SERMON FOR DEMOCRATS: GET UP AND FIGHT!

[PSU84]

SERMON FOR DEMOCRATS: GET UP AND FIGHT!


By Richard Reeves

SAG HARBOR, N.Y. -- My mail since the election, like the voters of 2004, is pretty evenly split. Half the letters and e-mails I have received this past week laugh in my face, calling me a loser, a fool, a charlatan or worse. The other half ask me what to do next, which flatters me too much.

Feeling neither wise, masterful nor comfortable at the moment, I'll quote my betters. This is something Abraham Lincoln said after a defeat (as paraphrased later by Adlai Stevenson): "I'm like the boy who stubbed his toe. I'm too old to cry, but it hurts too much to laugh."

<snip>

It was a close election, and we lost. But history and instinct tell me that important things without numbers attached happened in this campaign. There will come a day, sooner rather than later, when the losers of 2004 will remember for a long time with pride what they did here. If President Bush (news - web sites) governs generously and well these four years, it will be a gift for all and also a sign of how well the losers fought.

But I doubt that will happen. If nominating Alberto Gonzales to be attorney general of the United States is the first symbolic act of a second term, then we are in trouble already -- and so is the president. Gonzales is a great American story, but hardly a great American. His record as White House counsel, from his distortions of the Constitution in a blind quest for more secrecy and less liberty, to his debasement of the American character in advocating a little torture here and there, is a case study in what went wrong these past four years.

<snip>

I'm sure that some of the conservatives who mentioned Iraq as a moral issue meant we were doing God's work out there. But, for or against the war, both liberals and conservatives in that sampling saw Iraq as a question of right and wrong rather an issue of national security. I wish John Kerry (news - web sites) had read those numbers that way. Having said that, I have nothing against Kerry except his lack of public humor. He made mistakes, but he ran a decent and honorable campaign -- one the loyal opposition can build on in the next four years. I end the preaching with another quote, this one attributed to Joseph P. Kennedy (or, if you are too young to remember the Kennedys, to Aerosmith (news - web sites)): "Don't get mad, get even."

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=123&e=1&u=/ucrr/20041115/cm_ucrr/asermonfordemocratsgetupandfight

[Eric J in MN]

1. I'm all in favor of fight back. The question is

how, when we control nothing?

[struggle4progress]

2. People power really works. Have you ever tried to organize ...

... a community around specific goals?

People power ended British colonialism in India, Jim Crow in the South, and apartheid in South Africa. The principal actors NEVER controlled the official organs of power. They were, however, willing to think clearly and morally, to plan carefully, to speak, to stand and be counted ...

Pick a first project. For example, BBV. Then agitate, educate, organize.