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How Does One Form A More Perfect Union?

I haven’t written a letter to any politician in at least two months. Honestly, I have trouble even replying to emails, these days. I keep trying to write articles that offer up some new perspective on the events that surround us all…but they become garbled messes on my computer screen, and eventually I consign them to the “recycle” bin, where they undoubtedly belong. I gaze at the eye-aching white of my screen, and wish the heaviness in my heart would go away.

I can’t get over the feeling that everything is already out there. Everything has been said before, argued before, offered up in some form or another before. I can’t get past the fact that the facts seem so clear, so indisputable, and yet somehow they are not being recognized by enough people to make a difference. Without a galvanizing force, the indignation of a few becomes a dull murmur and in the end, the world does indeed end not with a bang, but with a whimper.

This is the state of the union as I see it:

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3 Points Against Bush

In my original posting on this topic, I listed the following three points:

1. Illegally authorized and supported a warrantless wiretap program, and when caught had the audacity to claim he had been given the authority by Congress, and then claimed the Constitution gave him the right, anyway. Anytime you use the Constitution to justify violating the Constitution, you’re way off on the wrong track.

2. Supporting and promoting the Patriot Act. One of the most invasive, unnecessary, and unjustifiable pieces of legislation ever written.

3. Using the threat of “terrorism” as a tool to turn neighbors against each other, prevent activism against his agendas, and cow the population and its representatives into accepting more and more outrageous assaults on their liberties in the name of an indefinable sense of “safety”.

I will show here how all three of these have undermined the unity of our society, eroded our civil liberties, and laid the groundwork for a greater departure from the ideals of democracy than we have ever seen before. It is not my place here to propose counter-measures and alternatives to these problems, but I do want to state that I feel strongly that listing the problems is only constructive if action follows. It is my dearest hope that these debates can prompt their readers into responsible action designed to take back control of their government and affect a change in the direction of its growth.

That said, I will plunge on in…

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