I have not seen much discussion of our Attorney General's testimony before the Senate. Not so much his defense of the Constitutionality or legality of the NSA spying.  I am thinking of some of the amazingly stupid things he said. 

After acknowledging that Bin Laden was undoubtedly aware that his conversations were being listened to Gonzales suggested he might forget this except for being reminded by mentions in the newspapers.  Is there any doubt why we have not caught Bin Laden?  Bush treats him as if he was a moron.

 In his prepared remarks Gonzales talked about the much broader electronic eavesdropping done by previous presidents including Washington and Lincoln.  Washington and Lincoln?

 I am not sure what is more disheartening.  That our government has distain for rights and values or that they seem so stupid.

An Iranian newspaper in retaliation to the Danish newspaper running the now well known, but largely unseen in America, cartoons is soliciting cartoons about the Holocaust. The relevance of the Holocaust to the Danes is hard for me to see. Even more peculiar is that every act of the Muslims and their defenders makes what apparently in the cartoons more legitimate.

[news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4688466.stm]

Alexander Hamilton made one speech at the Constitutional Convention. He called for a monarch for the executive power in the new government. The idea was rejected by the convention. Article II creating the presidency was left a bit vague because everyone knew George Washington was going to be the first president and it was going to be left to him to fill out some of the elements of his office.

The Founders intended, and expected, that the Congress in general and the House in particular to be, and was going to be, the most powerful branch of government. They were also creating a government of limited powers in which powers not explicitly given to the Federal Government remained with the people and the States.

Thus, I do not understand the Bush Administrations straining to find regal powers inherent in Article II. Where are these powers? For an administration that believes in "strict construction" and small powers they reserve for themselves quite expansive dictatorial powers.

This was the story behind the amazing evolution of Fischher's friend Hans-Joachim Klein, the penitent terrorist.  Klein had joined the Revolutionary Cells in Germany and had united with Carlos the Jackal believing that he was going to put his mechanic's skills to good use in a left-wing military organization, fighting Nazism in its modern disguises.  The Revolutionary Cells sent him for miltary training in an Arab country. In his intereview on this theme with Cohn-Bendit in the mid nineteen-eighties, Klein did not specify which country, but wherever it was, the place did not agree with him.  He found himself in a military training ground where in one part of the camp,European leftists singing left-wing songs received their anti-Zionists military training and , in another part, European fascists singing fascist songs received their own anti-Zionist military training.

The Palestinian movement tturned out not to be an anti-fascist or anti-Nazi cause at all.  It turned out to be an anti-Jewish cause.  Klein was horrified.  His mother had been imprisoned for a while in Ravensbruck, the Nazi camp and died later on from her sufferings there, when he was still a little child.  In his adulthood, he began to imagine or perhaps to fantasize, that she was Jewish--a not uncommon fantasy among modern Germans.  That was why he abandoned the Revolutionary Cells and then went even further and accused his old comrades among the German guerrillas not just of having betrayed the revolutionary ideal but of being out-and-out anti-Semites.  That was a shocking accusation. Klein was disturbed by something else at the Palestinian military camp,too, and this was a cult of suicide--a weird phenomenon that he was among the first to notice, back in the seventies.

[Paul Berman, Power and the Idealists.  pp.57-58.]

The early Zionist settlers, being solid European socialists and anarchists, basked in the sympathy of at least some portions of the European left.  In  the late nineteen-twenties and early thirties, however, the world Communist movement came out in favor of the Arab resisters.  Then, in the nineteen-forties, both the Communists  and the democratic left in Europe returned to, or re-affirmed, their original sympathy for Zionism--only to have things switch again in the nineteen-fifties, when Israel lined up as an ally of the British and French imperialists.

The 1967 war, in which the Israelis seized a lot of land, seemed to confirm Israel's imperilaist nature.  The Soviets became fierce enemies of Zionism.  Palestinian Marxists stepped forward, Soviet resources poured in.  And, under those cirucmstances,  the New Left came up with one more interpretation of the Middle Easter conflict, in which the New Left's vision of a lingering Nazism of the modern life was suddenly reconfigured with Israel in the a leading role.  Israel became the crypto-Nazi site par excellence, the purest of all examples of how Naszism had never been defeated but had instead lingered into the present in ever more cagey froms.  What better disguise could Nazism assume than a Jewish State?

