Since the year 2000 when Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney illegally[1] took occupation of the White House, and more particularly beginning in 2003 when word spread about Patriot I and then Patriot II, and still more recently when information hit the mainstream corporate media that every American is spied on by corporate entities like Verizon and AT&T, that all our phone calls, emails and site visits are being recorded into a gigantic underground database, as a result more and more – perhaps millions of Americans - are raising a hue and cry over the fact that this wretched, evil empire called the Neocon Administration is stripping Americans of their constitutional rights. The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), is at the helm of the struggle, as evidenced by their recent book called The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office, which delineates how the people’s most fundamental political rights as guaranteed in the US Constitution are being trampled upon as never before in the history of this nation. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is close on their tail, filing cases left and right to protect the rights of ordinary citizens. Bush has tossed the Magna Carta into the dustbin and thrown habeas corpus to the winds.[2] Today any American of any color, class or gender can be locked up and held without charges and without trial forever. It is a bleak era in American history. Yet, maybe we need to rethink this issue of being stripped of our constitutional rights since the year 2000. How many of those rights did we actually have before 2000? Maybe we need to do a background check on what rights were guaranteed, if at all, to the American people, and how many of those rights ever got manifested.
The Preamble to the US Constitution, signed on September 17, 1787, states:
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”[3]
Here is the first and greatest lie in the US Constitution. It was never “we the people.” It was a group of wealthy elites named Washington, Langdon, Gilman, Gorham, King, Johnson, Sherman, et al. The rest of the American population had nothing to do with the Constitution. They did not even know it was being written. This included non-elite white Caucasians, Native Indians, African-Americans, Hispanics, French, Irish and myriad other communities and denominations. All social classes but the elite upper class were excluded. Women were excluded. Ratifying the US Constitution, passing Amendments to that Constitution and the passing of laws by Congress was and is never done by We the People. It was and remains actions conducted by a handful of elite, millionaire ol’ boys. They put themselves in power because they wanted power and had the money to get it. It is unrelated to their qualifications, their Neohumanistic vision or their morality. It is also unrelated to their level of compassion for suffering humanity, for the half-naked, starving, downtrodden human beings who lived in the U.S. in 1776 and who live in America and elsewhere today. So from the get go, it must be clear, the US Constitution was never about democracy. It was about plutocracy and oligarchy.
No, we do not have democracy. But Cornel West is a man who deeply reflects on the meaning of democracy. He feels the pain of suffering humanity, and he longs to alleviate their pain. This is an example of the kind of person America needs at the helm of the country. Only such persons can take this country forward onto heretofore untrodden paths of a new and visionary world.
If since its very inception we the people were never consulted, if today our Senate and Congressional leaders vote for serial imperial war without consulting us, the people, then we never had anything like a democracy in this country. The only characteristic that distinguishes the U.S. from dictatorships on other continents is that Americans have remnants of free speech.[9] We still have some right to dissent. However, even this aspect of American life is rapidly disintegrating as Halliburton builds massive detention centers around the country, Congress passes laws that strip US citizens of the once sacrosanct habeas corpus, and mega telecommunications corporations move forward with their agenda to stifle the voice of the people on the Internet.
