Orthodox people, in particular, should remember their role in the American labour movement… to vote for the Tea Party spits on our ancestor’s graves and dishonours their achievements. After all, the Tea Party is the “Bosses Party”… they’re bought and paid for by Rupert Murdoch and the Koch brothers.
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Here’s the Rebel Girl…
Billy Bragg sings All You Fascists Are Bound to Lose… A song to sing TO the teabaggers….
Editor’s Foreword:
As with my collection of William Jennings Bryan, anything in boldface is from Mr Debs, and anything in ordinary typeface is my words.
BMD
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Wherever capitalism appears, in pursuit of its mission of exploitation, there will Socialism, fertilised by misery, watered by tears, and vitalised by agitation, be also found, unfurling its class-struggle banner and proclaiming its mission of emancipation.
I shall say this… the last ten years of my life have caused me to think, and think again, on the consequences of “conservative” thought. Firstly, most “conservatives” are not, by any means, Burkean legitimatists; rather, they are laissez faire Neoliberal apologists for the worst excesses of greed in the business world. I stand aloof from that… that does NOT make me a socialist… it does makes me someone who does not find that term an epithet.
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The most barbarous fact in all Christendom is the labour market. The mere term sufficiently expresses the animalism of commercial civilisation. They who buy and they who sell in the labour market are alike dehumanised by the inhuman traffic in the brains, and blood, and bones of human beings.
Many of us “do what we must” in order to survive in the wicked economic system now regnant in the USA. However… one doesn’t have to capitulate completely to this Moloch. Often, it’s only a small protest… most of us can only offer a “symbolic” dissent… but if we do so, we proclaim our humanity against this evil system. For instance, I’ve refused to dye my hair to conceal my age (as all the HR “gurus” tell us)… it may be only a small thing… but it means that I haven’t laid down and surrendered to the beast.
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A song about Joe Hill…
Billy Bragg does an English take on Which Side Are You On?
Now, my friends, I am opposed to the system of society in which we live today, not because I lack the natural equipment to do for myself, but because I am not satisfied to make myself comfortable knowing that there are thousands of my fellow men who suffer for the barest necessities of life. We were taught under the old ethic that man’s business on this earth was to look out for himself. That was the ethic of the jungle, the ethic of the wild beast. Take care of yourself, no matter what may become of your fellow man. Thousands of years ago, the question was asked, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” That question has never yet been answered in a way that is satisfactory to civilised society.
Yes, I am my brother’s keeper. I am under a moral obligation to him that is inspired, not by any maudlin sentimentality, but by the higher duty I owe to myself. What would you think of me if I were capable of seating myself at a table and gorging myself with food and saw about me the children of my fellow beings starving to death?
The Tea Party is nothing but selfishness writ large… I refuse to support such an agglomeration. I’ve felt the boot on my neck… I’ll fight all those who wish to kick their weaker fellows, and the teabaggers are, indeed, that, if they’re nothing else.
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When we are in partnership, and have stopped clutching each other’s throats; when we have stopped enslaving each other, we will stand together, hands clasped, and be friends. We will be comrades, we will be brothers, and we will begin the march to the grandest civilisation the human race has ever known.
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These are the gentry who are today wrapped up in the American flag, who shout their claim from the housetops that they are the only patriots, and who have their magnifying glasses in hand, scanning the country for evidence of disloyalty, eager to apply the brand of treason to the men who dare to even whisper their opposition to Junker rule in the United Sates. No wonder Sam Johnson declared that “patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel”. He must have had this Wall Street gentry in mind, or at least their prototypes, for in every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the people.
This could have been written today about such sorts as Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Joe Miller, or Rush Limbaugh. What’s most repellent about them is their false religiosity… that’s the prime cause of atheism out there. You see, they close their eyes and shut their ears to everything but “happy talk”… and brutally attack all who dare to “disturb their circles”. “Justice for all” means precisely that…
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Nathalie Merchant does a traditional Which Side Are You On?
Rebel Diaz does a modern take on Which Side Are You On?