[Paul Berman, Power and the Idealists pp. 53-54

In each country where the New Left happened to flourish, the revived panic over a newly discovered, cleverly disguised, still flourishhng Nazism seemed to be confirmed by strictly local cirucumstances.

The crudest of those alternatives, the least imaginative, was simply to revert to the old-fashion sectarian Marxism of the nineteen-thirties and to go about fighting Nazism in exactly the way that people had done in the past, by organizing disciplined, Leninist structures based on obedience, dedication, and self sacrifice, the dream words of the Great Depression, and in this manner to sink into a sepia-toned memory of long ago....

And yet retro-Marxism was never New Leftism's main impulse.  A still larger number of people took up the second alternative, a Marxism that was distincly of the nineteen-sixties and seventies: The Marxism of Ho, Mao, Che and Fidel, mixed with a few doctrines of the Frankfurt School philosophers....

As for the New Leftism's third alternative, it was fundamentally anarchist--a libertarian impluse that sometimes drew on the nineteenth-century pamphlets of Bakunin and Kropotkin, sometimes on the early-twentieth-century writings of Anton Pannekoek and the Dutch councilists, and sometimes on the contemporary but equally obscure pamphlets of the autonomists in Italy and the Socialism or Barbarism group and the Situationists in France.  But most often the anarchist alternative drew on nothing at all, on a breeze blowing through the university neighborhoods and on rumors from the California counterculture.

The piece has a history of Jewish Iranian relations.  She notes that the secular intellectual revolutionaries made a fatal error in not opposing Khomeini's persecution of the Jews and the B'hai sect by noting this set in motion the movement that would ultimately swallow them too.

Then in 1943 Lippmann wrote "that the new world order should be dominated by 'great regional constellations of states which are homelands, not of one nation alone but of the historic civilized communities.'"  

Lippmann's views were put forth not only in a desire to get America engaged in the world but in distinction to Woodrow Wilson's universalism.

However the one big difference is that the Show used the word "nigger" or more accurately "nigga" very often.  What to make of this?

I presume that most of the Cartoon Network's audience and thus the audience for Boondocks is White and generally young males.  The use of the word, which most newspapers won't print and I know of no one who has used in my presence, was said in a casual way hardly angry or pointedly as often seems to be the case in rap songs.  It would seem to me that it makes it more easy to accept the word.

If the show is a success won't it be soon before we hear more Whites use the word "nigger?"  What will the consequence be?  Will it represent a splint on generational grounds?

What is the meaning of its use by Blacks?  I am sure that every ethnic group has used the slur words used by others in an effort to take away their sting.  It is one thing for such a word to be used within the group than against the group.  But what happens when the group uses it so often?

Democrats should become the party of politics.  This is about the recongnition that in order to accomplish policies those affected have to accept the goals and the means.  This is not just about pandering to the public.  I will confess to finding the lines of the movie Blazing Saddles to be both funny and true, "they are farmers, people of the land, you know morons."  However, Democrats have to open up discussions with fellow Americans and people of the world to convince them of the rightness of various policy alternatives.

Many people at the CAFE believe passionately both in various policy alternatives that resemble the social welfare states of Europe.  There is also a belief that Americans are just waiting to adopt such policies.  I am skeptical on both accounts. However, I do believe that the Democratic Party instead of being the "know it all" party should instead  take a page from community developement corporations or even Saul Alinsky and begin talking and listening to others. Democrats will  have a chance to have both better and more successful policies as well as defeat the Republicans.

With tax reform coming to the fore this should open such a debate. Everyone hates the taxcode and most don't like paying taxes. However, opening this process up to debate and conversation may illustrate to Americans that Republicans are interested in shifting the tax burden from the wealthy to working people.  But beyond this particular issue this should be how Democrats should address our fellow citizens about all issues.  It will allow us to advocate more difficult policies and achieve greater results.

In the last week Syria has been accused of murdering Lebanese political leader Rafik Hariri and the President of Iran has called for Israel to be wiped out. However, no one at the Cafe has made mention of either event.  

