Democracy can die a slow death from a
thousand cuts, inflicted by a few small
men, wielding deadly little knives, drawing
blood one drop at a time, on a slumbering
people, who take their freedom for granted,
and let it slip slowly away.
Even today, after 2000, after 2002, after 2004,
there are stories in the news about abuses
against the right to vote, committed by the
same people, for the same reason, done
the same ways, and yet the people who
should care, dont, and the people who should
be fighting against this, aren't.
In my day when the Battle of Britain was
raging, when bombs were bursting above
our heads, when all of Europe had fallen
and the imperial army had stormed across
the Pacific, we knew what you forget, that
freedom is precious, that freedom is hard,
that freedom comes at a high price, that
not one inch of freedom must ever be lost,
because once we surrender one inch, we
risk it all.
In my day had a foreign power invaded America
and installed a proconsul, who ruled that your
Bill of Rights and National Laws were no longer
in effect, unless he permitted it, a righteous
people would have rallied in the streets with
a thundering voice calling out: never, never, never.
The world needs America. The world needs
America to be America. The world needs
America to be the light and the flame and
the torch. Yet today because you have lost
sight about what America means at home,
you have inflicted great harm and shed great
blood on yourselves, and the world.
I do not need to make dire predictions about
the future, the ugly truth is told by the shame
of the present.
When your Leader said he could take away
your Bill of Rights on his own personal whim,
you did nothing.
When your Leader said he could violate law
based on some claimed power he has, you
stayed silent.
When your Leader claimed he could inflict
horrid acts of torture that break international
laws honored by every democracy on earth,
you surrendered.
When your Leader claimed the power to jail
people without hearings and imprison people
without justice, you gave in.
When your Leader claimed the power to detain people without charges, and
inflict punishment and pain on unknown people without lawyers or law,
you submitted.
When your Leader seized the power to invade
your home without a warrant and take your body without a writ, you did
nothing.
When your Leader claimed the power to take your privacy without a court
and take your rights without a hearing, you gave in.
When your Leader said the Congress has no
right to be involved in the policy of making
war, you gave up.
When your Leader said your Courts have no
responsiblity for upholding your Constitution
without his permission, you stood down.
Every one of these abridgments of basic
freedom was done before your eyes and in
plain view, with the support of many, with
the submissiveness of some, and with the ignorant acquiesence of others
who had better things to do than value the freedom that braver
men and women than you, died to leave to
you, in trust.
Here is how it looks to the friends of freedom
in heaven who are shouting to you with the
great documents, books and ideas for
democracy that have been written through
the ages.
It all begins with the unbridled arrogance of
those who won the 2000 election and came
to believe, so far correctly, that they could
get away with anything.
Every American, every Democrat, every friend
of freedom should go to sleep every night, and
wake up every morning, with giant pictures of
Katherine Harris, Karl Rove, John Bolton and
Jim Baker as they were counting the votes in
Florida.
Every American, every Democrat, every friend
of freedom everywhere should go to sleep every night, and wake up every
morning, and
read the decision of the United States Supreme
Court acting like partisan hacks making a party
line vote, deciding the American Presidency.
Every American, every Democrat, every friend
of democracy should go to sleep every night,
and wake up every morning, and read the
stories from 2002 and 2004 about voters
being threatened and intimidated, about
voting lists being purged, about voting rolls
being stripped, about letters of threat to voters being sent in the
mail, about leaflets aimed
to intimidate voters being handed out even
in churches, about polls being close early,
about voters being fraudulently turned away,
about honorable people being forced to wait
seven hours for their most important right to
be honored.
Every American, every Democrat, every friend
of freedom in this land should go to sleep every
night, and wake up every morning, and read
the stories about an election only days away,
about problems with voting in state after state
already this year, about predictions of chaos
and warnings of crisis, from those desperately
trying awaken a slumbering nation.
Every American, every Democrat, every friend
of democracy should spend every one of these
last few days asking how six years after 2000,
our election system is more dangerously flawed
than ever before, with machines that even the
election officials do not always understand, with
technology that remains secret from our nation,
with standards do not exist, election workers who are too often
untrained. and a media that
is obsessed with spin doctors, dirt mongers
and dance contests more than the sanctity
of democracy.
To average Americans, security moms, soccer
moms, military communities, workers, families, men and women of faith
please understand that the problems that plague us today, come naturally
and inevitably, from the attitudes of those who believe they can get
away with anything. Those who deliberately destroy the checks and
balances of democracy. Those who aggressively demean the opinion of
others. Those who deliberately destroy the very fabric of democratic
debate and who deliberately destoy the very unity of nations,
seeking ever more ugly politics, aimed at winning ever nastier
elections, resulting in
ever more catastrophic disasters.
This is what happens when our democratic institutions and democratic
spirit of goodwill are destroyed in the name of aggressive and hostile
partisanship, in the single minded
pursuit of total power. This disrespectul
and contemptuous one-partyism is the
cause of our crisis from mismanagement
of the war in Iraq to the abuses of pages in
Washington, from the corruption that has
turned our capital into the house of the
bought and sold, to our inabiity to agree
even on urgent missions such as protecting
our ports, defending our borders and supplying
our troops.
To good Republicans, many of you agree with
much of what I write here, and you need to
have a heart to heart with yourselves, about
whether the time has belatedly come for you
to dissent from your party, on behalf of your
country, before this madness goes further.
