Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Abbreviated context for the bit I really wanted to quote below: "[...] In the past decade, this country has become a place filled with a specific kind of fear. [...] America is no longer only the fabled land of the free and the home of the brave, the shining light of liberty on a hill for everyone, if it ever was. It is also the land whose government bowed to politically orchestrated fears and made choices that restricted our Constitutional freedoms, that violated the US Constitution and removed the 800-year-old judicial right of habeas corpus, that still imprisons legally innocent people without charges, without access to an attorney, without allowing them to face and answer these charges in a court of law, without allowing an attorney to be present during the time they are questioned. [...]" Now on to the part that jumped out at me:

"There are still many good things about America and Americans, and more of them occur when we are given full information in order to let us make informed choices. Many of the problems we have faced in the past decade, and the reason that we as a country have not completely rejected certain political paths, have arisen from the governmental-corporate control of information and its sources, something we were not prepared for and did not at first want to believe. [...]

"If we want to return, however slowly, to an America that does not do the things we abhor, we need to continue to elect to office and support for appointment people whose values stress equality of opportunity, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, abandonment of bigotry and encouraging everyone to fully realize the freedoms and rights guaranteed in the law. This is easy to say but hard to do -- Arizonans have known for years about the violations of law, behavior and rights committed and allowed by the Maricopa County sheriff and his deputies, and haven't been able to get him out of office, though he's being investigated again now, and this time it may get somewhere. And that's just one lawman who aligned himself with neo-Nazis, who arrested peaceful protesters and who has a history of violating the rights of Hispanic Americans, who is the sheriff of the county containing Phoenix, AZ. He's not the only public official who shouldn't be there. I'm sure each of you reading this can name more."

-- twistedchick, 2010-09-11

[Entry continues with what each of us should be doing about this.]