Article 1, Section 2, Point 3 of the U.S. Constitution states:
“Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.”[10]
Here we learn the value of slaves in America in 1776. What was their struggle over two centuries to attain dignity and to live on an equal political par with Caucasian Americans? More important, did slavery end in America? Since 2002, 100,000 slaves are trafficked into the United States annually. Perhaps their skin is no longer black. It may be brown, yellow or white. Primarily women and children are trafficked all over the U.S. to work in the sex industry, sweat shops, motels and hotels, and as indentured servants in wealthy households. They come from Southeast Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe (particularly impoverished Ukraine), Philippines, Brazil and other countries. The majority work as sex slaves. Many beg on the streets of New York City, earning two to three million dollars profit annually for their owners. Japanese organized crime has also joined the business of trafficking in women.[11] The average age of these slaves is 20 years. They are seduced, tricked or kidnapped in their source countries due to extreme poverty as well as the low status of women in those countries. Many of these young women after arrival here to work as sex slaves are kept locked up in their rooms 24/7. Immigrant agricultural workers in the U.S. work in such inhumane conditions that it becomes difficult to draw the cut-off line between slave and free person, as both are enslaved. Brought from Central American countries during peak season, they work on corporate farms putting in 14-hour days with two 15-minute breaks and a half hour for lunch. They work 85-90 hours a week. Their bodies are drenched in pesticide spray. They are not given chance to wash off the pesticide, to drink water or have access to toilets.[12] They work with hazardous agricultural equipment and in a state of severe mental depression. The corporate farm owners toss them mere pittance wages. Slavery is alive and thriving in the United States. Only the color of the skin has changed. And these slaves are not represented in any district. They do not vote in elections. They have no rights at all. They are prisoners in our country. And people talk of American democracy?
Women
Women were not given any rights in the U.S. Constitution. They were not even mentioned. They had to fight like mad simply to get the right to vote. No, the chauvinists of 1776 forgot all about their better halves. However, in 1848 the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution were superseded by a far more glorious document presented at the Seneca Falls Convention called “Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions,” in which it was written:
“The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her…He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective office. He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice. He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and degrade men – both native and foreigners…. He has oppressed her on all sides. He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead… [and above all] He has endeavored, in every way that he could, to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing, to lead a dependent and abject life.”[13]
See the shameless crimes of chauvinist men! Centuries or millenniums ago, matrilineal societies abounded in the world. Women were held in high esteem by those ancient civilizations. But gradually over centuries men usurped those rights and made women into a commodity, into chattel. For two centuries the brutal barbarism against African Americans and Native Indians never even entered the mental fabric of the American psyche. But also, and even today, brutal barbarism towards women quietly continues behind the closed residential doors of nuclear families. Marital rape occurs amongst 12-15 percent of the female population.[14] Four women are slaughtered daily by their spouses in the United States.[15] Thousands more lie in hospital emergency rooms barely alive with broken bones and shredded souls. American white women are paid 73 cents for every dollar paid to an American man for the same work. African American women are paid 52 cents for every 73 cents earned by a white woman. The glass ceiling in the workplace remains in many cases more than two feet thick and hence unbreakable. Fifty, sixty and seventy-year-old women work ten-hour days earning pittance in the lock boxes of wealthy corporate banks. But the real crime is in the home. The real crime is the violence perpetrated against women by their spouses in the form of physical violence, verbal, economic, psychological, moral, emotional, social and legal abuse.[16] Evidence shows that even the worst physical violence is in time forgotten, because human beings can forget physical pain. But the psychological torture meted out to women disturbs their minds til the end of their lives. Do we read of this torture in any newspaper? Are women protected from such torture in the U.S. Constitution? Or by any of its later amendments? Sarkar says, there is no chance for the welfare of the world unless the condition of women is improved. It is not possible for a bird to fly on one wing.
The United States Constitution is a Failed Constitution, and this very failure has resulted in a failed state. The country became degenerate in every sense of the word. The word Empire was a part of the very founding of this country, beginning with the genocide of indigenous peoples followed by the genocide of African-Americans. Katrina tells us that the genocide of African-Americans continues. Rampant diabetes on Indian reservations due to calculated actions of the US government tells us that the genocide of indigenous peoples also continues. Who knows, maybe we will soon see the genocide of immigrants – Hispanic and Arab – along with any American who dares to dissent against the government. And so the US empire continues its morbid march across the country and across the globe. Its economic policies are nothing but economic terrorism. Arundhati Roy calls it the “new genocide,”[17] where you do not have to actually go out and shoot people. All you have to do is to set up the pertinent economic structure (called capitalism, aka World Bank, International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organization, CAFTA, NAFTA, MAFTA, et al) and sure enough, the genocide begins. Witness the suicides of thousands of farmers on the Indian subcontinent[18] as they lose all hope of survival and can no longer bear the noose of mounting debts that tightens around their neck. And all the while Prime Minister Manomohan Singh proffers sweet words of sympathy and, not to be outdone, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar talks about the well being of the Indian cricket players.[19] Forget the starving farmers!
