This is my first diary. Let me be very clear at the outset. I am a 72 year old atheist of Jewish ancestry. My political leanings are strongly left, a progressive socialist. I have been reading DailyKos for more than a year since I first signed up. I have kept silent, for the most part, except for a few comments and recs. Given the state of our dysfunctional social discourse and the clear and present danger of an ultra-conservative, ideologically fundamentalist Christian theocracy actually taking congressional power in 2010, I can no longer hold my tongue. They want to "Take Back America". Indeed, take it back to the seventeenth century, when slavery was legal, women had few political and educational rights, witches and heretics were routinely executed and the white Protestant male ruled with almost absolute power. We are being attacked mercilessly by those who would eviscerate the first and fourteenth amendments in order to destroy the wall of church/state separation and the civil rights of minorities and women. They want to bring God back to America, but not just any God, only their Christian version, negating anyone else’s beliefs or non-beliefs. THIS CANNOT BE ALLOWED TO HAPPEN!
I have read, and agree with, those DailyKos authors who have castigated the Obama presidency and the Democratic majority houses of Congress for breaking campaign promises, knuckling under to Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats thereby achieving only terribly watered down versions of what could and should have been landmark legislation. Why hasn’t Guantanamo been closed? Why is DADT still on the books? Now we have a federal judge striking down federally funded stem-cell research because Right-to-Lifers got their way.
All that being said, WHAT THE HELL ARE WE DOING ABOUT IT?!! Where are the rallies, where are the counter rallies? Where are the constant reminders to the President that he needs to forcefully acknowledge all the good things he and the administration have accomplished in spite of the Republican intransigence? The Republicans use fear and ignorance to whip up their base. We need to use fear of Republican dogma and use reason and education to whip up our base, moderates and independents. We cannot, must not, allow a return to the failed policies of the last administration because it goes way beyond policy decisions; it goes to the heart of American freedom and justice for a pluralistic society.