Editor,
The fundamentalist and fundamentally un-American leadership in the White House and Washington is attacking everything good that the United States once stood for. It is doing so without regard for the loud and gathering voices of opposition among the population it somehow represents through ignoring.
On Thursday, people in more than 150 cities across the country will gather to demand that representative democracy actually represent democracy.
If any of the following applies to you, then you cannot afford to wait to protest:
You or anyone you know is now suffering from, or may in the future suffer from, any number of horrible diseases the worldwide scientific community is seeking to combat. President George Bush opposes stem-cell research because of his fundamentalist views.
You want your children to receive a well-rounded education. This administration and its allies are seeking to destroy the foundation of science education in your schools because of their fundamentalist religious views.
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You are a woman who enjoys the advances toward gender equality over the last few decades. This administration is attacking birth control in an alarming way, in an effort to return to a day when women were punished for their sexual urges by being forced into child-rearing, while the father managed to avoid any such penalty.
You believe that consenting adults in love should be entitled to publicly declare that love and maintain equal status with other consenting adults in love. This administration is trying to tell you who you can and cannot marry.
You, your friends or your family are Hispanic. This administration and its followers have declared that the presence of hard-working, law-abiding, tax-paying immigrants and their families are a threat to national security. This xenophobic response tramples on the declaration the Statue of Liberty makes to the people of the world.
You believe anyone working for a living should earn a living. This administration and its
followers refuse to raise the minimum wage.
You dread nuclear war. This administration pumps everything it can into efforts to develop nuclear weapons, ensuring a return to life on the edge of nuclear holocaust.
Your children's health and welfare is important to you. This administration has refused to accept the dangers of environmental degradation, squeezing out a few more dollars for the rich and leaving the consequences to your children.
You believe rogue states must be stopped. This administration has blatantly ignored aspects of domestic and international law designed to contain the use of force. The U.S. is a rogue state, which severely undermines global and national security.
You believe, as the American-established Nuremberg Tribunal believed, that launching aggressive, preventive war is a crime against humanity. In violating this principle, Bush emulates the tactics of Nazi Germany.
You are a minority seeking equal representation in American democracy. This administration has systematically attempted to undermine the ability of minority groups to obtain equal access to government.
You believe the writers of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the 14th Amendment meant what they said. This administration has consistently violated basic and fundamental rights, seeking to spy on American citizens without probable cause and holding people without due process, habeas corpus or the rule of law.
You believe that when the human race got together and declared torture a despicable act that could never be condoned, the human race was right. This administration has done everything possible to rationalize a tactic that is always wrong, incredibly inhuman and inherently evil.
You refuse to accept that the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings are an acceptable level of collateral damage. More than 2,000 U.S. servicemen and women have died and tens of thousands more have been maimed based on lies these people told you.
America was a great country. We want it back.
Paul Linnenburger
Daily Lobo reader
