Too Often the Poor Fight the Wars.

I was a coal miner's son, born in West Virginia. Both of my parents came from the old country, and instilled in me a love for this country. I volunteered to fight in Vietnam with the 101st Airborne from 1966 to 1967. I did notice upon my return however, that many of the son's who had wealthy parents were able to keep from going to war with either college deferments, or being able to process through an outfit that never would serve over there. In any case, all my friends in Vietnam were either from poor or middle class families. I often wonder if anyone has ever seriously looked at the blood that is shed by these young brave men, and the abstract ideas that a government states are the reasons for fighting. In any case, the wealth of this country is concentrated in the upper 3% of the population (3% at the top make as much money as 95%)and the upper 5% are the ones that make over $100,000/year. The rest of us are like the Enron employees at the bottom of the ladder, forced to take the economic fall, while the fat cats at the top sell at the highest level by preventing those at the bottom from selling! This is another example of the rich shafting the poor! The gulf grows ever wider both nationally and world-wide. As long as the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer, wars are inevitable! Sooner or later, sons of poor families will have to ask: "Just whose property am I protecting?" In any case, I did not run into that many rich kids when I was fighting in Vietnam! The fact is that unless you have an Economic Democracy, you cannot have a political nor a social one! Sooner or later we will have anarchy as the social order disintegrates due to more and more people being put out of work. Throughout our history, the struggle for decent jobs and working conditions was fought on the front lines by the labor movement. Often labled as being Communist, and demonized by the industrial establishment, unions such as the UMW, fought with government sponsored thugs who used whatever force necessary to bring about an end to a strike that was favorable to the Company. During the Depression, my father was paid in "Script," which could only be used to buy items at the "Company Store." This was a form of indentured servitude, and caused many miners to become indebted to the Coal Company. How soon we forget the slaughter of miner's and their families at Ludlow, Colorado, where at the behest of John D. Rockefeller, the National Guard machine gunned down women and children. I often wonder how long a nation that has been built on the blood of Native Americans, and Slaves, can long prosper without the revolution called for in the Declaration of Independence? One does not need to go back so far as the Wachita, Sand Creek, and Wounded Knee massacres, but more recently to Kent State, Ruby Ridge, and Waco. Every major piece of legislation that has been passed by our government was done so after being forced down the government's throught by marching women and men protesting what was lacking in the Constitution to begin with. Whether it was the women's right to vote, child labor laws, or the abolishment of Jim Crow laws in the South, the government seemed to drag it's feet unless the people marched! Over one hundred years after Emancipation, Martin Luther King had to march in order to get equality put in a Constitution that failed to address it in the first place! It was written by white Northern European Males, for white Northern European Males. One thing I did learn in Vietnam: It doesn't matter what the color of a person's skin is who is fighting next to you. We are all brothers, and our strength comes from our trust and respect for each other, and from our history as members of the socio-economic poor and lower middle-class!