On the political right, to be termed a progressive is to be called a dirty word. For a right-winger to support anything progressive is to be called a radical, a hippie, a socialist, a communist, or worse... a Democrat and a liberal, by their fellows. Few on the right seem to remember that Republicans often have been the forerunners of progressive thought in American political history and once proudly claimed the label. It was the so-called Radical Republicans of the middle 19th century that helped bring an end to slavery in America. At the turn of the last century, a progressive movement spearheaded by the conservative Republican Teddy Roosevelt altered the direction of America in the 20th century. That earlier progressive movement at the beginning of the 20th century empowered every American to be all that they could be. At the beginning of the 21st century, our country needs a unifying and empowering political agenda that bridges the current political chasms to restore American greatness.

Progressive also literally means making progress. The implicit positive meaning is that the progress will generally require a certain perseverance and focus to gradually achieve a goal over time. That is the literal meaning of progressive, to make progress. Progressively is a concept that Americans will have to keep in mind, because things are going to get progressively better or they are going to get progressively worse. The status quo cannot stand. Change is in the air.

Americans have dug a big hole financially, and it is going to take a long time to dig out. The depth of our debt is staggering. Paying it down will be a progressive process. We will have to make serious changes throughout our society to begin the long, slow climb out of the mess where America finds itself. Progressively restoring American greatness will require a clear long-term plan executed over decades. All honest Republican and Democrats will admit that the aforementioned statements are true, but that is about all they can agree on! This progressive agenda is a long-term plan for gradually restoring American leadership in the world. This book seeks to restore progressively the greatness of our country through consensus.

Unfortunately, to be progressive today is to be deemed a liberal, persona non grata, by half this nation. For the other half, to be progressive is to be a rabble-rouser that gets in the way of Democratic political gain. Most Democrats are frustrated with progressives, and the feeling is mutual. Perhaps a Progressive is not really a Democrat. As a nation, the politics of left and right have prevented 'progress' for far too long, and forward progress is clearly a necessity for the 21st century

The Liberal/Conservative chasm that divides us, mirroring the Democrat/Republican fault line, has fractured our nation. Progressive politics laid the groundwork for American ascendancy in the 20th century, and it can do so again. Progressive has certain political connotations today that tend to make many Americans think of unrestrained liberal government...at least in the eyes of most Republicans and right-wing conservatives. It is a sad truth that today's GOP has forgotten that a conservative Republican president, Teddy Roosevelt, shepherded the progressive vision into American politics. Perhaps it irks them that his liberal Democratic cousin, President Franklin Roosevelt then nurtured it.

The current war between the parties has hamstrung us, and so it seemed appropriate to embrace the political title of progressive. It is a title that has history and connections on both sides of the aisle. Progressives should be promoting a forward-thinking political and social agenda for the new challenges we face as a nation and not getting bogged down in partisanship.

This book is meant to appeal to all red-blooded, patriotic Americans, whether they identify themselves as Democrat, Republican, 3rd party, independent, or apolitical. Progressives are not a bunch of lefty ideologues, and progressives are not the left wing of the Democratic Party. A true progressive is a serious person seeking serious solutions to help America and her people progress into the future regardless of party agendas.

This book seeks to knit together a progressive agenda that appeals to concerned Americans and builds a majority that can lead. Make no mistake because this agenda seeks to unite Americans, it requires Americans of every stripe to compromise. Americans must find a common ground, and this book seeks to reveal the common ground that is being concealed by the 'fog of partisan war'. Whether you call yourself a conservative, a liberal, a Democrat, a Republican, or are unaffiliated, you will find something in this book that you will have a hard time liking.

Honestly, I set out to write a book that could unite average Americans and that meant compromises for me as well. I compromised, because united we stand, divided we fall is as true as it ever was. These ideas can allow us to progress together into our future.

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Jury nullification is the lost check of the people against government overreaching. America’s Constitution was meant to create a system of checks and balances that would prevent tyranny. The Founding Fathers meant to make sure that our government had to go to twelve citizens every time they intended to rob another citizen of property or freedom. This has long been a controversial topic in America. The Establishment has dealt with those who speak of jury nullification by throwing them in jail for contempt of court. It is difficult to swim upstream on this, unless the people and the media speak out in favor it. Again, this is another scary idea of our founders, because it puts the power to interpret the law into the hands of the 12 men and women on the jury. The 12 people on the jury are supposed to be able to vote their conscience and decide for themselves whether the law applies or the law is just.

