I hate to break it to all my Liberal friends out there, but we're all fools.


There's a film I think everyone should see, especially now, in this last month before the 2004 Election: MR SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON. In it, the film's hero, the appointed Senator Jefferson Smith, storms out of the Senate instead of standing up for himself. His fellow Senator Paine, and the powerful businessman Taylor, have betrayed him, smeared him, called him a thief and a liar, and the press has taken this and run with it. Smith's faithful assistant, Saunders, finds him alone, faint of heart, crying, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

"Your friend Lincoln had his Taylors and Paines, so did every other man who ever tried to lift his thought up off the ground. Odds against them didn't stop those men, they were fools that way. All the good that ever came into this world came from fools with faith like that, you know that, Jeff. You can't quit now, not you. They aren't all Taylors and Paines in Washington, their kind just throw big shadows,that's all. You didn't just have faith in Paine, or any other living man. You had faith in something bigger than that, you had plain, decent, everyday,common rightness - and this country could use some of that. Yeah, so could the whole cock-eyed world, a lot of it. Remember the first day you got here? Remember what you said about Lincoln? You said he was sitting up there, waiting for someone to come along. You were right. He was waiting for a man who could see his job and sail into it, that's what he was waiting for. A man who could tear into the Taylors and root em out into the open. I think he was waiting for you, Jeff. He knows you can do it, (and) so do I."

~ Miss Saunders, MISTER SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON

Friends... don't give up. Don't sit back and sulk! Don't put your future in the hands of pollsters. Don't give the bullshit the time of day. Don't you dare give up, my friends, because this election is too important.

I refuse to worry and whine, anymore. I have to have Faith, because it's the only thing I can damn well do. Every moment of every day, I can have Faith in my fellow Americans. The Faith of a Fool, perhaps, but Faith nevertheless.

I can have Faith that Americans will see the Taylors and Paines --the Bush's and Cheney's for what they are: the worst kind of self-serving, egotistical, lying cheats. I can have Faith that the American people will listen with their hearts and minds open, and they will keep talking about the issues that face them, and turn away from greed, fear, and lies. I can have Faith that we are smarter than Bush and Cheney think we are. I can have Faith that Americans will not allow their Civil Liberties tobe stripped away,that Americans will not allow the super-rich to benefit again and again from loopholes and taxbreaks, while the working poor suffer and scrape and go without health insurance and education.

"Just get up off the ground, that's all I ask. Get up there with that lady that's up on top of this Capitol, that lady who stands for Liberty. Take a look at this country through her eyes, if you really want to see something. And you won't just see scenery. You'll see the whole parade of what man's carved out for himself, after centuries of fighting, and fighting for something better than just jungle law. Fighting so's he can stand on his own two feet, free and decent, like he was created, no matter his race, color or creed. That's what you'd see. There's no place out there for graft, or greed orlies or compromise with human liberties. (...) And it's not too late, because this country is bigger than the Taylors or you or me, or anything else. Great principles don't get lost once they come to light. They're right here, youjust have to see them again."

~ Jefferson Smith, MISTER SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON