Dear fellow resident of the 11th district:

The reason I decided to run for congress is that I am scared by the things I see happening in our country today.

I see an endless war - billions of OUR dollars devoted every day to the killing of innocent people, in the supposed defense of a way of life that we no longer live, in contravention of principles we hold to be beyond refute. We are on the wrong side of a moral divide. Our country has strayed from the path of justice, and forgotten the non-confrontational foreign policy of our forefathers - one that served us well. We can’t afford to send our money overseas, when our own people are suffering here at home.

I see a creeping attack on our rights and liberties - a bigger, more powerful, more controlling, more invasive central government; a climate of fear in which people are willing to give up their personal freedoms in pursuit of a false sense of "security." We are today perched on a dangerous tipping point -- and so we can no longer sit by and expect our leaders to protect us. We must actively defend the values and protections set forth in the constitution. We can’t afford to take our freedoms for granted! Liberty, once lost, will not be easy to recover.

I see an economic system that exploits the poorest members of our society; a monetary policy that is unsustainable and has led directly to the rising prices of food and gas we’ve experienced over the past year. Our money is being devalued, and ordinary Americans are suffering. We have been misled for too long by a banking cartel with a monopoly on money-creation -- bamboozled into using only their debt-paper as currency. We have become serfs in their system of credit. We Americans are up to our ears in debt - we need to understand how and why we got to this point, and begin working our way back to solvency, and eventual prosperity.

I see a broken political system - one in which corporate money counts for more than the votes of ordinary individuals; one in which our elected law-makers don’t write or read the legislation they enact; one in which two corrupt parties share a duopoly on power, refuse to address the true causes of injustice in our society, and ignore the voices calling out for reform; one in which new or revolutionary ideas are shunted to the margins, and our leaders make empty promises instead of telling us the truth, and asking for our help when the time comes to make tough decisions.

I see crumbling, dangerous cities and abandoned rural ghost-towns. I see people who want things to change, but who are too fearful or demoralized to take risks, to fight for what they believe in; people for whom the disparity between their aspirations and the reality of their everyday life is so great, that they cannot bear it, and try to escape reality through diversions like drugs, television, etc; people who toil long hours in pursuit of an American dream that has been hollowed out and sold to corporate interests; people who have lost faith in our democracy and no longer feel that they can "make a difference" in the world; people who have simply given up.

Still, I see hope.

Americans are starting to question the assumption, long drilled into us by talking heads in the irresponsible media, that what we have in this country is the best we could ever hope for. Young people are rejecting the culture of consumerism, and looking for ways to help the less fortunate. Determined idealism is springing up faster than it can be beaten down -- like shoots of grass through the cracks in a neglected sidewalk. As the American dream crumbles around it, the TRUTH, though still obscured by the tinsel of political propaganda and the baubles of shallow corporate "culture," is rising from the rubble like a phoenix. Americans know that we have been lied to -- and, groaning under the debt-burden our government has foisted onto us, we are ready to retake the mantle of liberty and renew our battered republic.

It’s time for truth.