This at a site that denouces Democrats who supported getting rid of a tryant who ran rape rooms and invaded neighbors.  Many at the Cafe spare no effort to blame the war in Iraq on supporters of Israel for the sake of Israel yet say nothing about the suppression of Lebanon by Syria.  For those who denounce Israel for its treatment of Palestinians where is the outrage about the treatment of Arabs at the hands of Arabs?

Beyond the infrastruction there will be the need to rebuild neighborhoods and shopping areas.  The Gulf Coast should borrow a page from New York City.  Localities should divide their towns and cities into development lots.  They should then layout the specs for that redevelopment, size, height, density and perhaps the look they want.

Then they should put the lots up for bid. The key is not money but plans.  Would be bidders will have to present a complete package that complies with the overall development plan.  As part of the bid there must be building plans, a development team, financing, a sales or rental team all in place.  The groups with the best plans that can get from scratch to built to filled best should be choosen.

The Federal Government can provide three services.  The first is subsidized bonds to pay for the building. In exchange builders will have to offer a mix of incomes in what they building.  The Federal Government can also make sure low income tax credits are available and known to the builders.  This will give investors a tax rightoff in exchange for low income rentals being built.  Lastly, the Federal Government can offer subsidized mortgages for buyers of the newly built properties.

This plan will allow a private, local and Federal  partnership that will limit the waste of money and get real buildings built to house real people.

Initially especially in the 1960s Democrats answer to fear was that an appeal to hope and the basic principles of America.  The way to fight fear was speaking of the Constitution and the Declaration of Indepedence and expanding who is included within those principles.

Somewhere, I think it was with the advent of the Vietnam War and Watergate, Democrats stopped appealling to hope and inclusion and instead offered our own version of fear.  Fear of being left behind.  Fear of evil corporations and other remnents of a failed Marxism.

During the debate over CAFTA here at the Cafe a few people refered to NAFTA as causing job loss in the United States and being bad for Mexico as well.  This made no sense.  The United States has more jobs now than when NAFTA was passed and how could it be a lose lose situation?

Tom Friedman addresses post NAFTA Mexico in "The World is Flat.  (I know he is not well liked here at the Cafe but I think that is because he is more correct than most and wont wallow in the fear mongering).  This quote from page 310 from Guuillermo Oritz of the Mexican Central Bank:

'That was a real shock. We started reducing our gains in market share and then started losing them.  We said that there is a real change here... And it was about China.'

China is such a powerhouse of low-cost manufacturing that even though the NAFTA accord has given Mexico a leg up with the United States andeven though Mexico isright next door to us, China in 2003 replaced Mexico as the number two exporter to the United States....

Democrats, Progressive voices have to stop fooling ourselves and demonizing people who are in business because we fear that the days of powerful unionized industries are fading and the comfortable life we had is going with them.  

If Democrats try to out fear Republicans we will live not only in a grim world in which we all race to the bottom but given that this country has never been all that hospitable to leftward politics, even domestic versions like Henry George, we will give this country over to the Republicans for a long time to come.

Since September 11, 2001 the use of fear has been even more palpable.  Fear is the excuse for robbing Americans of liberties, for going to war, for reducing our interaction with the rest of the world.  The use of fear especially when combined with a desire to have it easy has made for a mean and sterile politics.

Democrats should call for a series of governmental initiatives that call on the United States to strive to greater things and are based on hope.

Transportation, including the moving of the data and comminications.  It was the Erie Canal that originlly made New York City the world capital.  Whether it is rail, shipping or the internet the United States should be on the cutting edge of transportation.  We need to be able to move goods, people and ideas from coast to coast and beyond the coasts with greater ease and lower costs.

Biology, the human genome project was originally a governmental enterprise.  The need for basic biological research maybe beyond the cost of private companies.  The government ought to expand funding of biology.  One of the terrible things about the push against evolution is not so much the pushing of relgion on us but what is says about scientific knowledge in this country and the efforts to make our students as ignorant about science as possible.

Engery, this almost goes without saying but energy has economic, environmental and military consquences.  From top to bottom in the energy complex there needs to be changes from extraction to conservation.  We are never going to be self-sufficient but we can use a great deal less energy.

Water, though it is not talked about too much may be the crisis in coming years.  One of the reasons the Middle East is such an intractible problem is not oil but water.  We have a drought now in the Mid-West, Europe and Africa.  There has to be a better way to gain access to potable water and to use less water.

