Thomas Paine wrote a pamphlet named “Common Sense” that became a “best seller” and helped prompt the American Revolution. He also wrote pamphlets that helped spark the French Revolution.

We need him today.

The news of the past week or two leads me to believe that a new revolution is necessary in our nation.

As Thomas Jefferson wrote, the tree of liberty must at times be watered by the blood of tyrants.

I believe that now is that time.

We learned today that this president authorized the warrantless eavesdropping on American cell phone calls overseas. Thousands of Americans calling overseas were intercepted by the National Security Agency. It is such a blatant violation of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments that several NSA employees refused to participate, despite the secret presidential order.

I wonder if the half British lovely Juliet and her visiting friends Laura and Amber, who made dozens of calls to England with silly girl calls to friends about how much fun it is to be young and beautiful and visiting Los Angeles, were among the calls intercepted.

We also learned this week that the military, the Department of Defense, has spied on thousands of Americans who have protested the Iraqi war. They even infiltrated a Quaker meeting in Florida.

Does this mean that my picture standing along Classen Blvd. in front of Memorial Park with a “Honk for Peace” sign is somewhere in a DOD file? How about Lisa Ghariani and Tara Feurborn? How about our friend Rex Friend the Quaker attorney and former partner of Doug Parr? Are we all headed for a concentration camp that once housed German Nazis in El Reno?

Have you used your credit card this holiday season? American commercial records of credit card use is being “data mined” by our government looking for terrorists. Is your purchase of a sweater for cousin Bill in a government data base? Is it like that silly Mel Gibson movie “Conspiracy Theory” where everyone who buys “Catcher in the Rye” is flagged?

Our libraries are required to allow the government to search their records of books loaned to citizens under the Patriot Act. Been to Oklahoma City’s new library yet?

President Bush now admits that our pre war intelligence on Iraq was wrong, but he takes responsibility for leading us into war for the wrong reasons because deposing Saddam was the right thing to do. What? The ends justify the means? Will he next tell us, as Mussolini did his country, that he’s making the trains run on time? Or, perhaps, as Hitler did, that we must break some eggs to make an omlette? Madness, I tell you, MADNESS!!!

It is now clear beyond dispute that America is running torture chambers, defended by Vice President Cheney, in Eastern Europe and North Africa. We — and I mean you and I through the CIA — kidnap people off the streets of Germany and Italy and take them away and torture them in violation of the Geneva Convention and the American Constitution. This is not a wild charge by some mad foreigner, it is documented truth reported by American and European journalists.

Speaking of journalists, did you know that America is now in the top five of countries who jail journalists? We are tied with Myanmar, the former Burma, a regime that is among the most outlaw of the military juntas in the world, a country and government that is of, by and for heroin dealers in south Asia.

America now incarcerates more of its citizens — over 1,000,000 — than any other country in the world, including Russia and China. Oklahoma, for example, incarcerates more women than any other state in the United States.

Did you realize that it is now legal, under the Patriot Act, for police agencies to “sneek and peek” search your house? They can LEGALLY enter your home when you are gone, search your files and computer and leave without ever telling you. You do not even have the right to know WHY they are interested in you nor what they were looking for.

I would take comfort in my moral superiority should I read that these things were done by Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s Russia or Mao’s China. I am outraged that I am writing about my own country.

I can’t even blame Bush, really. I blame you and me for allowing Tom DeLay to take illegal corporate cash, laundring it through the Republican National Committee and using it to redistrict Texas so that 5 additional Republicans could be elected to the House of Representatives, giving the GOP control over a branch of government. We just let it happen. You and me. Voters. Americans who haven’t paid enough attention and who lack a capacity for outrage.

We’ve allowed ourselves to be blinded by false issues like abortion and creationism while our basic freedoms have been crushed under a blinding blizzard of seemingly innocent legalistic paper.

I would prefer to overthrow this government by legal means of a free election. I am not so sure that we any longer have free elections in a practical sense. How is it any longer possible for common citizens to raise these issues and inform the electorate when there is so much corrupt corporate cash on the other side? Will Halliburton allow us to upset their billionaire club shell game? I think not.

I believe the time approaches when we must take up arms against a sea of troubles. When the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune require us to inquire whether we will be or not be. When our lives of quiet desperation can no longer be quiet.

Mao famously said that political power grows from the barrel of a gun. All the guns are at present on the other side. We have blogs and posters. When is it right to arm ourselves? I’m not talking about buying a 9 mm. I do not mean for the pupose of personal security, because no amount of shotguns and pistols will protect us from the military might of this repressive government. What I mean is no less than this: at what point is it legitimate for Americans to seek the violent overthrow of their own elected government?

If they come and get me for writing this, how much longer will it be before they come for you? If they do not come for you, when are you no longer free, even if you do sit in your own home in front of your own television?

I am asking you what IS America?

Is America the First Amendment? Do we have Freedom of the Press if we are jailing journalists? Do we have freedom of assembly if you can’t attend a Quaker meeting without being observed by spies? Do we have freedom of religion if the government can put policemen in the examining rooms of gynecologists to keep them from recommending an abortion because of the religious beliefs of a minority that is temporarily in power?

Is America the Second Amendment? Is the freedom to have an armed militia free if all the militia are run by the government? Is it freedom to be armed when the arms you can buy cannot fight the repressive Department of Defense that is monitoring you?

Is America the Fourth Amendment? The right to be free of unreasonable search and siezure absent a judicial warrant is no freedom if they can listen to your cell calls, look in your computer without telling you and track your purchases through your credit cards.

Is America the Eighth Amendment? Sorry about that. We torture, so the freedom from cruel and unusual punishment is now out the window.

Is America the Sixth Amendment? We don’t need no stinkin’ badges. You no longer have the right to an attorney. We can take you to Gitmo and try you without recourse to the courts or representation.

Is America the Fourteenth Amendment? Not if you are Muslim. Your chance for equal treatment under the law is out the window.

Did they tell you in grade school that America would be the kind of country where SuzArt’s 81 year old mother is separated from her walker/cane and strip searched before being allowed on a plane?

When is enough just that: Enough?

What does your common sense tell you?