Well done! I learned so much about my community and made some new friends I would never have met. Thank you a thousand times for whatever you did, however you engaged neighbors, friends, colleagues to help us take America back.
I came across this post at Kos and I hope you don't mind me posting it here. The language at the end is a little um colorful but I think the point is dead on. Imua! Thank you!!
http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/24/133248/707 *
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For 20 years, now, I've been watching as our government has slipped slowly into fascism. The Napoleonic Stategies of the GOP made clear what they wanted: a fascist state with technology keeping dissidents in check. I have watched the Democratic party shift so far to the Right that Gerald Ford is looking pretty dang Left to me.
Worse, the Democratic establishment clearly has caught on to the tactics of the Right and only wanted to dislodge the Republicans so that they could be the ones in power rather than the Republicans. They started attacking the few Constitutional Rights the Right Wing wanted us to keep.
Just when it looked like there was no hope for our Great Nation, along came one man: Howard Dean - Our very own Lord Wellington; perhaps the greatest, certainly the most prominent, patriot in a quarter century.
Howard Dean preached a different kind of populism: the empowerment of the American Citizenry. The war cries of "YOU HAVE THE POWER" and "I WANT MY COUNTRY BACK" resonated with people across the political spectrum.
In Howard Dean's America, the National Parks were your parks and mine. Our taxes bought them, our taxes maintained them. The trees on National Lands were our trees, yours and mine. And when some company came onto our land and chopped down our trees and sent the timber to Japan for their own profit, that was theft.
Those kids in the public schools, those were your kids and my kids, and it was our duty to educate them all. Even if we didn't have kids. The hospitals were our hospitals. The roads were our roads. The military, those were our kids and our parents and our brothers and our sisters, even if we didn't know anyone in the services, and their sacrifices were made on our behalf.
He never had to say the words. In fact, I'm not sure he ever did. The important thing was that he wanted to give America back to Americans. And he wanted us to know that we were all in it together.
Solidarity and empowerment. These are very dangerous concepts.
When you empower the people, the power comes from somewhere, and where it comes from is the powerful.
If a politician was no longer answerable to the guys giving the million dollar checks but was, instead, answerable to the millions of people who gave $20, what power could the lobbyists bring? And where would those perks go? Who would take those politicians on trips and golf games? Who would be sitting at the table sipping $400 glasses of wine? The great unwashed hordes on the internet? The college kids with scruffy beards and blue jeans? No. It was too much to ask.
Howard Dean had to be taken down. And taken down he was. But Howard Dean knew, as Kossacks everywhere know, that the only way to take back our nation was door-by-door, block-by-block, American-by-American.
Napoleon was defeated on the fields of Waterloo when a great consortium of armies converged. When they were surrounded on all sides and the great columns, the hammer breaking glass, were finally rendered meaningless.
In every precinct in every county in every state, Howard said, we would rise up from the grassroots and we would contest every seat, from dog catcher and coroner and school board member to the great hallowed halls of Congress. Only by giving America back to Americans could the promise, the greatness, of America be preserved.
Those are OUR rights written there in the sacred documents in the National Archives. The blood of our fathers and mothers paid for those rights on the battlefields and waters across the globe and in our own backyard for the past 250 years.
It is on Howard Dean's shoulders that you and I stand surveying the landscape of 2006 and beyond. It is Howard Dean who gave us the battering rams to crash the gates.
Howard Dean, our very own Lord Wellington, stands between us and the yawning chasm of fascism.
Please click the link in my sig and give Howard as much as you can. The dollars you send now may keep you and those whom you love from sharing the dark fate of so many across the world who have fallen to fascists in their own lands.
And, in the meantime, FIGHT LIKE HELL FOR EVERY FUCKING SEAT in EVERY FUCKING RACE in EVERY FUCKING PRECINCT IN THIS GREAT NATION.
L'Shana Tova - Happy New Year. May this be the year that we TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK.