November 3rd, 2006
This Thursday Thirteen from Carmen’s Gone to Plaid blog just begs to be reposted and forwarded via email all across the Internet to everyone everyone knows before Election Day next Tuesday. There are some excellent reminders in there no matter who you’re voting for (and you should be voting for someone).
(note: my own Thursday Thirteen is a few posts down.)
Thirteen Reasons (or Not) You Should Vote for Me if I Ran for OfficeTuesday is Election Day (GO VOTE!).
[…snip…]
PS: You have the right to disagree with me (isn’t America great?), but not to be mean in my comments.
- Being a Democracy isn’t easy. Take free speech. You may not like what I say, and you have the right to disagree. But I still have the right to say it. That includes questioning our leaders without being called “unpatriotic.” Questioning our leaders and speaking your mind is the most patriotic thing you can do. However, these freedoms require responsibility.
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Tags: vote, Election Day, Democracy, free speech, Patriot
September 8th, 2006
A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won’t cross the street to vote in a national election.
–Bill Vaughan
Tags: Quote of the Day, Democracy, vote
July 24th, 2006
I just don’t know why they’re shooting at us. All we want to do is bring them democracy and white bread. Transplant the American dream. Freedom. Achievement. Hyperacidity. Affluence. Flatulence. Technology. Tension. The inalienable right to an early coronary sitting at your desk while plotting to stab your boss in the back.
– Hawkeye, M*A*S*H
Tags: Quote of the Day, Democracy, M*A*S*H
May 3rd, 2006
“Either every vote is sacred, or democracy is a sham.”
- David Cobb, Green Party presidential candidate, 12/2/04
Tags: David Cobb, Green Party, vote, Democracy
May 2nd, 2006
Jacob Hornberger, founder of The Future of Freedom Foundation, wrote an excellent commentary on April 26th and I wanted to share part of it:
… we now live in a nation in which the president has the omnipotent power to ignore all constitutional restraints on his power. That might not be the way the president and his legal advisors put it, but that is the practical effect of what they are saying to justify his powers. They effectively claim that the Constitution vests the president — as military commander in chief during the “war on terrorism” — with such extraordinary powers that he is able to ignore restraints on his powers imposed both by the Constitution and by Congress.
No restraints on declaring and waging war against other nations. No restraints on the power to secretly record telephone conversations of the American people. No restraints on the power to kidnap and send people into overseas concentration camps for the purpose of torture and even execution. No restraints on the power to take Americans into custody as “enemy combatants” and punish them — even torture and execute them — without due process of law and jury trials.
If all that isn’t dictatorship, what is?
“But President Bush is a good man. He’s trying to protect us. He’s waging war against the terrorists. He’s not evil like other dictators in history. He was elected. He can be trusted.”
People who say that are missing the point. The suggestion is not that Bush is an evil man. The point is simply that Bush now wields the same omnipotent, dictatorial powers that other dictators in history have wielded. That is not a small transformation in American life when it comes to freedom.
“Well, then, where are the mass round-ups, and where are the concentration camps?”
Again, people who ask that type of question are missing the point. The point is not whether Bush is exercising his omnipotent, dictatorial power to the maximum extent. It’s whether he now possesses omnipotent, dictatorial power, power that can be exercised whenever circumstances dictate it — for example, during another major terrorist attack on American soil, when Americans become overly frightened again.
Unless the American people figure out a way to reverse what has happened to their country — and have the will to do something about it — they will earn the mark of shame reserved for those people in history who voluntarily relinquished their freedom in exchange for the aura of security. Like all others in history who have chosen such a course, they will ultimately learn that they have lost both their freedom and their security. [“A Democratic Dictatoriship” (The Future of Freedom Foundation)]
I very much believe that the average American really wants to believe that the kind of abuses that Bush is actually claiming he has a right to and has actually been committing in the name of President of the United States of America simply can’t happen “here” in this country. This is America. We are the good guys. We are better than that. Our Leaders will protect us.
I’m sure that every other nation and people that found themselves lost and misled and trapped one day thought the same thing. That sort of thing couldn’t happen in their village, their country, their nation, their empire. They were invicible; they were great; they were blessed; they were the good guys. Their leaders were supposed to protect them.
I just don’t want to wake up in a police state some day because September 11th happened. It was a tragedy it happened. There are things we can do to fight back, to protect ourselves, but we don’t have to give up everything and destroy our freedoms and everything that made us a great nation, America, the good guys, just because it happened. That’s not going to make anything better.
Destroying ourselves so the bad guys can’t won’t solve the problem.
Tags: Democracy, dictatorship, George W. Bush, The Future of Freedom Foundation, Freedoms, 9/11
April 4th, 2006
I’m alway on alert for stories and reports about how things are going in Afghanistan. We hardly ever hear anything about how things are going over there since the invasion of Iraq started and, yet, supposedly, Afghanistan is really where all of this War on Terror stuff started. At the very least, Afghanistan is where the Taliban and Osama Bin Ladin was after 9-11. And we did a lot of bragging in the early days about how we were bringing them freedom and democracy and how we were going to rebuild the country. Remember all of that?
Now, Afghanistan hardly gets a mention in the news. Even when they had elections, it wasn’t even one of our top stories. Iraq has taken over our lives. Afghanistan is the forgotten bastard child. Kind of a shame really because apparently a lot has been happening while we weren’t looking.
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Tags: Afghanistan, Freedoms, Democracy, Taliban, Kandahar, Pakistan, al-Qaeda
