{"id":16214,"date":"2012-08-26T18:10:29","date_gmt":"2012-08-27T02:10:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=16214"},"modified":"2012-08-26T18:41:57","modified_gmt":"2012-08-27T02:41:57","slug":"subject-peoples-up-front-real-americans-to-the-peanut-gallery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2012\/08\/26\/subject-peoples-up-front-real-americans-to-the-peanut-gallery\/","title":{"rendered":"Subject peoples up front, real Americans to the peanut gallery"},"content":{"rendered":"

This just in<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Republican National Convention seating chart<\/a>, obtained by POLITICO Sunday, shows the delegations from Nevada, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota and Oklahoma all located on the outer fringe of the convention floor. Each are states with significant Paul followings.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe delegation for the Northern Mariana Islands, on the other hand, is right in front behind the gang from Michigan, birth state of Republican nominee Mitt Romney. Other groups with pretty good seats include those from the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and American Samoa. None has electoral votes that can impact the outcome of the election.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

And none are really part of these United States of America. Instead, they are colonial possessions, part of our vast and ever-expanding overseas empire. How appropriate that Romney should give their representatives the best seats in the house \u2013 and put the real Americans, the staunchly anti-interventionist Paulians, up there in the peanut gallery. Romney isn\u2019t running for President: he\u2019s running for Emperor, and it\u2019s only natural for Caesar to put his most subservient and dependent subjects up front, where their cheers can obscure the skeptics\u2019 grumblings.<\/p>\n

Yes, you read that right: I said real Americans. Because, you see, the inhabitants of the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and the Marianas aren\u2019t Americans: they are Virgin Islanders, Puerto Ricans, Samoans. They are, in short, the remnants of conquered and colonized peoples, the casualties of Washington\u2019s long war against the independence and integrity of indigenous peoples, including in the continental US. The tragedy is that these peoples are the worst victims<\/a> of the Welfare-Warfare State, their cultures literally <\/a>raped by a massive presence of the US military, and their economies so\u00a0distorted <\/a>by military socialism that the great majority are entirely dependent<\/a> on government\u00a0 largesse of one sort or another.<\/p>\n

As conquered territories, they should be granted their independence forthwith, and paid whatever reparations are due them: decades of environmental degradation and outright military occupation ought to be worth something. The day there are no delegates to any American political convention representing territories outside the continental US is the day we\u2019ll finally be cured of the bacillus of imperialism \u2013 and, yes, we can do without Alaska.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This just in: \u201cThe Republican National Convention seating chart, obtained by POLITICO Sunday, shows the delegations from Nevada, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota and Oklahoma all located on the outer fringe of the convention floor. Each are states with significant Paul followings. \u201cThe delegation for the Northern Mariana Islands, on the other hand, is right in front […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-16214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16214"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16216,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16214\/revisions\/16216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16214"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=16214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}