How stupid and short-sighted the ruling class really is! Cupidity is stone blind. It has no vision. The greedy, profit-seeking exploiter cannot see beyond the end of his nose. He can see a chance for an “opening”; he is cunning enough to know what graft is, and where it is, and how it can be secured, but vision he has none… not the slightest. He knows nothing of the great throbbing world that spreads out in all directions. He has no capacity for literature, no appreciation of art, no soul for beauty. That is the penalty the parasites pay for the violation of the laws of life.
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I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.
Sam Walton… Rupert Murdoch… Ray Croc… need I say more? These sorts are lionised by the teabaggers… that speaks volumes, does it not?
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Be true to yourself and you cannot be a traitor to any good cause on earth.
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Brother, can you spare a dime?
Rebel Diaz does a riff on the bailout
His Holiness had something to say about Capitalism:
What good is it, if we have a strong economy, but our people are ill?
For what shall it profit a man to gain the whole world, but destroy his own soul? That is why the Church must set itself into people’s minds, and why it must say what it must naturally, with love, not stepping back, not looking down on those who live in poverty, but in solidarity with poor people, to proclaim moral values. Then, nobody would accuse the Church of sanctimonious hypocrisy, but would attend to the preaching of the Church. This exhortation is now crucial for the survival of our civilisation; the consumer psychology and the lust of the flesh are not viable… they destroy the spiritual dimension of life, and turn human beings into animals.
The modern economy is built largely on fraud; it creates money out of thin air. [Money is] a token of human labour and of our God-given resources, such as coal, ore, and oil, along with our intelligence, physical labour, culture, and spirituality. [However,] every company produces its own money in the form of shares, which is passed onto the secondary market, becoming not just simple securities; they are traded and used as items of speculation. If these mere phantasms earn billions, not even backed by labour or real capital, then, how can such an economy exist? Who is going to pay for all of this? Why, the simple worker [is going to], who produces the value behind all of this bubble. [We need] a fair economic system where money and capital are equivalent and are the expression of real work.
His Holiness Kirill Gundyaev
Patriarch of Moscow and all the Russias
I would say that His Holiness and Eugene Debs are in sync with one another… and that His Nibs has nothing in common with such posturing slimers as Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Joe Miller, et al. I dare a certain loudmouthed clerical gentleman to call His Holiness a “commie zombie” for his opposition to unbridled capitalism…
The message is clear:
DON’T VOTE FOR THE TEA PARTY… IT’S EVIL!
BMD
Voices from Russia 
On This Election Eve… Some Thoughts from William Jennings Bryan
Tags: 1896 US presidential election, Arlo Guthrie, Barack Obama, Democratic Party (United States), GOP, Pete Seeger, political commentary, politics, Republican, Solidarity Forever, Tea Party, This Land is Your Land, United States, USA, William Jennings Bryan
Campaign poster from 1900 for William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925), the Democratic candidate for US President, he opposed oligarchic business interests and imperialistic adventuring abroad… sounds like a perfect opponent for the teabaggers of today, no?
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Editor’s Foreword:
Senator Bryan’s words are in boldface; my comments are in ordinary typeface.
BMD
Arlo Guthrie and Pete Seeger sing This Land is Your Land
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The humblest citizen in all the land, when clad in the armour of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of error. I come to you in defence of a cause as holy as the cause of liberty… the cause of humanity.
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The poor man who takes property by force is called a thief, but the creditor who can by legislation make a debtor pay a dollar twice as large as he borrowed is lauded as the friend of a sound currency. The man who wants the people to destroy the Government is an anarchist, but the man who wants the Government to destroy the people is a patriot.
Here’s what the Tea Party says: “We can’t let the banks and insurance companies fail… that’d be disastrous! Oh… foreclosures are through the roof? Who cares, it’s how we’ll let the recession run its course. It’s only little people anyway”.
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You can’t judge a man’s life by the success of a moment, by the victory of an hour, or even by the results of a year. You must view his life as a whole. You must stand where you can see the man as he treads the entire path that leads from the cradle to the grave… now crossing the plain, now climbing the steeps, now passing through pleasant fields, now wending his way with difficulty between rugged rocks… tempted, tried, tested, triumphant.
