If I was Dean's campaign manager he would not be in Burlington..he would be
at ground zero at San Francisco.

He would be walking along shaking hands and talking to all those gays and
lesbians who are putting their necks out on a line to get rights and
treatment that all of us take for granted.

He would then get up on a podium and start talking,

"There are people out there who are wringing their hands, screaming that
the sky is falling. They are the same people who were wringing their hands
when Blacks were allowed to join the army. They were wringing their hands
when blacks were allowed to play professional baseball. They were wringing
their hands when the civil rights amendment was brought in. They were
wringing their hands when Martin Luther King was fighting for those rights
and they shed no tears when he died fighting and they wrung their hands
when a holiday was declared in his name.

"These are the same people who rung their hands when women wanted to join
the workforce. They wrung their hands when women wanted to become
engineers, scientists....and they really wrung their hands and screamed the
sky was falling when they wanted to become wrestlers.

"They rung their hands when women fought for legislation that treated them
as equal citizens in this country and vilified the leaders of that movement
as traitors. They rung their hands when disabled people fought for
legislation allowing them to participate in national life.

"Every dark moment of American history, from segregation, to siccing the
dogs on blacks, to McCarthyism, to the criminalization of sexuality, to the
Ken Starr witch hunts, ...every dark moment in American history....always
has , behind them, these same people wringing their hands, and getting
their way."

(Take off jacket...roll up sleeves)

"Every bright moment of American history has come when ordinary good people,
like those standing in line, who sat down in the front of a bus, who swung
a bat in a jeering park, who charged the beach in war for his country,....
every bright moment in American history has come when ordinary people gathered the
courage and resolve to over come those people who wring their hands. Every
time America says that it is a beacon for freedom and justice in the world,
it is on the basis of these good people overcoming the hateful rhetoric of
that same group of people whose only contribution to national progress is
to wring their hands and get in its way.

"This President, the most ideologically narrow president in American
history, now speaks openly about bringing in a Constitutional amendment
that would ban these people from doing what they need to do to pursue
happiness.

"He will say that he is defending marriage.

"Is he blind?

"Take a look around...are these people attacking marriage?...No they are
embracing marriage.

"Such an amendment would become an albatross around the neck of the American
psyche and put a hole in its moral core. Every time an American speaks
about America being the beacon of freedom and equality, people will point
to this Constitutional amendment...and snicker and laugh and know that we
don't have a clue about what the words mean.

"This snickering would be too much to bear...because we DO know what they
mean and America's history is filled with people who risked their careers,
their positions, and indeed have paid with their very lives for the true
meaning of those words.

"So when I say take back our country, I mean take it back from the people
who wring their hands over people who only want to make America what it was
meant to be.....take it back from people and organizations who look at the
world through a lens of linear logic...a linear logic completely divorced
from reality and whose rhetoric has completely perverted the meaning of
what it is to be a conservative, or left or right wing... making rational
discussion impossible

"Is it left-wing to balance the budget? So be it. I am left wing. But I
can tell you a lot of my "conservative" friends don't have a problem with
wanting to balance the budget..

"A lot of my "conservative" friends have problems with an America, that in
the three years of the Bush presidency, has increased our level of debt 30%
to 37 trillion dollars. A debt that is grinding households and businesses
into non-existence. As my conservative friends know, this kind of
crippling debt is bad because it impacts on America's future freedom of
action.

"A controlling interest in this debt is controlled by foreigners, most of it
by central banks in Asia. With one phone call, with one sell order, they
could put the American economy back into the 1930's.

"Is this what Bush means by "security"?...by "prosperity?"

"Is it right wing to have an Attorney General who bends, distorts and breaks
every Constitutional protection to allow MORE and MORE government into your
affairs.....doesn't sound like the right wingers I know, not the right
wingers that hold individual liberty to be the most precious gift that a
country can give

"And if left wing means wanting a government that protects individuals from
arbitrary power, and that includes the arbitrary power of government
itself, then so be it,..I am "left wing".....but I have to tell you a lot
of my right wing friends would not have that much problem with the above
ethos, - of a government that is balanced and restrained by the
Constitution

"These people who wring their hands over what is happening today are the
reason why America spends more money on education but have one of the worst
public school systems in the western world. These people who wring their
hands are the reason why America spends more money on health care per
person and yet is the only western country where 25% of its population does
not have health coverage of any kind.

"These people who are wringing their hands is why America spends more on
defense than the next 15 countries combined, and yet NEVER feels secure.
These people who wring their hands are why America will not only ALWAYS be
fighting unnecessary wars, they will be the people whose incompetence will
keep America from WINNING those wars

"Our religions, which give us our framework for treating our neighbors in an
ethical manner has become usurped into becoming the last safe haven for
demagogues and hate-mongers who use labels and stereotypes to stigmatize
people and to keep regular people basing their decisions on fear and
uncertainty

"Our religions which give us the faith to face the unknown, and to "love
others as you would love yourself", has been perverted and deformed by
these people who wring their hands. They have deformed religion by making
it the means to which they make people fear the unknown, to lose faith in
humanity and all of its diversity, to love your brother ONLY if he is your
mirror image, and to destroy those who are not.

"So taking back our country is not going to be an easy thing but it must be
done and it must be done quickly,. It is a lot easier to destroy a country
then it is to build it up. Look at how far down we have come in the three
short years that Bush and his neo-conservative have come into power. Three
years ago we were the nation that every other nation turned to lead the
world to a better place, to a more ethical place. Now more and more of the
world see us as the problem, the great obstacle that must be overcome.

"It has always been easier to destroy than create. For every year that Bush
remains in power it will take two to undo the damage - and the people who
wring their hands will be squealing, and scheming and fighting us the whole
way.

"They know not what they do

"But fight back we must, fight back we will, and thanks to people like
yourself, fighting back is what we are doing now.

"It is an old fight. A fight as old as humanity itself. A fight for humans
to build an ethical society. To build a society where human dignity and
intelligence and capacity to reason AND to imagine, his capacity to create,
wins over the capacity to distrust, to fear, to be overwhelmed by
superstition posing as dogma.

"It is a fight that gives meaning to life itself, it is why we are here. We
will never stop, we will never give up. We may fall six times.....we will
get up seven. "

Closing scream.

Roll down sleeves. Put on jacket...and make off the cuff.."off the
record" remarks wondering about how those mental midgets at CNN like them
apples.