A long, desultory post: my beliefs, my fears

Note: this post has been delayed a day or so, awaiting the Hardball transcript.
I want to get the quotation right!
'Hardball with Chris Matthews' for Friday October 17, 2008:

[Minnesota Congresswoman Michele] BACHMANN: What I would say—what I would say is that the news media should do a penetrating expose and take a look. I wish they would. I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America?

Followed closely by...

[N.C. Congressman Robin] Hayes: "... liberals hate real Americans that work and achieve and believe in God."

Me? My bona fides:

Enlisted in U.S. Army, voluntarily, April, 1975.
Honorable Discharge.
Registered to vote, 1971.
Voted in every Presidential election from 1972 forward.
(note: I voted for McGovern in 1972 - I've moved to the Left since then!)
Filed Federal & state income tax annually, 1974-2007.
Retired from Fortune 100 company.

I consider myself an American.
Not only an American, but a loyal and patriotic American!

What I know of government, and much of what I know about America, I learned in public schools. My knowledge of government? - pretty much limited to 8th-grade Civics class (thank you, Miss Helen Giffert!).

Required reading in 10th-grade U.S. History class: Masters of Deceit, by J. Edgar Hoover.

I am extremely distressed to hear our elected Representatives espouse the opinion that, as a self-confessed liberal, I am anti-American.

The implication seems to be that if I question my Government, if I suggest that just maybe things could be a little different - perhaps a little better - then I hate my country.

I sing in a church choir - and have for the past 12 years.

I am voting straight-ticket Democratic this time around - perhaps the first time in my political life I have done so (I frequently have voted in protest for meaningless 3rd-party candidates, at all levels).
Why?
Because I am afraid of the Republicans!
They believe that I am anti-American!
They believe that I hate America, MY country!!!

Do I care what Sarah Palin's wardrobe costs?
No!
Do I care that Sarah Palin none-too-subtly insinuates that Sen. Obama is a terrorist?
YES!!!

My vision of America is shaped by texts memorized in Miss Giffert's 8th-grade Civics class:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..."
[Declaration of Independence]

"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.
...
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to 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.
[The Gettysburg Address, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania;November 19, 1863]

"... Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
[The New Colossus, Emma Lazarus]

Stop the madness!!!