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Tuesday -- April 9, 2002—Ground Zero Plus 210

"Vigilance Wars"
by
Cliff McKenzie
Editor, New York City Combat Correspondent News 
 

        GROUND ZERO, New York City, April 9--New York City is the heartland of protest.  It is also the battleground of the Vigilance Wars.
        Three major battles were being waged this weekend at the same time in the City That Never Sleeps.  Each of the battles involved institutions, which have their roots in thousands of years of culture, history, and bloodletting. 
        The first battleground was at the doorstep of Saint Patrick's Cathedral.   Catholic protestors shouted and chanted against Cardinal Egan and his reluctance to issue files on priests accused of, or found guilty of prior sexual misconduct.   Some called for his resignation based on an alleged history of past "cover ups" within the Church when he was aware of priests being shuffled from parish to parish in Connecticut but did nothing to bring it into the open.   The protestors stood in front of the famous St. Patrick Cathedral, shouting invectives at the Cardinal, demanding the end to Terrorism of their children and a reformation within the archaic structure of the Church.
        In another part of New York City the Palestinians and Arabs formed a protest line, issuing demands that Israel extricate itself from the occupied territory and allow the development of a free state of Palestine to exist.
        Still, in yet another section of the city, Jewish protestors railed against President Bush for interfering with Israel's right to fight for its rights, lambasting the United States for trying to quash its sovereign right to rid its country of Terrorism by attacking and counter balancing the slew of attacks on its citizens.
        All three issues had their roots in both history, scripture and religion.   I found it ironic that the focus of the world's conflict today came down to the fundamentals of one's belief in the institutions of government and religion--but in retrospect, that's the essence of all conflict--the opposing beliefs of people and the righteous indignation that results when there is no compromise that satisfies either side.
        I thought of the true victims of these conflicts--the children.
        In each and every case, standing in the midst of the hurling of words and bullets and bombs were the children of innocence.  Children look up at their institutions--their role models--but instead of seeing open hands guiding them along paths of freedom and joy, they see blood-stained hands and corrupted souls trying to grab them, rip off their clothes, strip them naked, and molest them physically with weapons of destruction, or sexually.   They are being threatened physically and emotionally by the scars of "Institutional Abuse," promulgated by both religion and government.
       I thought about the gods of mankind--the Buddha's, the Mohammad's, the Almighty's, the Jesus Christ's--and how ashamed each must be of the parents of the earth who have allowed Complacency to infiltrate their lives at the risk of their children's welfare.
       The news today is like allowing a suicide bomber to walk into one's living room.  At any moment, the headlines on the television or newspapers scream about the threat of physical or emotional violence to the children. Molestation.  War.  Violence.    
       I flinch as a parent, realizing the morality of the world seems to be undergoing an autopsy, and the cancers of the human condition are being exposed by the scalpel of exposure.   
        Most  sadly, the destiny of the world  is being decided by the few, not the many.
       I am, by some definitions, an anarchist.   I believe the subjugation of a person to the rule of a government is an antithesis of human rights--a form of bonded slavery in which one owes false allegiance to the "rulers" of the land.
       Thomas Paine, the architect of the American Revolution,  helped me understand the Rights Of Man come directly from God, and do not flow through the bodies of governmental or religious leaders.  I believe his thesis that any "law" that one imposes upon another is nothing more than a "human opinion" often tainted by self-will and self aggrandizement. 
       Laws, under the pure definition, are immutable, unchangeable facts not subject to interpretation.   Gravity is one such law.  No one can legislate it.   One can try to manipulate it, but only as a slave to its nature, not as its architect.
       Life and death are similar laws.   One might extend life through better medicine and health care, but one cannot eliminate death.    Men and women have invented eternity to give life a meaning after death--whether it be Islamic Paradise, the Christian Heaven, or the reincarnation of the soul.   Human beings struggle to alter "nature's law" but cannot change it, or make it--they only interpret it to fit their will, their whims.
     
