Is It Passion or Common Sense?

OpEdNews.com
 
Lately I have had a lot of people pat me on the head and say, 'Don't lose
your passion, Becky. Your country needs you.' This is happening because for the
last year I have done nothing but try to get Howard Dean's name and message
out to as many people as humanly possible. I'm pretty sure that there are a few
people who wish I had never gotten a hold of their e-mail address, but most of
my friends came around pretty quickly.
 
On Feb. 3rd of 2003, give or take a day or two, I was sitting in front of the
fire reading Newsweek, bemoaning the fact that our president was in the
process of starting a war in a country that I knew had had nothing to do with 9/11
and had no weapons of mass destruction. The reason I knew these things was
that I had been involved with the Afghans right after 9/11 and knew that Bin
Laden was one of the Arabs who had come into Afghanistan, with our help of course,
to set up shop against, well, us. I knew they weren't commiserating with
Saddam. Any moron who paid attention to after 9/11 would have known that.
 
I knew there were no weapons because Hans Blix was in Iraq saying that they
had looked everywhere and had found nothing but evidence of destroyed weapons.
Now, I know many, many people who read more newspapers than I do but when I
heard GW say that Saddam wasn't letting the inspectors in, I knew he was lying.
 
Seeing the writing on the wall that day, I said a silent prayer that someone
with some chutzpa, moxy, backbone, charisma, and brains would decide to run
for president. Within the next 5 minutes I came across a tiny little blurb about
the ex-governor of Vermont. It said he was a doctor, and, well, I have to
admit, I have a thing for cute doctors. It said that he was against the war and
that he was running for president. I was overjoyed. I remembered that Vermont
had been the first state to legalize gay civil unions, and since I'm a fan of
Petr Ilyich Tchaikovsy, Billie Jean King, Cole Porter, Bessie Smith, Walt
Whitman and Leonard Bernstein and a whole host of other famous people, as well as
having an ex-husband and many friends and relatives who are gay, I am a huge
believer in gay rights. But this is what I loved most. In this article, Howard
Dean was quoted as saying, ?By the time this administration's through, women
won't even be able to go to school in this country.? That clinched it. This
guy has no fear.
 
In the next article I read, in The New Yorker, he said that after the civil
unions bill passed he had to wear a flak jacket and that in the 4th of July
parade people were shouting all kinds of ugly anti-gay epithets at him. He said
that was when he realized he could run for president. If he could survive this,
he could survive everything that the totally unscrupulous Karl Rove could
ever throw at him.
 
When Dr. Dean gave the speech in Burlington declaring his candidacy for
Democratic nominee, the entire town was filed with throngs of people standing
shoulder to shoulder. A young gentleman introduced him and said that he had heard
Dr. Dean speak and was so moved that he quit his job in Georgia and drove
straight to Burlington to go to work for the man who was finally saying the things
he had been wanting to hear from a politician all his life?a politician who
talked about the founders of our country, quoted its greatest citizens and had
such a wonderful grasp of what this country was founded on. ?Freedom of speech.
Freedom of worship. Freedom from want. Freedom from fear.?
 
Dean had the courage of his convictions from the beginning. He came out
against the war in one of his earliest speeches; April 2003 at the California
Democratic Convention. I have heard this first hand. He was booed. Let me repeat
that. HE WAS BOOED. Any other politician would have thought, oops, better not
bring that up again, but not Howard Dean. He kept repeating it and kept
repeating it louder and louder. And that's why people like me flocked to him?people
who had never given a penny to a political candidate. Since then, hundreds of
thousands of people of all ages, backgrounds and colors have joined the fray..
 
I worked in New Hampshire for Dean last week and was given the privilege of
attending his speech at Philips Exeter Academy. The chaplain of the school is a
beautiful black man who I had seen speak at the memorial service of a friend
many years ago. During the Q & A he asked Dr. Dean to speak about the life experiences that shaped his
views towards the world, minorities, etc. Dean, having come from an affluent
family, has purposely done many things in his life to acquaint him with folks of
other backgrounds. He worked on a farm in south Florida and worked, slept,
ate and partied with the many Cuban immigrants who also worked there. He also
told the chaplain how he had requested African American roommates at Yale. Not
long into his first year, he noticed that he was the only white person in their
dorm room and that this had had a profound effect on his understanding of the
experience of being black in this country. After the talk was over, the
chaplain came up to him and they spoke some more and Dr. Dean told him his theory
on affirmative action.
 
