97-year-old Grandmother Speaks the Truth

I found this speech of Granny D., a 97-year-old activist, on some other message board. It nearly made me cry. We should definitely listen more to our elders...

GRANNY D'S SPEECH AT WARTBURG COLLEGE IN IOWA, 11-7-07

Thank you. It's wonderful to be here today at Wartburg, which I have long
admired as one of America's great liberal arts colleges.

I would like to underline that word "liberal" in the context of liberal
arts. It does not, of course, refer to big government, or to left-of-center
politics. No, as I'm sure you know, it refers to the art of thinking
freely--training the mind to think for itself, free of the lies and
fantasies and prejudices that wrap around us from an early age. In this
time, the very idea of human life on the planet is at stake.

War and violence have taken new and decidedly more dangerous turns.

So you are doing well to be freeing your minds right now. That is a
difficult task, as there are so many forces around you, telling you what and
how to think, and selling you incredible lies. The War on Terrorism is a
good example. It is a term used to keep you from thinking freely and from
actually solving the world's problems relating to poverty and freedom. If
you solved those problems you would severely damage the profits of the
elite. The very idea that you can have war on terror is as silly as the idea
that you can have war on anger.

War itself is insane anger.

As the world's resources become stressed by global warming and
overpopulation, do we really think we can kill all the angry people? Can we
calm them down by dropping bombs on their villages and spraying their
families with machine gun bullets? Isn't that rather like dropping gasoline
and crumpled newspaper on forest fires instead of water? Do you think anyone
really thinks it will work? They don't even want it to work.

War is too profitable.

It is profitable for those who finance the careers of our politicians.
Islamo-fascism, as a label, is yet another fraud used to keep you from
thinking freely. Some people in the world are so desperate and angry that
they will blow themselves up just to hurt us, that is true. But it has to do
with the conditions of their lives, not with religion.

Religion is always the excuse for murder, but rarely the motive. If I tell
you that God wants us all to clean up the dining rooms tonight, to scrub
every seat and scrape-off every blob of gum, you will thank me for my
opinion and you will back out of the room en masse. If, however, I tell you
that God wants us all to storm the administration building tonight and
change our grades to straight A's, then how many of you will answer God's
call?

In war, religion is a cover and an organizing convenience. That's all it has
ever been, going back to the Crusades, which were all about treasure and
rape. The "War on Terrorism," has very little to do with anyone's religious
beliefs. Terrorism, historically, is a term used to describe what
governments do to rule through fear--to overrule the rule of law. The term
originated after the French Revolution as a tool for suppressing dissent. If
we are to truly prosecute a War on Terrorism, it would inclue preventing
governments from using fear to shred the democratic rule of law.

If you want to stop insane anger in the world, you have to get at world
poverty and the injustices that people suffer as nations ruthlessly jockey
for resources.

"We don't negotiate with terrorists."

Anytime you hear tough language like that, you will do well to assume it
means the opposite.

(continued below)

[edit on 6-12-2007 by sylvie]

If we actually don't negotiate with terrorists, you would have heard the President make a speech proclaiming that: "Nothing our enemies do will persuade us in the least to give up on our principles. We will hold fast to our Bill of Rights and to the cherished Geneva Convention. All suspects will be afforded a lawyer and a trial and humane treatment, no matter what. We will not run like cowards away from the Constitution and the human values that our people have fought and died to protect and improve. We will not give any of that up to the terrorists in exchange for some hope of extra safety. We will not negotiate."

THAT would be refusing to negotiate with terrorists. But that is not what
this government has done. In terms of giving up on things of value, this
government has knelt down and emptied its pockets after the first punch. It was profitable for some people for this to happen.

Not only has our so-called government given away our basic human
rights--turned them over to the terrorists in exchange for worthless hopes
of safety--but they have subjected you and me to endless little indignities
unbecoming American citizens. Why do they harass you at the airports,
refusing to let you stop your car for a moment at the curb to pick-up your
friends? Do they think that, by harassing you in this way, that they are in
any way preventing a truck from driving up and exploding? They of course
know better.

