American Resolve

It is time that America return to its previous self to rediscover that "utmost reward of daring" and continue to dare against the storms of political malfeasance and subversion of the principles of our Constitution and Founding Fathers.

America is a trial by existence for democracy, a trial for the whole world to see, and now is the time to be daring and faithful to the American dream for the betterment of citizen and government alike.

But what about terrorism, you ask?

Terrorism is not a single identifiable enemy. Terrorism is an affliction of the human spirit, an evil malady of hopelessness and violence. Terrorism is the sickness of our age, a plague of the heart and soul whereby the few instill the fever of fear in the many and paralyze the very core of freedom and democracy.

And the cure for terrorism is American daring to refuse to buckle to fear by turning against our fellow citizens and spying on them and imbuing them with the stain of distrust as though We the people cannot be trusted except as we comply to the will and whim of government. We are the government. We must dare to refuse to turn our privacy into a corporate profit center for data mining and Orwellian guardianship; dare to embrace constitutional rights rather than shredding them as though the Constitution were nothing more than an inconvenient cluttered piece of paper.

So let us begin to reclaim the dream and the daring vision that is America.

Let us have the daring vision to enact universal healthcare for every citizen and child in America. We have been to the moon on a promise and a dream. Surely we have the means to ensure preventative healthcare for our children and each other.

Let us dare to care for our veterans. Suicide and PTSD are not acceptable collateral damage.

A nation that cannot care for its veterans or its children cannot face the world in good conscience.

We must hold fast to our Founders' vision of democracy. We must and will refuse to surrender our civil liberties and privacy to the fear-mongers who seek to line their pockets with our lives. A nation that spies on and fears its own citizens is not America; it is a totalitarian regime.

We must reclaim the vision of affordable education for our children. Surely we can see an imbalance just from the 2007 budget figures: $481 billion for defense, $100 billion supplemental spending for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and $56 billion for education. Has our vision become so frightened and distorted that we choose to put more money into war and the destruction of the world than into educating our children?

Let us dare to confront the control of the public airwaves. The hands of corporate conglomerates seek to strangle the very air that belongs to We the people and squeeze out every nickel possible. We must and shall fight the battle of the people's grassroots communication through support of Net Neutrality. The people's voice, our voice, must be heard, whether liberal or conservative, religious or atheist, the public forum must be held above the fray of profit and censorship. The benefits of technology cannot be controlled by the rich and powerful. It failed in 1776 and it will fail now if we dare it to be so.

We must restore faith in voting in America. One person, one vote - fully counted and fully enfranchised. Our election process must be restructured and made accessible for every citizen without intimidation, phone jamming or any of the other so-called political tactics that have become standard practice of the republicunt party. We must dare to restore sanity through reform to campaign finance in this country. No lobbyist or conglomerate should have more access or more rights than We the people.

So now we vote.

Our vote is not just the passivity of choice. but also a vote for our own action and participation in the American dream and in our own government. Activists and dissidents and great debate founded America. It was good enough for the Founding Fathers. it is good enough for us.

We are Americans. Daring and visionary. As we emerge from the darkness of the past 7+ years, we see the light of hope and promise and of course change.