Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Yes We Can.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to Justice anywhere.” (King, 242) In society today, there are numerous injustices the world feels that it cares not to, or is incapable to, fix. America was not always the country that the rest of the world saw as a problem, but shortly after World War II, the world was also settled in quite nicely, and an ideological slumber fell over the United States. People simply were not paying attention, and were becoming heavily prideful. This slowly progressed through segregation and bloated until the transcendental explosion of the 1960’s. The in-groups of Civil Rights quickly realized that there was something that could be done for segregation. Vietnam quickly awoke the “sleeping dog,” of public opinion, and there was an explosive change that to this day effects the lives and minds of many people in the American public. (Diggins, 30)
Many injustices have become a part of every day life in modern American life. From hometown healthcare, and flaws in welfare and government help, to the more recent corruption of big business and the economic recession that has stricken the country, and the unconstitutional decisions made in proper supreme and federal judicial courts, this as well as plenty of corruptions in our own house and senate has lead to the corruption that is slowly making America fail and flail, and drag other country’s economy down with us. All the while, the military is fighting unjust wars, plural, that seem to be uphill battles and public opinion is finally being awoken from the euphoria it has been living in the years before the Bush administration. This is more than anything hurting the country significantly. Every party tie has their own outlook on how to fix the problems, but what this country needs is a drastic change. Something that will make the problems that exist in the plain view of the public, begin to be solved.
“When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.” (Jefferson,1) The Founding Fathers declared the day our nation seceded completely from their binds to the motherland that one must look to their own thoughts and ideas in order to make a change. Breaking ties is one of the things the American people must do in order to make a conclusive and strong difference in their generation. People have to wake up and make a change on their own. The change starts with each person. Not an individual leader, or administration, but within the people who’s minds are laid to rest by their own contentment. (Dream, 578)
The American people must recognize the numerous “…appalling condition[s]…” that face the country today. Many people stand within the middle group, who do not feel like they can do a thing. What these people do not know is that they have more power than they know. They have to show the resistance and give the tension that those in the out groups are made uncomfortable by. Be a part of the in group. Martin Luther King, JR makes a number of references to be not afraid of the tension. That the time is not tomorrow, but that the “…time is now. Now is the time.” Those who are not afraid of this must quickly learn the “urgency of now.”(Dream, p.4, 578)
Those within the fighters and those awoken must have the fierce determination of Civil Rights Activists in 1963. In this discontentment, one must also find the fine line between change and hate, and the use of the ever popular transcendental thinking. Civil disobedience that will easily shake the country we live in today. Those who do fight these changes “cannot fight alone,” and in the walk of the modern world, it is now even harder to find people willing to cause the uncomfortable changes. (Dream, 579) These methods more than definitely made a difference in the 1960’s, and now that the country is awake again, this use of true political thought, and peaceful non-capitalistic democratic thinking, could rescue the country from falling into past influence.
The out groups of the issues may quickly see the flaws in uprising. Logical thinking will see how conditional “right” and “wrong” are (Thoreau,218). Radical thought can usually lead to some pretty dirty actions. If people do not learn from that past, then they are quickly doomed to repeat it. The quickest way to make and unjust law recognized is to not follow it. Henry David Thoreau, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King JR, both intelligent and strong activists within context, can all agree “an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind,” and that violence in Civil disobedience will leave more problems than the world started with. (King, 243) This direct action will cause negotiation.(Thoreau,218)
The American people must be dissatisfied with the way things are before anything can begin to change. It must be said: those who are greedy in big business “Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises?” (Thoreau, 217) Lawmakers and Judicial authorities that have become unjust: “…Shall we content to obey them? Or shall we endeavor to amend them and obey them…or shall we transgress them at once?”(Thoreau,219) The Founding Fathers were rebellious to what they saw as wrong, and now the United States public as a whole in this time of technology, must delve back to the original constitution and its message. “We will not be shipwrecked on a vain reality,” (Thoreau,218) but see the country through its hardship, turmoil’s, and utter mistakes, and be “Free at last, Free at last…” Yes, we can.

Word Count: 1003

Bibliography
Diggins, John Patrick. The Proud Decades. W.W. Norton and Company. Boston. 1988.
Hatch, Gary. Arguing in Communities. King Jr, Martin Luther. “Letter From Birmingham Jail.”
Ed. 3. McGraw Hill. Boston. 1983.
Slaughter, Beverly J. Ed. The Rhineheart Reader. King Jr, Martin Luther. “I Have a Dream.”
Thompson Wadsworth. Boston. 1999.
Thoreau, Henry David. Walden and Resistance To Civil Government. W.W Norton and
Company. New York.