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 "A Prayer for America"

is the most brilliant piece of insightful writing

 I have come across since 9-11 to restore the Republic.

It must be dropped as leaflets over the American people,

and put on their windshields in every car park in America.

They must be awoken out of their dangerous slumber.

To love America is to do that.

University of Southern California

Sunday, February 17, 2002

United States Congressman

Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio)

A Prayer for America

(to be sung as an overture for America)

"My country 'tis of thee.

 Sweet land of liberty of thee I sing. . . .

From every mountain side, let freedom ring. . .

 Long may our land be bright.

With freedom's holy light. . ."

"Oh say does that star spangled banner yet wave.

O'er the land of the free

and the home of the brave?"

"America, America, God shed grace on thee.

And crown thy good with brotherhood

from sea to shining sea. . ."

*          *          *          *

I offer these brief remarks today

as a prayer for our country,

 with love of democracy,

 as a celebration of our country.

 With love for our country.

 With hope for our country.

 With a belief that the light of freedom

cannot be extinguished

as long as it is inside of us.

 With a belief that freedom

rings resoundingly in a democracy

each time we speak freely.

 With the understanding that freedom

stirs the human heart and fear stills it.

 With the belief that a free people

 cannot walk in fear and faith at the same time.

 With the understanding that there is a deeper truth

expressed in the unity of the United States.

 That implicate in the union of our country

is the union of all people.

That all people are essentially one.

 That the world is interconnected

not only on the material level

of economics, trade,

communication, and transportation,

but innerconnected through human consciousness,

 through the human heart,

 through the heart of the world,

through the simply expressed impulse

 and yearning to be and to breathe free.

 I offer this prayer for America.

Let us pray that our nation will remember

 that the unfolding of the promise of democracy

 in our nation paralleled the striving for civil rights.

 That is why we must challenge

the rationale of the Patriot Act.

We must ask why should America

 put aside guarantees of constitutional justice?

How can we justify in effect canceling

the First Amendment and the right of free speech,

the right to peaceably assemble?

How can we justify in effect canceling

 the Fourth Amendment, probable cause,

 the prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizure?

 How can we justify in effect canceling the

Fifth Amendment,  nullifying due process,

and allowing for indefinite incarceration without a trial?

How can we justify canceling the Sixth Amendment,

the right to prompt and public trial?

 How can we justify canceling the Eighth Amendment

which protects against cruel & unusual punishment?

We cannot justify widespread wiretaps

and internet surveillance without

judicial supervision, let alone with it.

 We cannot justify secret searches without a warrant.

We cannot justify giving the Attorney General

the ability to designate domestic terror groups.

We cannot justify giving the FBI

total access to any type of data

which may exist in any system anywhere

such as medical records and financial records.

We cannot justify giving the CIA

the ability to target people in this

country for intelligence surveillance.

 We cannot justify a government which

takes from the people our right to privacy

 and then assumes for its own

operations a right to total secrecy.

The Attorney General recently

 covered up a statue of Lady Justice

 showing her bosom as if to underscore

there is no danger of justice exposing herself

at this time, before this administration.

Let us pray that our nation's leaders

will not be overcome with fear.

Because today there is great fear

 in our great Capitol.

And this must be understood

before we can ask about the shortcomings

 of Congress in the current environment.

The great fear began when we had to

evacuate the Capitol on September 11.

 It continued when we had to leave the Capitol

again when a bomb scare occurred

 as members were pressing the CIA

during a secret briefing.

It continued when we abandoned Washington

 when anthrax, possibly from a government lab,

 arrived in the mail.

 It continued when the Attorney General

declared a nationwide terror alert and then the

Administration brought the destructive Patriot Bill

to the floor of the House.

 It continued in the release of the Bin Laden tapes

at the same time the President was announcing

 the withdrawal from the ABM treaty.

It remains present in the cordoning off of the Capitol.

It is present in the camouflaged armed national guardsmen

who greet members of Congress each day

we enter the Capitol campus.

 It is present in the labyrinth of concrete barriers

through which we must pass each time we go to vote.

 The trappings of a state of siege trap us in a state of fear,

 ill equipped to deal with the Patriot Games,

 the Mind Games, the War Games

 of an unelected President

and his unelected Vice President.

Let us pray that our country will stop this war.

"To promote the common defense"

is one of the formational principles of America.

Our Congress gave the President the ability

to respond to the tragedy of September the Eleventh.

We licensed a response to those who helped bring

 the terror of September the Eleventh.

But we the people and our elected representatives

must reserve the right to measure the response,

to proportion the response,

to challenge the response,

and to correct the response.

Because we did not authorize the invasion of Iraq.

We did not authorize the invasion of Iran.

We did not authorize the invasion of North Korea.

We did not authorize the bombing of civilians in Afghanistan.