It is not about that. it is about keeping you fearful, and reminding us
that We the People no longer have the power. Speak up at the airport and you will be whisked away. What a wonderful place an airport is to teach us all about the new country we are living in. So you take off your shoes because one madman had an exploding shoe some years ago. I'm not sure which is worse: one possible tragedy like that, or the smell of a hundred million feet thereafter.

The point of this airport ceremony is to physically humiliate you into
subservience to the new state. Get used to it, because it is just getting
started--if you will let it. Any politician you hear talking seriously about
the War on Terror or about Islamo-Fascism is lying to you and trying to
prevent you from thinking freely. Call them on it. Tell them you think those terms are really just a lot of BS meant to deflect attention from the real issues of world poverty, the unsustainable exploitation of resources and other issues that we, in fact, could address seriously with a fraction of
what we spend on counterproductive warfare--though we understand it is
highly profitable for some.

If you are a psych major or have taken some psych courses, you understand that we often transfer to others the things we fear most within ourselves. When some leaders label others with words like terrorist, let them look first to what they are themselves doing in the world. Are they upholding the human rights encoded in the U.S. Constitution, and in the Geneva Convention, and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? If they are not, then they have forfeited their right to label other people in any disparaging way..

Do they understand that 90% of the people who die in war are civilians, and that any pre-emptive, meaning non-provoked war, is by definition an act of terrorism?

In the term "Islamo-fascist, let's look a little closer. The term "fascist"
was popularized by Mussolini to describe how corporate interests could be
combined with an authoritarian government. If some American leader has
assumed dictatorial powers by claiming the ability to disregard laws, and if
he has given no-bid contracts with billions of dollars to friendly
corporations that he has an actual family interest in, then he may indeed
want to transfer the word Fascist as far away from himself as possible, but
we see through this with our free minds. The historical shoe fits.

(continued below)

I am sure someone on here will ooze out of their gutter to try and smear granny D. and obscure the truth she speaks. Like it or not however she is right on the money.

The fact of our condition is that we have two governments. We have a
faceless government that has secret prisons, its own rules, a suspension of all our rights, and its own armies and budgets. It laughs at us when we
think we can tell it what to do. It has been around for some time -certainly
since the early 60s when we started losing the leaders who actually
represented our values. We do have another government. It is the one where we have debates, campaigns, elections (more or less), and where the winners play at a Congress. This government has fallen in power as the other has risen.

I have lived long enough to see the dimming of lights in the Capitol
building.

These people no longer much represent you and me. The mainstream news keeps us from seeing the truth of this. We are expected to be happy with our wonderful cars and your wonderful music players and our fancy phones that can message back and forth. But we have been left without anything of our own to say that is not a rewrite of a commercial. If you are not hearing the truth from the mainstream media, it is because there is a game here, and one of the main rules of the game is that you have to pretend we are still a government of, by and for its people. If you cannot live in that fantasy, you will be ostracized as a nut case, a fanatic, a fringe element.

That is part of the control mechanism that you have to understand if you
would be free to think for yourself.

If, to create an absurd example, the family of George Bush were investors
together in oil partnerships with the Bin Laden family, or if George Bush
Senior were a part of a company like the Carlyle Group that has profited
greatly from the Iraq War, would those stories be all over CNN and in the
front pages of newspapers, or would those stories violate the fantasy and
therefore be ignored? Well, those stories happen to be true, so judge for
yourself if we have a problem with the news media.

How, indeed, do we bring order into the chaos of our lives once we reject
the lies around us? What is the thing that is not a lie? Where is a fixed
star by which we can navigate our lives through the ever-warming waters
ahead?

Somewhere, perhaps less than a mile from here, there is someone who didn't come to this lecture. This person took time out of his or her day to go tutor a kid or help an older person--maybe to help someone learn a needed language. There is the star. That person out there has more to tell you than I do, for Love is the only truth that can save us from lies and from anger and sad living.

