America's Leaders Care Little for Whom the Bell Tolls

In 1775, the church bells rang from the steeple at the Old North Church in Boston to let residents know that British regulars were on the way. The bells rang again in 1776 in celebration of the Declaration of Independence.

In 1811 the New Madrid Fault zone in the middle of the country shook the ground so far eastward that it caused the bells in Boston to ring on their own. And when our founding fathers start rolling in their graves in utter despair at the mess that’s being made of their creation, no doubt, the ground will shake and the bells will ring on their own once again.

The founding fathers, in birthing this nation, wrestled with conscience and argued among themselves to hammer out agreements of civilized governing principle. They wrote and rewrote their fingers to the bone to get those agreements down on paper. They risked being hanged for treason for their efforts. And with little money they found a way to stand as one and fight to win a war against the strongest army and biggest navy on earth. They did this not only to extricate themselves from a monarchy but to go above and beyond that Herculean effort to create a government unlike anything the world had known before. They chose to live free or die trying. They sacrificed. Americans sacrificed.

Americans have never stopped wrestling with conscience, and they have never stopped sacrificing. Americans have been asked to sacrifice personal property, jobs, health, their very lives and the lives of their beloved through the years to keep America free and strong. American history bears witness to Americans always stepping up to the plate when need be to preserve the union and the principles on which it was founded.

America doesn't always get it right, but it has always lived free or died trying. America's leaders don't always get it right either, but because America's governmental doctrines were alive among its people through the shared memory of sacrifice, if the leaders got it wrong or their reach exceeded their grasp, course corrections were usually made. At least they were possible.

Today, it is unconscionable that in 5 1/2 short years, roughly one-half the time it took to officially birth this nation, 230 years of sacrifice is headed down the drain. It is unconscionable that we should find ourselves about to hold unverifiable electronic elections in November. It is unconscionable that representatives chosen to serve in the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives find so little to respect in America or her people that they would hijack entire districts through systematic gerrymandering to ensure their job security while denying it to their constituents.

It is unconscionable that we find ourselves squeezed so tightly in the grasp of consumerism and credit lending that we have created huge money and then given it a stranglehold on our representation and our ideals, our past sacrifices devoured by big eaters swallowing them in big bites. It is unconscionable that public lands and ports and debt are all for sale to the highest global bidder.

It unconscionable that greed is the watchword of the new millennium and the greed masters have bestowed favors on their own kind while slapping each others' backs, entertained, as the lions corner the common man. It is unconscionable that our leaders pick and choose which laws to enforce and then look the other way while corporations again become major trusts and jobs scramble over the border as illegal immigrants scramble in.

It is unconscionable that we would by proxy give our president and our vice-president carte blanche to make us one of the most despised nations in the world when Americans have fought and died for over 200 years to create peace and seek friendship among nations. And it is unconscionable that these same two leaders would sell our collective souls to the devil of tyranny in the name of Jesus in order to monitor everything we say and do and call it Homeland Security.

It is unconscionable that America is now poised to become a mere footnote in history--an experiment that didn't work, a commodity that was bartered, sold, frittered away in fear. Our forefathers risked everything to conceive a nation born of liberty and the inalienable rights of its citizens. It is inconceivable that now we would kick it all to the curb like a rump-sprung sofa.

If our forefathers do stir from their eternal slumber and cause the East Coast to rumble and church bells to ring in Boston, this time it won't be the work of the New Madrid Fault. It will be our own fault.

Electronic Voting Must Be More than Smoke and Mirrors

In a democracy, voting is a sacred right and responsibility of its citizens. Making sure votes are tallied accurately and honestly is a sacred trust charged to the government. Requiring citizens to cast ballots electronically without the accountability of a paper trail is a breach of that trust. It is not a democratic election if the results cannot be independently and tangibly verified.

Paperless electronic voting, as it currently exists, is vulnerable to fraud. This is as unacceptable to democratic citizens as the idea of no receipts at the ATM is to bank customers. Right now is the time for our representatives to involve themselves in fixing this new system by insuring that it becomes one of tamperproof integrity.

If our representatives wish us to believe that they, too, hold sacred a fair and honest democratic voting process, they need to co-sponsor H.R. 550--the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act. Contact your representative's office and urge him or her to do so

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