The Battle Plan

The following is the introduction to Naomi Wolf's new book, Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries.

The summer before last, I traveled across the country talking about threats to our liberty. I spoke and listened to groups of Americans from all walks of life. They told me new and always harsher stories of state coercion.

What I had called a "fascist shift" in the United States, projections I had warned about as worst-case scenarios, was now surpassing my imagination: in 2008, thousands of terrified, shackled illegal immigrants were rounded up in the mass arrests which always characterize a closing society; news emerged that the 9/11 report had been based on evidence derived from the testimonies of prisoners who had been tortured -- and the tapes that documented their torture were missing -- leading the commissioners of the report publicly to disavow their own findings; the Associated Press reported that the torture of prisoners in U.S.-held facilities had not been the work of "a few bad apples" but had been directed out of the White House; the TSA "watch list," which had contained 45,000 names when I wrote my last book, ballooned to 755,000 names and 20,000 were being added every month; Scott McClellan confirmed that the drive to war in Iraq had been based on administration lies; HR 1955, legislation that would criminalize certain kinds of political thought and speech, passed the House and made it to the Senate; Blackwater, a violent paramilitary force not answerable to the people, established presences in Illinois and North Carolina and sought to get into border patrol activity in San Diego.

The White House has established, no matter who leads the nation in the future, U.S. government spying on the emails and phone calls of Americans -- a permanent violation of the Constitution's Fourth Amendment. The last step of the ten steps to a closed society is the subversion of the rule of law. That is happening now. What critics have called a "paper coup" has already taken place.

Yes, the situation is dire. But history shows that when an army of citizens, supported by even a vestige of civil society, believes in liberty -- in the psychological space that is "America" -- no power on earth can ultimately suppress them.

Dissident Natan Sharansky writes that there are two kinds of states -- "fear societies" and "free societies." Understood in this light, "America" -- the state of freedom that is under attack -- is first of all a place in the mind. That is what we must regain now to fight back.

The two societies make up two kinds of consciousness. The consciousness derived of oppression is despairing, fatalistic, and fearful of inquiry. It is mistrustful of the self and forced to trust external authority. It is premised on a dearth of self-respect. It is cramped. People around the world understand that this kind of inner experience is as toxic an environment as is a polluted waterway they are forced to drink from; it is as insufficient a space as being compelled to sleep in a one-room hut with seven other bodies on the floor.

In contrast, the consciousness of freedom -- the psychology of freedom that is "America" -- is one of expansiveness, trust of the self, and hope. It is a consciousness of limitless inquiry. "Everything," wrote Denis Diderot, who influenced, via Thomas Jefferson, the Revolutionary generation, "must be examined, everything must be shaken up, without exception and without circumspection." Jefferson wrote that American universities are "based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it." Since this state of mind is self-trusting, it builds up in a citizen a wealth of self-respect. "Your own reason," wrote Jefferson to his nephew, "is the only oracle given you by heaven, and you are answerable not for the rightness but the uprightness of the decision."

After my cross-country journey, I realized that I needed to go back and read about the original Revolutionaries of our nation. I realized in a new way from them that liberty is not a set of laws or a system of government; it is not a nation or a species of patriotism. Liberty is a state of mind before it is anything else. You can have a nation of wealth and power, but without this state of mind -- this psychological "America" -- you are living in a deadening consciousness; with this state of mind, you can be in a darkened cell waiting for your torturer to arrive and yet inhabit a chainless space as wide as the sky.

"America," too, is a state of mind. "Being an American" is a set of attitudes and actions, not a nationality or a posture of reflexive loyalty. This tribe of true "Americans" consists of people who have crossed a personal Rubicon of a specific kind and can no longer be satisfied with anything less than absolute liberty.

