Mike Rizzuti's Journal

I am a very strange man and have lived a strange life. The people who often refer to themselves as the "Heartland of America" probably wouldn't like me very much, and many would say that I am a poster child for the moral degradation of this nation. However, I am a patriotic American citizen. I see as you and your viewers do that the government is doing terrible things, and it must be stopped. I feel that it will be stopped someday soon, and I take pride and joy in the knowledge that the American people are finally remembering that they have that power. However, I also have a great fear. When the pendulum swings the other way, and the Heartland of America regains control, will it swing too far, turn against me, and will I again have to choose which rights I enjoy, rather than having all of them as it should be?

I know that fear is what got this nation to where it is now. Fear is the reason people did not speak for so long that this government believed it did not need to listen anymore. And so, rather than continuing to fear, I will speak, hope I am heard, and know then that I have nothing to fear from the American people, and that we can fight together against the corruption of our federal government.

I believe in the Nine Principles.

1. America is good. This is plainly evident through the whole of our history. It is full of mistakes, as any history is, but our nation can at least be said to have always done its best. From the concepts of its very founding in the protection of personal liberty, to the willingness to examine ourselves and fight for our beliefs in our own Civil War, to the very sadly forgotten tradition of an open Ellis Island that took in the trash of every other nation and gave them a chance to be human, to the generosity and courage we showed to our allies in World War II, to the triumph of determination and diplomacy that ended the Cold War, we have been exemplary. We still have these values today, in our families, in our military, in our small businesses. We need only bring them to the foreground again.

2. I believe in God and He is the Center of my Life. I do not take my faith from any book. In point of fact, I don't think anyone should, as I believe it to be a thing so importantly and intensely personal that each person should determine its content and gravity themselves, alone. However, I do have faith. I am a man of science, and so cannot claim to have knowledge of this world's creator outside of my own unique, private experience, but I have an intense faith in the boundless potential and imminent divinity of the people, of humanity. This faith drives me and fills me with hope, and I could not stand to live without it. It shows me everyday the importance of the two things I feel are the core of morality: choice and reason. This faith, though it is different from yours and likely the vast majority of your viewers', is my guiding light, and I feel it is something we share, in a sense.

3. I must always try to be a more honest person than I was yesterday. I am a man with a terrible past. There are secrets in it which nobody should have to live with. However, I own them, and they are mine. The people who need to know do, because I take responsibility for myself, and could not have grown past those mistakes without accountability. Some of my past are things many would never forgive me for, but I am secure in the knowledge that I am a good person today because I am honest about when I wasn't.

4. The family is sacred. My spouse and I are the ultimate authority, not the government. I am as yet unmarried and childless. To the extent I pursue relationships, many people would find them strange, and possibly even foolish or corrupt. I have strange ideas about what a family can be, and how to express love and who (and even how many) to express it to. But the commitments and promises I make to those who are important to me are real and solid, and I consider them a moral obligation that supercedes any other. My parents, my siblings, my friends, and when I have them, my lovers: all I passionately assist and defend as though they were my own two hands.

5. If you break the law you pay the penalty. Justice is blind and no one is above it. I'll not mince words. I have gotten away with crimes. Terrible ones. But I have not escaped justice. The real core of this statement, that each person must take responsibility for all of themselves, good or ill, is something I live by, and in fact must, or I would still be a criminal to this day. I work hard to atone for my sins, and I have suffered grave consequences for them, though I was never jailed. This is as it should be, and I know that anyone with a conscience cannot live without they pay penance.

6. I have a right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, but there is no guarantee of equal results.

7. I work hard for what I have and I will share it with who I want to. Government cannot force me to be charitable.

These two are the concept which fueled immigration in this land when it worked the way it was supposed to. We let them in as they pleased, but gave them nothing but the chance to earn. That philosophy made them great people and ours a great nation. I currently cannot claim to live up to these principles. I am on disability, basically for being unable to keep work and nothing else. I take the money the government offers me because currently, it's what I have to do to survive without being a poisonous drain on the people I care about. But that I don't live up to them doesn't mean I don't live by them. While I take what I can, I never have and never would vote for anyone that wants to give me more. I am a true believer in the free market, and if our government were not crushing our potential by giving things to people like me, I probably wouldn't need to take them.

8. It is not un-American for me to disagree with authority or to share my personal opinion.

9. The government works for me. I do not answer to them, they answer to me.

I have said, for years, actually, that probably the best thing that could happen to our country is that we dismantle the federal government. I feel, though many will probably think it paranoid, that our country has actually come under control of one party. The socialist liberals and the moral-militarist neo-conservatives are working at opposite ends of the same goal: fascism. Every branch of the federal government has spent decades, nearly as far back as the very founding of this union, gradually extending its tentacles into every piece of our lives. By using their money and their media, they have sunk their claws in so deep that it seems likely to me that the only way to get them out is to dissolve Congress and arrest its members, and start anew, with a reformed Constitution that makes a conscious effort to return the real power to the states, cities, and people. This cannot possibly be un-American because it is precisely what Thomas Jefferson would want for us.

In closing, I want to say something to all those who are strange: the gay, the bi, the agnostic, and the rebellious. Those who live in fear of the traditional image of the right-wing, and those who live in the shadows of the Internet rather than the normativity of suburbia. Those who believe people should have control over their bodies according to their own conscience and passion, and that large businesses in their current form are irreparable engines of corruption. All those who carry all these strangenesses and many others, but who still realize that our government is wrong and must be stopped.

To them I say: You Also Are Not Alone.

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