• So when I see the flag and think of the Declaration of Independence I see the United Corporations of America; I see the blood and bones of people all over the globe who have been dehumanized, then exterminated by its imperialism; and I see a symbol that represents a monstrous lie maintained by excessive, deadly force. It makes me feel sick, and ashamed.

• Liberation Requires Disobedience

S. Brian Willson, brianwillson.com

Submitted by David Culver

I was probably seven years old before it really sunk in that everybody in my town was not celebrating my birthday on July 4. It was an exciting day with parades, picnics, fireworks and, in my case, special birthday parties and gifts. I lived much of my young life with the extra boost of having been born on the day that our earliest political framers signed the Declaration of Independence, an historical act of defiance against monarchial colonial rule from distant England. I remember proudly carrying the U.S. American flag in one of the July 4th parades in my small, agricultural town in upstate New York. And for years I felt goosebumps looking at Old Glory waving in the breeze during the playing of the national anthem or as it passed by in a parade. How lucky I was to have been born in the greatest country in the history of the world, and blessed by God to boot. Such a blessing, such a deal!

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Liberation Requires Disobedience, S. Brian Willson, brianwillson.com
We are complicit with our own repression. Our own stubborn allegiance to modernity that outsources all the pain and suffering to other peoples and the planet is a kind of mental illness of pathological narcissism and delusions of grandeur. It is a kind of suicide/ecocide.