Enhancing Freedom, Opportunity and
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Through informing and networking Liberals and
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Our vision is hundreds of
thousands of well-informed
June 8, 2007
Calendar
of Events Saturday, June 9 at 6:30 PM at Columbia City Theatre ( Sunday, June 10 at 1:30
PM at Town Hall ( Thursday, June 14 at 6 PM at Jay
Pearson’s (11206 NE 68th, Thursday,
June 14 at 6:30 – 8:30 every other week for 10 sessions at Traditions Café
(300 – 5th Avenue SW, Olympia – Study group concerning Challenging Corporate Power and Asserting
People’s Rights. Sponsored by Thursday, June 14 at 8
PM at the Cinerama – Friday, June 15 at 7 PM
at Friday,
June 22 at 6:30 PM at Table
of Contents *** featured articles Reflecting on Our 20 Months and Counting *** Liberals and Democrats It is Time to Stand Up for Our Liberal Values Nation and World Conservatives Oppose
Our Political Priorities State and Local Strategic Roles of Our Lake
Hills Liberals I Have a Dream *** Our Liberal Spirit Recommended Books Vigiling to Bring Our
Troops Home Alive Quote of the Week Life is unfair. Most of us are better off this way.
Our
Political Priorities · Fair Elections and Open Government · Fair Taxes and Competent Spending · Investment for Productivity · Quality Health, Education, Jobs, Income and Retirement
· Environmental Protection and Energy · Personal Security and Equal Rights · International Cooperation and Leadership Conservatives oppose all of these. Recommendations ·
Darcy Burner for ·
Alec
Fisken for ·
Both Gael Tarleton and Jack Block,
Jr. for Port Commission against their incumbent
opponent ·
Dana Stober for ·
Keri Andrews for ·
Brian Conlin for
Advocacy
Groups and Candidates
Sample Organization or Candidate Notice
Available
free to any organization or candidate who stimulate many of their members to
become politically informed through joining our
Do Good Organization or
Candidate: Our vision is doing good. To realize our vision, our mission is
helping all. Our major programs are
increasing awareness, organizing and acting. Present activities include protesting
evil, proclaiming good and helping people.
We invite you to the following events: Leader Dunking Fundraiser, Planning
session. Picketing. For more information and to join us,
visit our website: www.DoMuchGood.org.
About
Reflecting on 20 Months and
Counting
Five
days at my Thetis Island, British Columbia cabin has been spent reflecting on
our past, present and future. No
email No phone. No mail.
No newspapers. Only Canadian
radio. Congress recently in recess. State legislature not in session. No new revelations Bush administration
misconduct. This issue of our newsletter
is devoted to reflection and basics.
Of
the hundreds of community development projects, I worked with in North and
South America, Africa,
Many
of our Lake Hills Liberals task groups were never formed. Some events occurred only once: our recycling
garage sale, arts and crafts show, and a night at the movies. No one borrowed from our liberal lending
library. Some of us walked around
Notebooks
containing social services brochures were placed in our Lake Hills Library and
at our low rent apartment complexes.
Apartment managers have been given directories of social services and
voter registration forms to be given to new tenants. Free advertisements for tenants in our
newsletter have elicited work.
Eighty
households have displayed ‘Proud Liberal’ yard signs and bumper stickers. More recently, some of us occasionally picket
with ‘Bring our Troops Home Alive’ and similar signs. We have held 3 potlucks. Our Lake Hills Liberals Salon has provided 7
monthly international buffet dining experiences, followed by political
presentations and discussion.
Participants
in our various activities have included Cyril Booanna,
Our
most obvious successes have been:
·
Canvassing to
identify 1000 more likely Democratic voters for a total of 1700,
·
Recruiting 500
of these as members to receive our newsletter and another 600 throughout our
·
Publishing 73
consecutive weekly newsletters, with only 10% of our members quitting per year
Our
emphasis on creating a Lake Hills demonstration project to be replicated
elsewhere has broadened to informing
Our
newsletter has reported and commented on global, national, state and local
issues, relating to all of our priorities and many other topics. We have also addressed a variety of spiritual
issues. Most of our commentaries have
attempted to clarify the facts and liberal and conservative responses.