This state of mind, I learned, has no national boundaries. The Tibetans, who, as I write this, are marching in the face of Chinese soldiers, are acting like members of this tribe; so did the Pakistani lawyers who recently faced down house arrest and tear gas in their suits and judicial robes. Nathan Hale, Patrick Henry, and Ida B. Wells, who risked their lives for liberty, acted like "Americans." When the crusading journalist Anna Politkovskaya insisted on reporting on war crimes in Chechnya, even though her informing her fellow citizens led -- as she knew it well could -- to her being gunned down on her doorstep as she went home to her fourteen-year-old daughter, she was acting like an American. When three JAG lawyers refused to sell out their detainee clients, they were being "Americans." When Vietnam vet David Antoon risked his career to speak out in favor of the Constitution's separation of church and state, he was being an "American." When journalist Josh Wolf went to jail rather than reveal a source, he was being an "American" too. Always, everywhere, the members of this tribe are fundamentally the same, in spite of the great deal that may divide them in terms of clothing and religion, language and culture. But when we quietly go about our business as our rights are plundered, when we yield to passivity and switch on the Wii and hand over our power to a leadership class that has no interest in our voice, we are not acting like true Americans. Indeed, at those moments we are essentially giving up our citizenship.

The notion that "American-ness" is a state of mind -- a rigorous psychodynamic process or a continued personal challenge, rather than a static point on a map or an impressive display in a Fourth of July parade -- is not new. But we are so used to being raised on a rhetoric of cheap patriotism -- the kind that you get to tune in to in a feel-good way just because you were lucky enough to have been born here and can then pretty much forget about -- that this definition seems positively exotic. The founders understood "American-ness" in this way, though, not at all in our way.

And today, I learned as I traveled, we are very far from experiencing this connection to our source. Many of us feel ourselves clouded within, cramped, baffled obscurely from without, not in alignment with the electric source that is liberty. So it is easy for us to rationalize always further and more aggressive cramping and clouding; is the government spying on us? Well...Okay...So now the telecommunications companies are asking for retroactive immunity for their spying on us? Well...Okay...Once a certain threshold of passivity has been crossed, it becomes easier and easier, as Benjamin Franklin warned, to trade liberty for a false security -- and deserve neither.

What struck me on my journey was how powerless so many Americans felt to make change. Many citizens I heard from felt more hopeless than did citizens of some of the poorest and youngest democracies on the planet. Others were angrier than ever and were speaking up and acting up with fervor. I felt that all of us -- the hopeless and the hopeful -- needed to reconnect to our mentors, the founders, and to remind ourselves of the blueprint for freedom they meant us to inherit. I wrote this handbook with the faith that if Americans take personal ownership of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, they can push back any darkness. The first two sections of this refresher guide to our liberties recall what America is supposed to be; the last third is a practical how-to for citizen leadership for a new American Revolution.

There are concrete laws we must pass to restore liberty and actions we must take to safeguard it. You will find them in the last third of this handbook. But more crucial than any list of laws or actions is our own need to rediscover our role as American revolutionaries and to reclaim the "America" in ourselves -- in our consciousness as free men and women.

Do we have the right to see ourselves this way? Absolutely. Many histories of our nation's founding focus on a small group, "a band of brothers" or "the Founding Fathers" -- the handful of illustrious men whose names we all know. This tight focus tends to reinforce the idea that we are the lucky recipients of the American gift of liberty and of the republic, not ourselves its stewards, crafters, and defenders. It prepares us to think of ourselves as the led, not as the leaders.

But historians are also now documenting the stories of how in the pre-Revolutionary years, ordinary people -- farmers, free and enslaved Africans, washer-women, butchers, printers, apprentices, carpenters, penniless soldiers, artisans, wheelwrights, teachers, indentured servants -- were rising up against the king's representatives, debating the nature of liberty, fighting the war and following the warriors to support them, insisting on expanding the franchise, demanding the right to vote, compelling the more aristocratic leaders of the community to include them in deliberations about the nature of the state constitutions, and requiring transparency and accountability in the legislative process. Even enslaved Africans, those Americans most silenced by history, were not only debating in their own communities the implications or the ideas of God-given liberty that the white colonists were debating; they were also taking up arms against George III's men in hopes that the new republic would emancipate them. Some were petitioning state legislatures for their freedom; and others were even successfully bringing lawsuits against their owners, arguing in court for their inalienable rights as human beings. This is the revolutionary spirit that we must claim again for ourselves -- fast -- if we are to save the country.

