SEP 15, 2017
RICK GOMBAS

FDR got in trouble with the Daughters of the American Revolution when he gave an address to them beginning with the salutation: "Fellow immigrants ..." The fine ladies were not amused. Some of their ancestors had come over on the Mayflower, and that factoid made them believe that they (and their entire social class) were better than the rabble that followed.

What they didn't know about, and wouldn't have cared had they known, was a group that arrived aboard a ship more than a decade before the Mayflower — enchained Africans in the hold, forced to Virginia with the full knowledge and support of the British monarch. Monarchs craved and loved the gold the slaves "earned"for him and his genetic ilk. The Puritans hated that gold and all it bought and brought.

The Puritan movement in Britain realized that America could provide a safe harbor for the continued progress of those religious sojourners who were being persecuted for their anti-establishment actions by the civil and religious authorities in Britain.

The Puritans who remained in Britain became the establishment just three decades later when they won a civil war, executed the (former) king for treason and then abolished the office of king with an act of Parliament. They were closely aligned with the Levellers, a political party devoted to "leveling the estates of the rich" to bring about a just society stripped of inherited privilege and the concentration of wealth and power in a permanent, pernicious upper class.

They were the first socialists on God's green earth, and their brethren in America also embraced a democratic, egalitarian outlook (shrouded in a dour religiosity), a history that the DAR dutifully ignored. The Puritan cult of political personality that was Oliver Cromwell died with him, and the monarchy was restored. The Puritan judges who had convicted the late king were hunted down in Massachusetts and killed.

The New England Puritans clung on for a few more decades, their "Puritan ethic" evolved into our American work ethic, and a later king (George III) became the target of their freedom-loving descendants in 1776.

Like the original Puritans, we overthrew our king here and established our democracy. Now, 241 years later, many shallow and silly Americans, oblivious to and unappreciative of the sacrifices made by those original patriots, fawn and coo at the current technicolor spectacle of the British monarchy, bloated and deformed by centuries of riches ill-gotten by ruthless looting and other depredations.

Also, the British ruling class desperately tried to misdirect the attention of the masses by walling off certain biblical passages concerning the rich, such as, "Sell all your goods, and give the money to the poor."

Even President Obama, whom the Republicans claim is a "socialist," didn't say that; Jesus did. And St. Paul said, "The love of money is the root of all evil" (1 Timothy 6:10). And it is sure as hell Donald Trump never said nor endorsed that bulls-eye of Christian teaching or its corollary: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

But many American Protestants choose to ignore their heritage and blind their eyes against the truth. The truth is that a huge section of American Christianity was inspired by the Lord to oppose and defeat a system of politicized and domineering oppression that had relegated black freedom strivers into a martyr-strewn landscape populated by vicious dogs, fire hoses, vicious cops, tear gas, vicious judges, fraudulent laws, vicious politicians, vicious lynch mobs and all the other peculiar features that made the Civil Rights Movement the modern equivalent of the lion's den encountered in ancient Rome by the early Christians.

Now the Coliseum has been relocated to the border and the barrios. The Republicans are now building a wall to contain millions of devout Catholics, whose church has been systematically deprived of influence by the utterly corrupt Mexican ruling political party, the PRI, that has been in power for most of the past 100 years, the cause and beneficiary of the betrayal of the Mexican Revolution.

And lost in the rubbish of current Republican philosophy is the covenant with the Mexican people informally agreed to by the American government back in the 1920s. Ever since then, we have "officially" winked and looked the other way so that America can serve the cause of peace and justice by being a "safety valve" and allowing the entrance of millions of desperate workers and immigrants from that benighted country who otherwise would form a violent revolutionary movement that would destroy the Mexican ruling class (but liberate the people). That's why the PRI enforces gun control against private ownership of firearms in Mexico.

We "allow" illegal immigration in order to provide protection to American businessmen and their investments in that country. If the 10 million undocumented workers were to be deported, it would cause a crash in the profit of doing business there, and a few hundred billion dollars would be lost by the international corporate state.

Mexican workers here, even at below minimum wage, can still send back enough money to support their extended families and, in doing so, forestall a new bloody revolution south of the border featuring millions of refugees, not immigrants, trying to escape the carnage.

Many of the thieves, liars and killers in the Mexican upper class have already set up shop with their cash purchases of expensive real estate in place like Los Angeles, New York, Miami and San Diego and, because of their (stolen) wealth, are welcomed here with open arms by the Republican/Wall Street establishment.

Many of these also have participated in at least two stolen national elections when the left-wing candidates were denied their rightful office by the Wall Street-influenced candidates of the two pro-business parties there.

Republicans like to jaw about our traditional values, but they ignore those like thrift and frugality, which have been enthusiastically buried by the "buy now, pay later" materialistic consumer culture promoted by Wall Street. And by the way, whatever happened to the idea of Christian charity?

Rick Gombas lives in Saranac Lake.