I
have mounted three crusades:
·
To improve our
identification of likely Democratic (Liberal) voters through canvassing
·
To educate and
inform liberals as described above
·
To reduce
corruption or even the appearance of corruption through public campaign
financing
The
best way to realize our liberal values is to elect Democrats. The best way to elect Democrats is to
identify likely Democratic voters and stimulate them to vote. To identify these voters, canvassing is necessary. Canvassing is labor intensive. But for most of us, it has the largest payoff
of any political efforts, several additional votes per hour.
Beyond
electing Democrats, realizing our liberal values requires reducing the
influence of powerful and wealthy groups which promote their special interests
at the expense of our public interests.
This requires reducing our elected officials dependence upon private
campaign financing which empowers special interest lobbying efforts.
If
we elect Democrats, who are free from influence by anti-social private
interests, we will quickly increase freedoms and opportunities for all
Americans. This will occur faster as
more Americans adopt liberal views concerning such groups as gays, immigrants
and relationships between men and women.
As
many of you have noticed, some have resented and others questioned, I have
sometimes harshly criticized our failures before offering possible
solutions. I believe that you are now
aware of our failures, so I intend to focus upon solutions.
As
always, I welcome, pay attention to and depend upon your responses. I would like to especially thank
Liberals and
Democrats
A Liberal Manifesto
I am a Proud Fighting Liberal
I’m
We Liberals believe in one
Conservatives don’t believe in
our American Dream. Their every action
is dedicated to destroying it.
Conservatives Have Lessened Our Security and Freedom
Conservatives have gravely
harmed our security and freedom.
Incompetent protection against terrorism. Misdirection and weakening of our military. Unnecessary death and injury to our fighting
forces. Incompetent homeland
security. Alienation of our allies. Massive debt.
Erosion of our environmental, technological and economic base. Massive pollution. Increased exposure to climatic
catastrophe. More dependence upon
foreign oil. Increased foreign
debt. Reduced access to health care. Reduced access to education, from preschool to
higher education. Insecure jobs. Increased bankruptcies. Loss of pensions and attacks on our social
security. Destruction of our safety
net. Degradation of our civil
liberties. And much more.
Conservatives Have Lessened Our Prosperity
Conservatives have gravely
harmed our prosperity. They have
exported our jobs without providing better ones. Rewarded less productive people at the
expense of more. productive people.
Given tax breaks, subsidies and favorable regulations or deregulation to
industries which exploit their consumers.
Refused to enforce regulations and collect unpaid taxes. Allowed corrupt business leaders to ruin
their companies, investors and employees.
Rewarded companies who register in foreign islands to avoid American
taxes. Created massive federal debt,
while reducing public investment. Wasted
and privatized our natural resources.
Produced a weak economic recovery with stagnant incomes. Threaten a return to stagflation, featuring
both inflation and recession. Wrecked havoc with our retirement and safety
net. Soaring prices of petroleum,
transportation, housing, health care, and education. And much more.
As always, Conservatives
have killed the golden goose. They give
tax breaks mainly to the rich instead of investing to make our economy more
productive. This harms all of us. In the long run, even the rich prosper less
as the return on their wealth declines.
Conservatives Have Divided Us
Conservatives have separated
us from the rest of our world’s people, each other and our government. Conservatives have alienated our allies. Diverted resources from our poor and
middle-incomed people to the rich. Tried
to impose their extreme religious doctrines upon us. Filled our air waves and book shelves with
hate for our thinkers and scientists, our government and social service
workers, members of our press, our union members, our poor, our women, our gays
and lesbians, our immigrants, and our ethnic groups. The have accused liberals of treason. Proposed divisive legislation. Denied legitimately elected liberals
participation in government decision-making.
Greatly increased privacy for government while reducing privacy for
people. Refused to allow investigations
of their failures.
Conservatives Have Violated Our Moral Standards
Our basic religious belief
is that we should love God, all of God’s creation, including our fellow man and
ourselves. We should be one people of
God, working together to preserve and enhance God’s creation. We should use our God-given freedom to love
rather than hate. To create harmony
rather than disharmony. To unite rather
than divide. To create rather than
destroy. To care for others rather than
denigrate them. To especially help the
less fortunate, making sure that no one is left behind. To help those who oppose us to see the
light. To protect and promote justice.
Many of us do not express
these beliefs in religious language. But
our dedication to competently enhancing freedoms and opportunities for all,
especially those with fewer freedoms is simply another way of expressing the
same values. So is our talk of justice
and peace. Our liberal religious and liberal secular political values are the
same. There are no differences. We
should not be divided by our different forms of expression.
