things to this country then refusing to buy health insurance or keeping the lights on too long. But it's all us, it's never their fault, they're above being at fault, above the law, above manners and procedures, above morality.

Is Anyone from Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, or Yemen Reading This?

If they are, I think I have something to say

A Contemporary Military Map of the battle of RI. Library of Congress ID g3772n.ar300400. Public Domain.

There's always a tendency to speak only of current examples, but the great democracies of the Western world had centuries of, often very bloody, legal and political history leading to their current status, a history that the Islamic world does not have. They also have a culture that held certain things as sacred, certain non-biblical things in fact, that the Islamic world did not hold to.

Instead, we see in the Islamic world a great desire to keep Islam in the government, even as separation of church and state is necessary, and a great desire for a morality and justice that Feudalism long ago hardened Europes heart against. We see in the Islamic world a desire at once for freedom and order, at once for individual and group dignity, and we see fights within society that must be resolved.

As such, I wanted to share the story of a former democracy, one that was absorbed in to America in 1776, its traditions and system destroyed in favor of the federal constitution. A democracy created by a pastor, a Puritan pastor, with freedom of conscience for all and a work ethic that made its small, rocky-soiled state an early center of industry and commerce in America. That democracy is Providence Plantations.

The pastors name was Roger Williams. He grew up the son of a wise and just merchant and trader, who gave to the poor in life and in his will. His home parish in London was the sight of great religious tumult, including the burning at stake of many puritan martyrs who died for nothing more then their belief in God. Graduating from Cambridge with a degree in theology and great life experience, Roger Williams headed across the seas.

He may well have been driven out, as he was already at that time quite controversial, and in 1630 he began his mission to the puritans of New England, only to find just as much controversy in America. Among the places he preached the longest and loudest was the town of Salem, which if it had fully received him, might have averted its horrendous infamy for burning withces at stake 60 years later. Salem denied him, and thus Salem carried its shame, and still does to this day.

Salem denied him so thoroughly that he was about to be deported back to England, at which time he fled southwest, to the lands of the Narragansett Indians. There he befriended many, and was given the gift of land. He named it Providence, in honor and thanks towards God. In later years, the colony would repay the kindness of the Narragansett by housing Quakers and Jews fleeing form their own persecution, thus demonstrating the true refuge, forgiveness, justice and charity of Christ.

In 1643 he headed back to England to acquire a charter for his colony. The toes he stepped on long ago forgotten, the English granted it to him, and he incorporated three towns, Providence the capital, Newport, and Portsmouth. He also, on the way there, wrote a book on the Indians he knew, titled "Key into the Languages of America," granting him respect on his authority for perhaps the first time in his life.

He was not unknown to commerce, starting afterwards a Indian trading post at Cocumscussoc, but when the needs of his colony called him, he gave it up, selling it likely at a loss in 1651 in order to head back to England to have his bastion of freedoms charter confirmed. Thus he showed, at once, a skill with Mammon, and a willingness to disregard it for what was more important. He actually failed, but his fellow John Clarke succeeded, gaining a full and correct charter by 1663, while he handled important family business that held him back until 1654.

Unfortunately King Phillips War (1675) did see his colony burned to the ground, but he also lived to see it rebuilt. He stayed a preacher always, and kept his colony a free refuge always, open to all religious beliefs, and all religious debate. The example he set and the sheep he led would become the tolerant, but comparatively pious, religious traditions of modern America, even though his democracy was later swallowed up.

Samuel Slater, in 1790, built the first successful cotton textile mill in America at Blackstone River. Manufacturing would grow more rapidly in Rhode Island then almost any other American colony. The people of Rhode Island kept that free spirit alive, striking against unfair merchants in 1783 and refusing to participate in the war of 1812, and did away with all slavery in its limits voluntarily under the State Emancipation Act of 1784. Thus they let their religion, true religion (Isaiah 51), guide them as their hearts and law were free!

