Socialists From The United States

"Paul entered upon the path of intellectual sterility when he substituted a delirious mysticism and orgy, for the social enthusiasms which alone should intoxicate the spirit."

"Paul's ... no-work-no-eat doctrine was directed by him only against the poor. All around him were the rich, virginally innocent of toil, and yet who were gorged to the gullet."

"It was the test of loyal citizenship among the Romans to seek out in every part of the world that which was most rare and valued, and bring it back to Rome as a gift. Thus her sons went forth and returned laden with richest trophies to lay at her feet. They brought to her pearls from India, gold chariots from Babylon, elephants from interior Africa, high-breasted virgins from the Greek isles, Phidian marbles from Athens. Paul also would be a bringer of gifts to the Rome that had honored him and his fathers with the high honor of citizenship. And the gift he would bring and lay at her feet would be the richest of them all—a religion."

"For eighteen years Jesus worked thus as a day labourer. We find him ever afterward identifying himself with the working class. Passages like, "which of you intending to build"; "the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a householder, which went out early in the morning to hire labourers"; "the burden and heat of the day"; "no man hath hired us"; and the references to the patching of worn garments and hewing down trees for firewood, give evidence of a working-class consciousness."

"Paul was undeniably sincere. He believed that in reinterpreting the Christian faith so as to make it acceptable to the Romans he was doing that faith a service. His make-up was imperial rather than democratic. Both by birth and training he was unfitted to enter into the working-class consciousness of Galileans. He was in culture a Hellenist, in religion a Pharisee, in citizenship a Roman. From the first strain, Hellenism, he received a bias in the direction of philosophy rather than economics; from the second, his Pharisaism, he received a bias toward aloofness, otherworldliness; and from the third, his Romanism, he received a bias toward political acquiescence and the preservation of the status quo."

"The tendency of the families of wealth in every country to form a class by themselves, is deep-set in the human makeup. Rome carried the tendency one step further — she cemented the moneyed class in the various countries into an international combine. "Peace and order" were at last secure. An antitoxin against insomnia had been devised. Slave owners could now lay their heads on their pillows at night, without the fear of insurrection gnawing them through the night-watches. An uprising of the toiling masses, no matter how formidable, could be handled. Upon a rebellious district could be mobilized in shortest time six and twenty legions. The machinery of intimidation was complete. Man was undermost, and property paramount. The "Golden Age" — literally — set in. The Roman Empire, that apotheosis of property rights, fastened itself upon the world. Embracing all nations and tongues and climates, a motley crew, they had one cohering principle which swallowed up their diversities — the coherence of a common plunder."

"The extension of the Roman "System" to include the Jews, a sturdy mountaineer folk in the hill country of Syria, met there a vehement opposition. And in Galilee, one of the districts of the Jews, the most vehemency of all."

"Jerusalem was the home of the country's aristocracy. Like the local aristocracies in all the other countries of the world, these had lined up with the Romans — were federated with the invader."

"A measure had been proposed in the Roman Senate to dress slaves in a uniform livery, so as to distinguish them from freemen. It was killed straightway by the argument that this would disclose to the slaves their numerical strength."

"Much of the New Testament is the narrative of the coalescence of the native princes with the Roman invader."

"Native oligarchies, living under Rome's protectorate, were moons depending upon their central sun for light."

"Hitherto there had been frequent changes in the tyranny under which, for some four hundred years back, they had lived; and this alternation of masters had kept hope alive. Now there was a sense of permanency in the despotism which, from Antioch as its land base, was bearing down upon them in the trail of the Roman legions. There was an imperious note in the commands of the tribute gatherers, as though an infinite arm of power was now behind the fist which lay at their throat, demanding their goods. Furthermore, all of the tyrannies hitherto had been of the East, Eastern. And though exacting the uttermost farthing of tribute, these despotisms had been gilded with a respect for Asiatic ideals, religion, reverence, a hold-fast in the Unseen. But this new despotism was characterized by a hard materiality, untempered by sentiment of any kind, a race of conquerors self-indulging, heavy-fisted, cynical."

