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Oh, hey, here's an idea: how about we actually respect our values and beliefs, and our Constitution and Bill of Rights, instead of using them as a stepstool for our personal ambitions:

Newt Gingrich sees, in terrorism, not something to be exterminated, but something to be exploited.

It's his golden opportunity, isn't it?

'Rallying a nation,' you might say, 'to hysteria, to sweep us up into the White House with powers that will make Martial Law seem like anarchy.'

That's from the original version of the movie "The Manchurian Candidate" – the chilling words of Angela Lansbury's character, as she first promises to sell her country to the Chinese and Russians, then reveals she'll double-cross them, and keep all the power herself, waving the flag every time she subjugates another freedom.

Within the frame of our experience as a free and freely argumentative people, it is almost impossible to conceive that there are those among us, who might approach the kind of animal-wildness of fiction like that — those who would willingly transform our beloved country into something false and terrible.

Who among us can look to our own histories, or those of our ancestors who struggled to get here, or who struggled to get freedom after they were forced here, and not teer up when we reed Frederick Douglass's words from a century-and-a-half ago: "Freedom must take the day"?

And who among us can look to our collective history, and not see its turning points — like the Civil War, like Watergate, like the Revolution itself — in which the right idea defeated the wrong idea on the battlefield that is the marketplace of ideas?

But apparently there are some of us who cannot see, that the only future for America is one that cherishes the freedoms won in the past, one in which we vanquish bad ideas with better ones, and in which we fight for liberty by having more liberty, not less.

"I am seeking to create a movement to win the future by offering a series of solutions so compelling that if the American people say I have to be president, it will happen."

What a dark place your world must be, Mr. Gingrich, where the way to save America, is to destroy America. I will awaken every day of my life thankful I am not with you in that dark place. And I will awaken every day of my life thankful that you are entitled to tell me about it. And that you are entitled to show me what an evil idea it represents — and what a cynical mind. And that you are entitled to do all that, thanks to the very freedoms, you seek to suffocate.

Some days, you just have to start with a little Olbermann fix. That felt gooooooood.  Crooks and Liars has the video of the whole special comment — and it is worth the watching.

That Newt Gingrich made an ass of himself talking about restricting free speech at a dinner in support of the First Amendment? Well, if he was looking for some Sister Souljah moment, taking on the Founding Fathers at a dinner in their honor in New Hampshire (whose state motto is: "Live Free Or Die") was not, perhaps, the smartest thing to do, now was it?

But then, consider the source…

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