Space, for some reason Progressives have often disparaged the space program.  However, exploring the universe especially as a global enterprise gives us more basic knowledge and lifts us beyond the mundane.

It would be my goal that these projects would serve a number of ends.  They would find solutions to current problems, generate current jobs both in government and throughout private enterprise.  Beyond the current they would create ideas that lead to a world we cannot now imagine starting whole new industries.  Creating exciting new jobs with careers that are both personally and socially fulfilling it will lead to greater demand for better schools and an improvement of the schools.

A last thought.  This country has lost two generations of Ph.D.s.  The first in the 1970s and now as many cannot find jobs in Universities. We ought to open up high schools and lower to Ph.D. regardless of the education courses they have taken.  Perhaps like in Europe they can be encouraged to write and publish in their feel thus improving their skills and taking advantage of tenure in high schools that otherwise to be a nice perk but a perculiar protection.  Schools should be filled with teachers who know and love their subjects and thus will be far better teachers.

Since the Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam the United States has combined a level of self satisfaction and the fear that the good ies will be taken away.  Both parties have pushed fear as their major electioneering tool.  It is time for Democrats to turn our back on fear and call on the country working together to do great things.

These two images are still used to batter Democrats regardless of their personal histories.  One of the great political services that Bill Clinton did for the party was to take  away the club of welfare from the Republican's arsenal.  Despite much whining by the Left Clinton's reforms have eliminated the charge that Democrats are opposed to work and want to take money away for the working class. However, Democrats are still accused of being against the common interest.

Besides Michael Lind's post one of the reasons that led to the above conclusion is the statement I heard over and over after 9/11 "thank goodness George Bush was president."  What did Bush do that was so unusual?  Wouldn't Al Gore have taken out the Taliban, wouldn't any president?  When I would challenge people on their praise of Bush they could conceed that Gore and other Democrats would probably have gone after Bin Laden.  Inevitably that concession would be followed with an "except Jimmy Carter."  That may not be fair but Demcrats are saddled with an imagine of weakness when it comes to protecting America.

In the 1960s the heros of the Democratic Party were Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy. Too much is made of the Jefferson-Wilson idealism and not enough of the military strength embedded in the notion.  Wilson went to war to "make the world safe for Democracy."  Roosevelt not only worked to make America the "arsenal for Democracy"but had to overcome Republican isolationism and pro-German if not outright pro-Nazi sympathies often found in the now "Red States."  Truman not only used the atomic bomb, but inuagurated the Cold War and took us into another shooting war in Korea.  John Kennedy said we "would pay any price bear any burden for liberty."

As I understand from many posts here at the Cafe the McGovern-Carter wing of the Party believes that there may be no price worth bearing. Saddem was responsible for the deaths of millions in Iran, Kuwait and Iraq itself. That seems to be of little interest.It is said that America will inevitably blunder abroad.  That America goes to war for oil or corporations.  Most Americans, I believe, not only do not agree with this but resent it. With the attacks of 9/11 a lot of Americans are afraid of this view.

Domestically Roosevelt was not so Progressive as he is now assumed to have been.  However, he created a series of programs that benefitted all Americans in need.  I believe they were some of the first to be available regardless of race.  He also created social insurance programs such as social security.  Succeeding Democratic Presidents worked to expand opportunities for all Americans.

However, sometime in the 1970s Democrats stopped being for programs that benefitted all Americans and started insisting that Blacks and then Hispanics and woman and other groups needed to benefit from programs at the expense, or at least at the apparent expense of Whites.

Nixon's Southern Strategy and Silent Majority tactic was the first effort to exploit the split between Democrats, especially uppermiddle Class Democrats, and working class ethnic voters.  (See E.J. Dionnes' Why Americans Hate Politics)  None of those in the "House of Labor" have addressed the disparity between Union leadership and Reagan Democrats.

Democrats retained controlled Congress for 20 years after Americans became disaffected with the Party.  The difficulty of ousting incumbents disguised the drop of support until Congressional arrogance and the failure to pass Clinton's healthcare reform, who needs Democrats if they can't do anything, led to the Republican takeover.  

The problem of being a Congressional Party is the focus on staying in office and stopping being for anything.  The one thing that none officeholding Democrats agree on, as the Cafe posts almost all show, is that the Party does not stand for anything and it does not fight for anything.  