"This was the Roman Empire's contribution to the world's thought, namely, the solidarity of capital, the oneness of the interests of property irrespective of national boundaries."

"Paul was a stockholder in Rome's world corporation. And that stock by slow degrees had blinded him to the injustice of a social system in whose dividends he himself shared. This explains in large part why he accepted the political status quo, and preached its acceptance by others."

"The Roman Empire was a world-wide confederation of aristocracies for the perpetuation of human servitude."

"Mary knows that within her a child is gestating. For she thereupon composed a song. It is the greatest song in history. This "Magnificat" is the battle-hymn of democracy. Sensing a child within her, Mary feels herself equal to the Roman Empire; and she announces that the days of despotism are numbered. Caesar on his seven-hilled throne may sacrilegiously style himself Augustus, "the divine one." But Mary as confidently disallows him that title. Heaven is not on the side of privilege and oppression, she affirms, but is rather on the side of the trodden. Rome is great, but Galilee with God is greater. In this song three classes of people are objects of Our Lady's invective — "the proud," "the mighty," and "the rich." And she passes upon them a threefold sentence: they are to be "scattered," "put down from their seats," and "sent empty away.""

"In the countries of the ancient world, even before the formation of the empire, slavery was the basis of society. In each was a capitalist class and a slave class. The capitalists, however, were constantly in fear of slave insurrection. The dread clouded their sunshine by day, and nightmared their sleep; for they saw, piling up against them, a discontent hell-deep and heaven-high."

"The Church has as an organized body no sympathy for the masses. It is a sort of fashionable club where the rich are entertained and amused, and where most of the ministers are muzzled by their masters and dare not preach the gospel of the Carpenter of Nazareth."

"This is one of the mutterings which they are muttering today: "The social well-being of the people, the upward movement of the non-propertied or labour classes to material welfare, is continually being obstructed by conceptions of political subserviency and passive obedience to despotic authority, which is directly traceable to Christian doctrine.""

"Rome ... did not conquer the nations. She annexed them, by means of a coalition with the local capitalist group in each. ... Wherever the strain between the local privileged class and its proletariat was intense, Rome found natural allies in the former."

"Many US journalists and politicians acknowledge that climate change is the largest threat facing humanity, but few point to the fact that the US military is the largest institutional polluter, and emitter of carbon emissions, and every single climate treaty excludes their responsibility."

"The need for critical media literacy and mass organizing has never been more urgent. If you want to go down the rabbit hole with me to learn more about the true nature of the US government and how we can unite to demilitarize our communities, check out The Empire Files."

"The violent confrontations are happening.. are going on every single day and night... The opposition does not denounce the violence, and they also incite the violence and use the violence and the deaths. It’s like this theater of cruelty...to bolster international support... [Opposition activists] pulled out people from 18-wheelers, stole trucks on the highway, created giant barricades, doused the freeways in gasoline, and this is where a lot of people are dying."

"This is why during the COVID pandemic, the oligarchs siphoned two trillion dollars from the working class, while one third of small businesses shut down and the poor suffered through mass evictions and joblessness. Due to the neoliberal indoctrination of public education and mass conditioning of American Exceptionalism, most Americans haven’t given a second thought to what the US does in our names around the world."

"A majority of Americans now favor using US troops to defend Taiwan if it is invaded by China, according to arecent poll. There is no other rationale to explain this mindset other than corporate media propaganda steadily pumping out anti-China stories and legitimizing it as an adversary."

"The inevitability of war with China is a tacitly accepted reality, with rarely any questioning about whether or not the US should be conducting these acts of aggression or militarily backing Taiwan at all. How does any of this protect the American people? Needless to say, all of this points to the very real and growing possibility that the US will start war with China over Taiwan, and we need to speak out against this utter madness before it is too late."