When Abraham Lincoln said that our nation was "conceived in Liberty" he was not simply phrasemaking; our nation was literally "conceived" by Enlightenment ideas that were becoming more and more current, waking up greater and greater numbers of ordinary people, and finally bearing on our own founders, known and unknown, with ever-stronger pressure.

Key Enlightenment beliefs of the colonial era are these: human beings are perfectible; the right structures of society, at the heart of which is a representational government whose power derives from the consent of the governed, facilitate this continual evolution; reason is the means by which ordinary people can successfully rule themselves and attain liberty; the right to liberty is universal, God given, and part of a natural cosmic order, or "natural law"; as more and more people around the world claim their God-given right to liberty, tyranny and oppression will be pushed aside. It is worth reminding ourselves of these founding ideas at a time when they are under sustained attack.

The core ideals, the essence, of what the founders imperfectly glimpsed, are perfect. I am often asked how I can so champion the writing and accomplishments of the better-known founders. Most of them were, of course, propertied, white, and male. Critics on the left often point out their flaws in relation to the very ideals they put forward. John Adams was never comfortable with true citizen democracy. "Jefferson's writings about race reveal that he saw Africans as innately deficient in humanity and culture." When a male slave escaped from Benjamin Franklin in England, Franklin sold him back into slavery.

But the essence of the idea of liberty and equality that they codified -- an idea that was being debated and developed by men and women, black and white, of all classes in the pre-Revolutionary generation -- went further than such an idea had ever gone before. It is humanity's most radical blueprint for transformation.

More important, the idea itself carries within it the moral power to correct the contradictions in its execution that were obvious from the very birth of the new nation. An enslaved woman, Mum Bett, who became a housekeeper for the Sedgwick family of Massachussetts, successfully sued for her own emancipation using the language of the Declaration of Independence; decades later a slave, Dred Scott, argued that he was "entitled to his freedom" as a citizen and a resident of a free state. The first suffragists at the Seneca Falls Convention, intent on securing equal rights for women, used the framework of the Declaration of Independence to advance their cause. New democracies in developing nations around the world draw on our founding documents and government structure to ground their own hopes for freedom. The human beings at the helm of the new nation, whatever their limitations, were truly revolutionary. The theory of liberty born in that era, the seed of the idea, was, as I say, perfect. We should not look to other revolutions to inspire us; nothing is more transformative than our own revolution. We must neither oversentimentalize it, as the right tends to do, nor disdain it, as the left tends to do; rather we must reclaim it.

The stories I read and reread of the "spirit of 1776" led me with new faith to these conclusions: We are not to wait for others to lead. You and I are meant to take back the founders' mandate, and you and I are meant to lead. You and I must protest, you and I must confront our representatives, you and I must run for office, you and I must write the opeds, you and I must take over the battle. The founders -- the unknown as well as the well-known Americans who "conceived" the nation in liberty -- did not intend for us to delegate worrying about the Constitution to a cadre of constitutional scholars, or to leave debate to a class of professional pundits, or to leave the job of fighting for liberty to a caste of politicians. They meant for us to defend the Constitution, for us to debate the issues of the day, and for us to rise up against tyranny: the American who delivers the mail; the American who teaches our children; ordinary people.

In my reading, I went back as if to contact our mentors. I looked for practical advice and moral support from those who had stood up for the ideal.We need a strategy for a new American uprising against those who would suppress our rights; we need what Lincoln would have called "a new birth of freedom." As readers of Tom Paine's Common Sense had to realize, we are not declaring war on an oppressor -- rather, we have to realize that the war has already, quietly, systemically, been declared against us.