The real division of politics in the world is between truth and love on one
hand, which call for the happy development of every human's highest
potential, and the politics of fear and hate on the other hand, which are
known by exploitation and oppression. You know which kind of politics is at the helm today. Maybe an election or two can make some improvements.

But, even so, we still have this little problem with the other government,
the one that thinks it is really in charge of our lives and our world--the
one the world knows very well.

When the storm destroyed New Orleans, the wealthy neighborhoods suddenly had armed Blackwater guards at their gates. These machine-gun toting men were from other nations and had no familiarity with our Bill of Rights. They would have followed any order. In that storm, we saw the future, if we will allow it. Race is more important in organizing political differences than economic class. So now we see a rise in racial conflict in America, even in places where we wouldn't have imagined it a few years ago. The uneasy peace between the races in America made possible by the post World War II boom is now moving into difficult times. It is aggravated by the immigration issue.

Can you see these issues freely?

(continued below)

You read the newspapers and the internet news sites, and you watch the Daily Show, so you know just about everything. Or do you?

The U.S. Farm program, voted for by our elected representatives, subsidizes the corn industry so heavily that American corporations sell corn in Mexico for half of what Mexico's family farmers can sell it for. So half the farms in Mexico have gone out of business. Farm families have migrated to Mexico's big cities, where there is so much poverty that all one can do is plan to sneak into America for decent wages. They die on our desert borders. If it were easy to come and go, how could we oppress them so easily? We have come to rely upon this oppression for the smooth operation of our communities. But you will not hear about this story on the TV news, will you? It is outside the accepted fantasy.

The lies that surround us drive emotions and they drive unkindness and
cruelty, which are the signposts of misinformation and misunderstanding.
People who are not free of mind are not kindly of mind. Kindness is
freedom's truest indicator. If you cannot stop to help someone who clearly
needs your help, you are not a free man or woman. Your chains may have the glamorous attachments of Blackberries and credit cards, but you are not free if your time is not your own to follow your heart. If you are looking for a strategy to improve relations between the races, between straight and gay people, between religions, you must understand that such peace is most achievable when there is sufficient truth and prosperity to go around, and when there is the kindness that is the product of those two.

To preserve prosperity in the world, agriculture and nature must be saved.

The coal plants must be shut down--all of them--within the next few years.

Gasoline-powered automobiles must be phased-out in the next ten years.

International trade must be largely curtailed in favor of local production.

These are the issues of a politics of love, and they cannot go forward
without some free thinking and some knocking-down of immense lies now in place. Free thinking, prosperity and kindness, so intertwined, make
cooperative living easier to achieve, and push intolerance away. We have a lot of work to do, but, can you see it? Do you have a glimpse of it? Can you stand the idea of Google-ing a little more Noam Chomsky and a little less USA Today? That would be a good beginning.

Churchill was correct when he said the empires of the future are the empires of the mind. The big battle for the future is being fought right now in your mind. Your freedoms are closing-in around you. Our present circumstances seem to necessitate a new and democratic international compact between those of you who are willing to do what is necessary to be free people living sustainably, and to withdraw our support from systems outside the compact.

The compact can be first between individuals, and then communities. It can later include regions and nations. How will this be brought forth? Will it
be enough? I don't know, but it's all we can do. Certainly the Internet, for
as long as we can keep it, can get us started. But don't rely on it
entirely, for it is no longer ours to trust. You have the power to save your
freedoms and your natural world.

Truth and Love, Courage and Energy, and a good organizing plan for
cooperative action are your great powers. Don't look for leaders to do it
for you, unless you are standing before a mirror. I'm 97, soon 98, so saying 'good luck' is about all I have left. I have filled my life with adventures and good causes. They have not been enough for the world, and they have not even been enough for me.

But I shudder to think of how bare my life would have been had I not
answered the call to action that you must now be feeling somewhere in your hearts, as you have it felt before.

Thank you all very much.

Just gotta love her.

Nice!

Finally something I can email to my relatives - in response to the onslaught of emails I get (usually rated false on snopes) that have such insightful titles like:

"Islamo Fascists and Ron Paul activists create basketball team to destroy the Constitution!"

