No, this is not an election fraud diary. This is not a diary about getting geared up for the next election. This is not a diary which complains, disdains, or revels in pain. No. This diary is about the split in this country; a split which will not be healed easily or in the near term. A split which has existed for at least 150 years, if not more. But in 2004, this is the reality of the USA:
- Science vs. Religion
- Democracy vs. Demagogery
- International Dialog vs. Fortress America
- The Constitution vs. the Bible
- Love vs. Hate
- Peace vs. War
Say nothing of my religion. It is known to God and myself alone. Its evidence before the world is to be sought in my life: if it has been honest and dutiful to society the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one.
Thomas Jefferson
It should be noted that the framers of the Constitution of this country were neither godless or weak. They were liberal in every sense of the term. We need only to look at the opening of the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, having its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
These were not Americans who feared challenging oppressive power. These were not Americans who believed in acquiring power over justice, loving money over liberty, forcing one form of religion over another, or believing lies over the truth. As flawed as each individual founder might have been, at their core they believed that a better world was achievable, and they gave us a foundation on which to build that better world.
And now it is our turn to continue to fight for their vision.
As we face ourselves in the mirror in 2004, and consider what we shall do in the face of the power grab by the far right, we should take heed of the lessons our founders gave us; the lessons enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.
...we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth
Abraham Lincoln
I am a patriot. The future belongs to us.