Today we have most of our rights still codified on paper -- but these documents are indeed "only paper" if we no longer experience them viscerally, if their violation no longer infuriates us. We can be citizens of a republic; we can have a Constitution and a Congress; but if we, the people, have fallen asleep to the meaning of the Constitution and to the radical implications of representative and direct democracy, then we aren't really Americans anymore.

So we must listen to the original revolutionaries and to current ones as well, and explain their ideas clearly to new generations. To hear the voices of the original vision and the voices of those modern heroes, here in the U.S. and around the world, who are true heirs to the American Revolution is to feel your wishes change. "[Freedom] liberated us the day we stopped living in a world where 'truth' and 'falsehood' were, like everything else, the property of the State. And for the most part, this liberation did not stop when we were sentenced to prison," wrote Sharansky. "I was not born to be forced," wrote Henry David Thoreau. "I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest...they only can force me to obey a higher law than I." You want to stay in that room where these revolutionaries are conversing in this electrifying way among themselves. It feels painful but ultimately cleansing and energizing. You want to be more like them; then you realize that maybe you can be -- then finally you realize that you already are.

Our "America," our Constitution, our dream, when properly felt within us, does more than "defend freedom." It clears space to build the society that allows for the highest possible development of who we ourselves personally were meant to be.

We have to rise up in self-defense and legitimate rebellion. We need more drastic action than e-mails to Congress.

We need the next revolution.

Comments

[111]

American's have always had to fight for liberty and we have to keep on standing up to those who want to control us. It seems like every generation faces these questions in one degree or another.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Paul

Alice Paul, a Quaker, and others were beaten and tortured in an American jail because they picketed the White House for the right to vote.

"In the election of 1916, Paul and the NWP campaigned against the continuing refusal of President Woodrow Wilson and other incumbent Democrats to support the Suffrage Amendment actively. In January 1917, the NWP staged the first political protest to picket the White House. The picketers, known as "Silent Sentinels," held banners demanding the right to vote. This was an example of a non-violent civil disobedience campaign. In July 1917, picketers were arrested on charges of "obstructing traffic." Many, including Paul, were convicted, incarcerated and tortured at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia (later the Lorton Correctional Complex) and the District of Columbia Jail.[2]"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMbx7c_5vx4&feature=related

All these women wanted was the right to vote.

[DBMAC]

Your book is very timely. I cannot wait to read it. I have been thinking a lot lately now that I am in my 50's about how it seems that our country has come to that point in history again when the spirit of revolution is in the air. Like a new spiral up from the sixties revolution. I hear kids today talk about how there is nothing in their generation to get excited about like I had in my generation. They yearn for the era that produced the music that defined our generation. I think of Bob Dylan. What happened to us? We need that kind of organized revolutionary spirit rekindled. Where is the avant guard to lead the way? We are complacent as a society and our leaders are hypocrites.

[kellygrrrl]

Naomi - "The Shock Doctrine" was the single most informative book I have ever read.

Very much looking forward to your new work!

Thank you!

[MinasTirith]

Hey Kellygrrrl,

I read and loved the Shock Doctrine, too...

Though it was written by a different Naomi. Naomi Klein.

Which of course does not stop either of us from looking forward to the new book from Naomi Wolf. ;-)

[Tremonius]

Most inspiring, like many of the speeches I listened to all through the sixties and into the seventies.

There is, by my direct experience, a large vat of sludge. It gathers at the sump of the nation, the south, and festers up into the plains. It is inert, dark, dank, and sordid, and is subject to the simplest and most despicable innuendo and the odd egregious lie. This wide and shallow mass will respond to a claim that Magoon is forced to lie and slander because Obama wouldn't ride with him to his little town hall desperation down-home camp meetings, that the tawdry tinsel twit from Alaska has "foreign policy experience" because you can see Russia from some of the islands up there.

"Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain." – (Talbot in Maid of Orleans; Friedrich Schiller)

[Stanley]

The connection to our source goes beyond liberty, equality and brotherhood espoused by the enlightenment era of the late 1700's. These ideas brought forth manifest changes and eventually led to the civil war. We need to live up to those ideals. What the misunderstood extremists of today argue is that ideals are more important than personal liberty. That tolerance is too great a price to pay in the face of their ideals like the right to life, the sanctity of marriage, and the need for self defense. These ideals are being tested as they are interpreted and because of the need of some to live the idealism they only see, they are willing to give their power away to those who claim to deliver it to them. Our idealism is not in the idea but in our heart. We are not living up to th psychological space we make but the openness we create in our heart that our answers are within and we are responsible to them. One could argue that Bush sacrificed our freedom to protect his ideals. What we learn from this lesson is that the ends do not justify the means. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, but it is ours to take responsibility for our choices and find the good in them no matter what. The question is now that we know what we lost, what will we do to regain it?

[fuzzywuzzy6]

I think much of this election is about xenophobia and a fear of the future. Yes the future is scary--we don't know what will happen, everything is changing so fast. But we can also have hope about what we can achieve. Yes, we are often uncomfortable with those who are different from us. But we can make an effort to learn more about them.

The GOP is attempting to defund the middle class, the working class, and the poor, and all those who advocate for them--products liability lawyers, consumer advocacy groups, social justice groups. The less money those groups have, the less they can achieve in the way of public education and access to the courts. They certainly won't be able to afford lobbyists. And as to the average American, the more difficult life is, the worse their economic situation is, the less time they have for public action and self-education, the more exhausted and hopeless they become. Is that the real goal of the GOP, who has been forcing out its moderates and traditional (pre-Nixon) conservatives?

[elizaW]

The middle class will not have a better life with Obama in the White House. Obama's core group of elitist liberals has nothing but distain for average Americans, particularly those in the red states. Every other comment here is a slam at the IQ of these Americans. And yet the Democrats are talking as if they're the party that cares. The real goal of the GOP has always been a strong America with opportunities for everyone. Obama's vision is a weak America where the Ivy League will meet at The White House for intellectual debates followed by a song or two from Barbra Streisand.

[23000Days]

Please come back through the mirror! Everything is just the opposite in this dimension.

[Bad actor]

What does your GOP have as a finale for the country--typhoid ? the slogan "compassionate conservative" says it all. It tells us what a conservative is without the embellishment. You will not see "liberal" modified in that way because it would be redundant. Ms Wolf's essay is one of the best that I have read and I have put it on my booklist so that I may refer to it again and again.

[payos]

Republicans have succeeded in seeding the resentment and anti-intel­lectualism in you, ElizaW. You will have to keep clinging to your fear and prejudice, despite the evidence of the last two days of how the economy has been handed to hell in a hand basket by the last 8 years of Republicans. If you feel that:

"Every other comment here is a slam at the IQ of these Americans."

then you are blind indeed, willfully blind. And if you really think that:

"The real goal of the GOP has always been a strong America with opportunities for everyone."

then, God bless you and yours. Because I'm afraid you will have a long, long wait...

[jofle]

! Sounds like a graduate from home schooling experiment gone bad. Very Wahabi madrassa-like approach to reality, facts and history.

[jofle]

... I apologize for the earlier snark, becasue you sound very young and you seem to be speaking from your heart -- and I can respect that. But for your sake, I urge you broaden your reading, especially history. Research some respected authors, not just those from the republican party or those religiousl­y-approved & screened. The political world and society in general will remain mysterious and threatening until you do.

[jadeba]

Thank you, Naomi, for this great post. You have voiced what I have felt for a long time and why I am an Obama supporter - his simple message that is is about "us" resonates among we who feel that government has long treated us as servants, when we are the ones they serve. The apathy we see stems from the helplessness that we have been systematically led to feel. What can we do? What can any one of us do? This is the strength and the power of Obama's message. Together we can work for a better democracy. Together we can return to a country "for the people" and "by the people". We are not helpless, nor are we powerless.

