Simple, clear words in the midst of rhetoric.

[madfloridian]

http://www.crocuta.net/Dean/Common_Sense_For_A_New_Century-Dean.html

Where We Are

“Are the special privilege boys going to run the country, or are the people going to run it?”
Harry Truman

Our country is on the wrong track, and the reason is clear: our government is no longer serving the interests of the people.

The takeover of our politics by what Truman called the “special privilege boys” has been a decades-long process, but it has culminated with the Bush administration. Our executive branch has become a private club for large corporate interests.

Increasingly, large multinational companies write the rules of our economy in Washington, DC for their own profit, while the American people are left to compete for lower wages.

Meanwhile, the executive branch has been consolidating more and more power for itself, running roughshod over the checks and balances our founders established. In October of 2002, our Congress abdicated their power and responsibility to declare war. The political process failed, and now we are paying the price.

The Patriot Act takes away too many rights from ordinary Americans—rights we had come to expect. Nor should John Ashcroft be allowed to detain American citizens without charge and without legal representation.

We are losing our role as a world leader. John Fitzgerald Kennedy said, “The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war.” But President Bush has made that truth a lie. This president has implemented a foreign policy characterized by dominance, arrogance and intimidation. His brand of diplomacy has driven a deep wedge into the alliances and the security organizations we established to safeguard our freedoms and our safety.

The problem is simple: those at the top are gathering more and more power for themselves, and taking more and more power away from everyone else.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Theodore Roosevelt said it best, “Every special interest is entitled to justice full, fair and complete....but not one is entitled to a vote in Congress, to a voice on the bench or to representation in any public office.”

The American people have a history of proving that the most powerful interest of all is the common interest."

Guess what, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, my friend. The United States DID start a war, and those in your own party are not speaking out.