Thanks for the post. I read it all the way through and it gave me a lot to think about.

Don't know if you bothered to read your own post or not, but it was thoughtful, articulate, and challanging. Indeed we may be heading back to a 60's political climate. In the 60's democracy showed it was not a neat orderly process where the people were allowed to show their preferences once every four years by voting and in-between times go back to doing what the authorities told them to do.

Democracy can be taken to the streets and it is upsetting to the authorities. Hanna Arendt wrote a book named "Power" in which she reiterated potestas en populi and clearly articulated the principle.

Thank you again for an important post. Perhaps the Hayden's coming out the woodwork presage a new era where "the excess of democracy" of the 60's might again re-shape this nation and guide a new direction toward individual and human rights are not trumped and deferred by "Partiot Acts" and other authoritarian neocon devices.

Publius