When the love of personal liberty met the hatred of inherited power
on the Concord green one April day, a farmer’s musket called the world
to witness the birth of the first nation so conceived.
America was born on paper, not in conquest, as when loyal subjects carried
empires on their backs, under a lash made lethal by reverence to religious
cant that hasn’t kept its secrets since Gutenberg unlocked holy scripture.
America was born on paper, and with paper proclaimed the death of a slave trade
worse than even Moses knew. So long as we don’t lose the paper, so long as we maintain
the right and skill to write by natural hand, not by BigTek toy from BigTek store,
So long as we maintain the papers of our founding, not copies edited for public consumption,
So long as we corral the donor class, now spied by vultures near their gilded Donner Pass,
So long as we reclaim the right to choose from among ourselves, not who the Donors choose,
Because they think of the poor and afflicted only at temple, mosque, and church,
Because the poor would tax them and keep them from their quest to control gravity,
Which impedes their flight of fancy, which brings them down, not up, to a Donner Pass.
Dave Read