Hope America

Hope America, lift yourself up like some phoenix in some new day.
It’s not too late to reclaim your good name as Land of Liberty.
All of mankind has hoped in your great dream,
based as it was on higher impulses that human beings can have
to make a world where none need grovel at the feet of bullies any more
or suffer needless want because of artificial economic means.
There’s a connection between people, a holy bond,
which scientists have failed to measure with their graphs and charts.
The pursuit of happiness!”
What a grandiose goal: to save the little from the big.
Wasn’t this just what Jesus meant
when He said “love your neighbor as yourself”?
There’s no doubt Jefferson had this in mind
as in candlelight he penned great charters to set us free
from all the ills that had beset the world since men had learned
to dig metal out of the ground to fashion money, chains and swords.

It didn’t come out the way the Founders hoped
but there’ve been times when it’s come close.
The New Deal and the War on Poverty
have earned high praise.
Lawmakers braved assassins’ bullets trying to free the poor
including two sons of the rich who tried to stop a war.
Even today dangers abound
as heroes pray for courage in the legislative halls.

We must stand up against the ones
who’d like to turn this country into one vast prison camp,
with cameras everywhere and giant penalties for everything,
so that we’re caught, whether by poverty or prison door.
The unjust laws they’ve made, contrived by greed and not diplomacy,
should be removed from our law books the way a cancer is removed.
The Patriot Act should be allowed to lapse.
Some “justices” should go home now before doing any more harm.

UNDO!  UNDO!  the larcenous laws that corporations and railroads made,
the lies that lying liars told.
UNDO the complex scams of insurance companies
that keep tightening their noose around our necks.
REPEAL!  REPEAL!  mandatory sentencing, Three Strikes, forfeiture,
which have made us into something we didn’t intend.
We are too good for laws like this to soil our name,
our vision of free men with compassionate hearts.

Let’s be as great as all the songs and all the hymns say that we are.
Let’s do something for history books to make our children proud.
It’s not too late to set things right
if we will use the potent tools right in our hands:
the Bill of Rights, the Golden Rule, the handshake of our neighbor too
can save us from the monster’s jaw
if we believe the thing that Jesus taught
when He said we can do all that he did and even greater things.