One of the keystones of a new progressive agenda must be citizen empowerment. America’s future rests upon whether or not individual citizens will step up and shoulder the burdens of citizenship. As we give more and more power to the government, we must realize that we are really giving power to the wealthy and big business lobbies. Power to the People will require an incredible amount of tolerance from each one of us, because freedom is a messy business. We will need to tolerate many differing opinions, lifestyles, and religious beliefs to forge a coalition large enough to overwhelm the moneyed power that has a chokehold on our government.

Jury nullification opponents will scream anarchy and point to trials in the South that let Ku Klux Klan members go free for lynching that everyone knew they had committed. However, the Constitution clearly gives the central government the power to protect individual rights when states and local lawmakers attempt to abridge citizen rights. Cries from the law-and-order crowd of anarchy and chaos always target the citizenry’s most fearful visions, which saturate the media in the numerous flavors of cop shows and endless news cycles of gruesome crimes drawn from all across the country. We must trust our fellow citizens. Anarchy would not result, because an overwhelming majority of Americans want the bad guys to go to jail and will put them there.

The whole idea behind the American jury system was that we might allow 99 guilty men to go free before imprisoning one innocent man. If we do not embrace that most basic concept of our nation’s founding, we cannot return to greatness. The Founding Fathers and the Constitution created a justice system that might let 99 guilty individuals go free before imprisoning one innocent, because that system was a huge check on government power. Police can arrest people all day, but if they cannot convict them through constitutional means, their power is checked. The power of the central government to impose its will upon the people was limited as well by this system. Jury nullification is the ultimate check on government power.

The power of jury nullifications means that government cannot pass laws that less than 95% of the people agree with. How do we come to this calculation? Simple, given the requirement of a jury of 12 peers agreeing unanimously to provide a guilty verdict, we divide 1 by 12, which allows for an 8% disagreement percentage. This leads to a 92% agreement threshold in the populace for successful implementation of a given law. However, the ability for a citizen to get at least one appeal on any conviction raises the bar. This guaranteed appeal cuts the 8% threshold to a 4% disagreement threshold among regular citizens being sufficient to influence the central government’s ability to prosecute a given law. That means that 96% of the populace must agree with a law to send an individual to jail. What a check on government power to imprison its own populace! With the requirement of 96% agreement, how could America have become the largest imprisoner of its own citizens? America has an enormous prison population and imprisons more of its citizenry than any other “civilized” nation by raw numbers and by per capita. This is freedom? No! It is not freedom. We should all live in great fear of the growing police power of our central government.

Only jury nullification can stop this horrible abuse of the central government’s power to make law. Years ago, when George Bush, Sr. went into Panama and dragged Manuel Noriega back to the U.S. for a trial, many questioned the legitimacy of such a military action (but that is for another essay). Our own international legal experts deemed the military intervention legal, of course. Nonetheless, at the trial, the American people spoke out in the courtroom. The people questioned the legitimacy of Bush the First’s kidnapping of a foreign leader. In the end, the reality was that the government could not get a conviction. To George Bush, Sr.’s great dismay, there was a hung jury.

The jurors could not agree that Noriega deserved to be imprisoned for the alleged drug trafficking that he was charged with. Many citizens questioned our interpretation of international law that allowed us to invade Panama as well as using the military to pursue and capture a foreign head of state. America’s own system of justice could not and would not convict Noriega. Apparently, not only was it a violation of international law as foreign international legal experts had claimed, but it was also a violation of American law, according to America’s own citizen jury.

Well, of course, the administration could not stand for an outcome like that. Bush, Sr. had mobilized the military to invade a sovereign nation, captured the duly elected leader of that country, and brought him back to the United States. There had been much international protest over this Christmas invasion. Many protestors referenced Noriega’s previous high standing with our government as an ally in the Drug War. Noriega seemed to be receiving punishment for some transgression in his dealings with the CIA, and this was the contention of many within, and without, the U.S. borders. What an embarrassment it would have been for Bush if Noriega had not been imprisoned!

Therefore, the jury was marched before a group of government operatives and presented with “secret evidence”. What was the secret evidence that never saw the light of day? We still do not know. We may never know. Perhaps the government officials simply told the jury that they either convict Noriega or go to jail themselves. This is an obviously strong motivation to ignore one’s conscience and save one’s skin. And so, Noriega went to jail, but it was far from a legal trial. After all, it was obviously a case of jury tampering, which is a federal offense, but by then, the government had already largely exempted itself from such mundane constraints as the Constitution and the rule of law.