"As soon as it got dark, I’ve never felt like my life was more in danger... We had press jackets on, but at the same time, we knew that if we identified ourselves as Telesur journalists we could get lynched. Because that’s the climate right now. They just call you an infiltrator, and then you get killed. And they deemed many other people as infiltrators...they said, hey, black guy are you a Chavista? And they threw a Molotov cocktail on him. They also beat to death a national guardsmen, who was retired, just for being in the vicinity, thinking he was an infiltrator."

"The United States functions as an oligarchy rather than a democracy. Policies like are passed not due to public support but corporate interests. The overwhelming majority of people in this countrysupport things like paid maternity leave, free college, and a higher minimum wage. Yet these things are painted as wedge issues that can never be accomplished due to the partisan divide. Corporations control the political process and the conversation around it, and they always win what they want."

"The US political system needs to manufacture consent for its global Empire by directing Americans’ attention and energy away from the corrupt oligarchs and corporate overlords who oppress us here at home to an external threat, like communism, terrorism, and now, Russia and China."

"When Donald Trump became president, it was imperative to rationalize how someone so unsavory to liberal sensibilities won a democratic election. Instead of having reflection or accountability for the failures of the Democratic Party, and the anointment of a candidate like Hillary Clinton, the results were blamed on sinister foreign forces like Putin’s Russia, and entities like Russia Today."

"Russia and China will continue to be hysterically fear mongered against because the arms industry needs to keep pumping out weapons to sell and the people need something, someone to blame for why our lives continue to degrade, other than our own government."

"The US is not only an Empire, it is the biggest and most powerful Empire the world has ever seen. It has 800 military bases in more than 70 countries and it bends other countries to its will through sanctions and war. It has interfered to subvert the democratic processes more than 50 times in Latin America alone. The US is not effective at protecting and serving its own citizenry, so it has no moral leg to stand on to justify this global military presence and daily violence. It is only successful if you look at control and domination as merits of success. The system it upholds exists to benefit very few people, which becomes a tinier pool every year, while the vast majority at the bottom suffer and die preventable deaths—structural violence under capitalism."

"There is no rational justification for the continuous, aggressive US military buildup and maneuvering around Russia and China. The US routinely sends in ships and aircraft into the South China Sea to flex its muscles, which China recently denounced as a “threat to peace.” It is incomprehensible to imagine China conducting military operations in the Gulf of Mexico, but apparently China should accept the US doing this on a regular basis."

"While both countries clearly have strategic geopolitical ambitions, Russia and China do not share the US’s imperial goals for global hegemony. China spreads its influence through production and financial investments but it only has one military base in Djibouti. When you compare this to the nearly 1,000 US bases littering the earth, the notion that the US is acting defensively is laughable."

"The US military is bigger and more costly than the next ten countries combined. It is patently absurd to think that it is Russia or China, not the US that is setting the world stage militarily."

"We went into at least ten supermarkets. The shelves were fully stocked with every goddamn Nestle brand, every paper product—except toilet paper...And this is where you get into some weird territory, where there are some huge shortages of particular goods used and hoarded for propaganda purposes, to create this kind of international humiliation campaign."

"For doing my job –– for interviewing government officials, protesters at los guarimbas, average Venezuelans and peaceful marchers –– I am called a spy who should be killed by the same people called ‘peaceful freedom fighters’ by Western press...These unsuccessful attempts to intimidate us reveals how much they really fear accurate reporting that might undermine their narrative... The show [The Empire Files] is totally independent of TeleSUR...We merely sell them the content; they have zero control over anything we do."

"One just has to leave the United States and speak to people in other countries, especially those long subjugated by the US, to see how true this idea (that the US is a force for peace) really is. The United States is a global Empire, which imposes its world order through military force. A new study reveals that US “counterterrorism” operations have been active in 83 countries in the last three years alone. It does this not to spread “democracy” or “human rights”—a ridiculous assertion for an oligarchy that hosts the largest incarcerated population—but to extract resources and protect capital. Whatever the US dictates, its junior collaborators follow suit and the rest know the penalty for bucking the beast—genocidal sanctions, coups, invasions and bombing campaigns. These criminal actions depend on a compliant corporate media that make them palatable to the public."

