We found out on the eve of our nations birthday a few weeks back that Thomas Jefferson first referred to our forbearers as “subjects” in an early draft of the Declaration of Independence.

Upon reflection Jefferson made a monumental edit that deeded us with a revolutionary identity. It seems he sought quite methodically to expunge the word, to wipe it out of existence and write over it. Many words were crossed out and replaced in the draft, but only one was obliterated. Over the smudge, Jefferson then wrote the word “citizens.”

I am loathe to say it, but we have reverted back to being Subjects.

The American corporate media culture challenges our freedom in a much more sophisticated and seductive fashion. We are saturated with images and rhetoric by which we willingly morph our identity.

Here is a brief history of the evolution and devolution of your public self. First you were a Subject ruled by a King. Then, by virtue of hard earned modern democracy you became a Citizen, one with mutual responsibility. Next, the fossil record indicates you were a Customer, signifying a relationship between a business and a buyer of goods and services.

Somewhere along the way a mutation was engineered. You are now a Consumer. You have deformed into a buying machine. A Consumer is a Subject. In the days of Kings the Subjects had no choice. They were ruled by a superior social order or military force. In our day we actively accept being Subjects.

Even in the darling progressive media outlets you are uniformly labeled a Consumer. In America it is manifestly clear that we have confounded democracy and capitalism. The Catholic monk and hermit Thomas Merton offered this spiritual diagnosis over 40 years ago.

“When we call ourselves the ‘free world’ we mean first of all the world in which business is free. If you have nothing to buy or sell freedom is, in your case, irrelevant. Profit first, people afterward.”

Capitalism can be conducted with a social conscience. The unexamined, unquestioned monoculture of consuming is leading to the collapse of all of our ecosystems.

A Consumer is a Subject, a pawn to be manipulated.

A Citizen is a Verb with dignity and purpose.

The spiritually awakened person and culture will be keen to preserve their fundamental identity.
In his wondrous sermon “Spiritual Freedom” Rev. William Ellery Channing spoke with relevance eternal.

“I call that mind free which is not passively framed by outward circumstance, which is not the creature of accidental impulse, but which bends events to its own improvement, and acts from and inward spring, from immutable principles which it has deliberately espoused.”

Seduction surrounds you. Will you be a Consumer or a Citizen?

“Can a president put somebody above the law by authorizing illegal conduct?” Leahy inquired.

“The president doesn’t stand above the law. But the law emphatically includes the Constitution. It starts with the Constitution,” he replied.

These are a few key answers Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey offered last week before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The buzz is Mukasey is sure to be confirmed. Brace yourself anew. Our next United States Attorney General will occupy that noble office continuing the policies of torture, illegal warrantless wiretapping, and the President being above our laws and constitution.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy whimpered, “He’s at least answered the questions, which is better than his predecessor.”

We now have a bar so low for the highest law enforcement office in the land that an ant could jump it. Answering the questions. The content of the answers don’t matter. Is there a person reading this that could get a job with this pitiful standard?

I grew up a literal Bible believin’, Bible quotin’, Bible thumpin’, Bible memorizin’ guy.

Some of those teachings still have potent relevance. Jesus exhorted in the Sermon on the Mount, “Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.”

Mukasey’s tack is as old as humanity; using weasels words to bypass honesty.

How long will “we the people” allow this administration to blaspheme our sacred covenants and human dignity for imaginary security?
Mukasey, “at least answered the questions.”

Yesterday President Bush lectured Cuba, “You can bring about a future where your leaders answer to you.”

Friends and Fellow citizens, what will your answer be?