It’s time to seriously consider doing this, as a sensible and prudent measure to end the Iraq war. If our Congress can’t de-fund it, the American people can. I’m not sure how this can be legally, or if it will be successful in crippling the war machine and its efforts to suck more and more of our sons and daughters to their assured slaughter for no intelligible reason or end in sight, but it may be worth a try to check it out. I’m not a pacifist, but this is not a just war and our soldiers need to come home. Make it a New Years’ resolution.

These are heavy times, and it’s easy (and understandable) to want to just tune out and wait it out, hoping for the “opposition” to roll in and fix everything. But we need to make sure that future generations know that we didn’t all just sit around and wait; that we cared about our country; and that we knew that the times were too serious for frivolous campaign games and electoral chicanery to not stand up and defend our Constitution, and indeed our way of life. Privacy International just released a massive study that troublingly points to the conclusion that the United States has joined the ranks of the “endemic surveillance societies” of the world; our status over the past year has been “deteriorating.” Russia and China are also listed as endemic surveillance societies, obviously.

It ought to inspire shame that we’ve managed to join them — and they’re totalitarian societies, no less. We did it in a democracy. But there is still much to celebrate, and I hope everyone had a wonderful New Years’ Day. I will never be afraid to say I love my country.