Those who do not learn the lessons of history, are condemned to repeat its mistakes. It was back in the First Century B.C. when the Greek historian, Diodorus Siculus, said:

“It is absurd to entrust the defense of a country to people who own no part of it.”

It was in acknowledgement of the timeless wisdom of this sage that a “Third Party” and its dynamic candidate took the field in our election for the presidency in the United States in the year of 1860. That party became known as the Lincoln “Republican Party” and its candidate that year was a gangly mid-western lawyer named Abraham Lincoln. Together, they were to implement a public policy that would catapult our country in the ranks of the most world’s most powerful economies ever. Within two years of his election, President Lincoln had won passage of the most significant legislation in his party’s platform, the Homestead Act of 1862, a platform based on the thesis that “It is absurd to entrust the defense of a country to people who own no part of it!

The Homestead Act offered the landless white citizens of America part-ownership of the country by giving them 160 acres of frontier land, free, if they produced on it income for themselves and their families for a period of five years. The new Lincoln Republican Party’s slogan then might well have been that which you see emblazoned on our tee shirts here today: “OWN OR BE OWNED.” Own property or be owned by others!

In Lincoln’s America of nearly 150 years ago, the problem confronting the vast majority of the citizens of our nation was that most people owned no land. Today, the major problem for the vast majority of the people of our nation and of our world, for that matter, is that 99% of the people own no capital in a high-tech, capital-intensive economy! We have come here today to stand before the “Likeness of Lincoln” to proclaim the fact that, were he alive today, Lincoln would be here with us to urge the nation, as we do, to establish a “Capital Homestead Act,” one that would make it possible for every American to become an owner of productive capital and not just for the tiny elite who now own our corporations.

“How in the world can you do that?”, you ask. I’m so glad you asked that question because I came fully prepared today to answer it for the 21^st Century Abraham Lincolns who are alive today. We do it by reactivating Section 13 of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 to supply asset-backed currency through the discount windows of each of the 12 Federal Reserve Banks to American citizens for two purposes: one, the sustainable, non-inflationary regional growth of industry, commerce and agriculture through Capital Homestead Accounts for the people, not just for corporations, and two, to de-monopolize the power of money, productive credit and ownership of the means of production by decentralizing that power to the people through their local banks.

Before you dismiss what we are calling the “Abraham Lincoln Plan for the 21^st Century” as a pipe dream, let me remind you that one of the intentions of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 was to enable what we call the “Homesteading of Capital” for “private sector development.” Section 13 of the Act gave the Federal Reserve the power to create and discount “eligible paper” for private sector industrial, commercial and other “productive uses.” The Act established a network of “lenders of last resort” for the banking system. Access to the “discount window” of the FED was to be granted, however, only when the bank paper was based upon the “production, transportation and warehousing of real private sector goods and services.”

         Now, of course, your question is, “how in the world does such a 21^st Century, Abraham Lincoln Capital Homesteading Program address not only the global terrorism threat posed by resource starved suicide bombers around the world but also the daily destabilizing terror experienced by hundreds of millions of our citizens today who we have insufficient funds to pay for our housing, healthcare, education, legal defense and credit card debt needs?” For it is the lack of access to adequate and secure income that is the “terrorism” that stalks hundreds of millions of us in this country every day.

         Later on this morning, at the program that we will hold over at the Federal Reserve Board building, Dr. Norman Kurland will go into greater detail on the simple, yet profound process by which Abraham Lincoln-style Capital Homesteading can become a living reality in our nation. Suffice it for me to say in the brief time allowed me that we can reform American income distribution policy from a total reliance on inflationary wage, job-destroying employer benefits and taxpayer dependent redistribution checks, to growing income independence for every citizen through expanding capital accumulations and dividend checks.

         We can control government spending through a tax system that encourages accelerated rates of investment, sustainable green growth in urban and rural communities and widespread ownership opportunities.

         We can eliminate the double tax on corporate profits and job-destroying Social Security, Medicare and other payroll taxes. We can eliminate all taxes for people below the poverty line.

We can provide citizens reporting incomes below the poverty level, including private charity, with a monthly check to meet their basic subsistence needs until their Capital Homesteading dividends and labor incomes from new jobs rise above the poverty level.

         We can create the equivalent of a Marshall Plan to conduct the research, development and financing of sustainable energy technologies that reduce the levels of carbon dioxide and other pollutants from continued use, thus reducing our dependence on oil and fossil fuels. “We can do it if we apply Abraham Lincoln-type Capital Homesteading to it!”