Professor Prince Brown of Northern Kentucky University said we need to find a way to maximize the full potentialities of human beings and to minimize their sufferings. Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King had a dream, a glorious vision. It was not just for America. It was for entire humanity. His mind and his love extended way beyond U.S. borders and reached out to the world. For this very reason, his name got embedded in the history books for all time. Most of his life he spent fighting for very fundamental, basic, political rights of African-Americans, which the fraudulent, white man-made U.S. Constitution denied them. He fought for an end to riding at the back of the bus. He fought for an end to segregated coffee shops and toilets. He fought for an end to segregated schools and universities. And he fought for the right to vote. Towards the end of his life he changed. He began to understand that the root of the evil lay not in politics but in economics. He had fought the hard fight for political rights. Now he began to fight the far harder battle for economic rights. He did not restrict himself to African-Americans. He spoke on behalf of all people who lived lives of helpless, hopeless impoverization. He began to speak against serial imperial American wars. He knew well who was going to fight and die in those wars. And above all, he began to speak of economic justice. It would be fair to assume here that when he began his fight for economic justice, it became too much for the powers that be. They had no alternative but to kill him. They had to silence his voice. Reverend King had the tremendous power to rouse a nation from slumber, both by the choice of his words, by his ideas, and by the sheer power of his voice. Had he lived, it is highly probable that he would have started an economic revolution. He would have caused the entire American population for the first time in history to demand economic justice. Hence, the capitalists, the wealthy, powerful elite, had no choice but to kill him.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt also had some vision. He realized that there could be no contentment in a country if any fraction of the population is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed and insecure. He believed that America had grown under the protection of certain inalienable rights - free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures.[20] These were our fundamental political rights. Roosevelt took our rights one step further, and said that people must have economic security, because “People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made."[21] Hence on January 11, 1944 Roosevelt presented the Second Bill of Rights to the U.S. Congress. He gave these rights as the right to a useful and adequately remunerative job, the right to adequate purchasing power,[22] the right of farmers to produce and sell at a price that enables them self-sustainability, the right of all businessmen to survive economically without being dominated by monopolies or oligopolies, the right of every family to the basic necessities of food, clothing, housing, health care and education, the right not to have to worry about economic survival in old age, sickness or unemployment.[23] Franklin Roosevelt had the vision, the understanding of the absolute necessity for economic democracy. But this bill remained penned only. Sixty years later the people of the United States continue to have no economic rights and no economic democracy. What’s more, Americans don’t even realize that they should fight for it. They don’t even realize that economic rights are their birthright. They don’t realize that the minimum necessities of life, including housing, health care, food and education are their birthright as human beings, as per the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Herein lies the tragedy. It is the lack of economic democracy that leads to the horrible class divide and class wars that have plagued America since its inception.
