A simple redress of grievances is our cause

Forrest Johnson

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

That part about petitioning the Government for a redress of grievances caught my attention. I’ve decided to utilize my First Amendment rights in a positive way. 

I, along with the millions of National Union of Friendly Americans (NUFA) in good standing, do hereby announce that we are petitioning the Government for a redress of grievances.

Our single grievance is simple.

The President is a boob.

Now there are some citizens who may challenge that grievance by saying they don’t think the President is a boob. Matter of fact, there are those folks who feel that the President is quite a whiz, that he’s the best thing since sliced bread, that he’s a lofty leader, better than Abraham Lincoln. 

Sorry folks, the President is a boob.

That’s our grievance not yours. Go get your own grievance. 

The many members of the New Conservative Neanderthal Party (NCNP), formerly known as the Republicans, have vented all sorts of grievances in the past months and years. Remember that it didn’t take long after Obama was elected for Sen. Mitch McConnell and the NCNP to tell the faithful that their only job was to make sure he was going to be a one-term president. Now that’s working for the good of the country. The only thing was they didn’t petition the Government for a redress of grievances. They just blabbed away and forgot to remember We the People in most of their actions and inactions over the years because they just didn’t like that guy. 

Lots of them still bellow about socialists and communists and Democrats and the left, still drag Obama out of the past to scold once again as a dictator and a socialist and maybe not even a citizen of this country even though he’s long gone and has nothing to do with current affairs and the state of the nation under the present administration. 

As the world warms they opine that we should just go back to the days of yore, when there was a chicken in every pot and Ozzie and Harriet and the Cleavers lived on those tree-lined streets and all was good with the world. Oh, to return America to those wonderful days when we didn’t have to worry about all those bad scientists who scare us and those darn socialist-leftist-radicals who want to give it all away to people who just sit around and drink pop and watch TV all day, waiting with their hands out for another check from the Government.

Put it in writing. The First Amendment guarantees all of us the right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. You’ve got a problem with truth and facts on the ground and how those little incidentals impact a make believe world? Put it in writing. Go get your own grievance.

Oh, by the way, I just heard that President Rumpt has issued a five or six page screed about the injustices he’s suffered at the hands of the radical left and the other bad guys. He’s really mad that those bad people and the enemy of the people, the press, are portraying him in such a bad light. I’m hoping to read his letter, written on a piece of paper not tweeted into the atmosphere so it will live on in the historical record, according to him.

I just can’t wait to see the magnificent prose.

In the meantime I have read some of the speeches and letters of Lincoln. In particular, I read again the Second Inaugural Address written in winter of 1865. Lincoln, humbly hoping with some measure of certainty that the Union would prevail, outlined the reasons for war, the stain of slavery, the recovery of the nation.

“On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it—all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war-- seeking to dissolve the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.”

On the issue of slavery, Lincoln spoke clearly.

“Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just god’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not, that we not be judged.”

To restore the Union was Lincoln’s final plea.

“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan--to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nation’s.”

We at the National Union of Friendly Americans will be petitioning the Government for a redress of grievances.

Our single grievance is simple.

The President is a boob.