Message from Charles Aulds

Americans (particularly those who profess to be Christians) possess a good set of values with which to evaluate the actions of their leaders and to decide matters of politics. Americans don't need to be confused by calls for more war; Americans don't need to follow ambitious men into new wars. Americans don't need to look for excuses to justify their evil.

Americans have the principles of law, justice, and liberty that the nation's founders took great pains to put into documents for those who would follow them.

That's why I believe that Americans abandoned their principles far too quickly and too willingly when those principles were challenged. It was a demonstration of weakness.There was absolutely no good reason to trash these principles carelessly, precipitously. There should have been, at least, a heated debate before those principles were violated. The response to torture in secret prison camps? Silence. Tacit consent.

Maybe it's not too late to reverse the trend; a departure from the espoused principles of inclusiveness, freedom, and respect for human rights and dignity. America has become a country that exists only to supply the demands of the military/security state.

Americans should evaluate every potential leader, every decision, from their own personal frame of reference ... the value system that Americans pledge to one another that they will not hesitate to die for. 

Americans don't protect their rights by sending their military abroad to destroy and conquer and to subjugate other people.

Americans protect their own rights by protecting, defending and respecting the rights of others. That's American. That's what constitutes the heart of America ... the ideals that Americans hold in common, not the fears, emotions, and prejudices that divide them as a people, and alienate them as individuals.

The current state of fear is the real threat to the idea that is America. Because we've seen a demonstration that the only thing that can induce Americans to betray themselves is fear. And so fear is what you're being sold, daily, by the media. Don't buy it. Turn off that damned TV, put down that cellphone, and read something.

Charles