ilovemylife: ARE WE WHO WE THINK WE ARE?

The most important things to me are truth and justice. I would like my country and my government to be based on these things. But if We the People don't know what is being done in our name, we are missing the point of being a government "of the people, by the people and for the people".

We've been wrong: The USA and slavery
We've been wrong: The USA and indigenous people
We've been wrong again
and we've been wrong again
and we've been wrong again
and again

"Abraham Lincoln best described democracy as 'government of the people, by the people, and for the people.' For that government to be 'by the people,' however, requires that the people decide who shall be their leaders. Without free and fair elections, there can be no democratic society, and without that constant accountability of government officials to the electorate, there can, in fact, be no assurance of any other rights. The right to vote, therefore, is not only an important individual liberty; it is also a foundation stone of free government." Source: usinfo.state.gov

The Gettyburg Address

A speech delivered by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War.
Lincoln was speaking at the dedication of a soldiers’ cemetery
at the site of the Battle of Gettysburg. The opening and closing
lines are particularly memorable: “Four score and seven years
ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation,
conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all
men are created equal…. [We must] be here dedicated to the
great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead
we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the
last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that
these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under
God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government
of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish
from the Earth.”

‡ Lincoln surprised his audience at Gettysburg with the brevity
of his speech. He delivered the Gettysburg Address, which lasted
about three minutes, after a two-hour speech by Edward Everett,
one of the leading orators of the day.

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John Dean on George W Bush

From: THXl138

The Presidents of the United States of America
I think we have had some awful Presidents. In my opinion, we have voted for the wrong candidate sometimes. Also, in my opinion, a word to describe us is fickle. Just tonight, I heard pundits on MSNBC make generalizations about the country's feelings about Barack Obama based on a poll taken tonight only with people in Mississippi. Poll those same people in 7 days and it could be a different result. And a poll of Mississippians surely isn't enough to gauge the entire population. But not one pundit on the panel, thought to mention this possibility. The danger is that these people make statements that perpetuate their personal feelings and they get amplified because they are on television.

My experience is that many people don't think for themselves and are influenced by immaterial and irrelevant things they hear, as well as lies and manipulations by candidates.
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