        Therefore, I find it absurd that human beings in the 21st Century have not advanced much over our ancestors, the homo erectus, measured to be 1.8 million years old.   The Academy of Science dates the rise of homo sapiens, individuals much like ourselves, to be about 100,000 to 150,000 years ago.   According to science, we evolved from our ape-like ancestors, learning how to speak and use our free will and think and create.   We also learned to kill those who didn't believe in what we believed, and to build fortresses around the land we possessed, claiming our rights over it.   We became followers, clansmen and clanswomen who blindly fell in step behind a leader to whom we entrusted our future.
       Over centuries, these "governments" rose.  Some were secular, some religious.   In the end, we blindly followed the rule of the "lord" over the "serf" until  "democracy" was born within the Roman Empire, and began to spread slowly until the Rights Of Man and Woman were determined not by edict, but by voting.    Ultimately, the responsibility for our lives as human beings became vested in our choices, in our free will to conform to "imposed laws" or to refute them through revolution.
       America became the model of democracy.   Some embraced it, others refuted it.   Religions sprung from the well of man's and woman's need to believe in something larger than human frailty--to provide an authority larger than the reality of life and death, to give value to dying, and hope while living that there was life after death.
      Churches, sects, belief systems sprouted from the need within a human to find some order in the chaos, some justification for the suffering one endured, some reason for the sacrifices that life demands.  Gods were created.  They started out as forces of Nature--fire, the moon, the sky, the star.  They evolved into Zeus and 12 Titans.   Then into the Torah and Bibles and Korans.  Scripture was installed within the heart of humanity to decipher a "better way of life," often to justify the scrabbling humans endured to make ends meet, or to answer the question "why me?" when it seemed the world was a hammer and a person simply a nail to be driven by hierarchical forces of man and nature.
      Divine creation was then replaced by evolution, launched by Galileo who threatened the world of religion by announcing the earth was not the center of the universe but a mere part of it.  Later, Darwin drove the nail in the coffin by promoting evolution, and science and religion went to war.  
       Over the centuries, wars were fought between the believers and unbelievers.   Violence and Terrorism ruled those who might oppose obedience to one set of "laws."    People were put in caste systems, and taught to follow their leaders blindly to the promised land, whether that be Heaven or Paradise or on some tail of a comet passing across the Heavens.  Even Christ was interpreted narrowly to threaten those who didn't accept Him as Savior with the damnation of Hellfire.
      So when it comes to the issue of Terrorism and Vigilance, I see a world at War with Vigilance.  If Terrorism is the oppression of institutions upon the free will of humanity, then Vigilance is its counterpoint.   Vigilance is the right of the individual to refute institutional protection, and to stand up against government's and religion's protection and assume the duty of the Parent of Vigilance.  In this battle, it is a parent's responsibility, not the institution of government or religion or society to protect our fledglings.
      One can choose to live in a world of Terror by thinking another, or a group of others, has power over them and what they think and do, or where they will go upon their death, or how they should live their lives.    One who subscribes blindly to a faith or institutions created by mankind and womankind only festers the quagmire of human de-evolution, of emotional crisis, of sad and lonely disappointments that the "other" or "others" have failed them, have deserted them, have stranded them in a sea of unfulfilled expectations.
       This disillusionment is most poignant when a child is killed and a mother and father wail over the dead innocent body and scream to the heavens:  "Why, God?  Why did you let this happen?"
       Such disillusionment is exaggerated when opposing religious beliefs come to battle as the Palestinians and Jews are now locked in mortal combat, or the Protestants and Catholics in Ireland, or in Africa where warring tribes try to "kill" the disbelievers.  The world asks: "Who is right?  Why are they fighting under the veil of religious beliefs, when the truth is they only want the land?"   Yet each side struggles to give validity to its right "to kill" from scripture, written law, forgetting it was scribed by human hands.
       Then governments step in.   Human beings from other lands wage war on war, as though throwing fire on fire might stop Terrorism.   Governments assume they have the right to dictate the future of a people, a world.  They make laws to authorize their violence against violence against violence.
