"Live free or die: Death is not the worst of evils."
General John Stark
American Revolutionary, New Hampshire Militia
In each generation there is a political establishment that serves a particular need in society. Sometimes it serves the needs of the many and more often it serves the needs of the few--the powerful, the wealthy, those who own the chains of freedom. We each hold a belief that if only I had such and such, then I would be happy, free to be my own man or woman. It is the owners of said such and such that in turn own the people and dangle the perception, the lure of freedom as a way to profit and control. The stories in a society define who we are, the storytellers control our identity. In modern society we call the professional storytellers marketers, advertisers, public relations reps, and politicians. They spin story so artfully we forgive the deception. Will I really be that popular if I drink that beer, wear that perfume, drive that car? Are they really so beautiful, clean, and likable as they are on the red carpet or in that show or movie? Well, of course they are, I read it/saw it in the news.
In the early part of the Eighteenth Century, the dominant story was still the divine right of Kings. Good King George certainly relied on it to extract the wealth of his colonies for his own purposes. Taxation without representation was a given, the King was instituted by God to rule the people. Allegiance to the King defined one's prosperity. The King as patriarch oversaw the people's safety and well being. The King owned the chains of freedom, serve him wholeheartedly or suffer the consequences. While the Magna Carta had changed the story slightly taking away absolute power from the King bestowing specific rights on the people. This became a stepping stone for a new chapter in the story, a new story where those who are exploited rise up against the oppressor, fighting to live free or die.
Before Hitler was the supreme leader of the Third Reich, he was a demagogue, an artful storyteller of the people, weaving a story of honor, strength, and fortitude in the face of adversity. He used and reused symbols and myth to define the identity of a people, deserving and invincible, true patriots of the cause of freedom. Those who held the chains of freedom, the industrial owners, bankers, foreigners, and cultural elitist who opposed them were on the wrong side of history and truth--they were the oppressors, the degenerates who held down the true strength and destiny of the German people. They must be destroyed at all costs. It was this story which made the German people nearly invincible, conquering most of Europe and part of Asia. For the German people, it was also live free or die.
Were the newly founded Americans right and the new Reich Germans wrong because one won and the other lost the fight for their freedom? Both believed emphatically in their cause, giving heart and soul, life and limb to their cause célèbre. Does passion for an ethic, a value system, devotion to God and Country make one right? What is the difference between a revolutionary and a terrorist, a patriot and traitor, a hero and a oppressor?
Ultimately the questions are answered by how one defines freedom. The American Architects believed in a society where different values were respected and protected, all Men are created equal without regards to class, religion, or presumed divine rights, where Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness were protected by the state. The chains of freedom were loosed by the state giving individuals rights and privileges that had been reserved for Kings and their Consorts.
The German Nazi Architects, on the other hand, believed in a society based on a racially defined Aryan feudal system of privileged aristocratic supermen served by lesser evolved, degenerate populace. Inequality bore the chains of freedom which was defined by service to the state--those who served became feudal overlords. Happiness was a product of eugenics and utility to one's race; only when one accepted one's racial fate could one truly be happy. There is only one state defined Truth, one story that is acceptable to tell--everything else is the product of a degenerate society; belief in such liberal propaganda only verifies one's degeneracy.
While in the German Nazi story the storyteller was unequivocally the state, in the American story the storytellers were a free, open, and unbiased press, what Jefferson emphasized as “The freedom of the press is one of the great bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by a despotic government” and Thomas Carlyle popularly referred to as the Fourth Estate equal to the three traditional representational branches of government.
America was born before the industrial revolution. The Architects lived in an agrarian society surrounded by city dwelling craftsmen, merchants, and traders. Land was the primary basis of wealth and power. By the end of the industrial revolution just over 100 years later, the power base had shifted to the industrial giants, those who owned the mechanisms for production. Corporate owners became the power brokers in the new American social and economic structure. Freedom under the Architects was the freedom of the individual to live their lives according to their own values and beliefs unfettered by the State or the exploitation of others. As the power base shifted, by the end of the twentieth century, Freedom was redefined as the freedom of the economic power base to exist unfettered by the State and exploitation was no longer a moral principle but a right of the corporation to utilize whatever means to profit. While the German Nazis were looking backwards to a feudal land based utopian (for Aryans) society and economy, the World War ushered in an economic power structure that dismantled any last vestiges of the society and economy that America was founded on.
The story of who and what America was forever changed, the chains of freedom were now in the hands of profiteers and capitalists. The storytellers were now owned by the corporations. In the American political system, propaganda was no longer the property of the State but rather was now a means of survival of the corporate infrastructure. While industrialist Rupert Murdoch reinvention of Fox News as a political propaganda machine is the most blatant and well documented example of the downfall of the democratic journalism espoused by Jefferson, the entire field itself has become the "news business" and now is owned by major corporations that to some degree influence the stories that are told. One of the few exceptions being National Public Radio and the Public Broadcast Service which are membership supported with a small part being granted by Congress. Not surprisingly the deeper one is in the hands of the corporate till the more likely it is that storytellers will try to devalue the non-corporate owned entities as unpatriotic and biased.
Fundamentally, what has happened to the American value system? Are we now longer citizens of a representative democracy but rather consumers of a corporate political system? Has the story of individual freedom and respect been lost to the social and economic changes of the last 200 years? Is the new morality of exploitation and domination the new, true American spirit?
In the mid twentieth century a new form of storytelling became popularized as a grassroots challenge to the status quo. It became known as "Rock and Roll"--it challenged the politics, morality, and economics of traditional American society. It crossed racial boundaries, asked hard questions, protested wars, and even at its most light-hearted challenged a button down, keep in your pants Victorian moral system that excoriated the unfaithful. It was at the heart of a popular revolution in the spirit of Stark's "Live Free or Die." With money to be made Corporate America found ways to tame and commoditize it, which gave birth to a second generation of popular protest, the Punk movement of the late 70's and 80's which shunned commercialization and challenged the greed and hypocrisy of Reagan's Corporate America. By the mid-90's the corporate machinery had silenced the last channels of protest. Even when the internet opened the doors to popular communication, true democratic exchange, it failed to find a broad base in the political discourse. The chains of freedom were fitted by the Corporate storytellers and we no longer wanted what are forefathers fought and died for, now satisfied with an X-Box and McDonald's cheeseburger, too often we now live in mediocrity and die in obscurity.
Ultimately we as a society must address a fundamental question, are we a democracy or an oligarchy of multinationals and wealthy business owners? Should the owners of the means of production and service be the primary influencers and controllers of social and political life, a form of exploitative capitalism heralded in modern libertarian economics--everything is a commodity and the people "vote" by their dollars, a system without political protections for minority views which unceremoniously discards the vulnerable and incapacitated in back alleys and cardboard cities? Or do we choose to require businesses to operate within the bounds of the public good by offering goods and services with full disclosure and value rewarding innovation rather than conceit--a representative democracy of the people, where businesses serve and are accountable to the people and are not allowed to invest in politicians?
Live Free or Die in Corporate America... the choice is up to you.
Happy Independence Day