Perhaps a real - truly intelligent - speech like this could maybe, just maybe, open their minds a little...

However, I am a little worried on the sourcing - could you provide more detail on this activist so I can email her and confirm this is indeed her words and that they were delivered in such a manner?

I've seen far to many interesting tidbits attributed incorrectly to Vonegut, Chomsky, etc...

And if I'm gonna fly this in everyone's face I want to make sure I got my facts right. eh?

Thanks in advance!

I don't necessarily agree with Granny D or all of her policies or beliefs, but I admire her courage. She has proven that a regular person can make a difference, and that regular people should take a bigger role in politics. With hardly any money and little-to-no support from the state or national Democratic party, this 97-year-old woman ran for senate and surpassed everyone's expectations with an incredibly strong showing against an incumbant senator who had millions in his campaign war cheast.

I certainly agree that we should respect and listen to our elders a lot more. They have lived through similar events and situations that we are currently experiencing or getting ourselves into. But at the same time, a lot of our elders have been left (for one reason or another) bitter and untrusting. I remember my great grandmother, who lived during both World Wars, always telling us "never trust the Japanese!". That's not exactly the kind of thinking that I want future generations sharing. So while I agree that we should listen to and value the opinions of elderly Americans, we should also take those opinions with a grain of salt just as we should if they came from anyone else. I think the most important things that our elderly population can offer us is a phenomenal work ethic and justified warnings of repeating the very same horrors that they lived through.

There is an excellent documentary that has been showing on HBO titled "Run, Granny Run!". It's a behind-the-scenes documentary of Granny D's run for US Senate. It is truly inspiring for anyone, even those of us who disagree with some of her politics. The important message that she conveys, I feel, is that even a regular person can and should take part in the political process and run for political office. And although at times her age really shows and her mind escapes her, her courage and her extremely hard work and sacrifice give me an extremely proud feeling.

What's the source? How do I know she's 97 year old gramma?

With her age comes wisdom and that is worth alot these days. People should listen to their elders because they have lived through the BS long enough to see through it and to see it for what it is. I remember the things my mother use to tell me but I did not listen, only to learn the hard way later.

Here is her website.

www.grannyd.com...

I would like to underline that word "liberal" in the context of liberal
arts. It does not, of course, refer to big government, or to left-of-center
politics. No, as I'm sure you know, it refers to the art of thinking
freely--training the mind to think for itself, free of the lies and
fantasies and prejudices that wrap around us from an early age. In this
time, the very idea of human life on the planet is at stake.

Oh, dear granny, fifty years ago you would have been absolutely correct. Today? Today there is no such thing as a liberal. What once was liberalism has devolved into nothing more than rampant socialism.

[edit on 6-12-2007 by SpeakerofTruth]

reply to post by TruthMagnet


Here's a URL: Wartburg College

Very nice read and thanks for finding and sharing this with us. Finally someone making pretty accurate observations from a person with a long enough history to have not only seen changes in the world but obviously lived it (to a degree).

I'm just waiting for another article to pop up where a cop tasers this woman in the parking lot or at the airport. That wouldn't shock me at all.

Thanks..

Originally posted by SpeakerofTruth
Today there is no such thing as a liberal. What once was liberalism has devolved into nothing more than rampant socialism.

[edit on 6-12-2007 by SpeakerofTruth]

I keep seeing comments like this all the time. not just from you but all over the board.

Can you please tell me what is wrong with socialism. and why is it "nothing more than rampant"?

In Europe a liberal is closer to neo-cons than a conservative, I understand that and it can confuse things, but I don't understand how --now that communism is dead-- the liberals became to be the closest thing you got to commies?

Wow what a great article, it's as if she is giving a going away gift before she dies(down the line) and she is really hoping that we can end this oppression. The oppression of the goverment financially, politically, constitutionally, and I agree with everything she had to say.

Great post OP

Just some half-senile old crank with an axe to grind against religion. I was agreeing with her until one of those run-of-the-mill allusions to the Crusades that's supposed to prove something. Two words for you: JOSEPH STALIN.

