YOU are the most important American who has ever lived

    I want to let you know that each of us is afraid and anyone who does not admit it isn't being honest with themselves. Both sides of this struggle are afraid: One
who is afraid of being caught and stopped, the other afraid that a Great Crime will be perpetrated on our nation and the world. This is a time of such crisis for the American people that we will fully understand its importance only after the battle is over, regardless of whether or not we succeed. If you are afraid, as I am afraid, do what I do and embolden yourself with the knowledge that you, unlike so many generations, have been blessed with a chance to directly protect America and The Constitution from which all blessings of Liberty flow. Use yourself as an instrument to do whatever you can to simply fight what is wrong, to say out loud what you believe to be right. Merely doing so is the price paid to join the ranks of those who have ever fought tyranny to preserve Freedom in this country and keep America a symbol of hope to the oppressed.

    Our names will never wind up on any walls or plaques. No one will salute us posthumously in our victory. However, we fight for a prize grander still: That our children will grow up with necks and spirits free of tyranny's iron yoke. If we do not fight with all the strength we have we will live the rest of our lives in fear the likes of which we have never known. Our children will be born under a sooty sky and will never know the warming rays of Freedom.

    If you are a youth, your whole life lies ahead of you. Begin investing now to ensure your place in a Free American Future. Your strength to combat the evil against which we struggle will embolden those around you to join the fight and win the American government back for The People it was created to serve. If you are an adult, protect the Freedoms to which you have become accustomed and ensure your children are shaded from the searing glare of tyranny by Freedom's broad boughs. Hopefully they will never know the loss of Liberty enough to fully appreciate the struggle you fought for them. If you are aged remember the sweetness of your life and consider that there are those as old as yourself who have never known a day without servitude. If you are infirm or unsound of body and do not think your words will be heard or fear reprisal for speaking out against tyranny, recall the countless millions of men and women who, with quaking knees stood trembling against oppressors, BUT WHO STOOD.

    They, like the both of us, could have taken the easier way out- slink into comfortable shadows like whipped dogs and protect ourselves for this day, this week, while killing the future of our great nation and the lives of our children and grandchildren. Honor the ideals of Liberty and Freedom which your countrymen fought so bravely for. They gave their lives to ensure that we may be Free and we, each of us, owe the same to our posterity regardless of the price exacted.

    That is why those who came before us finally decided to stand up to the whip, though trembling. And that is why we must stand up now.

    You are the most important American who has ever lived because those who fought so bravely before cannot return to defend us. Like them, we must realize that the fight for a Free American Future is our fight, and ours alone. All of the future is counting on us, untold billions yet to be born.

    Do not be disheartened, be glad. You have been given a chance to repay in full all Patriots who have ever given their life to defend your Freedom. Do not be afraid if you act but fearful is a pale word to describe our future if you do not.

    If there is anything I can do for you, please let me know. We need every soul in this country to help push back the darkness. If you have not done so, familiarize yourself with The Constitution and The Bill of Rights. Aside from our wits, they are the only armor we have.

PB

this democracy and to pass it along to future generations, as it was passed by others to us.

That is very, very, very clear to me. And you have nailed it. What a fine article!

I have sometimes argued this from a different perspective, regarding the demise of transparent elections. We Americans are at the vortex of corporate/war profiteer power in the world. We have the theoretical power, as a sovereign people, to actually dismantle our war machine and the bad actor global corporate predators who are oppressing us and everyone else. That is WHY they have taken our right to vote away! These fascist operators cannot afford to permit an honest vote in this country--and in this country in particular. We have tremendous latent power to transform the world for the better. Our vote is VERY VALUABLE, as are our voices and activism as citizens of this powerful country.

And I see patriots arising everywhere, risking lives and careers, or their lifeblood--their time, their energy, their resources and their spiritual stamina--to fight back. I have never been so heartened by my fellow Americans.

I do think that there are specific mechanisms of power that are being used against us, and that it is best to address those mechanisms, rather than just protesting Bush junta actions--by letters, phone calls, street protests, etc.--and hoping that the war profiteering corporate news monopolies will pay attention, and that, somehow, this regime can be made to listen to the people. There is so much that has gone wrong, that it can be mind-boggling. We have to think about POWER. HOW are they disempowering and disenfranchising us? WHAT are the means of RECOVERING our power?