If one needs more convincing that the loss of “Jury Nullification” has broken the American justice system, one only need look at the Rodney King beating and the subsequent trial of the officers involved. Many were dismayed by the acquittal of those officers. The evidence was right there on videotape of what was done to Rodney King. No one is saying that Rodney King is a pillar of virtue, but even if he were on PCP, which is arguable, the tape showed him on the ground and cuffed with multiple officers continuing to deliver blows to an obviously helpless individual. How can that not be police brutality?

The jury is not to blame here. The Founding Fathers saw the judge as an impartial arbiter of facts and fairness in the courtroom, not an ally of the prosecution. Unfortunately, in 21st century America the judge does act as an ally to the prosecution. The jury received strict instructions from the judge that they could not convict the officers if the Los Angeles Police Department had trained them to beat Rodney King in this manner. Huh? Surely, jurors were confused by these instructions, and maybe they even wished to vote their conscience, despite those instructions. Unfortunately, they were faced with a jail term if they were to vote any other way, because of the judge’s unconstitutional powers to imprison them for voting their conscience. Contempt of court has been used as a club to beat juries into submission for decades now.

Following the police officers’ acquittal, there were riots that on the surface had a racial component. Nonetheless, much of what happened on the day of the acquittal was an assertion of power by the people. It was more than the black versus white rioting that the media and government portrayed it as. Many people hit the streets to protest the acquittal. Some of the rioting may have been a subconscious desire to send a message to the Establishment that though they owned the courtroom and made the laws, the streets were still owned by the people in those South L.A. neighborhoods.

Following this disastrous ruling, the Clinton administration came in and retried the case, further demonstrating the broken state of the American justice system by violating constitutional protections against double jeopardy. The central government got around this with the torturous logic of claiming that the officers had violated Rodney King’s civil rights. Despite the ultimate outcome, the retrial only made the whole situation worse by failing to address the strict jury instructions that judges have been allowed to force upon helpless jurors.

The true intent of the jury system is for there to be a constant vote of the people on the laws being put out from the government. To accomplish this, we must fund jury service. There is no way a hard-working stiff can get a jury of his peers. All his peers are hard-working stiffs too. All the accused’s true peers are working for companies that do not pay for any jury service. This must change. The federal government must fund this essential part of the American justice system. Verified by pay stubs and/or tax returns, jury compensation should be a more reasonable recompense for this essential citizen service than what is currently being done. The society must fund the salary of people called to jury service for our justice system to work correctly.

Is this too expensive? How much are we willing to pay for freedom? Rolling back the police state would likely reduce costs considerably. Repeatedly, progressives must push the theme of Power to the People. Yes, the people are the great unwashed of our nation in the eyes of many. Together the people, the poor, the blue collar, the middle-class, all outnumber the moneyed, the powerful, the wealthy titans of business, and that is why those same titans are constantly beating the drums of fear among the middle class. The moneyed and powerful will go to their default propaganda that criminals will take over, rape our daughters, and kill our sons. This is the constant drumbeat of television shows like “CSI this” and “CSI that” or “Law and Order this” and “Law and Order that”. It will only be a brave and tolerant citizenry that will be able to resist this drumbeat.

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Within these pages, I am trying to sketch out, in admittedly broad strokes, a picture of a positive American future. This is a vision that, if forced upon the politicians, will allow America to make progress on her finances and her honor, both of which have been damaged severely at the beginning of this new century. The following progressive ideas are deeply interconnected and can, if executed in concert, truly bring about the American Renaissance that we all crave. This agenda is based upon common sense, not any true genius or inspiration. Included in the common sense I'll admit to a healthy dose of tolerance. Politics and the media in America have polarized society so much that common sense no longer seems to exist. The partisan ideologies pushing common sense to the fringe are driven by moneyed power's desire to protect its elite status and lifestyle.

Freedom and liberty cannot exist in a climate of excessive government and corporate power. We are on the road toward an authoritarian capitalism that minimizes individual liberty. Progressives must seek to promote the freedom that was the original vision of our Founding Fathers. There are a number of obstacles to accomplishing this return to greatness. Without digging our way out of debt, we cannot make the investments in our infrastructure and our people that are essential for restoring our greatness as a nation. Moneyed power has achieved levels of wealth sufficient to build and maintain a private infrastructure, which stifles public infrastructure improvement. Also, the future cannot be bright when we are beholden to so many for our energy needs.