It's taken 60 years of living for me to finally find a decent role model.

I believe I've found her.

Now I need to find out what she eats to keep such a clear mind.

Great post OP.

This is really interesting. I admire those who have the wisdom of years, and while I initially began reading with skepticism, it appears GrannyD is not just someone with a wacked-out personal agenda.

I can't say I agree with all her points, and I can't say she and I would not be in a bitter debate over some things should we talk. But I can say that I admire and agree with her take on freedom. She is absolutely right on the issue of political freedom, or should I say, the lack thereof? I too watched in dismay as Hurricane Katrina showed the worst of what our government has become capable of, from the mayor who allowed thousands to die rather than force buses into service, to the corruption in the police department that was exposed when 'deserters' were uncovered by the FBI to be 'non-existants', to the governor who declined to apply for federal help in time, then complained about the lack of federal help, to the rescuers who shot back at people who were firing shots into the air to get noticed, to the gangs who took control of a city ravaged, to the federqal government who seemed totally impotent, and to the militia that was used against the gangs shooting obviously lost pets for a cheap thrill. And, yes, I'm sure I missed a lot of targets in this blame game.

I have seen our liberties removed one by one. I have seen the removal of habeas corpus, the Patriot Act which denies the right to confront an accuser, be advised of charges, or to see an attourney... for American citizens! I have watched seemingly-legal international intelligence ( ) attempts become full blown privacy invasions on our own soil. I have watched as airport security became a major disruption to every traveler who does not appear to be a threat, yet that same security allows those who might appear to desire chaos and terror a free pass.

I have watched as our own citizens had their rights removed, yet someone can cross into this country illegaly for any reason and be rewarded with immunity and entitlements, free to steal identities and commit violent crimes. I have seen the police turn from servants of the public peace into vengeful and sadistic taser-wielding vigilantes. And during all this I have watched citizens who were left unprotected by this change turned into criminals for defending themselves.

So yes, GrannyD, while we are not birds of a feather, keep on preaching the message of freedom. That is the most important topic of all.

TheRedneck

(edited for a typo)

[edit on 6-12-2007 by TheRedneck]

"As the world's resources become stressed by global warming and
overpopulation, do we really think we can kill all the angry people?"

Another logical error. The world is enjoying it's highest standard of living EVER...the quality of living has gone up with population, not the opposite. Being old does not equate with being right.

I believe in respect for one's elders but groundlessly attack my religion and I'll give you all the respect you deserve-none.

reply to post by Jim_Kraken


We could never save ourselfs with attitudes like yours.

I think she's absolutely right about all of it. Ask yourself who lives in the nice houses with big bank accounts and has power backing them? It sure in the hell isn't your average citizen. While we all slave to work our butts off for a measly wage, they go and make laws to restrict us from becoming free men & women. With the technology and the know how this world should be poverty free, but it reeks of it in all nations. She's right about all the money that's spent on wars and profited by the Elite. All that money that could be used for better food sources, education and enviromental issues. We could be to mars now if our minds were focused on education and love.

This is the first I've heard of granny and she sounds very wise and loving. She's 97 years old and has seen and learned alot through all those years and war has been plentiful in her life. She's right about the fear factor and how we all need to stand up and help each other make a difference in our lifes. Look at our educational systems of teacher unions, government and a big lack of parent involvement. Parents are so busy working day and night that they don't see the fires raging in their children's minds and the lack of education. The government is baby sitting our children while we are supporting the backbone of our countries. I remember in ancient history that the leaders were on the front lines and fighting the wars with their own blood, but now days it's all citizens and mostly children that are fighting the wars and spilling their blood while our leaders go home to their mansions and sleep well.

No, I'd say the granny is right and we need to free our minds. It might be to late, but think about everything that's going on around us and who is safe. If anything bad were to happen here on earth and we had ample time to prepare for it then who do you think is safe and better to survive? The Elite and all their posted no tresspassing or you will be shot facilities will make it and most everyone else would vanish.