Dean says that he noticed that when someone in his practice was asked to hire
someone, they always hired someone like themselves. For example, his white,
female office manager hired a white female, and his white, male employees hired
white men. He realized that this had nothing to do with racism. What it had
to do with was 'projection.' 'Projection' is a process whereby you can only
see the good or bad qualities in someone else that you have in yourself. If you
don't have them in yourself, you don't know they exist, therefore cannot see
them in anyone else. So we are drawn to people who are like us because we can
see them better. He is dead on about this. I've studied it. So, affirmative
action assures that different sexes and races of people will be hired or
accepted into a school even if the majority of folks doing the hiring are white men.
The chaplain then said to Howard Dean, 'When I came in here I wasn't going
to vote for you. Now I am.'  This, by the way, can be seen on C-span's video of
the speech.
 
My question is this. Is it passion or common sense to work for this man? This
man who wasn't afraid to say, 'We face a growing threat to our liberty and
justice in America today. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison spoke of the fear
that economic power would one day seize political power. That fear is now
being realized' under the Bush administration. The Bush administration uses fear to
rally people to its causes. Our nation, once looked to as a beacon of hope
from around the globe, now is looked at with suspicion and distrust. Most
alarming, our political process is in crisis, as the majority of Americans turn away
from the most fundamental duty of citizenship-- voting. America is better than
this. The time has come once again to take our country back.?
 
You see, I believe that, too and I believe that the man who said those words
should be the next president if the United States. No other candidate has done
what this man has done. No other candidate has rallied more people to the
cause. If Dean doesn't make it though-- I still think he will-- it will not be
because of lack of courage, lack of inspiration, lack of integrity or lack of ideas
of how to help this country and all of its people realize our full potential.
It will be because our country is too far gone to recognize him for what he
is. The freshest breath of air this country has seen in decades. Is it passion
or common sense to put everything you've got into this man's candidacy?
 
Dean has written a pamphlet called  "Common Sense' modeled after the one that
Thomas Paine wrote in the 1770's. Paine wanted to inform the people of the
new America that King George had forgotten them, the people, and was only
looking out for his cronies. The pamphlet was passed from hand to hand and asked
those who had the courage to take up the fight against a government that was not
of, by or for its people. Those people fought long and hard for the freedoms
that we used to take for granted'the freedoms that are now being slowly eroded
every day by this government that is every bit as corrupt and uncaring as that
of King George in 1776.
 
Howard Dean says, 'this pamphlet, like Thomas Paine's, is a declaration of
values and a call to action for a new generation of American patriots -- Common
Sense for a New Century.?
 
In his pamphlet he quotes Thomas Paine, ?We have it in our power to begin the
world over again.?  Is that passion or common sense?
 
Harry Truman, ?Are the special privilege boys going to run the country or are
the people going to run it?? Is that passion or common sense?
 
Thomas Jefferson, ?Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the
progress of the human mind.? Is that passion or common sense?
 
Harriet Beecher Stowe, ?Common sense is seeing things as they are; and doing
things as they ought to be done.? Is that passion or common sense?
 
Barbara Jordan, ?Let each person do his or her part. If one citizen is
unwilling to participate, all of us are going to suffer. For the American idea,
though it is shared by all of us, is realized in each one of us.? Is that passion
or common sense?
 
Howard Dean says, 'Now we enter a new era. After a few decades of relative
peace and prosperity, we are beginning to see that our system is once again out
of balance, and the interests of the people are not being served. It should
not be this way. Our path for the future is clear: it is the path that
generations before us have taken. It is to change America the only way it can be
changed-- through the people. When our country goes wrong, it is our duty to set it
right.'  Is that passion or common sense?
 
Is it passion or common sense to respect a candidate who can mobilize
thousands of people from ALL OVER THE WORLD to come to a state in the dead of winter
and help him get his message out to the people?
 
Mark Shield of PBS News Hour said, "Howard Dean has done more than give the
Democratic Party a voice, he also gave it back its soul."  
 
Is it passion or common sense to elect the candidate who has reenergized the
Democratic party-- has made young people in our country stand up and work for
change WITHIN the system (unlike our generation did in the 60's) has raised
millions of dollars from donations under $100.00-- who says the people have the
power to take this country back-- who made so many of us proud to be Americans
again-- who stands up for peace and accountability in our government and rights for
every American no matter what they look like or who they choose to love?
 
You can tell me I'm passionate but it has always been obvious to me that Dr.
Howard Dean should be the man we choose to go up against this president and
this administration. It's just common sense.
 
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Ms. Burgwin's writing has appeared in Newsweek, Time, New York Magazine, the
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Tribune Review as well as several online Op Ed
sites. She is also involved in gay rights, women's issues and the
environment. She lives in Pittsburgh with her family.