1. Our right to vote.

To me, this is the number one priority. Our right to vote is the means by which we exercise our sovereignty as a people. It IS our power. Without it, there is almost nothing we can do to fight tyrannical policies, or bring about change.

Our right to vote was taken away during the 2002-2004 period, with a bill engineered by the two biggest crooks in Congress, Tom Delay and Bob Ney (in collusion with Christopher Dodd), called the "Help America Vote Act" (HAVA). This bill provided a $4 billion boondoggle for electronic voting corporations with very close ties to the Republican Party and the Bush junta. The bill failed to ban partisan vendors, failed to require a paper trail (let alone a real paper ballot) in electronic voting, failed to control lavish lobbying of state/local election officials and legislators, permitted the voting machines and central tabulators to be run on private, corporate 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code--code so secret that not even our secretaries of state are permitted to review it--permitted the machines to be secretly "tested" by the industry itself, and created a weak, underfunded federal commission for oversight (and told them to go slow).

With the nationwide purchase of these insecure, unreliable and extremely HACKABLE voting systems, our elections have been rendered almost entirely NON-TRANSPARENT, and furthermore highly manipulable by private corporations, whose far rightwing ties would send icy chills through your soul. Two of them (the most partisan rightwing), Diebold and ES&S, control 80% of the vote count in the country.

Non-transparent elections are not elections. They are tyranny. That's what we have. And we MUST change this, while we still have a window of opportunity to do so. This can best be done by pressure on local/state election officials--the ones who purchase this election theft machinery with our money and run our elections. Ordinary people have more influence at the local level. It is possible at this level to get rid of corrupt officials and achieve honest, open vote counts. There is a pretty good bill in Congress (HR 550--see below), but we mustn't wait around for Bush's Congress to give us back our right to vote--when they are the ones who took it away.

2. The news media.

Clearly, this is the other barrel of the shotgun that is aimed at our democracy. Virtually all news and opinion in this country--with the exception of the internet--is now controlled by 5 billionaire CEOs, who oversee huge conglomerates of news, opinion, entertainment, and OTHER subsidiaries. I call them the war profiteering corporate news monopolies--because of their deep investments and conglomerate subsidiaries in war materials and oil. They acted as the propaganda arm of the Bushite government on the Iraq war, and on stolen elections, and are doing so on all major issues. They promulgate disinformation on a daily basis, and have huge black holes in their news/opinion streams on stories of vital importance.

We need to work on cutting the umbilical cord for those hooked on this false national narrative--people plugged into this newsstream, who think that it is 'reality'--and provide people with alternative information, and urge them to question and detach from this highly manipulated "newsstream." We are reduced almost to word-of-mouth communication in this country--supplemented by the internet--to know what's really going on. This delusion that's created by the war profiteering corporate news monopolies is very hard to wake up from. We need to help people do that. Corporate monopolies have taken over our public airwaves. It is our right, as a sovereign people, to take our public airwaves back, and to bust up these monopolies. But most people have trouble just disengaging from this delusionary world that they create. (A corollary is peoples' unwarranted trust in the Democratic Party leadership--many of whom are corrupt or fearful, and have betrayed us. It's damned hard for people to "get" just how many of our country's institutions have failed us.)

This problem has a less specific solution than the non-transparent election problem. Web sites like Media Matters, Truthout and DU provide commentary on biased corporate news monopoly reporting.

Below I will post election reform information.

Thanks again for this post! It's a great insight! The American people need a morale boost--a re-empowerment--not ridicule as "sheeple" (which I see too often at DU, unfortunately). They are NOT "sheeple." They've held to their progressive beliefs through a half decade of fearmongering and propaganda (so the issue polls have been telling us for several years). But they feel demoralized and depressed, and powerless. They need to know how important they are, and that they are being oppressed BECAUSE of how important they are--because of their potential, collective power as citizens and voters to turn the most powerful country in the world toward peace and justice.