Redeeming the Dream
“Going
against a recognized legal code is called a crime. A particular community or
particular state rests on certain fundamental laws and regulations. When these
rules and regulations are concerned with the laws of the state, they are called
the constitution. When these rules and regulations are concerned with the
administration of justice, they are called social law. Any action which is ultravires
to the constitution or the social law is considered a crime. That is why in
different countries there are differences of opinion about many things except a
few cardinal human principles. With different people and states, the
constitution, legal code, administration and judiciary are bound to vary. For
this reason, people, when they remain in a particular country, are required to
follow the constitution, law, judicial codes and executive decisions of the
country concerned. Otherwise they will be charged with crimes. If we try to
expand the scope of the few fundamental human cardinal principles, that will
pave the way for the greater unity of the human society. Humanity or
Neohumanism will thereby acquire accelerated speed, which is one of the essential
factors for the path of proper movement. If the fundamental unity G10of human
society increases more and more, and divisive differences steadily decrease,
then universal humanity is bound to be united under a common ideology. This
should not remain a utopian dream. It should be the first expression of the
practical wisdom of humanity.”[24]
- Shrii Prabhat
Ranjan Sarkar
No constitution today in the world is perfect. There is great variation from country to country and from state to state within one country. In India, for example, there is one set of laws for the Hindu population and another set of laws for the Muslim population based on Islamic Shariah. All constitutions are in a state of evolution. Perhaps the five-year-old Bolivarian Constitution of Venezuela would be the most progressive constitution in the world. According to Shrii Sarkar’s statement above, if we can expand the scope of fundamental human cardinal principles in every region, then automatically the laws and hence the constitutions of regions and nation states will coincide. Those newly written constitutions will resonate with their commonalities rather than their differences. What are those human cardinal principles? The include liberty, equality, fraternity and the divinity of man. Their resulting expressions are sympathy, compassion, love for the lives of others, fundamental respect for the inherent divinity of all created beings, and universal outlook. These are more important than social values such as economic efficiency and productivity. Sarkar talks about a Neo-Magna Carta, involving the formation of a world government, which will also require a world constitution. That world constitution would require a charter of principles or bill of rights to encompass at the very least the following: (1) Complete security should be guaranteed to all plants and animals on the planet; (2) Each country must guarantee purchasing power to its citizens; (3) The constitution should guarantee four fundamental rights: (a) spiritual practice, (b) cultural legacy, (c) education, and (d) indigenous expression; (4) If the practice of any of these rights conflicts with cardinal human values, then that practice will be curtailed. In other words, cardinal human values will take precedence over all other rights.[25]
A prime present drawback of the U.S. constitution is that individual rights are given maximum scope (at least in comparison to some developing countries), and this leads to unrestrained capitalism and resulting unbounded capitalist exploitation. Capitalist political liberty is granted but not economic freedom. In addition, the constitution does not guarantee adequate and increasing purchasing power to citizens.[26] A statement must be included about unity in diversity emerging from a multilingual, multisocial and multiracial society. Social amity, cultural/linguistic legacy, equality and unity among races must be included. Another critical point hitherto unmentioned or perhaps not thought of is the right of flora and fauna to exist and thrive. In the exploitative capitalist framework we have seen the brutal destruction of ecological biodiversity in the name of the bottom line. This needs to change. Still another point is with regard to the moral standard and character of the president. A high moral standard must be guaranteed. If a president does not meet an acceptable standard, there must be means to remove him from office. Every citizen should have the right to file a case against the president of the United States. Every individual, irrespective of race, class or gender must be considered equal before the law and before the constitution. The law and the constitution should coincide.
To live as human beings means to love without limits. And as Reverend King said, an injustice anywhere is an injustice everywhere. Any injustice is a deep wound in the hearts of human beings. To redeem the dream, it must be guaranteed in the Constitution – any constitution – that that there is but one culture and it is called the human culture. There may be myriad regional variations throughout a country, but human culture is one. As the great Bengali poet, Satyendranath, wrote:
There is only one race in the world,
And that is the human race.
Nourished with the milk of the same Mother Earth,
Dwelling within the same compass of the sun and the moon.
The same heat and cold, the same hunger and thirst,
We all equally feel.
We all struggle to preserve our lives.
We seek friends and comrades, and build happy homes,
We all drown in water, we all thrive on land.
Black and white are merely external hues –
Internally the blood of all is red.
By penetrating below the surface,
The true inner nature is instantly revealed.
The brahmin and the outcaste, the great and the small,
Are all artificial distinctions that ultimately crumble to
dust.
When love awakens in sleeping souls,
Then true human beings will emerge.
There is no difference between one color, one race and
another.
For the entire universe is pervaded by One Infinite
Consciousness.[27
[1] This has been documented by investigative journalist Greg Palast, who did a thorough study of voting machine fraud going back to the first George Bush. The results are in his latest book called Armed Madhouse: Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf?, China Floats, Bush Sinks, The Scheme to Steal '08,No Child's Behind Left, and Other Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War (2006). According to Palast, due to voting machine fraud and other tactics concocted by Katherine Harris,et al, more than one million African Americans were disenfranchised. Further information on voting machine fraud can be found at www.blackboxvoting.org. Several books have also been published, the latest being Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen?: Exit Polls, Election Fraud, and the Official Count (2006). Generally, exit polls always tally with results. Hence exit polls have always been used by the media to predict the results. Since 2000, exit polls no longer tally with results. The reason? Machine fraud.