Our need at this propitious moment in world history is for what somebody has called “Unity ’08,” a coming together of Democrats, Republicans and Independents at the polls in November of the year 2008 to say programmatically that we need this new direction now to end the barbarism of war, the decadence of racism and the scourge of poverty that plague our nation and our world.

         Now there are those who are saying, Walter Fauntroy, you are dreaming if you think that the application the wisdom of the First Century B.C. Greek historian, Diodorus Siculus, that “you cannot entrust the defense of a country to people who own no part of it, has any relevance for the present age, will work in 2008 A.D. You are dreaming if you think that by pairing that wisdom with our slogan, “OWN OR BE OWNED,” will give us a platform and a public policy in 2008 that you will do for America today in the homesteading of capital, what Abraham Lincoln’s homesteading of land in 1860 did for our nation and our world in that era.

         But so, in fact, did they tell the Joshua and Caleb of our Judeo/ Christian/Muslim faith traditions that “you are dreaming if you think that by merely walking about the walled city of Jericho, the barriers to the promise of God for their lives would come tumbling down.” But it did!

         So, in fact, did they tell Martin Luther King, Jr. in Montgomery Alabama, Birmingham and Selma that “you are dreaming if you think that by exercising our First Amendment Right of peaceable assembly to redress our deeply held grievances, we can win freedom from those humiliating ‘for white only signs’ and achieve our voting rights through changes in public policy. You’re dreaming,” they said.

         But Martin Luther King, Jr. was not just a dreamer of impossible dreams; he did not rest until he made of his impossible dreams, living realities. Our “Coalition of Conscience” did it before for civil and voting rights; on our present watch, Martin King’s “Beloved Community” of citizens of every race, creed and color in our nation today, can do it again today for an Abraham Lincoln “Capital Homesteading Act” for our time and for all time.

         I close with words from Paul Robeson, a man whom some would quote with reservations because he held political views that were impala- table to some of us. But that aside, Paul Robeson was a cultural giant: a Phi Beta Kappa scholar at Rutgers, an All American football player, a magnificent thespian, a brilliant lawyer, a marvelous singer; there is nothing in the annals of music from the ethereal heights of a Mozart to the more banal levels of an Elvis Pressley to the supposedly ice cycle cool genius of a Charlie Parker, nothing in the annals of music is as stirring to me as the rich, resonant, robust tones of Robeson rippling over a number like “Joshua Fit ‘de Battle ‘round Jericho” or “Get on Board little chillin, there’s room for many a more. Der s no second class aboard dis train, do diffence in de fare.” There’s nothing more rich than Robeson.

         In the closing chapter of his autobiography, “Here I Stand,” he writes and I quote him;

“In the glow of lamplight on my desk, I gaze upon one of the wondrous signs of our times, full of hope and promise for the future. And I smile to see in the newspaper photographs the faces so bright, so solemn, of our young heroes, the children of Little Rock. Their names are Elizabeth Eckford, Carlotta Walls, Minnie Jean Brown, Gloria Rae, Thelma Mothershed, Jefferson Thomas, Ernest Green; and to this list may be added the names of all of the black and white youth of the Southland who have given us great new epochs of courage and dignity. The patter of their feet have become the thunder of the matching men of Joshua and the world rocks beneath their tread.”

         I like that old Negro Spiritual, “Joshua fit de battle roun’ Jericho.” In its simple, yet colorful depiction of that great moment in biblical history, it tells us that:

“Joshua fit de battle roun’ Jericho and de wall come a tumbling down. Up to de walls of Jericho da matched wid spear in han’. Go blow dem ramhorns, Joshua cried, ‘caus the battle am in my han’s.”

These words have I given you just as they were given us by their unknown, long dead, dark skinned originator. Some now long gone black bard bequeathed to posterity these words in ungrammatical form, yet with emphatic pertinence for us today: ‘De battle am in our hands.”

         America, America listen, listen, the battle to translate Abraham Lincoln’s land homesteading program of the 19^th Century into our Unity ’08 Capital Homesteading Program for the 21^st Century, that battle is in our hands. (pause) Let us go on now to win the battle to establish in our nation this program that will enable us, once and for all time, to end the barbarism of war, the decadence of racism and the scourge of poverty across this emerald planet of ours.