There was a time when Democrats supported a strong nation that pressed for our interests which was peace and stability and expanded economic growth worldwide and domestically for expanded opportunity for all people. Republicans do not win by large margins but they do control all branches of the Federal Government.  They have gotten their by honing in of the Democrats desire to weaken our military and making amends for past racism, sexism and other isms all at the expense of most Americans.

The claim led me to think about other claims that have been made through the years.  As feminism came to the fore and even more importantly women entered the workforce in large numbers various academics, often female, produced study after study showing that children benefited more from happy mothers.  There were studies that showed that quality time was more important that a lot of time for children.  It is interesting that most all of these studies demonstrated what one presumed that academic believed before the study was done.

I have come to find virtually all political debates over the environment to be largely useless as I expect both sides are lying.  Environmentalists have cried wolf once too often for me to ever to believe them.  On the otherside to believe in the begnine effects claimed for corporate poluters is unbelievable as well.

All the above is one reason why academia has become so marginalized in today's public debates.  However, with the above said two articles in the Times today illustrate how insidious the Right is about molding the truth and the concept of truth.  

There is now a dig being done in East Jerusalem.  Whatever the structure that was found turns out to be it is going to be a significant find.   However, this dig is being funding by various Rightwing groups including one on which Irving Kristol is on the board.  What these groups want is for this find to be King David's Palace not for historical or reasons of knowledge but for political reasons.  The implication is that these groups if not the archelogists are perfectly content to see the findings skewed as they wish  them to be.

Paul Krugman's entire column is debated to this theme.  From the silliness of supply side economics to the more serious efforts at discrediting global warming and evolution Krugman points out how much the anti-relativists are in favor of slanting the truth.

The Left must understand two things.  As the various funders of the constellation of Rightwing thinktanks understood tying to gether media coverage of ideas, linking to politicians who are amenible to their ideas is just as important as generating the ideas in the first place and especially generating truthful ideas.

The Left has to do a much better idea of getting ideas out to the public.  It has to be done deliberately and constantly.  The otherthing that the Left can do to distinguish itself from the Right is to care about the facts and the evidence even when they do the agree with the favorite notions and hope.

Ever since TPMCafe opened one of the regular targets has been Wal-Mart.  Reading about some of their actions they certainly have done things that are reprehensible and need correction.  However, I always get the feeling that the real problem with Wal-Mart is that they sell things cheaper to lots of ordinary Americans, the very people that Progressives claim to speak for.   A letter to the NY Times attacking CAFTA re-enforces this feeling.  It denounces the idea that Americans should want to spend 50c for a T-shirt.  Fairly generous with other people's money.

More telling still is the Op-Ed piece in the Times "The Price Is Right" By PANKAJ GHEMAWAT and KEN A. MARK.  It makes a very strong argument that Wal-Mart is balance good for its workers and good for consumers.  

Other than people who want consumers and shareholders to subsidize workers, and event that I am not aware ever happing, it is not clear to me what Wal-Mart has done that makes it such a general target.  Or rather in areas where they have acted miserably there are already various actions against them.  It still seems to me that on the whole they make things better for more people than do those who attack them.

Thus Morris and his followers sought an art that used natural materials and hand craftsmanship.  The result was the creation of some of the most beautiful works ever.  To see them is inspiring and powerful.  The problem was that the works were very expensive to make.  All the craftsmanship made the cost of the works prohibitative to all but the wealthy.  It   was only with the ironic use of machine produced reproductions that the fruit of the Arts and Crafts Movement could be owned by the middle class let alone the working class.

I think of this analogy because so many here rail against globalization, corporations, the consumerist society that we are.  Since Gutterberg invented moveable type power has been shifting to consumers and capital and away from producers and labor.  Many here though sincere and impassioned want a world that is past and which to bring back will be devasting to the lives of working and middle class people.

What ties these two articles together is a general tendency of Americans to buy into easy solutions and political leaders to feed us pap. After the attacks of 9/11 there was no call for sacrifice, no suggestion that the use of oil had to come down. We wer told to go shopping and if you wre rich you were given large tax cuts.

Too many politicans led by George Bush act and sound like the United States has a God given right to world leadership. We do if we work very hard at it. We need a call to arms not of the weaponary sort but of ideas. It is time to recognize that we must do things not "beause they are easy but because they are hard."