Conservatives have massively
violated our moral standards. Their
religious don’t believe in a loving God, but a pride-filled vengeful God. Conservatives don’t believe in preserving and
protecting this world. Conservatives
view this world only as testing place for entering into another fantasy
world. Conservatives even believe their
fantasy world will come about through the destruction of this world. They create doctrinal ideologies which deny
carefully scientifically produced knowledge.
Religious conservatives
don’t worry about the greedy exploitation and ruination of our God-created
world. No problem, since the ruination
of our world will hasten the coming of their fantasy world.
Religious conservatives
don’t believe in loving all of God’s people, but only those who avoid the sins
they define. The sins they define are
strange elaborations of minor bible passages, which don’t include the many
passages in which God, his prophets and Jesus tell us to love our world and our
people. They are obsessed with the
supposed evils of sex, while ignoring the evils of corruption, injustice and
war. In spite of their tortured denials,
religious conservatives hate the people they define as sinners and seek to
punish them, including with torture and death.
Religious conservatives
define people as sinners, even when their supposed sins are behaviors over
which they have no control.
Conservatives don’t trust that people want to behave well. They don’t trust that many people with
education (about consequences and ways to change their behaviors) will improve
their behaviors. They want to deny
access to knowledge of contraceptives, on the false premise that such knowledge
promotes promiscuity. They want to
invade everyone’s privacy to identify and punish those don’t behave in
accordance with their strange beliefs.
Many are hypocrites who practice the same behaviors they would punish in
others.
Religious conservatives
relegate women to subservience to men.
They want power over all who don’t hold their weird beliefs. They are masters of intolerance, prejudice,
discrimination and division. They lack
compassion for anyone other than their true believers. They foster a Culture of Discontent, in which
they whine that they are victims of liberal attacks on religion, in spite of
the fact that most liberals are religious.
Many traditional
conservatives and libertarians are not religious. These conservatives are not obsessed with
sex. They are obsessed with greed. They do not worry about the greedy
destruction of our world. They would
grant more freedoms and opportunities to corporations than to people. They oppose regulations which require
corporations to quit imposing their costs on their workers, consumers and others. They seldom criticize our massive corruption
of public officials paid off by powerful corporations and the rich. They accept our government secrecy which
protects our corruption.
Secular conservatives are
also intolerant. Living in homogeneous
rural areas, small towns and suburbs, they are prejudiced and discriminate
against our diverse ethnic groups, immigrants, people with fewer freedoms and
opportunities and many others not visibly prevalent in their communities. They are uncompassionate toward these groups
and denigrate those who are compassionate.
They want fewer taxes on themselves and more taxes on others. They oppose rich kid’s taxes (estate taxes)
on unearned and untaxed income. They
want fewer government programs to assist the less fortunate, but support farm,
military, retirement and other programs from which they benefit.
It is Time to Stand Up for Our Liberal
Values
We should be ashamed that we
haven’t stood up for our moral values as did centuries of liberals before us:
John Lock, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Tom Paine, Abraham Lincoln,
Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson, Eugene Debs, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Truman,
Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Martin Luther King and countless others. Some of us have stood strong: Robert Byrd, Paul Wellstone, Russ Feingold,
Barack Obama and John Edwards come to mind.
But not enough of us have stood up.
Have too many of us worried about offending perpetually offended whiney victim conservatives? Have we worried that public opinion won’t
respond favorably to our criticisms of Conservative thinking? Can we afford to only play defense?
Like Harry Truman, we need
to give them hell. Or as Harry said,
give them the truth and they’ll think its hell.
Let’s give our conservatives something real to whine about. Let’s see who the public likes better, us
happy warriors or those whiney victims.
I invite you to go back to
read the above again. For each passage,
ask, “Is this the truth? Can you think
of evidence that it is true? Do you
think that most American people who aren’t knee-jerk conservatives will believe
it? Do you think it will offend anyone
other than ditto-head conservatives?
Should we be loudly proclaiming these thoughts?” If your answer to any of these questions is
no, inform me. I don’t mean quibbles
that the above doesn’t include enough nuances and footnotes. Too many of these hurt John Kerry. Your comments will be published in our
newsletter.
I hope you will all be
inspired to express the thoughts that you find most compelling, in blogs,
letters-to-the editor and other forums.
I hope you will not just relate these to national politics. Relate them also to state and local politics. Let’s throw our conservatives on the
defensive for a change. Political
contests like football games are won by both good offense and good defense.