[TRYKER]

"The apathy we see stems from the helplessness that we have been systematically led to feel." jadeba

We must be made to feel helpless, otherwise we would demand that our taxes be spent on domestic and social programs.
As helpless and afraid, we never EVEN object to the huge percentage of our taxes that go instead to the PENTAGON and its attendant wars and bomb builders...the MIC.
Those "entitled ones" with their corporate welfare at the top of the financial food chain, eat way more than their share...and to cover their crimes, they use poor people and immigrants as scape-goats.
The rich get $10 million and the poor get $1000...and a trashing by the million email forwards of the right-wing suckers.
Do we need a revolution? OY!

[fuzzywuzzy6]

Thank you for a beautiful piece, Ms. Wolf. Very inspiring.

The media needs to revisit the McCarthy era. Most people were cowed then, even the ACLU. (And I don't agree with all the cases they pursue today.)

In the Nixon era, there was a blatant attempt to cow the media. There has been such an attempt during the current admin, and it is going on with the gop's attempts to prevent research into the history and actions of Sarah Palin.

The current admin does not have the excuse of Nixon's. In Nixon's admin, there were people who were definitely paranoid at the top. Dick Cheney and his ilk are crass and manipulative, using the politics of fear to suppress dissent. Their use of the FISA revisions and other legislation, regulations and secret signings by the largely uninterested and uninvolved Bush will be used to interfere with the lives of law-abiding Americans.

During the 60's and 70's, New York police officers were sent to PTA and hospital district meetings to look for possible trouble makers. Often, these were people were seen as possible future political rivals for sitting NY officials, nothing more. Certainly they were doing nothing in the least bit subversive.

[Retrofuturistic]

I have read your book =The End of America= and agree with you that action is needed; former "citizens" have been relegated to mere consumers. It is very difficult however, when all the checks and balances are gone, the Congress is owned by special interests, the Justice Department is politicized, the president took imperial power, and the media is owned by rich right-wingers. There is no one who represents the people and no forum for our dissent; plus, the populace is now either so uneducated or religiously brainwashed that few people can see things as they are.

The worst part is that the media is corrupted. At least in the 60's and 70's they reported on demonstrations and spoke truth to power. Now they don't.

The only place that is still "free" is the internet, but even our emails and phone calls are scrutinized. How can a revolution succeed under such conditions?

[milo9]

Eluding surveillance is a huge challenge. Remember St Paul, those kids got busted before the party even started.

[wavpeac]

One of the most uplifting diaries I have read in days. I am a big picture person and have often been criticised for being "such an idealist", however, this diary answered my prayers. It answered the need in my brain for bigger solutions than elect this one or that one. The system of facism that we fight is bigger and more powerful that Obama or Mcsame. This system will not stop just because someone gets elected president. It will continue like a disease or addiction. This country needs a revolution. It needs recovery.

[AMERIKA]

Thank you Naomi. Thank you for expressing what I think and feel. Thank you for speaking truth to power.Thank you for reminding those who will listen of their responsibilities under the constitution. Thank you for the words you speak and the thoughts you document, and the encouragement you give. With a little effort, we will retake this government and then we must insist that the American experiment is put back on track. If for no other reason, for our children and their children's children.

[GSMRaleigh]

I don't know about elsewhere in our country, but here in my part of NC it is my understanding that the schools focus very little on early american history. Therein lies a huge problem with the younger geneation. The have no background to understand what it means to have our consitution shredded by the government. They just don't get that the rights we have enjoyed for hundreds of years are being taken away bit by bit.