To Democrats you should be embarrassed
and ashamed that after 2000, 2002, and 2004
the party of the people will be disastrously
outspent, yet again, on election day, in getting out the vote. Have you
learned nothing?
It is pathetic, wrong and inexcusable that
after 2000, 2002 and 2004 your party remains
ten years behind the Republicans on matters
of bringing out voters on election day and
fighting to ensure that the voting is honest.
It is incredible, unbelievable and pathetic that
after 2000, 2002 and 2004 you have leading
party financiers who have given ten times more
to promote democracy in Russia than to defend
democracy in America, that you have a former
candidate hoarding tons of money from 2004, because he wants to be a
candidate in 2008, rather than using that money and being the hero who
leads the fight for the right to vote in 2006.
Every American, every Democrat, every friend
of freedom everywhere should be pounding the
table with outrage at the Election Assistance
Commission, that was created after 2000 to
ensure integrity of democracy and is nothing
more than a fraud, a farce and a sham that
at best has done zero, and at worst, is the
great enabler for the potential corruption and
chaos of elections in America.
Every American, every Democat, every friend
of freedom should be demanding that every
Secretary of State entrusted to protect the
franchise, and every election official that allows this to happen, who
have not done their jobs
six years after 2000, be impeached, fired, recalled or removed if there
are crises in their jurisdictions that they are doing nothing to prevent
today.
This is a warning in the most Churchillian
terms to Democrats in the Sunday New York
Times sounding like schoolchildren giddy
with glee, that you finally might win an
election, or acting like Halloween trick or
treaters, spooked at what the Republican
ghouls will do to you, again.
This is not the time for giddy glee and this is
not the time for paranoid fears. This is the time
to fight for freedom and democracy in your
own backyard, knowing that this election could
be decided by a handful of votes in a handful
of places. Knowing that the arrogance and
contempt from those who think they can get
away with anything, will be without limits if
you let them get away with this. Knowing
that they have you outgunned, outmanned,
outorganized, outspent and outmanuevered
yet again, this time, now even more than ever
before, in the machinery of getting out and
counting the votes.
This is a warning in the most Churchillian tones
to a party that has known little but losing for the
last six years. You have to do what we did, when our back was against
the wall in the Battle of Britain and we fought them on the
beaches, and we fought them on the seas,
and we fought them on the land, and we
fought them in the air because the stakes
were beyond description and our will to win
was single-minded, and strong beyond anything
we have known before.
Democrats should be holding hearings right
now in Washington, even with Democrats
only, bringing this matter to the front pages
with the truth about dangers already proven
this year.
Democrats should be threatening hearings
after the election with investigators and
subpoenas aimed at anyone who tries to
steal even one vote, in one precinct, in one
race in these coming days.
Democrats should be mobilizing hundreds
and thousands of lawyers from the firms
large and small, from the law schools and
halls of academia, far more powerful than
anything being done now, far more similar
to the Freedom Summers in the 1960's
than the losing tactics of recent years,
airlifting them on Election Day into key states
and precints where trouble is most likely.
Democrats should be prepared to call for
grand juries and prosecutions in trouble
spots in a moment's notice getting ready
now, today, this minute, in jurisdictions with
a history of trouble.
Democrats should be voting in droves using
absentee ballots to protect their franchise.
Democratic leaders should conduct a national
emergency conference call with everyone throughout the blogosphere and
conduct the most massive and unprecedented fundraising drive in the
history of democracy to raise emergency money for the NAACP and other
programs to get out the vote and ensure the
integrity of this election.
Democratic financiers should have a sense of
urgency and passion and conviction and write
large last minute checks to respected groups
that police the honesty of elections.
National Democratic Leaders with giant PACs
to promote future candidacies must go the
extra mile and make major contributions in
these closing days and those sitting on money
given to them in trust for 2004 must use it now,
now, now, now when the stakes are so high and the consequences of
failure so enormous.
And to answer Senator Kerry's staff in the
New York Times, I dont know who is behind
the anonymous website, it is certainly not me.
I am not anonymous, I am not a coward, and
I say openly and clearly that it is a total disgrace for John Kerry to
be hoarding money
that he did not use in an election he did not
fight hard enough to win. It is disgrace for
candidates not running or candidates in safe
seats to be hoarding huge piles of money,
when we are in the fight of our lives, for the
values we hold dearest, in a country facing
crisis.
The hosts of Air America and progressive radio
everywhere should act like war rooms with
broadcasts that appeal for money and support,
work with candidates and blogs, use the media
to create a 24/7 megaphone for democracy
that sets aside the grievances and becomes
a national machine for empowerment, action
and organization for these last few days before
these huge, historic elections.
In a few short days when the people vote
there will be a cannon of democracy that
will be heard around the world. This will
either be the finest hour or the darkest
day. This is not the moment to be giddy
or gleeful for an election that could well
be lost. It is not the moment for paranoia
or fear about an election that could still be
stolen or given away through malfeasance
or mistake, in a handful of precincts, that
determine a small number of races, that will decide control of the
Congress.
This is a time for organization, battle, focus,
commitment, energy and mission and it is
a time to fight them on the beaches, on the
land, in the sky, on the seas and everywhere.
The stakes are high.
The mission is clear.
The cause is just.
The battle is now.
It is up to you.