I was mentioning to someone several days ago that I might be asked to speak before a group gathered to protest the theft of the presidency ­ the blindsided attack on the government of the people, by the people, and for the people.  “That’s dangerous,” was the response.  “People get killed that way.”

I can’t argue with that assessment.  A long line of people in our nation’s history have met the fate of the gun by publicly standing up for liberal beliefs  Just as surely, the survivors have met with character assassination of the most scurrilous nature.  Witness the life and times of one William Jefferson Clinton  A quick internet search will find the man guilty of everything from drug running, rape, incest, serial and mass murder, treason….  With all the unfounded and irrational charges out there, trading pardons for money becomes laughable.  With the exception of Nixon, those who posture from the right, no matter their crimes or misdeeds, seem to enjoy long life and respectability.  One look at Jesse Helms brings to mind John Huston’s line from Chinatown, “Ugly buildings, crooked politicians, and whores all get respectable if they live long enough.”

Thus far, I find no reason to fear for myself, but I can certainly understand the reasoning behind fellow journalists and letter writers assuming a pen name.  Yet I wish they would not.  I can understand why people choose to be silent when someone boldly claims that “Clinton was, and is a criminal,” or “George W Bush is doing a wonderful job,” or worse yet, “Ronald Reagan was the best president this country ever had.”  Over the years we have become complacently quiet in the face of such ignorance.  We seem to have spent ourselves fully during the civil rights marches and anti war protests in the sixties and early seventies, and have lost our will to do battle.  We took respite in polite times, and have bought into the etiquette of avoiding politics in public settings.  But if the mainstream media avoids reporting our protests, we give their single theme, corporate view acceptance by remaining anonymous in public or in private.  Still, I would rather have anonymous outrage than fuming silence.

Liberal reticence began at the top of the Reagan era.  The generation of the sixties brought an end to an immoral war that brought well over 50,000 of our fine young men home in body bags, (another 50,000 committed suicide upon their return) and they saw through the resignation of a president guilty of real high crimes and felonies!  Along came Gerald Ford who put our nation in a holding pattern, then Jimmy Carter to try and repair the mess left behind by the military industrial complex.  Those of us on the left, took a much needed nap, and were fast asleep by the time Mr. Teflon took power.

We seemed to accept the media created myth that solid investigative reporting by newspapers and television networks brought Nixon down, in spite of the fact that eighty percent of the nation’s newspapers endorsed the crook in chief in ’72, in the face of all that was already well known.  Our Fourth Estate, for the most part, has always been the voice of power, and has only reported on the filth that could not be hidden.  The tactics of the right always require discrediting the messenger of harmful information to limit damage, and to obscure the avoidable truth.  Constant complaints of a “liberal press” were tactically driven then, as they are today.  And among the political battle philosophies of the right is the belief that if one repeats a lie often enough, it will be accepted as fact.  In our malaise of the late seventies, we lowered our resistance, and even if we believed there was no such thing as a “liberal” press, we were at least prepared to believe in a hard working, unbiased one.  If we ever had either, Ronald Reagan would have been impeached before reaching a second term.  Conversely, Bill Clinton would never have been impeached at all.

Whatever positive changes have been made throughout our nation’s history, have been brought about, not by politicians, and not by the press.  They have been brought about by Americans who were willing to stand up and be counted.  That simple fact requires the educated among us to speak loudly and openly.  As you gaze through the letters sections of the new left leaning web sites, the vast majority of writers state that they are surprised to find that so many share their beliefs.  They are only surprised because for twenty years we have dwelled in self imposed obscurity.  We cannot afford such obscurity.  We must strive to continually gain more knowledge, and to be so presumptuous as to educate the Limbaughesque within our midst.

Hitler attacked Jews, not just because they were an identifiable target, but for the same reason he attacked intellectuals.  The brightest among Jewish traditions is education.  Hitler understood that if he could silence the educated, and give voice only to like thinking ideologues, he could hold power indefinitely.  Attacks on defense lawyers by the Republican party are in that same tradition.  Defense lawyers have that nasty habit of requiring the state to make its case.  By making impotent those with the intellectual weaponry to challenge, the state is free to run roughshod over the rights of all.

In Mein Kampf, Hitler said, “All propaganda has to be popular and has to adapt its spiritual level to the perception of the least intelligent of those towards whom it intends to direct itself.”  John F. Kennedy said it much more succinctly, “Liberty without learning is always in peril, and learning without liberty is always in vain.”  These are two views of the same point from opposite sides; the former from democracy’s enemy, the latter from its champion.

That said, there is at least one more campaign promise that W is sure to break.  He will attempt to destroy public education,
he will not save it.  Our public schools that suffer the most are in our economically poor and middle class communities.
They simply lack the funds to be effective.  Classes are too large, and teachers and materials are too few.  The idea of
pulling a thousand dollars out of such a school, and giving it to an economically poor student, whom the school has failed,
to attend a multi thousand dollar a year private school that the child’s family cannot afford with or without the voucher,
is patently stupid with no sense of logic dedicated to the stated intended result.  It does, however, serve an unstated intent.
It serves Hitler’s theory of mind control, and creates an uneducated working glass that provides an endless supply of cheap labor.  It serves the Republican quest to take us back to the good ol’ days, “when children were working in coal mines,
and life was a beautiful thing.”
(Apologies to Anthony Newly.)

We, who have received the benefits of a fine public education system, have the responsibility to use that education to
preserve and rebuild the system before it is lost to further generations of Americans.  We do that by using the intellectual
tools that we have learned to continually inform and educate ourselves.  We do that by openly correcting misinformation
that is circulated by the current government and corporate power structure.  The more we speak to any given opportunity,
on the streets, in restaurants and bars, in coffee shops, and at work, the more we will realize our numbers  As we fully
realize our numbers, we will force the so called Fourth Estate to recognize what cannot be hidden.  George W. Bush
took the White House by a bloodless coup.  He is not now, and never will be the president of a United States of America
that believes in, and practices democratic principles.  George W. Bush is not supported by the will of the people.
In this we raise our voices high, and we will never again be silent!