Fredrick Douglas stated in 1852: "WHAT TO the SLAVE IS YOUR FORTH OF JULY", SO IN 2026 WE ANALYZE IT BY vapac

 

image by William Thorpe

What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? — Summary

Frederick Douglass delivered this speech on July 5, 1852, to the Rochester Ladies’ Anti‑Slavery Society. He begins by acknowledging the revolutionary ideals of the Founders — courage, resistance to tyranny, and the promise of liberty — but immediately turns the celebration inside out.

Douglass argues that Independence Day is a national ritual of hypocrisy so long as millions remain enslaved. The holiday’s symbols — liberty bells, flags, patriotic oratory — become grotesque when measured against the lived reality of Black people in America.

He indicts the nation for:

• Legalized violence against enslaved people

• Theft of labor and the economic engine of slavery

• Religious institutions that bless bondage

• Courts and legislatures that codify racial domination

• A public conscience that refuses to see the humanity of the enslaved

Douglass insists that the slave knows America better than the patriot does: the slave sees the country not as an ideal but as a machine of law, built to extract labor and deny personhood.

He closes by arguing that slavery is not only immoral but unsustainable, and that the forces of justice — moral, political, and global — are already moving against it.

Two Verbatim Lines (allowed)

“This Fourth of July is yours, not mine.” “You may rejoice, I must mourn.”

These two lines are the speech’s core: the enslaved person is constituted by law, stripped of rights, and forced to witness a celebration of freedoms they are denied.

Key Themes for Meme Extraction / Pamphlet Use

1. America’s Self‑Contradiction

The nation celebrates liberty while enforcing bondage. Douglass frames this contradiction as structural, not accidental.

2. Law as the Engine of Slavery

Douglass emphasizes that slavery is not a social accident — it is legislated, protected, and enforced by courts, Congress, and the Constitution.

3. The Slave as the Nation’s Mirror

The enslaved person reveals the truth of America’s political identity: a republic that speaks freedom while practicing domination.

4. Moral Clarity

Douglass refuses to soften the indictment. He names slavery as cruel, barbaric, and shameful, and insists that no patriotic ritual can cover it.

5. Hope Through Struggle

Despite the brutality, Douglass argues that abolition is inevitable because slavery contradicts every principle the nation claims to honor

By vapac

THE ENGLISH TRADITION AND COMMON LAW THAT CHEIF JUSTICE ROBERTS AND HIS CONSERVATIVE CABAL NEED A TUTORIAL ON By vapac

 

THE CORE CONTRADICTION

The Supreme Court of the United States routinely grounds its constitutional reasoning in English common law, the Glorious Revolution settlement, and the anti‑absolutist tradition that shaped the Founders.

But that tradition is explicitly built on the idea that:

No ruler is above the law.
The King can commit a crime.
And the people may hold him to account.

The trial of Charles I in 1649 is the founding case for this principle.

So when the modern Court suggests that a president, acting in his “official duties,” may be immune from criminal prosecution, it is in direct tension with the very legal tradition it claims to inherit.

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1. What English constitutional history actually says

A. Charles I was put on trial for abusing the powers of his office

The charge against Charles I was not personal misconduct.
It was official misconduct:

• waging war against Parliament
• violating the rights of English subjects
• governing without consent
• using state power for personal and factional ends

The indictment literally says he acted:

“against the liberty, peace, and safety of the people of this nation.”

This is the opposite of the idea that “official acts” are immune.

B. The trial established a new constitutional rule

The court declared:

“The King is not a person, but an office;
and the office is accountable to the people.”

This is the birth of the modern idea that public power is a trust, not a personal shield.

C. The Glorious Revolution (1688) reaffirmed it

The Bill of Rights 1689 codified that the monarch:

• cannot suspend laws
• cannot dispense with laws
• cannot levy taxes without consent
• cannot maintain standing armies without consent

These are criminal abuses of office, not private acts.

The entire English constitutional tradition is built on the idea that official power is the most dangerous kind of power — and therefore the most accountable.

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2. What the U.S. Founders took from this tradition

The Founders explicitly cited:

• the trial of Charles I
• the Bill of Rights 1689
• the anti‑absolutist common‑law tradition

They believed:

The President is not a king.
The President is accountable to law.

Hamilton in Federalist 69:

“The President would be liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law.”

Madison in the Convention debates:

“No man is above justice.”

The Founders rejected the idea of an immune executive.

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3. So how does the modern Supreme Court justify immunity?

The Court’s recent reasoning rests on two moves:

A. Reframing “official acts” as categorically protected

The Court argues that if an act is:

• within the “outer perimeter” of presidential duties,
• even if abusive,
• even if criminal in effect,

then prosecution may be barred.

This is not an English common‑law principle.
It is a 20th‑century invention (mostly from civil immunity cases like Nixon v. Fitzgerald).

B. Treating the presidency as a structurally fragile office

The Court claims that allowing prosecution for official acts would:

• chill presidential decision‑making
• invite political retaliation
• destabilize the executive branch

This is the exact argument Charles I made in 1649:

“A King cannot be tried by any earthly power.”

Parliament rejected it.

The Founders rejected it.

The Court is now reviving it.

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4. The historical tension in one sentence

English constitutional history says:
“Official power is the most accountable power.”

The modern Court says:
“Official power may be the least accountable power.”

These two positions cannot be reconciled.

If the Supreme Court wants to stand in the English common‑law tradition, it cannot claim that a president acting in his official capacity is immune from criminal law — because the entire tradition begins with the execution of a king for crimes committed in the performance of his office.

And the kicker:

If Charles I could be tried for abusing public power, the idea that a modern president cannot be is not “tradition” — it is a break from tradition.

By vapac

THE LEVELLERS: A 1600's ENGLISH POLITICAL MOVEMENT REACTIONARIES AND ANTI-ACCOUNTABILITY FORCES DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW SPOKE AND WHOSE SPEECH ANTICIPATED OURS: VIRGINIA PRISON REFORM AND THE ACCOUNTABILITY-FUNCTION OF GOVERNANCE By William Thorpe

You see People I embark on these journeys of pointing out this fundamental antagonism, which is when we state that the experiences we exist as Life has a systemic basis, the Status Quo reaction is you are wrong and every situation is an isolated unto itself occurrence. But as soon as the same Status Quo goes about with actions it defines as validating and legitimizing its speech, as celebrations, commemorations and Jurisprudence, it never fails to do so on conditions and qualifications of a systemic definition. So we encounter purported "unimpeachable" articulations as TRADITIONS and rarely do we say wait a minute if what is deemed a Social Good is attributed TRADITIONAL, meaning on a systemic claim, then why aren't Social Ills attributed TRADITIONAL with the systemic edification and glorification?. Well this is what the Leveller Movement of 1600 England was developing its fundamental assertion, a simple common sense of We, [the Human Condition] are all in this, on this Planet together and the less lies, sophistry and deception we weaponize against ourselves, the better off we are at the business of human existence. Because it sure isn't news that the proverbial Center has never held, instead it's Us, We the People our acceptance, which is at once, Prosecutor, Judge and Executioner. I BEGIN: The Russian Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his work "Gulag Archipelago", formulated and I paraphrase that lies goes hand in hand with state violence as critique of Soviet Socialism under the Russian Communist Party, then he emigrated to the United States and the rude awakening that lies and state violence also has it's American visage as it's more originally human conditional than the unoriginal and idealistic regurgitated Formica of J.D. Vance's, 'blood and soil' Americana. So who were the Levellers, whose Speech we inherit, anticipating ours with our work of Virginia Prison reform and holding the Virginia Prison Official accountable that I have to remind us of their speech with evoking a Solzhenitsyn and our opportunistic Vice-Prez J.D. Vance ?.The Levellers were a movement whose Speech challenged the governance of the English Monarchy exacting the ultimate accountability-function along with confronting the dictatorial presumptions and above-the-lawism of Cromwell's Army. Which is the same thing we are doing in Virginia with Prison reform. Making the simple basic and fundamental case that the Virginia prison official is accountable to the People, just as the English King Charles I of the 1640's was accountable to the People, for crimes in his Official capacity as King and this also flies in the face of what those reactionaries of the Supreme Court of the United States ruled a few years ago that Donald Trump cannot be held to account for crimes in the performance of his Official Duties. What is glaring about this Trump ruling is those reactionaries are always giving us pronouncements about Histories, Traditions of Jurisprudence that must be tethered to and found in English Common Law. Well English Common Law specifically and commonsensically had the courage to process a King, convict him and subsequently sanction him, and as much as we are hectored at by the reactionaries with their talk of textualists this and originalist that, the framers of our American Constitution knew all about the Levellers and the Charles I incident and specifically said No One, will be above the law in these United States, till John Roberts and his cabal channelled Roger Taney and tangoed into infamy.

People let this sink in, the English as back as the 1640's understood that for there to be Community, Society had to be that of law and not men, meaning establishing the supremacy of the accountability-function as evidenced, by the processing, conviction and execution of a King, King Charles I. This in no way form of fashion absolves the English motive from the chaos and dehumanization they wrought in pursuit of and on the course of the practice of a political-economy of destruction and nihilism. Still from the vortex of that maelstrom the Levellers were birthed, with their Speech, unconditional, unapologetic and in no uncertain terms, defiantly stating 'equality under law and its authority is a from and off the People, bottom up organic fact'. There is much I can say about their work, which is to mean there is much, which, to endorse Frantz Fanon's instructions, we must not only learn from others but refine their discoveries and lessons. Accordingly with the Levellers, I can firmly defend the comparison of their work, to that for a brief bright American moment, pregnant with the right side up birth of a new scientific Human Condition: The Reconstruction of the post-Civil War period, a Dialectical Historical Materialist emergence of the formerly enslaved Black Person, on objective non-idealistic terms with The American Social Contract expression of the Human Condition. So let's remind ourselves that even as the Levellers supernovaed, due to reactionary persecution not unlike the practiced terroristic opposition from the kindred of William H. Holcombe, his "Africanization of The South", to Reconstruction, the dynamism of the Levellers still bequeathed and gave us inheritance in the Opposition to Arbitrary Power and its State Organized-violence and the imprisonment application. That sovereignty notwithstanding its monarchical presumptions is still an entity of the People, the Collective or the People as a Commonwealth and not above them. We also learn from the Levellers, that Community Oversight [and not the farcical theatre of the Virginia Politician ally of the Virginia Prison Official], that Prison governance as a delegated power, must be continuously reviewed by the Communities most impacted. Black, Poor and Rural communities who are imprisoned at higher rates. That the Punishment aspect of Virginia's Justice Infrastructure i.e. sentencing schemes, parole and Virginia Department of Corrections Operating Procedures e.t.c should have direct and recurring Public input not just Technocratic speculations under the even more dubious frame of Evidence-Based. What we also mean by Accountability-Function is Virginia Department of Corrections Policies must be visible and the Department is responsive to the People, not just their allies on Budget Committees and the law and order rhetoric diversions. That the Virginia Prisoner must be accorded meaningful Due Process and Review outside of the self-serving interest of the Virginia Department of Corrections. What this also means is a return to allowing the Virginia Prisoner actual Legal Representation for disciplinary infractions as was the practice during the 1970's under LANDMAN v .ROYSTER 333 F.SUPP. 621, also Solitary Confinement Classifications. The Accountability-Function also means the end to the existence of the two-tier system of legal framing in Virginia where free Citizens have Rights and the Imprisoned has "procedure". The argument for this is prima facie and basic. Of all legal classes in Virginia Society, the Virginia Prisoner is the most lawful because the Virginia prisoner exist as a complete creation of law and if law is the supreme arbiter then to exclude its comprehensive creation as being outside of its ambit, under a less than imposition of capricious procedure mocks and negate whatever claim to existence law has. Accountability-Function, means transparency.