Sources:

http://www.rogerwilliams.org/biography.htm

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~rigenweb/history.html

Julian Assange Must Follow the Example of Christ

US Supreme Court Building. By Duncan Lock, license cc asa 3.0 unported

"Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea." -Matthew 18: 6, the word of our Lord

One of the reasons folks have a hard time understanding espionage laws is they see law as about morality, they see law as about preventing immoral behavior and punishing the wicked. But that is not what government is for, nor has it ever been for that. The purpose of law is to resolve disputes, to settle differences in a manner that is open, transparent, fair, and respectful to the rights of everyone involved.

The fact is that the government has a real difference with Julian Assange. They had secrets, Julian released them, they had protocols, Julian broke them, and now they're friends can't trust them, they can't look at each other, spies and envoys are fleeing, and the worlds mightiest powers and superpower know not how to handle their own states. Right or wrong, this is where things stand.

Now, there are countries that don't utilize Espionage laws much. Israel and Russia both immediately come to mind. Both, instead of finding and prosecuting spies in a court of law, send out secret assasins, with ice picks, guns, poisons, and all manners of traps, destroy the peace, and when they find their victim, leave no trace of him, and give him not a second, not a minute to answer for his sake. If they make a mistake, too bad, the wrong person is dead. They don't tell his or her family either, and all the citizens are left questioning what happened to their fellow man. Without a doubt, if Americas ability to try spies in a court of law is interfered with, they will have to, for the sake of preserving their government, resort to much the same.

Julian, we all know what you stand for, or at least say you do, transparency, but what you fail to see is that this law is also created for transparency, and in fact, the most important kind of transparency, the ability of individual citizens to see what they are charged with, and society to see what happens to them, along with the ability of all to make their decisions in a conscious, responsible manner. You have angered a lot of powerful people, and if you continue to be successful, you will anger only more. If you do not turn yourself in now, you will be bodybagged, and no one will ever hear from you again, but if you do turn yourself in, whether you are imprisoned or killed, you will be so before the common man and all eyes to see, and all minds to know how arguments are settled in a civil society.

Civil Disobedience is a fine and honorable thing, but it involves taking the consequences of your actions, in part so that fights don't get out of hand. Lets face it Julian, if you die the wrong way, something else dies with you, but if you die the right way, transparency only grows, and you can speak for your own defense in court, and stand by your actions, and speak, for all the nation and world to hear, about your values and what you find right. And you will go to jail, and possibly even be put to death, but if you stay out there on your own running, people who are very good at this stuff will get to you, and they will kill you, in a way that destroys everything that you stand for.

There were four Roman soldiers who confessed a faith that their commander could not stand. He had them put in to a freezing lake, and said that if any of them gave up their faith, they would be given a warm bath, but if they didn't, they would be left there to freeze to death. Three of them stayed there, holding hands as brothers, to die the whole night through, but one just couldn't stand it anymore, and came out, and renounced his faith. And yet, all four of them died that night. Tell me Julian, which one will you be? Will you join your brethren of all the other convicts at jail, and spread the light of wisdom and righteousness to the people you are called to, or will you die shamefully at the hands of a foreign spy, possibly even painfully, as a former KGB agent died not long ago.

Two thousand years ago, a visionary far greater then yourself, or anyone now alive, was crucified above a hill in Calvary. He didn't fight the police when they came to get him, and he didn't complain about his fate either, nor did he lie in court to get off easy. He accepted what he had came to do, took his cup of sorrows in Gethsemane, and went up that hill cross in hand for all things to come to pass. Julian, if you really do care about transparency to the extent that you claim, you must do likewise. The worse thing that could happen here is for America, already weakened, to be hamstrung by those who think they know better, and with them, all the world to where espionage laws can no longer truly exist. They are an important part of transparency. Law isn't about what's right or wrong - it's about a peaceful, serene society that is transparent and honorable, and when you accept this, you can have your fate handed to you fittingly, and become the hero you were born to be.

Update 12/6/2010 - It seems, according to AOL News, Assange has done a wicked and cowardly thing. Holding over 1.4 gigabytes of what Assange considers worthy secrets, Assange, rather then turn himself in as he should, is withholding them, and thus his objective, from the public as a bargaining chip to secure his freedom. If this is how it appears, Julian has much to be ashamed of.