SOME RESOURCES FOR AMERICAN REVOLUTION II:

Hopeful signs - latest news:

California voters sue the state over Diebold:
www.VoterAction.org is suing the state of California and 18 Calif county registrars on behalf of 25 California voter/plaintiffs, on the illegal Diebold "certification" by Schwarzenegger appointee Bruce McPherson.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2180496
Seven of these counties just promised the judge they would use PAPER BALLOTS, and were dismissed from this lawsuit (4/27/06).
http://kcbs.com/pages/29285.php
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2249205

Maryland rejects Diebold:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x418263

Florida - anti-trust accusations against Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia, re: heroic Florida election official Ion Sancho:
(FLA AG subpoenas the companies)
http://www.computerworld.com/governmenttopics/government/legalissues/story/0,10801,110192,00.html
http://www.tbo.com/news/politics/MGBKSY8W8LE.html
(info & discussion)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2183630

Utah county clerk fights back!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x419226

(Tide turning?) New York Times: "New Fears of Security Risks in Electronic Voting Systems" (5/12/06)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2278829

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More resources for American Revolution II:

www.votersunite.org (MythBreakers - easy primer on electronic voting--one of the myths is that HAVA requires electronic voting; it does not.)
www.UScountvotes.org (statistical monitoring of '06 and '08 elections--they need donations)


(Activist sites with links to state activist groups or info)
www.votetrustusa.org (news of this great movement from around the country)
www.votersunited.org (good general info, and state links)
www.verifiedvoting.org (great activist site)
www.solarbus.org/election/index.shtml (fab compendium of all election info)

www.freepress.org (devoted to election reform)
www.bradblog.com (also great, and devoted to election reform)
www.TruthIsAll.net (analysis of the 2004 election)* :patriot: :applause: :patriot:
www.votepa.us (well-organized local group of citizen activists in Pennsylvania, where important legal issues are at stake, including state's rights over election systems)
Provisions of the PA lawsuit:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x423739

The Voter Confidence Resolution
http://tinyurl.com/rlnr2 (“We Do Not Consent”)
http://guvwurld.blogspot.com (GuvWurld blog main page)
http://tinyurl.com/amryg (Voter Confidence Resolution

www.debrabowen.com (Calif Senator running for Sec of State to reform election system)
www.johnbonifaz.com (running for Massachusetts Sec of State on strong election reform and antiwar platform)

*Some tributes to TruthIsAll, who is very ill:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x417007
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x417231
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x675477

Congressional bills:

Russ Holt's HR 550 requires a real paper ballot, bans secret software in "voting machines", and has more than 170 co-sponsors, but the audit required is too weak, it promotes electronic voting and centralized power, and the secret software might be permitted to continue in the central tabulators (the bill is not clear). To sign the HR 550 petition: http://www.rushholt.com/petition.html
At lot of discussion at DU of the loopholes/pitfalls in HR 550:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x422926
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x421136
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=422967&mesg_id=422967
(Note: Senate Bill-SB 330 and House-HR704 simply require a "voter verified paper audit trail" (VVPAT), which may be best for the moment.)


Also of interest:

Michael Collins (Autorank)'s searing election reform article for New Zealand's Scoop.com
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x971363

Bob Koehler (-- four recent election reform initiatives in Ohio, predicted to win by 60/40 votes, flipped over, on election day, into 60/40 LOSSES!--the biggest flipover we've seen yet; the election theft machines and their masters are now dictating election policy! Title: "Poll Shock" 11/24/05)
http://commonwonders.com/archives/col321.htm

Bob Koehler's latest: "Trust us: Take this box and stuff it" (3/16/06)
http://commonwonders.com/archives/col337.htm
More Koehler:
www.tmsfeatures.com/tmsfeatures/subcategory.jsp?file=20051124ctnbk-a.txt&catid=1824&code=ctnbk

Amaryllis (Diebold, ES&S, Sequoia lavish lobbying of election officials - Beverly Hilton, Aug. '05)
www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x380340

HOWARD DEAN remarks on electronic voting machines 04/06
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x994507

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Throw Diebold, ES&S and ALL election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor' NOW!

:think: :patriot: :woohoo: :patriot: :think:

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"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." --Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence