Here are a few I feel are appropos the day after the Friday FISA massacre:
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Frederick Douglass
We must keep demanding, all of us, who oppose the assault on our liberty, whether from the right or the left.
It may well be that our means are fairly limited and our possibilities restricted when it comes to applying pressure on our government. But is this a reason to do nothing? Despair is not an answer. Neither is resignation. Resignation only leads to indifference, which is not merely a sin but a punishment. Elie Wiesel
I’m in no mood for being punished anymore, are you? Indeed, I’m in the mood to punish those who in their cowardice or greed or blind fear or stupidity have chosen to continue down this dark path to enslavement.
The first principal of nonviolent action is that of noncooperation with everything humiliating. Cesar Chavez
And the first non-violent act we can do is turn off the money spigot to the Barack Obama campaign and any politician, Republican or Democrat, who voted (or will vote in the Senate) for this atrocity. I know there are many conservatives and Republicans who are very uncomfortable with the loss of our privacy rights. The candidacies of Ron Paul and Bob Barr demonstrate this. I ask anyone who has ever contributed to the people who support this blasphemy of a bill to send them an email asking them to remove your name from their mailing list, and to cease all further calls for money. It’s a first step, and only a first step, but one we should make.
Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves. Herbert Marcuse
Elections mean nothing unless we control the process by which the candidates are selected for us. The far right learned that lesson by out-organizing, out-joining and out-maneuvering many of the other factions in the Republican Party. We would do well to imitate their example within the Democratic Party. Merely sending money to “progressive” challengers is not enough. We must be positioned to make the choice for ourselves as to who is and is not the progressive in the race. We can’t so that on the sidelines.
Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Frederick Douglass
This is the true Long War in which America is engaged. And we must fight it at home against the fear, the prejudice, and the weakness of our fellow citizens, and against the cupidity and corruption of our political leaders. No one ever said it would be easy, folks.
We have learned that power is a positive force if it is used for positive purposes. Elizabeth Dole
Elizabeth Dole is an idiot. But then she believes the FISA bill serves a positive purpose. I include her quote here, at the end, as a warning. There will always be those who believe unmitigated power in the right hands and employed for the right purposes is a good thing. History teaches us, if nothing else, that such beliefs are delusional. Power accumulates and spreads if not checked by Justice.
