Wise words

Andy recently sent me a transcript of a speech given by Scott Ritter, former Chief United Nations Weapons Inspector for UNSCOM in Iraq (1991-1998) and highly-outspoken critique of the current war. I thought this closing excerpt was particularly compelling:

But collectively this country, we have stopped functioning as citizens. We have so few people participating in elections. And this is a representative democracy? We're not citizens, we are consumers. We've wrapped ourselves in the cocoon of comfort. And so long as the powers that be keep us waddling down a path of prosperity, we don't want to do anything to rock the boat. But you know what? The boat we're on has just hit an iceberg and it's sinking. And we've got to do something about it. We're being lulled into a false sense of complacency. This is a nation that is infected with a disease, a disease of complacency, a disease that is destroying citizenship, a disease that is destroying the Constitution that defines who we are as a nation.