[2] Garda Ghista, “The Rights of Prisoners and International Law,” Center for Research on Globalization. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=GHI20051030&articleId=1170
[3] The U.S. Constitution and Fascinating Facts About It, Naperville: Oak Hill Publishing Company, 2006, p. 31.
[4] Garda Ghista, “Muckrakers and Freedom of the Press in the 20th Century and Beyond,” Prout World, http://www.proutworld.org. 2004.
[5] Garda Ghista, “Pre-emptive Invasion and International Law,” Center for Research on Globalization, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=GHI20051213&articleId=1477
[6] Shrii Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, Human Society, Kolkata: Ananda Marga Publications, 1999, p. 240.
[7] Cornel West, The Cornel West Reader, New York: Civitas Books, 1999, p. xv.
[8] Ibid, pp. xix-xx.
[9] Michael Ruppert of From the Wilderness website has fled to Venezuela where he remains, in the face of escalating death threats for his increasing public exposure of the real perpetrators of 9/11. Please see the article posted today at http://www.worldproutassembly.org/archives/2006/09/fury_as_academi.html for more information.
[10] The U.S. Constitution and Fascinating Facts About It, Naperville: Oak Hill Publishing Company, 2006, p. 31.
[11] Garda Ghista, “ASI and the Globalization of Slavery,” Prout World. 2002,
[12] Fingers to the Bone: United States Failure to Protect Child Farmworkers, New York: Human Rights Watch, 2000.
[13] Paula S. Rothenberg, Race, Class and Gender in the United States, 6th Edition, New York: Worth Publishers, 2003, p. 456-458.
[14] Garda Ghista, “Marital Rape,” Indymedia. http://publish.indymedia.org/en/2006/07/843711.shtml. After great opposition, marital rape was declared a crime at the UN Convention on Women’s Rights in Beijing.
[15] Julia T. Wood, Gendered Lives: Communication, Gender and Culture, Boston: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 2000 (Introduction).
[16] Garda Ghista, “Wife Abuse,” Prout World, http://www.proutworld.org/features/wifab.htm.
[17] Arundhati Roy, “Do Turkeys Enjoy Thanksgiving?” The Hindu, January 8, 2004, http://www.hinduonnet.com/2004/01/18/stories/2004011800181400.htm
[18] Regarding subcontinents, Lewis and Wigen’s book The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography asks the salient question that why do Europeans consider their little peninsula an entire continent while the vast lands of India and China are referred to as subcontinents. It is unbounded ethnocentrism.
[19] P. Sainath, “Withering Lives,” Frontline (the Hindu Publications), Volume 23, Issue 17, Aug 26-Sept 8, 2006. http://www.frontline.in/stories/20060908004500400.htm
[20] Only free worship remains available today to the American people.
[21] The Second Bill of Rights: Excerpt from 11 January 1944 message from President Franklin D. Roosevelt to Congress. http://www.worldproutassembly.org/archives/2006/05/the-second-bill.html.
[22] The guarantee of adequate purchasing power is the key to moving towards economic democracy. According to Sarkar, this guarantee should be written into every constitution in the world. Then, if any individual is denied his minimum necessities of life, he will have the legal right to sue his government for denial of those rights.
[23] Ibid.
[24] Prabhat R. Sarkar, Prout in a Nutshell, Part XII, Kolkata: AM Publications, 1987, p. 5.
[25] Prabhat R. Sarkar, “Requirements of an Ideal Constitution,” Prout in a Nutshell, Part 12, Kolkata: AM Publications, 1987, pp. 45-52.
[26] Ibid.
[27] Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, Prout in a Nutshell, Part X, Kolkata: AM Publications, 1987, pp. 55-56.