[queenmjd]

shackled illegal immigrants: you may condone illegal activities, the rest of the nation considers illegal activity ILLEGAL!

spying on the emails and phone calls of Americans: I am doing onthing wrong. I do not care what they know. Only those with something to hide would care. If we had been able to do this pre 9/11 maybe we would have averted the terrorist attack?

despairing, fatalistic, and fearful of inquiry: that is the mantra of the Dems/Libs let's SCARE people into our ideology. Gratefully most are too smart for this.

human beings are perfectible: This is the fatal flaw in your theory. Human beings by their nature are flawed, beautiful and unique in their imperfection.

[GSMRaleigh]

You are totally clueless about what this country is.

You may not care to have your e-mails read, your phone calls listened to, but I do.

And, who is to judge if what you are doing is right or wrong?

[RRonin]

Perfection is not attainable in this world, but the most radical idea the Founding Fathers embraced was that a nation of farmers and shopkeepers could decide it's own fate, without the shepherding of Church or King. The Founding Fathers believed in Education and in the idea that the lowliest yeoman and scullery maid could improve themselves into fully fledged citizens.

[milo9]

Queenie you should emmigrate to a different country. It is appalling that you are so willing to give up the foundation of personal freedom, your privacy. And you're so short sighted. Unwarranted surveillance can corrupt the democratic process by uncovering sensitive information on our elected officials. Network analysis is a perfect tool for blackmail.

Despairing, fatalistic, and fearful of inquiry? Where the hell did that come from. Hard core realists is what we are ,while you, on the other hand, are empty headed polly annas.

No Queenie, the Fear Card is the favorite tactic of Right Wing LIARS.

After voting for Bush in '04, what makes you think that you'd have anything of value to add to the political debate?

[queenmjd]

Despairing, fatalistic, and fearful of inquiry? Where the hell did that come from.
It came from the article we are commenting on. Her words not mine.

I do hope all your high mindedness comforts you in Nov :)

[111]

It is known and published that the US had all of the information about the attacks they needed to prevent them. Our government chose to ignore or did not know what to do with the information they had, like being told that planes would be used and that the World Trade Center was considered a target. In fact military exercises simulated that very scenario before the attacks.

Then why does the government want to spy on and gather data on Americans?

Republicans are using images of 9/11 to instill fear into our citizens ignoring the fact that they were in charge and let us get bombed. It was their failure to protect us but they continue to ask us to look to them for protection.

If you are open to inquiry, I suggest you do some reading and research. The information is out there. But it sounds like you think you are too smart to learn ... how sad

[Rule Of Law]

And it has been equally well documented that not one thing that Bush has passed in the Patriot act, Military Commissions Act, or any other so called anti terrorist legislation would have prevented the 911 attacks! He has not made this country "safer." That could only happen if we left Iraq today and gave them the freedoms that we say we are there to spread.

[SocialistDistortion]

You rail against the very policies your party claims to stand for. The GOP claims to be about small government and privacy, yet they spy on Americans with illegal wiretapping. You claim that you don't care what the government knows about you, yet you rail against supposed "socialist, big government" tacticts of the democratic party.

Your logic is no logic at all. People with attitudes like yours are why this country has sunk so low, and why it will continue to sink under McCain.

[decibelJONES]

Thank you.
The toil of caring and concern take their toll.
At these times I must take heart and remind myself, not of my rights as a citizen, but of my duties. Remember, if McCain moves in to the white house, we will have even more reason to fulfill our duty to the constitution, and we will have an even greater need for inspiring leaders at the gates.
We must be those leaders.

[pithy]

About two yerars ago, someone gave me an "Impeach Bush" bumper sticker.

I was afraid to put it on my car. I was afraid someone would come along and bash in my windows or accost me in the supermarket parking lot and threaten me.

After rioting in the streets to end the Vietnam war, overturning cop cars and participating in "sit ins," I thought of myself as brave.

Until recently, I"ve thought of myself as a coward.

But listening to Obama, I"ve started having hope again. He speaks to our better selves. Yes, I know one man can't turn this around by himself - and that's why I've joined the growing army of his supporters.