American Spring: Revolution 2.0

Andrew Bosworth

It is easy to imagine an “American Spring” in 2012, and a non-violent revolution that restores the Constitution and gives Americans a chance at peace and prosperity.

People would converge to create a critical mass: the original Tea Partiers (1.0) and Occupy Wall Street protesters, among others, in a united front.

This is not a remote possibility. This article is not speculative but is rather reporting stirrings visible today…

This convergence would advance core goals, but it would also encourage debate in order to transcend the “liberal-conservative” spectrum.

Only a convergence, after all, can create a nation in which free markets and social cooperation are mutually reinforcing – taking Americans to the next level of individual liberty and .

Fortunately, the US Constitution already provides a working template for decentralization and bottom-up change. There is no need to re-invent the wheel.

Tea Party 1.0

How soon people forget. The original Tea Party (1.0) began in 2008, when the sitting president was a Republican. It opposed the entire Washington – Wall Street axis of power and greed.

Back then (before the Tea Party became the Neanderthal wing of the Republican Party) the Tea Party 1.0 advanced 5 basic goals:

1. Ending the debt-based, fiat money system of the Federal Reserve, and moving towards a system of sound money.
2. Ending banker bailouts and corporate welfare.
3. Limiting the federal government and upholding States’ rights.
4. Protecting the civil liberties of the Bill of Rights.
5. Disengaging from foreign wars and entanglements in the Middle East and bringing troops home to “nation-build” in America.

The Establishment panicked. The two political parties, the corporate media, and even “Homeland Security” worked along parallel lines to give the Tea Party an ugly make-over.

The federal government planted agents among protesters with racist signs – which then attracted true racists. The corporate media spotlighted the most uneducated, beer-swilling protesters.

Within three months, the Establishment transformed the original Tea Party into a mob of rednecks, hayseeds and suburban rabble.

The Republican Party then delivered the coup de grâce. It encouraged the more compliant Tea Partiers to run for Congress, hijacking the movement: Tea Party 2.0.

Today, Tea Party 2.0 Republicans do not fight to “End the Fed” or work to create a system of sound money. Tinkering with the budget without abolishing the Fed simply renegotiates America’s indentured servitude.

Today, Tea Party 2.0 Republicans also adopt a moralistic platform, concerned with the marriage preferences of strangers and what they smoke. Tea Party 1.0 did not distract themselves (or others) with divisive social issues. Instead, the original Tea Partiers focused on the economy, federalism, and ending the wars.

Today, Tea Party 2.0 Republicans are even militaristic, their ranks filled with bugle-blowing Islamophobes.

Tea Partiers 2.0 are willing to launch another war – this time in Iran, engineered by the same neo-cons responsible for the Iraq fiasco.

Not only does Russia insist that Iran does not have an active nuclear weapons program, but the actual 2011 IAEA report highlights activity that ended in 2004. There has been much ado in the western press about computer modeling of explosions in 2008 and 2009 (common in reactor physics), but they not prohibited in the IAEA Agreement or Protocols. (links below the article) . Yes, Virginia, there really is a whole lot of war propaganda goin’ on…

Yet this neo-con, globalist faction is itching for World War III, and they need Tea Party 2.0 to provide them with some fake patriotism.

Indeed, Tea Party 2.0 is an absolute disgrace.

This is unfortunate, because Tea Party 1.0 brought a powerful constitutional message to national politics. Tea Party 1.0 recognized – as did the Founders – that domestic tyranny and foreign empires go hand in hand.

What is to be done? People who joined the original Tea Party movement (1.0) should reclaim it. Using the 1.0 designation helps.

This means renouncing the Republican Party and its Astroturf organizations, and returning home to libertarianism and constitutionalism.

Just like the Democratic Party, the Republican Party is an Establishment party of deficit spending, corporate welfare, police state legislation, and endless wars. Together, these Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee parties have maintained a duopoly of power since the 1830s, but America is now experience a surge of democratization.

Tea Party 1.0 knew that solutions are state and local, not national. While many OWS protesters talk about localization, some remain fixated on national and even international solutions.

Tea Party 1.0 also knew that “taxing the rich” only provides Washington DC with more money to waste and steal. Taxation simply feeds the Beast.