No amount of tarriffs or quotas will stop India or China or the many other countries that want to raise their citizenry to middle class status. The economic pie can be expanded for everyone including Americans but only if America gets to work. The war on Islamic extremism can be defeated but only if we both work to make Muslims but of the global economy and defund the oil economies of the Middle East.

One does not have to believe that America, the West or Israel are always right to recognize that they individually and collectively have been more democratic, provided better standards of living for more people and give individuals more choices for their lives than either Communism, or the Islamist-Arab world has. The failure to recognize that enemies of the West are a greater danger to Americans or Europeans than for example Wal-Mart makes it almost impossible to successfully counter Bush and the Republicans.

This country has been dominated by the Republican Party since Abraham Lincoln. This has been disguised by Franklin Roosevelt's four terms and the Congress being dominated by Democrats for so long after World War II. However, most Presidents have been Repbulicans and as it now stands Republicans have to commit crimes or major stupidies for the Democrats to comeback to power.

Yet there are so many opportunities for Democrats who stand up for making the lives of people better. They should not advocate the creation of heaven on earth or the defeat of all evils. However, they can support a world that is peaceful, economically expanding and free while proposing programs at home that make real people lives better than they are now.

CAFTA, freetrade and globalization are not panaceas nor will they make heaven on hearth. However, they will make life better for both American consumers, ie all Americans, and for producers in some of the poorest countries in the world. This will take time and committment. Of late, except for Clinton and Gore, the latter mopping the floor with Ross Perot over trade, the issues that need to follow trade are virtually ignored except by Bono.

Bin Laden and his followers, drawing on a large pool of disaffected educated often middle class young Arabs, are not about ending poverty or even murdering the Jews of Israel for the sake of the Palestinians. They are about murder.

I have a 10 year old daughter. I fear that her whole life will be filled with worry about the memory of September 11 and future acts of terror. If the United States is ever attacked again imagine the next version of the "Patriot Act." How many rights will Americans be willing to give up? How little will we resemble the nation we all want.

If the Progressive community cannot make protecting America and indeed the entire western world the first priority why should anyone vote for a Progressive candidate?

This does not mean sending soldiers all over the world and making an endless war. That is a guarantee for the end of our liberties without any warranty that the nihlists will b e defeated.

Bush's incompetence is stunning. We should have done a far more complete job in Afghanistan. Bin Laden should have been eliminated and the Taliban forever crippled and the country put on a path to peace and people to wellbeing.

In Iraq the stupidity of the Bush Administration has been stunning. We need to stop acting like we are fighting the Nazis and work on protecting Iraqis so they can be safe and have water and power and jobs. We need to encourage normal politics in Iraq.

To fight the nihlists we must stop saying that we are in a war on terrorism. Terrorism is a tactic not an enemy. We need to heal the rifts that Bush has made with the rest of the world and unite with police, security and intelligence forces of the world to disrupt the financing, and communications of these groups and track them down and arrest or kill them. There will be no quick or easy fix but with Bush in office it will never be done.

The United States and even more Europe has to rethink the balance in the Middle East between stability and democracy and developement. We should encourage market capitalism in the region since it will not only make people better off it will unset the traditional culture that is so embbed there. We must risk the regimes that have used oil wealth to hire chauffeurs for the women and fund terrorist groups. Progressives are in a perfect position especially unions to help the Middle East with its vast resources to reach the level of say South Korea.

Bush is a fool and way too ignorant for the world's wellbeing. The tough guy talk is a substitute for thinking. However, if the Left does not see and call the evil for what it is I fear not only many years of terrorist acts but a slow diminution of our liberties.

However, the single biggest cost of any campaign is media and especailly television. If the cost of buying television ads, and to a lesser extent radio and newspaper ads candidates would not have to raise so much money. Companies like the New York Times, the Washington Post and most other newspaper companies own television and radio stations. The Times could do much to help the cause of campaign reform by making the cost of ads cheaper.

Walter Cronkite urged media companies offer candiated free space. Why doesn't the Times offere discount rates for most of the campaign season, and given the length of American campaigns they can define it, and as the election nears offer free time. This would take a lot of money out of the process and make the Valero decission moot.