      What makes sense is there are no "laws" of any veracity ever made by mankind.  There is only interpretation of what some believe is "right," but could be "wrong."  But people believe, falsely, such laws are valid--gospel.
       America's Supreme Court doesn't make or change law. Neither does the House of Representatives or Senate.   They merely issue out opinions, subject to constant change.   Abortion, once a crime, is now sanctioned.   How could there be a "law" if such "law" can be changed by a single vote?   Such misnomer is harmful to anyone who accepts the word "law" as a truth, rather than a fiction.
       Vigilance and Terrorism, however, are laws.   One either lives in fear or lives in freedom from it.   Just as one either lives or dies.  
       Terrorism, like gravity, sucks one down into the caves of Complacency.  It disables one's ability to stand up and fight for what is "right."   It suggests that others are in charge, that the individual has no say in the future of his or her life, but must follow or accept the decisions of others, more important people who can "change the world."
       This sheep philosophy has ruined countless lives.   It has promoted abuse by parents, given virtue to criminals of the soul draped in religious clothing, and honored the egos of leaders who believe their way is the right way.
       That's why Vigilance becomes more important than government, or religion, or any institution which attempts to dictate to another how he or she should live, and whether he or she has committed a crime against humanity or society.
       Self government has always been the ultimate law of human nature, but the most abused and neglected law.
       Under the self-government of the self, there is only one guiding principle that has worth in regulating human behavior--and that is the welfare of the children of the earth--not just one's own children, but all the children of all the lands.
       The decisions a human beings make must be benchmarked by their ultimate effect on children.  Does such an action free a child from Terrorism and promote Vigilance within it, or does such an act further imprison a child in Fear, Intimidation and Complacency?
        Adults, primarily male leaders of society and industry, rarely give this benchmark much credence in their decisions about the future of the world.
        The Catholic Church is under attack today because its male-based "messengers from God" have corrupted their stations.
        The Middle East, which denies women rights and is ruled by men, princesses, deny the children of their lands the rights to evolve by suffocating them with principles that perpetuate poverty and pain and suffering.
        Israel's claim to the Holy Land and refusal to allow a Palestinian state denies the children of that land the ability to learn what the Jews have learned, that democracy of the self can change the past, can turn a desert into a flourishing state where health, education and opportunity abound.
        Were each individual, regardless of political or religious affiliation, to subscribe to the Principles of Vigilance, the world would shift its eagerness to suppress others to the nurturing of others--especially the children.   If man-made laws were to be imposed, they would focus solely on the abuse of children--physically and emotionally.
        America would not be exempt from such an evolution.   It would find itself just as needy, if not more needy, than its underdeveloped counterparts in this area.   When half of America's parents divorce, leaving their children in  a state of abandonment, seeking their own selfish satisfaction instead of shouldering the responsibility of parenthood, then America falls flatly on its face as a model of Vigilance.
       Further, when over 1 million babies are killed each year, denied the rights of prosperity on the whim of a individual's right to deny the propagation of the species, then America has far more blood on its hands than the Jews or Palestinians, for under such a "law of death" Americans symbolize the most cruel and dispassionate treatment of life possible--the denial of it.
       Vigilance is about Courage, Conviction and Action.  It is about making the law of human nature live above the law of Terrorism which promotes death.   Only when one makes a Pledge of Vigilance and vows to uphold it will Terrorism truly be eliminated.
       And only when one thinks through the idea of a "law",  will one realize that the only government or religious belief worth giving oneself to is the Law of Vigilance.  From that law will flow  the true fruits of humanity's future.
       Only when the War on Terrorism is fought with the Shields of Vigilance will we know peace.

    
       Semper Vigilantes.

 Go To April 8--"G-Pa, You're Too Big & Fat"--A lesson in Vigilance