Besides, as the Founders detailed in the Constitution, the states must collect taxes – not the federal government.

It follows that the states must organize medical, social, educational, and other programs – not the federal government.

“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.” James Madison

Occupy Wall Street

Occupy Wall Street reminded us that American society is now extremely stratified, with a huge gap between the wealthy (the 1% of the population) and everyone else (the 99%).

Interestingly, the corporate media often stereotypes OWS protesters, singling out punks, meth addicts, dazed-and-confused aging hippies, and anyone else who could deflect attention from the fact that most OWS protesters are ordinary workers, students, retirees and single mothers – often with children in tow.

OWS protesters are often quite articulate. They regularly note that globalization is not based on free or fair trade. It is based corporate monopolies, financial speculation, human trafficking, and war.

In this top-down globalization scheme, governments often facilitate wealth extraction, colluding with high finance to defraud the People of their income and property.

When some OWS protesters denounce “capitalism” what they are really denouncing is the “crapitalism” that prevails today. Technically, what the protesters are actually denouncing is “neo-fascism,” the interlocking of Big Government and Big Business, with an anti-democratic agenda.

After all, the United States has not had true capitalism or free markets since before the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913. But that does not prevent the 1% from using the rhetoric of free enterprise, rather cynically, as a smokescreen for their predatory and parasitic business practices.

The OWS did learn from the mistake of the Tea Party. It refused to be assimilated, or co-opted, by the Democratic Party, by Moveon.org, or by any liberal group. OWS is still OWS 1.0.

Establishment conservatives, especially in the corporate media, pretend that OWS is “liberal.” OWS is not liberal. If anything, OWS is non-ideological, interested in pragmatic approaches that combine individual liberty with social justice.

Most OWS protesters reject both parties and the entire liberal-conservative paradigm. Many of them feel betrayed by liberal-democratic politics and refuse to vote for Establishment clones of either party.

The OWS movement does not have any constant or universal goals. But OWS does have strategies, evident in its actions.

OWS displays 2 valuable strategies:

1. Maintaining independence from the two-party system in order to accomplish fundamental transformation rather than superficial reform.
2. Building a long-term movement, with a focus on bottom-up, adaptive and horizontal cooperation.

Revolution 2.0

Tea Party 1.0 and OWS would benefit from sidelining peripheral issues of drug policy, abortion, and immigration – until these issues can be addressed within a healthier political climate.

These issues are important, but they are not as important as the core issues of the economy, political decentralization, or war and peace.

As a unified front, the Tea Party (1.0) and OWS can reach a critical mass and restore peace and prosperity. Returning to the Constitution would, in and of itself, be revolutionary.

Last time (1776), the winds of change swept across the Atlantic to help fuel the French Revolution (1789).

Perhaps if Americans set an example, Europeans might break out of their bankster Euro-prison and replace its authoritarian technocracy with people-powered democracies.

In the US, the answer to Orwell’s 1984 is 1776; in Europe, the answer is 1789. But this time around, the ultimate outcome should be political decentralization. That is how both revolutions developed before being reversed by counter-revolutions.

A Revolution 2.0 would limit the federal government to its enumerated powers – making room for ordinary people to return to their states, counties and cities, to begin the work of restoring America from the bottom-up.

A Revolution 2.0 would Occupy Washington DC and the institutions that deprive the nation of peace and prosperity; compromise national sovereignty; entangle the nation in foreign alliances; divert national resources; and perpetuate debt slavery.

More specifically, a Revolution 2.0 might also include:

1. Advancing a “Petition of Grievances.”
2. Demanding resignations across a swath of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches.
3. Insisting upon a full Audit of the Federal Reserve.
4. Drafting proposals for state Nullification of unconstitutional acts and orders.

This, therefore, might be what an “American Spring” looks like:

Tea Party 1.0 + OWS 1.0 = American Revolution 2.0
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Andrew Carl Bosworth, Ph.D. was born in Panama in 1962 and has been on the move ever since, living with his family in Spain, France, Italy, Tunisia and Washington DC, and then as an instructor in Haiti, Australia, Mexico and Japan. His wersonal webpage is here: http://www.proftrek.com/.
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Article published here: multipolarfuture.com
URL: http://www.a-w-i-p.com/index.php/2011/12/23/american-spring-revolution-2