The American People held all rights and powers in their hands prior to the creation of the constitutions of the states and the federal government. We Americans ceded some of our power to both our states and the Federal Government. The power granted was designed to allow the governments to function. However, the Supreme Court does not grant Americans rights we continue to have all the rights that we have not given away.

It is true that the Founders were more afraid of encrouchments by the central government than the states and believed that states would defend their citizens. The Civil War and the Civil War Amendments and the Civil Rights Movement shifted the balance between the Federal Government and the States. However, it did not change who is the sovereign in the United States. The people of the United States. Conservatives just do not get it. The Supreme Court did not give us a right to privacy, for example, we always possessed it.

Unfortunately, too many Americans fail to appreciate how important the world is to America. They also believe we give large amounts of GDP in foreign aid. 9/11 may have shown that the oceans are no longer an absolute barrier of protection but we do not realize how many good we sell abroad and how our ability to buy foreign goods make for a richer life. Additionally we are so used to having everyone take dollars and have commodities like oil be priced in dollars we probably can't imagine what it would be like to convert our currency like most other people in the world.

I am not sure this is a good area for the Democratic Party to champion. Nor do I think reflexively anti-American academics should do it either but there needs to be an aggressive effort to bring the world to Americans. How we benefit from the rest of the world. How the world needs a policeman to make trade and travel safe and the world relatively pacific and whether we like it or not America is that policeman for the good of Americans.

I fear that we Baby Boomers like to hear only comforting words. We need institutions who will tell us the truth about the world we live in.

The Conformity Act required that all take Communion in an Anglican manner at least once a month. This was too "Papist" for many of the Dissenters. Some fled to the Netherlands, then as now the most tolerant nation in Europe. The Pilgrims ultimately found the tolerance unacceptable and exiled themselves to the New World.

The came to the New World not for religious freedom as we mean it today but to be religiously intolerant. Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson discovered this to their detriment.

Those who founded the nation were aware of the English experience. Yes Jefferson and Madison were vocally in favor of freedom of conscious. But they also knew that when the state involved itself in religion it was believers not non-believers who really suffered. Non-believers could do what what was necessary to appease the King. Believers would fear for their souls.

The debate over religion currently going on is based on ignorance and is frightening. There was a time when being a "Papist" was worse than being a Communist was in the 1950s. In a country as of as many diverse faiths and non-faiths as ours the only way to avoid implosion is to allow toleration of all faiths and to live up to the terms of the U.S. Constitution which bars all relgious tests for office.

It is no longer shocking to see Bush betray the values the Americans and the world so need to hear after 9/11. The horror and fear cause by the attacks are still palpable. Bush, Cheney, Rove and the like all play on our fears. Sadly, in a lesser way so too Democrats who oppose freetrade agreements like CAFTA. Why should Democrats be making common ground with very rich sugar growers and textile mill owners?

I would hope that Americans would remember Franklin's admonition "its a republic if you can keep it." Instead of bullying the world and making our military strength our signature we need to reach out to the world and invite them back.

On this site I seem to be the resident rightwinger but I want nation to be the source of ideas both inside and out for people to aspire to.

In the 1890s William Jennings Bryan was the Democratic Party's main standard bearer and Presidential candidate. He championed the then losers in the economic system, farmers. Farming began its continuing slide in important to the American and world economy.

I fear that too many Democrats want to repeat this experience. To look at economic change, fear it and act as if there is something good at stopping it instead of helping those who will invitably lose out to deal with the changes that are coming.

I increasingly fear the nation Republicans want to create. They are shifting the tax burden from unearned income to working people with barely anyone mentioning it. All the protections of the safety net are being eliminated while they enthrone the rich. They use terrorism to take away the freedom we are supposed to be defending.

The groups that support Republicans are haters. They anomosity toward Gays is frightening. They want to put women "back" in their place and their anti-semitism is only barely hidden.

Unfortunately too many Democrats do not seem to realize that in order to have the money to fund social programs someone has to make it. The more dynamic our economy the more wealth it creates. Only a market economy can create the wealth necessary while leaving us freedom of choice. I would like to see free trade and market methods more often championed as a way to solve multiple problems.

There is evil in the world. Bin Laden is still on the loose and Saddem Hussein was an evil leader. This fact needs to be faced. Not only by the military and certainly not in the incompetent manner of the Bush Administration.