We did not authorize permanent detainees in Guantanamo Bay.

We did not authorize the withdrawal from the Geneva Convention.

We did not authorize military tribunals suspending

due process and habeas corpus.

We did not authorize assassination squads.

We did not authorize the resurrection of COINTELPRO.

We did not authorize the repeal of the Bill of Rights.

We did not authorize the revocation of the Constitution.

We did not authorize national identity cards.

We did not authorize the eye of Big Brother

 to peer from cameras throughout our cities.

We did not authorize an eye for an eye.

Nor did we ask that the blood of innocent people,

 who perished on September 11, be avenged with

the blood of innocent villagers in Afghanistan.

We did not authorize the administration

 to wage war anytime, anywhere,anyhow it pleases.

We did not authorize war without end.

We did not authorize a permanent war economy.

Yet we are upon the threshold

of a permanent war economy.

 The President has requested a $45.6

increase in military spending.

All defense-related programs will cost close to $400 billion.

 Consider that the Department of Defense

has never passed an independent audit.

Consider that the Inspector General

has notified Congress that the Pentagon

cannot properly account for $1.2 trillion in

transactions. Consider that in recent years the Dept. of Defense

 could not match $22 billion worth of expenditures

 to the items it purchased, wrote off, as lost,

billions of dollars worth of in-transit inventory

and stored nearly $30 billion worth

of spare parts it did not need.

Yet the defense budget grows with more money

for weapons systems to fight a cold war which ended,

weapon systems in search of new enemies to create new wars

This has nothing to do with fighting terror.

 This has everything to do with fueling

 a military industrial machine

 with the treasure of our nation,

risking the future of our nation,

risking democracy itself .

With the militarization of thought

which follows the militarization of the budget.

Let us pray for our children.

Our children deserve a world without end.

 Not a war without end.

Our children deserve a world free of the terror of hunger,

 free of the terror of poor health care,

 free of the terror of homelessness,

 free of the terror of ignorance,

 free of the terror of hopelessness,

free of the terror of policies

which are committed to a world view

 which is not appropriate for the survival of a free people,

 not appropriate for the survival of democratic values,

 not appropriate for the survival of our nation,

 and not appropriate for the survival of the world.

Let us pray that we have the courage and the will

 as a people and as a nation to shore ourselves up,

to reclaim from the ruins of September the Eleventh

our democratic traditions.

Let us declare our love for democracy.

Let us declare our intent for peace.

Let us work to make nonviolence an

organizing principle in our own society.

Let us recommit ourselves

to the slow and painstaking work of statecraft,

which sees peace, not war as being inevitable.

 Let us work for a world where

someday war becomes archaic.

That is the vision which the proposal

to create a Department of Peace envisions.

Forty-three members of congress

are now cosponsoring the legislation.

 Let us work for a world where

 nuclear disarmament is an imperative.

 That is why we must begin by insisting

on the commitments of the ABM treaty.

 That is why we must be steadfast for nonproliferation.

Let us work for a world where America

can lead the way in banning weapons of mass destruction

not only from our land and sea and sky

 but from outer space itself.

 That is the vision of HR 3616:

A universe free of fear.

 Where we can look up at God's creation

in the stars and imagine infinite wisdom,

infinite peace, infinite possibilities, not infinite war,

 because we are taught that the kingdom will come

on earth as it is in heaven.

Let us pray that we have the courage

 to replace the images of death which haunt us,

the layers of images of September the Eleventh,

faded into images of patriotism,

 spliced into images of military mobilization,

jump cut into images of our

 secular celebrations of the World Series,

 New Year's Eve, the Superbowl, the Olympics,

the strobic flashes which touch our deepest fears,

let us replace those images with the work of human relations,

reaching out to people, helping our own citizens

here at home, lifting the plight of the poor everywhere.

 That is the America which has the ability

to rally the support of the world.

That is the America which stands

not in pursuit of an axis of evil,

 but which is itself at the axis of hope

 and faith and peace and freedom.

America, America. God shed grace on thee.

Crown thy good, America.

Not with weapons of mass destruction.

Not with invocations of an axis of evil.

Not through breaking international treaties.

 Not through establishing America

as king of a unipolar world.

Crown thy good America.

America, America.

 Let us pray for our country.

Let us love our country.

 Let us defend our country

not only from the threats without

 but from the threats within.

Crown thy good, America.

Crown thy good with brotherhood, and sisterhood.

 And crown thy good with compassion and restraint

and forbearance and a commitment to peace,

to democracy, to economic justice

here at home and throughout the world.

Crown thy good, America.

Crown thy good America.

Crown thy good.

Thank you.

 Dkucinich@AOL.com

"Forgiveness is the answer

 to the child's dream of a miracle

by which what is broken

is made whole again,

what is soiled is made clean again."

- Dag Hammarskjold