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“Let’s Take America Back.”

That’s the slogan I chose for the prospective U.S. Senate campaign I’ve been exploring for the past two months. For me its power comes from ten years hosting a daily public radio talk show, listening to countless callers say pretty much the same thing: “What country is this we’re living in? And what did they do with the one I learned to love as a child?” It didn’t matter which party they belong to or where they stand on today’s issues. They all want their country back.

Some of my callers would explain, often in well-informed detail, how America’s corporate elite have Congress, the White House, the mass media, the election process and the financial system wired up so tight that We the People can never regain power (and what fun and merry conversations those were). Certainly true… if that’s what we believe. And if it is then we’re saying that a couple hundred thousand elites can permanently keep three hundred million of us from having what we want.

I’m sorry, but that’s just too embarrassing to accept. So what if we don’t? What if instead we remembered that we still openly elect our leadership in this country (we’ll talk another day about the growing scale of electronic fraud that brings that premise into question), which gives us some power and responsibility to move this country towards what we want it to be? What would happen if we took that belief, and the work/pleasure of citizenship necessary to animate it, much more seriously?

That’s one question that drove me to look hard at a run for the Senate. And the first thing I noticed was that just about every non-incumbent campaign I can find is making some kind of reference to “taking our country back.” Seems like we have an early nominee for the most overworked cliché of 2008.

Fine. So what does it mean? And how do we do it? This post begins a campaign to answer those questions. We start with a conversation, but conversation alone isn’t enough.. Remember this one?



Network came out in 1976. Think how much we have taken in the thirty years since. In the real world. sad to say, ‘not taking it anymore’ demands more of us than screaming that we’re not going to take it anymore.

I'm committed to challenging all of us to discover and advance whatever it takes to really take our country back. A partisan run for the U.S. Senate, boxed in by the demands of 10-second sound bites, dialing for dollars and delivering the goods to campaign contributors, turns out to be a poor way to do that. And it’s not just the campaign process that’s taken America astray; we have to take a fresh look at the core notion that everything will be fine if we just put good people into office. I'll bet you remember this one:


That fictional Mr. Smith held forth in 1939. Maybe back then white knights like Jimmy Stewart were enough to save the day (I doubt it). Today we know better. We can send the best people we know into the entrenched power matrix of Washington and they won’t take our country back for us. They need us with and behind them, actively, persistently, sometimes raucously, to overcome the huge hurdles that a century of big-money politics has set in place.

Did I mention that this revived citizenship has to be satisfying and (at least occasionally) fun? That’s because if it’s not, we won’t take it on. If you’re not thinking that your life is too busy to take on any more responsibilities, you’re unusual. The biggest challenge to taking our country back is finding ways to engage that enrich rather than drain energy from our lives. The activism we’re here to foster will flow from what we want more than what we “should” do.

Here’s the good news: a lot of activists within reach of this blog have experience and ideas on how to do that, and we’ll find out what they are. Better news: America's bursting at the seams with all kinds of smart, creative groups and organizations devoted to taking our country back. We’ll link to them to learn what works, what’s enriching and productive, what isn’t. I don't know about you, but when I get excited about a project I can forget that there are usually a lot of terrific ideas already out there for the sharing; it’s far too late in the game to burn up precious energy reinventing wheels. In the words of the Hopi Elder Prayer,

"This could be a good time! There is a river flowing now very fast. It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid. They will try to hold on to the shore. They will feel they are being torn apart and
will suffer greatly... Know the river has its destination. The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river, keep our eyes open, and our heads above the water. And I say, see who is in there with you and celebrate…. The time of the lone wolf is over. Gather yourselves!”

Okay. Let’s gather ourselves.