The world is a messy place. There will be winners and losers. The Democrats should help more people have the tools to be winners and should make programs, not just agencies, that really ameliorate the results of risk.

The Market, is a great source of economic freedom and has powerful destructive effects. A market economy destroys traditions as well as common ways of production. It is one of the amusing things about Rightwing morals who so embrace the Market. Who took "Christ" out of Christmas but capitalism?

The Market also destroys traditional ways of doing things as well as values and leaves everyone less secure. The sense of risk is what many attack when they attack capitalism.

However, Capitalism has not only made people far better off than ever before in history. It also makes choice, a form of freedom, much more available to more people.

Democrats should be the champions of worldwide economic choice. Democrats should also not accept the idea that both the rich and poor or free to sleep under any bridge they choose.

We has a society and as members of the Democratic party will be judged and deserve power by what we do both to encourge greater participation in the market and to provide a safety net for those who get hurt by the constant and inevitable changes wrought by capitalism.

I watch CNBC virtually everyday all during the day. I know Fox gets most of the ink but CNBC is so in the tank for Bush and big business I wonder if they are on the take.

John Snow is on their air so often I wonder when he will have to get an AFTRA card.

CNBC's take on GM is that Union workers have to give in on their healthcare and on their pensions. I emailed them and asked about what was going to happen to executive healthcare and pensions. Not only did they not say anything about this on air but I have received two emails from them complaining that I do not see things in shades of gray.

I am not sure why the Democratic Party should act as if it is a division of a seminary. This is a secular country with a lot of devout members of different faiths.

I have never felt the fear of anti-semitism held by my grandparent's and parents generations. I do now.

A.H. Ahamson,a follower of Rushdooney, Richard Mellon Scaife and other very wealthy Christian and Republicans are funding not only the thinktanks of the right but assults on many mainstream Christian Churchs.

Where are the religious leaders except for Jim Wallis who say that James Dobson's and the like are not the only interpretations of the Bible.

Cohen's book was in the news in the run up to the war in Iraq. William Kristol and other neo-Conservatives urged Bush to read it and Bush was photographed carrying it around. It was pushed on Bush because it rightly suggests that civilians should be in command of war not generals.

However, either when Laura read it to him she missed the most important parts or Bush just carried it and never read it because he ignored the most important parts of the book. The need of civilian leader to be thoroughly familiar with military technology and tactics. For the leader to keep fully apprised of events on the battle field including from outside of the chain of commmand. Above all to honestly keep the nation informed of what can and is going wrong.

Too much of the debate in Washington ignores real people's needs. Democrats should be for a healthcare system that makes people healthier. An education system that does not throw out tests when some groups fail them but teaches everyone to be able to deal with them. The tax code should neither require an account to cope with nor should it be the way wealth becomes entrenched. Lastly wealth from capital should not be enshired at the expense of working.

One of the great, and barely spoken of, crimes of the Bush Administration is their favoring coupon clipping over earned income.

Borrowing form Michael Mandelbaum's "The Ideas That Conquored the World" perhaps it is time to change tacts. Perhaps we should increase contacts and business with these countries. In the short run they may give their leaderships greater legitimacy. However, over time such dealings will hopefully create other centers of power outside the goverments and ruling parties, help liberal ideas infiltrate beyond government controls and by getting such nations involved in international organizations lead them to live up to modern norms.

Here is a trade bill that will bring down the price of sugar in the United States, substantially higher here than almost everywhere else, make it easier for people from the Carribean to send goods into the United States which will provide future markets for America and help shore up are region that my be tempted by what is going on in Venezuela. Yet Russ Feingold is railing against Cafta in the New York Times.

Freetrade is not nirvana but it does, overtime, improve most peoples way of living. Protectionism will barely protect jobs from the furhter developments of technology. Yet Democrats would rather carry the Unions water, and align themselves with some of the richest people in the United States and the world.

Why do so many Democrats, for example Chuck Schumer, oppose freetrade? For all its failings limiting free trade is more likely to help keep the poorest people on the planet poor without doing anything to bring jobs back to the United States. Afterall, the New England textile jobs outsourced to the South have never returned.

Democrats need to advocate legal reforms and educational reforms here and abroad to help the benefits of free trade in the aggregate benefit more people.