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    Revolution in the Air
    Revolution in the Air
    Revolution in the Air
    Ebook82 pages1 hour

    Revolution in the Air

    By Steven Greffenius

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    About this ebook

    Short essays about freedom and hope under our Constitution. Begins with a review of JFK and the Unspeakable by James Douglass. Articles investigate taxes and labor market freedom, health care, financial fraud, secrecy, torture, and citizens' right of revolution. Explores our obligation to replace illegitimate government, and how to advance revolutionary aims via secession and civil disobedience.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSteven Greffenius
    Release dateNov 4, 2010
    ISBN9781452368566
    Revolution in the Air
    Author

    Steven Greffenius

    I was born in Minneapolis in 1954; grew up in Valley City, North Dakota; graduated high school in Des Moines, class of 1972; graduated from Reed College in 1976 with a bachelor’s in history; married Leslie Olin from Boston in 1979; served as gunnery and electronics material officer on the USS KIRK based in Yokosuka, Japan, until 1982; earned a doctorate in political science from the University of Iowa in 1987; and taught politics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the Hopkins-Nanjing Center in Nanjing, China, and Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Currently I’m a technical editor at Conexant Systems in Waltham, Massachusetts. My wife and I have a son who lives in Washington DC, and a daughter in junior high school. We live in a great house in Westwood, Massachusetts, southwest of Boston.

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      Book preview

      Revolution in the Air - Steven Greffenius

      Revolution in the Air

      Steven Greffenius

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright 2010 by Steven Greffenius

      All Rights Reserved

      ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

      Articles

      John F. Kennedy and the Unspeakable

      Lincoln’s Legacy and the Path Ahead

      Revolution and the Second Amendment

      If You Liked Medicare, Wait Till You See What’s Next!

      So-Called Health Care Reform

      The Massachusetts Plan

      Labor Market Freedom and Job Growth

      Morally Hazardous Banks

      Leadership and Legitimacy

      Cash for Clunkers: Another Genius Program

      Garden Variety Totalitarianism

      Who Is the Bad Partner?

      Bring on the Rabble Rousers

      Wikileaks and Government Secrecy

      Torture Guidelines

      Outside the Gates

      Freedom in Danger

      John F. Kennedy and the Unspeakable

      John F. Kennedy and James Douglass

      I know there is a God – and I see a storm coming;

      If he has a place for me, I believe that I am ready.

      - John F. Kennedy -

      I lived in Nanjing, China when Oliver Stone’s movie, JFK, came out. We were cut off from a lot of news over in China. You felt like you were on the other side of the world because you were. So something had to make a big stir in the U. S. for us to know about it in Nanjing. The Los Angeles riots after police beat Rodney King and the first Persian Gulf war were two events that made a stir. Oliver Stone’s film did, too.

      I didn’t see the film until much later, well after we returned to the United States. Before that I saw an interview where a journalist asked Stone whether he believed the story he told in JFK. He smiled slightly and said, I just make movies. I thought it was a good answer. I didn’t feel so comfortable if, after nearly thirty years of controversy, the judgment of so many people would turn on the story presented in one film.

      After we returned from China, I read Gerald Posner’s book, Case Closed. The controversy about Stone’s film must have raised my interest, as it was the first book about the assassination I’d read. Posner’s argument, that Lee Oswald acted alone and that a single bullet hit both President Kennedy and Governor Connally, seemed plausible. I hadn’t been inclined to question the Warren Report to begin with, so Posner’s account was convincing enough for me.

      Now move forward ten years and more, to the Bush administration’s response to 9/11. The regular use of torture by the CIA and the military against our enemies appalled me. It completely changed my attitude toward my own government. Where before I would give my elected representatives the benefit of the doubt in every doubtful case, now I would never do so. I completely lost faith that the government would do the right thing as it carried out its responsibilities. The government’s behavior after 9/11 caused it to lose legitimacy.

      Some would say, It’s about time you saw that. Others would say, Governments have always done bad things. These acts weren’t out of the ordinary. You have to take the bad with the good. A third bunch might comment simply, Open your eyes and try not to be so idealistic. Open your eyes is right, but not in the way the last group intends. Remember Saul’s conversion, when the scales fell from his eyes after God struck him blind? He was a new person after that. What a conversion experience – Paul went out and converted the world after that.

      Let me describe my conversion experience. Mine started in 2002, when we started down the path toward war with Iraq. I’ve already written a lot about that period in Ugly War. Anger preceded Bush’s reelection in 2004; discouragement followed it. By 2005, though, my emotion and vehemence had played out, so the horrific events in Baghdad and elsewhere during Bush’s second term didn’t affect me so much. As Bush’s popularity bottomed out and stayed low during 2005-2007, I thought, I was here a long time before everyone else.

      Then in the summer of 2009 I read an article by Oliver Stone in praise of a new book by James Douglass. Douglass’s book is titled John F. Kennedy and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters. I bought the book at Amazon, and as often happens at that site, picked up another book, too, called Brothers by David Talbot. I read Brothers first, and could see it was a first class piece of journalism. I said to people, if you’re interested in the Kennedys, you have to read this book - and I don’t recommend books that often. Then I started Douglass’s book.

      As I read Talbot’s account, I found myself saying, We’ll never know if there was a conspiracy behind Kennedy’s assassination. As I finish John F. Kennedy and the Unspeakable, I ask, How could anyone who considers the evidence think otherwise? The main problem with

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