Let’s Stand Our Ground

Gandhi, King, Mandela and Congressman John Lewis stood tall, non-violently, for equality and freedom, even when beaten and imprisoned. This is standing your ground.  Stalking unarmed teenagers, whether self-proclaimed gang leader or self-appointed neighborhood watch, is not.

‘Stand Your Ground’ like Helen Thomas did, when a foxy President cornered by the wise old feisty hen, tried tap dancing to the tune:  I didn’t really want to preemptively strike and go to war with a country which had nothing to do with the 2,977 deaths on 9/11. I just wanted to ‘shock and awe’ until 3,527 Americans stood their last ground for the American Dreams of Bankers and BP/Halliburton corporate types.

Detroit, though only one example of neglecting urban issues to death, deserves fellow American citizens standing their ground to prevent more murders and more Governors hiring more city managers for more city obits.

Whether financial burden on those trying to get the highest and best education, or deterioration of employer provided healthcare, or home ownership, or funeral charged to a credit card, BANKs are the Alpha of American BANKruptcy and Foreclosure, their Omega for Right and Left Americans.

So “Stand Your Ground” as much against those who start wars for profit with no financial motivation for ending them, as we stand our national security ground against those who choose to expose the felicity of power’s foreign and domestic spying and killing machines.

Nonetheless, those standing their ground for bathtub drowned government, without realizing how very passé is the time without taxes allowing Robber Barons to “build America” on the backs of their assembly lined unrepresented worker bees, need their “Father, Knows Best” reality checked.

When we profess standing your ground for our U. S. Constitution, is the highest expression of American patriotism, then as “We the People” we are obliged to “Stand Your Ground’ in defense of a tasteless and insensitive magazine cover, and ‘Stand Your Ground’ by neither buying the publication nor buying into a myopic press, or gerrymandered government.

As patriotic Americans standing our ground for The First Amendment, we are standing up for a Mosque in lower Manhattan, and the “right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”  However, unless living in our largest IOU holder, one citizen’s freedom is not allowed to infringe on another’s.

Speaking of China, it’s really not all that American to ‘Stand Your Ground’ herded by ABC’s “Made in America” ratings solicitation.  Our past trials in isolationism aided and abetted world wars, holocaust, genocide, ethnic cleansing, starving children, women as chattel, export import imbalance and the inhumanity of the powerful on the “least of these.”

Better to ‘Stand Your Ground’ as a super power for humanity and example of ‘Truth, Justice and a new and improved American Way,’ but be conservative when standing your ground on hunting trips, with a friend so much a legend in his own wonder lust and filled with unknown hydration sources, that you, like oil sources get in his sights.

As earth Stewarts, we need to be good listening neighbors, who remember to send the elevator back down for the next generation, so truly, ‘No Child is Left Behind.”  That’s the wise alternative to self-destruction by corporate media driven polarization.

Standing your ground against potential contribution of women and citizens of every color, has already cost America a colossal reservoir of immense talent, and we need to do better.

Having lived on ‘both sides of the track’ President Barack Obama is probably a good choice to guide us into the 21st century reality that Franklin was correct, “we must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

Let’s stand our ground with our children, who are better.