A Martyr for Peace, "Without fear I go now to God - your future is what you will choose today."

These are the last words of Malachi Ritscher's suicide note, before he doused himself in gasoline and burned himself to death by an off-ramp in downtown Chicago on November 3rd.

Why did he do it?

Here is the statement I want to make: if I am required to pay for your barbaric war, I choose not to live in your world. I refuse to finance the mass murder of innocent civilians, who did nothing to threaten our country. I will not participate in your charade - my conscience will not allow me to be a part of your crusade.

He killed himself over Iraq, and more.

My actions should be self-explanatory, and since in our self-obsessed culture words seldom match the deed, writing a mission statement would seem questionable. So judge me by my actions. Maybe some will be scared enough to wake from their walking dream state - am I therefore a martyr or terrorist? I would prefer to be thought of as a 'spiritual warrior'. Our so-called leaders are the real terrorists in the world today, responsible for more deaths than Osama bin Laden.

I have had a wonderful life, both full and full of wonder. I have experienced love and the joy and heartache of raising a child. I have jumped out of an airplane, and escaped a burning building. I have spent the night in jail, and dropped acid during the sixties. I have been privileged to have met many supremely talented musicians and writers, most of whom were extremely generous and gracious. Even during the hard times, I felt charmed. Even the difficult lessons have been like blessed gifts. When I hear about our young men and women who are sent off to war in the name of God and Country, and who give up their lives for no rational cause at all, my heart is crushed. What has happened to my country? we have become worse than the imagined enemy - killing civilians and calling it 'collateral damage', torturing and trampling human rights inside and outside our own borders, violating our own Constitution whenever it seems convenient, lying and stealing right and left, more concerned with sports on television and ring-tones on cell-phones than the future of the world.... half the population is taking medication because they cannot face the daily stress of living in the richest nation in the world.

I too love God and Country, and feel called upon to serve. I can only hope my sacrifice is worth more than those brave lives thrown away when we attacked an Arab nation under the deception of 'Weapons of Mass Destruction'. Our interference completely destroyed that country, and destabilized the entire region. Everyone who pays taxes has blood on their hands.

He killed himself for America.

How easy it would be to dismiss Malachi Ritscher as a nutjob. He clearly wasn't normal, but what I've read about him shows that he lived a regular life. He suffered from depression, but kept it together enough to be consistent in his work, recording live jazz for bands who otherwise couldn't afford to cut a CD. He was a loner who was well liked, and was active in the anti-war movement. Plus, there's this little known fact: unlike other forms of suicide, self-immolation is generally undertaken by people who are not mentally ill.

It would be easy to dismiss Malachi Ritscher's self-immolation as just another roadside attraction in Freak Show America, and have it take its place with OJ, Jon Benet, Michael Jackson, the Runaway Bride, Terri Schiavo, and the rest of the tabloid cast. But that dog won't hunt. We will never know anything of what was in Malachi's heart or mind when he committed suicide, but we have his statement of principle, ordinary writing and pedestrian anti-war rhetoric that it is, but nonetheless principled. No freak show here.

We could dismiss this act as an aberration, a political anomaly with no precedent, but we would be forgetting our own history. Malachi Ritscher is not alone in American history. He joins Norman Morrison, Alice Herz, Roger LaPorte, George Winne, Florence Beaumont, Timothy Brown, Richard Breeze, and a man whose name I never could find. Follow these links. Don't worry, there are no awful pictures, but there isn't much information either. All of these people were protesting a war, Vietnam or Desert Storm, and we have collectively ignored their final gestures and forgotten their names.

How many of these names did you recognize?

Now there's Malachi Ritscher, and the media is busy writing him off as mental. This is consistent with our history. Also consistent with our history is this:

There will be more.

RIP Malachi Ritscher(1954-2006)