Prior to the Revolutionary War there was an elusive and mysterious figure, whether male or female no one now knows, who published a series of pamphlets called "The Alarm", which railed against the abuses increasingly being perpetrated upon the American colonists by King George of Britain and his coterie of conservatives and corporatists. The pamphlets, published in New York and distributed throughout the colonies, were signed by someone named "Rusticus".

Rusticus directed particular fire toward a corporation, of which King George (and the "father of modern conservatism" Edmund Burke) held shares, the East India Company. Awarded special privileges and powers, the East India Company dominated commerce throughout the British Empire. In the American colonies, the East India Company deigned to obliterate any and all competition. Rusticus was one of the voices that early on called for resistance to this violation of what many liberal thinkers were now considering their "inalienable rights".

Rusticus accused King George, his ministers and the corporation of "enslaving America". Rusticus wrote, "How little they regard the Laws of Nature, the Rights, Liberties, or Lives of Men."

Rusticus leveled the broadside that reverberates even today with the absolute greed, cronyism and corruption we have seen from conservative politicians and corporate executives: "They have levied War, excited Rebellions, dethroned lawful Princes, and sacrificed Millions for the Sake of Gain. The Revenues of Mighty Kingdoms have centered in their Coffers. And these not being sufficient to glut their Avarice..."

Wow! Mind you, this was written in 1773... but the parallels to how conservative and corporatist policies have wrought damage and destruction here at home in America, and around the world, are simply stunning. U.S. covert operations to "dethrone" legitimately elected leaders in places like Iran, Latin America and elsewhere... coddling of vicious dictators (and terrorists) who would do our bidding (including Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden), corporations gobbling each other up, getting bigger and bigger and bigger, paying their top executives more and more and more (while paying their workers less and less and less), invasions of countries that posed no threat to us, "no-bid" contracts to corporations with ultra-close associations with the politicians who are awarding the contracts (Hello Dick Cheney and Halliburton), privatization of "the commons", the greedy compulsion of conservatives to "deregulate" big business and "unleash the free market", the resultant (and totally predictable) orgy of speculation and speciousness that has led to our current economic disaster (which, of course, closely parallels the economic disaster the same conservative policies led us into in the 1920s), the inculcation and perpetuation of a rampant consumerism that does, indeed, "enslave" us all to corporations... each of these afronts to our independence, welfare, sense of justice and basic goodness as Americans is eerily similar (though assuredly magnified in sheer scale) to the very issues that Rusticus warned about.

Within a year and a half of Rusticus' Alarm, the patriots of the colonies had had enough, and East India Company tea was being dumped in Boston Harbor! The American Revolution had begun... in resistance to a king... and a corporation!

Now Rusticus is back, sounding the alarm again.

"It's time to rise up again against conservatives and corporations. We must throw off the tyranny of super corporatism and conservative 'principles' that have proven, over and over again, to not benefit the common American. We must reclaim our independence, sense of justice for all, and real compassion as Americans. We must hold conservatives accountable for their litany of utter failure of judgment, failure of insight, failure of ideas, and failure of conscience, throughout American history! We must re-establish our determination to hold corporations subservient to the people, not vice-versa. We must reverse the conservative legal assumption that corporations are "persons" (a ploy they use to usurp vast powers unavailable to any actual living person); they are not "persons", they are contructs of the imagination of persons, and therefore must never be accorded powers and privileges far greater than any individual citizen, and be in position to use those powers to monopolize, manipulate, control, dominate, exploit, abuse, addict or "enslave" consumers or citizens anytime, anywhere, nor to harm the commons, including the health of our very planetary system, that accrues to the benefit of all people.

"Mind you, the majority of corporations seek only a fair profit to provide for and sustain their owners, employees and share-holders, and are law-abiding and good citizens of their communities. But the largest, just like the East India Company of 1773, and like the railroads of the 1880s, are out of control. But to a degree far worse than imaginable in 1773. Corporations are now threatening the very fabric of our nation, our society and our world. They control our daily lives, the food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe, the information we receive and therefore the thoughts in our head. They demand that we buy, buy, buy from them in a never-ending loop of subservient transfer of our capital, our time, our freedoms... indeed, our very lives... directly into their Coffers. To them we are serfs. Some of these corporations would slit your throat for a dollar; they would destroy the world for an extra billion! And, indeed, as you are reading this sentence they are doing just that.... aided and abetted by conservative politicians and power-mongers all along the way.

"On Guard America! Wake up, all nations, and all people everywhere! Shake off the chains of ignorance and consumerism! Stop being the dupes of people who want to rob you blind, and keep you in veritable bondage! Corporations have taken over the world. Let's take it back!"