Letters to the Editor
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My letter
Dear [Senator],
You have been one of the few Democrats willing to stand up to the Bush administration. I urge you to continue to do so by doing all that you can to defeat the Republican's torture bill.
The Bush administration's attack on the founding priciples of this country must stop! This bill is not in the best interests of the United States and puts US military personnel and legal US residents at great risk.
Democratic leaders must stand-up and fight for what is truly American and is morally right.
US representatives do not have the right to compromise fundamental human rights, nor to represent to the world, that US citizens no longer hold true the very principles and ideals that lead to the founding of this great country.
Regards,
ellston empires, ltd
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A small addition..
To all you letter-writers: MAKE SURE IT IS SNAIL MAIL!!! Emails dont count s&%t. Flood the senate in real letters, make a campaign out of it. NOW. Fer christs sake, you are legalizing abduction, rape and torture.
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Can you get anyomore Democrats to Sit out the Election Glenn?
Gee thanks again Glenn. You have convinced me that the Democrats are so spineless and unprincipled that it is pointless to go and vote for them because nothing is going to change. Was that your intention?
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write your Republican reps too
I see no reason why we should not also write our Republican Reps and Senators as well. Take a minute or two to find out a little bit about them and personalize it. Here's my letter to Congressman Kirk of Illinois (from my husband and I, with some bits cribbed from another poster's letter):
Dear Congressman Kirk,
We are your constituents and are writing to you for the first time because we are absolutely appalled to read about President Bush's attempt to legalize torture and suspend habeas corpus. We know that you see yourself as independent-minded and we assume that you are not among those who support Bush on this topic and that you will ferociously fight his attempt to subvert America's will. We demand that you not only block the current “torture bill” (the “compromise” put forth by John McCain and others), but that you do every single thing in your power to stop this madness.
Torture is not an effective means of gathering information. It endangers our men and women in uniform (as a Navy man, we would expect you to know that). It is absolutely immoral and anti-American. Legalizing torture and suspending habeas corpus—even for terrorism suspects—will only put us on the road to tyranny and make us no better than our enemies.
Let us be clear about this. We will not vote for anyone who supports the legalization of torture or the suspension of basic civil and human rights. Beyond that, we expect you to fight this "torture bill" by every means you have available in as public a way as possible. Your position on the Congressional Human Rights Caucus puts you in a unique position to defend the basic human rights guaranteed in the Geneva Conventions and in our own Constitution.
Please let us know what you plan to do about this most fundamental issue of human decency.
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Blindly loyal party partisans
I'm honestly amazed - and more than a little disturbed -- at how many people think that some sort of grave wrong has been committed when someone voices criticisms of the Democratic Party. We're all supposed to be good Party followers and praise the Party Leaders even while they help to legalize torture and permanent lawless detention powers? We're supposed to refrain from criticizing the Party Leaders and simply accept that they know best and follow along meekly and obediently? That sounds a lot like the behavior of Bush followers, and not something I'm particularly interested in emulating.
The horrified reaction to anyone who dares speak ill of the Party is particularly bewildering given that much of the criticism being voiced is of a tactical nature -- i.e., arguing that Democrats are jeopardizing their electoral chances by failing to demonstrate resolve and energize their base. Why would someone who wants the Democrats to win refrain from criticizing them when they are making strategic error that decrease their chances of victory?
There are paid consultants and spokespeople for the DNC who will always praise Democrats and never criticize them. For those who want Stalinist-like blind praise for the Democratic Party, it is not that hard to find. But most bloggers, and most Americans who exchange political ideas over the Internet, are Americans first, and their allegiance is to their politcal values, not to any political Party. Torture and due process-less detentions are no less repugnant or dangerous when approved by Democrats than when they're approved by Republicans, and anybody who finds those things reprehensible and un-American has the responsibility to speak out against any political official, regardless of party, who endoreses and enables those things.
Beltway Democrats expect you to meekly accept whatever they give you because of your party allegaince, and apparently, there is a not insubstantial number of people willing to comply (and to attack those who refuse to comply). That's exactly why our national political figures have been so unresponsive - because they feel entitled to dictate from the top-down what the Party will do, and the loyal members quietly and gratefully accept it.
Personally, the last thing I'm going to do is abdicate my rights and responsibilities as a citizen to criticize political officials when then they profoundly fail in their duties. It is the responsiblity of national Democrats to energize their base and make people enthusiastic about voting for them. Just take a quick and random look around the liberal blogs, as they discuss the Democrats' complete capitulation to the worst excesses of the Bush movement, and you will see how effective they are in that objective. I'm not going to pretend that this isn't the case or dishonestly praise them for doing something that is craven and wrong.
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Changing attitudes
When I was 16 or so I was very unhappy with where I was in my life and I wanted nothing more than to move to the US. When I was 19 I had revised my dream
somewhat; I wanted to study or work in the US for a year. Then finally when I
was 24 I started going on vacations to the US. Thoroughly enjoyed meeting
Americans. I'm now in my thirties and once again my attitudes have shifted.
Since 2001, the ever increasing security lines and ever decreasing amounts of
respect from people working in airports have been chafing at me but I still
kept coming, thinking that it would get better in 2008. But this law that is
going to be passed makes me afraid it won't. It makes me afraid to travel to
the US again. It boggles my mind why no Democrat is standing up and call this
what it is, a torture bill. I still can't understand why, when accused by
Republicans that they first voted for the war in Iraq and then were against
it, nobody said: yes I voted for it. Because I was deceived. The evidence
was cooked. I feel powerless as I see a country my grandfather believed to
be the greatest country on earth, slide off to a new moral low previously
found only in the former Soviet Union.