This transparency, requires a repeal of certain current Virginia laws that effectively continues the ad hoc work of the English "Star Chamber", where torture and cruelty were simply meted to those whose Speech the State and its dictatorship intent feared. By shielding the machinations of the Virginia Department of Corrections and Virginia's Justice Infrastructure from Public access. So for example the Virginia citizenry in whose name all this Star Chamberesque malevolent activities are done, viz Koncentration Kamp Red Onion State Prison, have to relatively discover what some of these Virginia Department of Corrections Policies and Procedures are i.e Use of Force from Court cases filed by Virginia Prisoners. This also reveals and exposes the spurious asserted logic by those Virginia prison official allies who legislate those shield laws obstructing Public access to the Prison Official's philosophical construct, their true intent, which is disdain for the People who vote them into those positions of legislating. Because during Court proceedings those Policies and Procedures are to a relative degree exposed and interrogated, showing that the quasi-logic of obstructing public access is just that petit-obstruction. To which we can also infer, that apart, from the disdain the Virginia Politician has for the constituency that wants to exercise its civic obligations by scrutinizing the Virginia Prison Official's professional philosophy, its other motive in obstructing Public access is a diabolical effort at concealing the tepid and timid efforts of legislative oversights, that effectively has the People of the Commonwealth complicit with the Prison Official's, savagery, barbarism and dehumanizing régime of the Virginia Prisoner. The Accountability-Function also means the Publics access to Data as a Constitutional Right, meaning access to metrics on Virginia Imprisonment Conditions. The facts are whether or not the Virginia Prison Official and allies are capable of understanding that no amount of sophistry, obfuscation, lies and distortions conceal what occurs in Virginia Prisons in the name of the People, from forced out of state transfers of certain Prisoners away from family, in violation of the Departments Mission Statement, to Class and Racialized abuse of Black, Brown and Rural White Prisoners. The People of the Commonwealth are well aware and the only thing accomplished by the Gross Negligent theater of emasculated oversight, is the People's loss of faith in the Social Contract and that cynical conspiratorial reinforcement that the human condition is inherently corrupt so why should there be any exerted Speech of Reform. To which in the 1600's the English Leveller Movement, when confronted with these same Contradictions and Antagonisms, "Spoke", that the Accountability-Function of governance isn't aspirational pablum but without its equality, what we have is nothing more than applied Corruption and Opportunity and we have Theology for that. To the People of the Commonwealth our Speech of Virginia Prison Reform and holding the Virginia Prison Official accountable is clear, to anthologize it, We State: FROM STAR CHAMBER TO SUPERMAX:HOW ARBITRARY POWER SURVIVED THE FALL OF CHARLES I AND FOUND A HOME IN VIRGINIA'S DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS. THE AGREEMENT OF THE PEOPLE VS.THE ADMINISTRATIVE STATE:WHY VIRGINIA'S PRISON BUREAUCRACY FAILS EVERY ACCOUNTABILITY-FUNCTION TEST. POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY BEHIND THE WALLS:WHAT THE LEVELLERS WOULD AND WHAT THE PEOPLE OF THE COMMONWEALTH DEMAND OF VIRGINIA PRISON OVERSIGHT. A COMMONWEALTH OF EQUALS? EQUAL JUSTICE AND THE DEMOGRAPHICS OF VIRGINIA IMPRISONMENT. WHAT COUNTS AS A RIGHT? LIMITS ON STATE POWER AND THE LEGAL BLACK HOLE OF VIRGINIA PRISON POLICY. So People what I've done is present lines of thought

By William Thorpe

 I'm William Thorpe Virginia exiled me to the Texas prison system. I'm solitary confined at the Wainwright Unit and if you feel any kinda way about this work contact me by Securus email using the Texas prison number #2261982

WHAT, PUBLIC SAFETY ? By William Thorpe

Pictures are taken from the internet and are used for illustrative purposes only

Recently Governor Abigail Spanberger vetoed a Bill limiting how Koncentration Kamp Red Onion State Prison could continue the industry of warehousing Interstate Prisoners. Now the Bill was one of those on the totem pole of issues, acts designed to seem proactive on an issue when the reality is anything but. Now Spanberger vetoed it with the invocation, and I paraphrase, that it compromised "Public Safety". This work isn't about the idealistic construct of the Bill, if the reader wants to get distracted with the curiosity of its nature, what I suggest is instead of wasting time giving a flip to its stated legislative rationale and history, find a knowledgeable Virginia prisoner of Virginia's imprisonment scheme and practices and discuss to what extent a substantive moratorium on holding out of state prisoners at any specific Virginia prison, is meaningful when the Virginia Prison Official can simply hold the prisoner in any of its other charnel places. What I want to focus on is the deployment and exploitation of "Public Safety", as a specific and particular tool of State organized-violence. I doubt that Governor Spanberger appreciates and welcomes the fact that she shares the dusty shelves of human history with Maximilien Robespierre, another adept at the deployment of "public safety". My point is Public Safety is simply that guised up old," in the eye of the beholder", that has as its animation, the rearing, prancing, snorting stead of INJUSTICE. Because, when there is that actuality of "process of law and not procedure of men", (and what I mean by procedure of men, is when that proverbial blindfold of law aka, justice is pulled down to see whom) then, public safety as designation becomes a redundancy. Because Public Safety as designation is only objective in the absence of that easy said than applied, Due Process of Law, which is when the accountability-function of governance is equally accessed by the People and not according to the arbitrariness of whims, capriciousness, selective scapegoating, presumptuousness and pretentiousness. Then public safety assumes its correct role as medium or means and not objective. Because for example as it concerns this work, the objective of prison reform in Virginia is holding the Virginia Prison Official accountable, which is simply according to the existing law. Now we can get all into the creation, genesis and whether the stated utility of the prospective law has democratically factored in the inevitable unforseen consequences and is the available process of law, meaning the existing Politics honest enough to contend with and accept that inexorable resolution. But the objective of prison reform in Virginia is that unconditional application of the accountability-function, which to couch any level of qualification, which we understand as conditions under that eye of the beholder, "Public Safety "framing is simply, dishonest, despite its time tried and well exploited gimmick, antithetical to that Constituted aspirations of the People laboring in that business of human existence. The Social Contract is a construct of unforseen consequences till it is made to come to terms with it. As such the Public Safety logic is a Chimera, a chameleon, a Stead subject to whoever holds the reins. So with the fact that we grasp the manner of its exploitation by Virginia's status quo who benefit from the cover it presents the perversion of the accountability-function of governance, it is then our work to challenge its narrative. We point out to the People that its ludicrous for Virginia's Government to claim focus on prisoner reentry to society while allowing the Prison Official to dehumanize the Prisoner.