The teabaggers and the GOP assail Barack Obama… after he’s been in office for only 18 months. Let’s see… 18 months after G W Bush was inaugurated, he plunged the USA into an undeclared war in Afghanistan, and was planning an unprovoked aggression against Iraq. Therefore, he’s worse than Barack Obama is judging by the Republican’s own standards (“look at what he did after 18 months!”)! History has judged G W Bush… he’s the worst president in American history… and the GOP wants to return to many of his policies. Bryan was right, “You must view his life as a whole”… after all, anyone who would cut taxes in the midst of fighting a war is an irresponsible and feckless fool.
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Pete Seeger sings Solidarity Forever
There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that, if you’ll only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class, which rests up on them.
The “trickle upon” voodoo economics of the Republican Party wasn’t an invention of the Greedy 80s of the 20th century… it came from the Gay Nineties of the previous century, a decade when Big Business ran amuck, raping the country and creating an obscene gap between the rich and the working class. Compare that situation to that of the 1950s, when there was a more equitable division of wealth. EVERYONE was more prosperous as a result. The Tea Party’s advocacy of special treatment for the wealthy (the GOP senatorial candidate in PA called for a moratorium on corporate taxation, no lie!) must be viewed as treasonous and culpable.
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Plutocracy is abhorrent to a republic; it’s more despotic than monarchy, more heartless than aristocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. It preys upon the nation in time of peace and conspires against it in the hour of its calamity. Conscienceless, compassionless, and devoid of wisdom, it enervates its votaries while it impoverishes its victims. It’s already sapping the strength of the nation, vulgarising social life and making a mockery of morals. The time is ripe for the overthrow of this giant wrong. In the name of the counting-rooms which it has denied; in the name of business honour which it has polluted; in the name of the home which it has despoiled; in the name of religion which it has disgraced; in the name of the people whom it has opprest, let us make our appeal to the awakened conscience of the nation.
Don’t believe the smarmy “religious” and “patriotic” façade of the Tea Party… “Greed is good”… THAT’S their credo. They wish to make Sectarianism the de facto state religion… we have NOTHING in common with such nonsense, do note well the priests and hierarchs who collaborate with and write favourably of such unbelievers (it’s better to associate with out-and-out atheists… they’re not out to “convert” us, after all).
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Arlo Guthrie and Pete Seeger sing If I Had A Hammer
And who can suffer injury by just taxation, impartial laws, and the application of the Jeffersonian doctrine of equal rights to all and special privileges to none? Only those whose accumulations are stained with dishonesty and whose immoral methods have given them a distorted view of business, society, and government. Accumulating by conscious frauds more money than they can use upon themselves, wisely distribute or safely leave to their children, these denounce as public enemies all who question their methods or throw a light upon their crimes.
The leader of the House Republicans, Boehner, has called for the repeal of all regulation on the banking industry passed into law since the start of the economic crisis. That is, he favours the untrammelled raping of society by the plutocrats… all the while posing as a “populist”. He also advocates the repeal of health care reform. Am I being catty if I were to say that all the things he denounces publicly are a part of the special health insurance plan that he enjoys as a congressman? That is, it’s good enough for him and his family… but he won’t let YOU have it too! How do you spell H-Y-P-O-C-R-I-T-E? After all, he and his family are special! They DESERVE better health care than you do! You know what to do…
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Nation after nation, when at the zenith of its power, has proclaimed itself invincible because its army could shake the earth with its tread and its ships could fill the seas, but these nations are dead, and we must build upon a different foundation if we would avoid their fate.
Due to deliberate Republican policy, the USA spends as much on warfare and military material as the rest of the world combined… the Tea Party wouldn’t only continue this, they’d intensify it (that’s where the money from the shredding of the inadequate social safety net would go). Senator Bryan was right… this is a recipe for the worst sort of disaster… and I’m not a commie zombie for pointing this up to you!
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Pete Seeger sings Banks of Marble
You shall not press down upon the brow of labour this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.
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To end it, here are some words from Valentin Zorin of Voice of Russia:
I do daresay that Mr Zorin and Mr Bryan are in concord… what’s right is right, all through the generations… do reflect on the fact that “wrong is always wrong” as well. Greed has always been labelled “wrong”… and that’s the main motivator for the GOP/Tea Party… do vote accordingly.
BMD