Nice sentiments, but Washington would be a virtual ghost town if we removed everyone beholden to the corporations; it's woven into the very fabric of our government at this point.

The problem is that we are foolishly convinced that trading one party for another represents some form of change. The tyranny comes from the two-party system. It's where ideas go to die. It's where freedom goes to die.

It is human nature to want to be part of a group - the majority of thought - the consensus. We are taught at a young age that there's safety in numbers - to think or act on your own is a perilous path to take. Conform or be ostracised.

"Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day. But a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly proves a deliberate systematic plan of reducing us to slavery."
- Thomas Jefferson

I think that they walked away. They realized that there was a deadly price to be paid for the romantic idea of "revolution", a price they were not prepared to pay.

As Dr. Johnson said about the notion of being hanged in the morning had a wonderful way of focusing the mind, the idea of actually being a casualty for the cause had a way of bringing into focus their own vulnerability, their own mortality.

Most sincerely,

T. J. Flapsaddle

Mike we're ALL avoiding that sort of confrontation, and I guess voting in Obama is our last ditch effort to keep us a "nation of laws". All the schucks running things need to do is screw up this election, and they will indeed, have a fight on their hands. I ran away when the head of the CIA became vice president to Ronald Movie Star First Tool Reagan, and lived in the Caribbean for twenty years. I sold stuff made out of palm to tourists and raised my kids in "paradise". I talked to people from all over the world, and they often asked me: "What's the best thing about being an American?" I would always reply,"Whether it's actually true or not, we grew up BELIEVING, we were Free". And that makes all the difference in the world. That's why we see America finally pushing back as one. The confusion and fear and oppression and lies that have been the last eight years, has finally been overwhelmed by that true human instinct, or as the Constitution puts it, that inalienable right. We ARE mad as hell and we're NOT going to take it anymore.As Nader said in 2000, "Things have to get worse, before they get better". Well, this is bad enough. Now it's time to make it better.

In order to have a revolution you (we) must come up with an end game. I too remember the civil rights marches and Kent State and even Berkeley at that time. Many of us waiting for "the plan" and how we (you) would plan to change the actions of our government who kept taking us to war without even a simple plan to win it.

Yes, we believed we were free and we grew up realizing the government did not allow us to be free. We could never be free as long as we tresspassed, littered, damaged other people's property, i.e., showed no respect for the freedom or property of others.

I attended meetings with many of protestors and found no plan for the future. I even ran into Jane Fonda and her husband who treated many of us like idiots. They never offered a single freedom. It was demonstrating against the system and I never remember the word peace verbally said, just written on other's property.

I keep hoping that the group here will come up with a plan to return our freedoms to all Americans. Had we bothered to learn the science of economics, we could have shown others, by example, of how to survive the meltdown of bad mortgages.

Reacting to stupidity is never a forward action. I read a call for something better and many are heading to Obama for a better government. Is this the end game? Is this the program for freedoms?

Malcolm