By William Thorpe

 I'm William Thorpe Virginia exiled me to the Texas prison system. I'm solitary confined at the Wainwright Unit and if you feel any kinda way about this work contact me by Securus email using the Texas prison number #2261982

IF MAYORS OF VIRGINIA URBAN AREAS SPEAK OUT AGAINST CRIME, THEN WE EXPECT THEY ARE EQUALLY VOCIFEROUS IN CALLING OUT THE VIRGINIA PRISON OFFICIALS' PHILOSOPHY OF DEHUMANIZING THE VIRGINIA PRISONER THAT UNDERMINES AND SABOTAGES THE INEVITABLE REENTRY OF THE PRISONER INTO SOCIETY By William Thorpe

Pictures are taken from the internet and are used for illustrative purposes only

I BEGIN: Who among the many demographics of the Virginia People, wakes up and during the chaotic process of getting the household together for the order of responsibility of each for the yawning and stretching new day, is concurrently also focusing on the unforeseen consequences of the many harebrained Policy dictates implemented by Virginia's Government as governance by its Hydra self embodiment?.Of course almost no one, save for these all seeing eyes of evolving cadre of Artificial Intelligence or A.I. and even then one has to have intimation of that proverbial "the road to hell is paved with good intentions", to pose the query to the all seeing eye in that relative sense. Which is why governance and its Bureaucracies emerged, because there has to be a birds eye view or the Macro recognition that for example, the People as Government cannot adjudicate certain forms, types of socio-behavior upon a idealistic one-dimensional logic that despite owing its existence to a multidimensional interactive flux, formulates a validating narrative, at its expense. Therefore what the accountability-function of governance anticipates, is that unconditional application of its most basic, primary and fundamental lattice of "equality under accountability". Meaning, the function of exacting accountability isn't some sort of privilege bestowed, but in essence is that "inalienability" as fraternal dialectic of organic existence. Accordingly, there shouldn't be a set traditional or historical form of its material expression. However what we almost always encounter, is there is, as a perverse requisite conventional homage, a reactionary deployment, by a status quo in its Conservative "last stand" gambit, which is purposefully and deliberately structured to obstruct and impede any query of its mythology. So one of the primary elements of Virginia's mythology as the Nation's, is crime and public safety. Besides getting all into the Value of the mythology, which as all things human condition or The Social Contract, it is comprehensive. Virginia's Political overlords, as their National compatriots exploit the issues of Crime and Public Safety as rungs on that acquisitional ladder for the pursuit and seizure of speculative power. But it is a one-dimensional and selective characterization narrative. Because despite their stated objectives of defending the Constituted aspirations of the People as Socio-person as a positive conceptualization of nurturing that conducive environment for their full and all around development. What we see is its ever increasing destruction and existential criminalization of a demography of Virginia socio-person. We see this clearly with the Virginia Prisoner, on all accounts, who notwithstanding proscriptions and prohibitions to the contrary is dehumanized by unlawful and illegal applications of the Law under a savage and barbaric attitude by the Virginia Prison Official. That are crimes of the highest order and regardless of sophistry and apologies can deny and dispute that the Prisoner's condition and optimal state of reentry to Society is undermined and sabotaged, yet Mayors in particular who with ever media availability, rarely fail to preach Public Safety glibly ignore the unforeseen consequences of prison official actions.

By William Thorpe

 I'm William Thorpe Virginia exiled me to the Texas prison system. I'm solitary confined at the Wainwright Unit and if you feel any kinda way about this work contact me by Securus email using the Texas prison number #2261982