"The biggest terrorist organization in the world today is the U. S. Empire. ... The U. S. central command has its own death porn channel, video-logging their beheadings by drone. A drop in the bucket of the crimes and chaos the Empire has showered on this region of the world. But amidst its success in completely shredding several countries, it has also revealed a weakness – that its greed and arrogance can lead it to disaster. Any crisis for the Empire means new opportunities for the people: to expose its lies, its crimes, and to mobilize against it."

"It’s chilling to face the reality that nuclear war is not some distant Cold War era threat, but a strong possibility in our near future. Due to incompetence or belligerence, any nuclear armed country could initiate this death spiral. Right now we face an unprecedented ecological crisis in need of global cooperation. Instead of becoming a leader to reduce and dismantle nuclear weapons, the US is spending over a trillion dollars to modernize its nuclear arsenal. And despite being a signatory to the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty, the US is buying hundreds more. In February, the Biden administration secured a contract with Northrop Grumman for 600 new nukes, for no reason other than to line the coffers of the defense industry."

"DC think tank policy prescriptions about nuclear weapons are sponsored by the very arms companies rewarded with lucrative contracts for their recommendations, which always result in further militarization."

"As a woman, I completely reject Hillary’s brand of bourgeois feminism because it leaves out millions of immigrant women, poor women, and the women under her bombs around the world."

"We need to strategize how we can live in a world beyond nukes, because there will never be peace as long as these weapons exist."

"Before reading this book, I knew and greatly admired Dave Dellinger. Or so I thought. After reading his remarkable story, my admiration changed to something more like awe. There can be few people in the world who have crafted their lives into something truly inspiring. This autobiography introduces us to one of them, with the simplicity and integrity that characterizes everything Dave has done."

"All of his life he really struggled against war. It was interesting, I was in World War II. I was a bombardier in World War II, I wasn’t thinking about pacifism or war. You know, I was imbued like everybody else with the idea of a good war. Dave Dellinger saw beyond that. He saw farther than that. He was a conscientious objector in World War II. Not that he didn’t understand the dangers of fascism, but he thought it was necessary to uphold the ideal of non-violent resistance to fascism, to war."

"He was so consistent, and his conscience was absolutely seamless. We all had a great mentor and friend who could be called upon in almost any direction relative to human decency and peaceableness, and who fulfilled that enduring saying of Gandhi that the peacemaker belongs where the war is, not where the peace is. David would set out for this or that trouble spot doing what could be done, and daring at times what could not be done. And for this, he will be in our memory as long as we live. Myself and my family and my friends. God bless him, God rest him."

"THE COURT: . . . Mr. Dellinger, do you care to say anything? Only in respect to punishment."

"The way of life that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki and is reported to have roasted alive a million people in Tokyo overnight is international and dominates every nation of the world, but we live in the United States, so our struggle is here. With this way of life, death would be more appropriate. There could be no truce or quarter. The prejudices of patriotism, the pressures of our friends and fear of unpopularity and death should not hold us back any longer. It should be total war against the economic and political and social system which is dominant in this country. The American system has been destroying human life in peace and in war, at home and abroad for decades. Now it has produced the growing infamy of atom bombing. Besides these brutal facts, the tidbits of democracy mean nothing. Henceforth, no decent citizen owes one scrap of allegiance (if he ever did) to American law, American custom or American institutions."

"I wanted the State of Massachusetts, which was called a Commonwealth but was filled with private wealth and private property, to change, as the early Christians had changed. They "had all things in common, and sold their possessions and goods and parted them to all men as every man had need.""

"The final encounter with God, or an encounter with God that would take you beyond doubt, wouldn't have the character of a metaphysical proof."