A clear and objective view of the American economy will be required for success. The economic power of the military- industrial complex (and now the terror-industrial complex as well) is based upon conflict. With so much American economic activity related to the defense industry, it destroys our credibility as a peace-loving people, and it sows the seeds of endless conflict and war across the planet...not to mention bankrupting our nation. This agenda attempts to create a synergy of solutions to bring about progress on all the aforementioned fronts. Politicians have stoked the fires of discord along the left/right axis. The angry, name-calling politics that dominate the airwaves are very destructive to the country. The partisan wars prevent even the discussion of controversial ideas, let alone any real action. The two parties have divided the great issues of the day, without necessarily any rational reasons, other than the other people are on one side. This knee jerk reaction for conservatives to oppose whatever liberals support, and vice versa, leads to little reasoned debate.

Once there were 'liberal' Republicans, but those handful that still exist are now known as RINOs, 'Republicans in Name Only' by their own party. The two parties have become exclusionary, costing us the special synergy between liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats that once brought about dynamic thinking in our politics. This push and pull tension in four directions instead of two has been lost. The progressive agenda in the following pages could be seen as a libertarian- socialist vision of American politics that seeks to reignite our natural synergies by creating the multi-polar political tension that once made American politics great. To some a libertarian- socialist is a contradiction, a fiction, but I submit that there is an overlapping agenda between all ideologies, if we act as Americans first rather than as ideologues.

The caricature of Uncle Sam on the cover shows how the left/right war cripples us. Uncle Sam has eye patches on both eyes. The one on his right eye is Liberalism, which means this ideology blinds Sam to ideas from the right. The eye patch on his left eye is Conservatism, meaning this ideology refuses to see ideas from the left. Democrats and Republicans are beholden to the polarization of left vs. right and conservative vs. liberal. Each side has so demonized the other that any issue one side picks up, the other must be immediately against. Unfortunately, this leaves poor, old Uncle Sam blind. Americans must throw off the blinders of these isms and look objectively for solutions to our society's ills.

We have no shortage of ills! Oh, yes, we have many, many problems today, which presumably the readers are aware of and care about or else they would not have opened this book. Partisan warfare has become so heated that tension between left and right prevent us from finding the solutions that are actually there under our noses.

A bipolar political system under stress can settle into a back and forth swing that never actually makes progress but falls into an illusion of change through ever more drastic swings of the political opinion pendulum. Dramatic swings of political opinion can be revelatory in a multi-polar political universe. However, in the bipolar universe we are just going back and forth from the left to the right and back again, which goes nowhere. Society can have a very short memory. First liberal ideas are all the rage and then conservative, but in the beginning of our republic, there was a clear belief in liberty as the guiding ideology.

That belief in freedom brought us together as one nation and one people and dampened the swing of the pendulum, because freedom cannot help but create a multi-polar, diverse political climate. The Founding Fathers provided us a framework from which to progress, adapt, and evolve over the years, not burdened by divisive, preconceived notions of ideology. Then, the guiding vision was that the individual's freedom and liberty comes before the needs of the State. The focus truly was on the individual and their freedom and not what was best for the State, for business, or the oft cited by anti-constitutionalists, public safety.

No doubt, things have changed a lot since the 18th century, but they have not changed as much as the politicians and ideologues would have us believe. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights are still our best weapons. Like the wielding of any weapon though, it requires courage. It requires the courage to embrace and demand the rights that individuals are guaranteed by our Constitution. Unfortunately, individuals have been tempted to turn over too much of their freedoms to authorities under the influence of the siren song of safety. The Bill of Rights empowers the individual citizen to effect change, but citizens must act and be engaged. Freedom and individual rights are the real defense against those that would loot our nation's treasury and run our country into a ditch.

An interesting thing about history is how often the same pressing problems seem to recur as a particular nation or society matures, grows, and eventually, passes into oblivion. Each ideology or ism of its day attacks these recurring problems: substance abuse, feeding the poor, ensuring civil rights, educating our children, etc-with a very narrow mindset. History has also shown that as the pendulum swings back and forth over time, the swings become ever more violent in each direction. Eventually, the society tears itself apart. The great American social experiment can evolve beyond this rollercoaster ride to civil strife.

Remember, moneyed power and their agents are terrified of the power of the people. The colossal partisan divide and the rabid rhetoric from the right and left are bought and paid for by moneyed power. They will fill the airwaves with more and more docu-dramas of fear to divide us. Through all the wrath and hateful speech, the money moves the wheels of the state behind the scenes. The laws created strip the individual of his rights and ability to prevent moneyed power from getting the legislation they have paid for.

That is what politics in America is really all about today: money and power. When the power of the individual is constrained, the power of money and the state become unrestrained. Unholy alliances between billion dollar corporations and millionaire government officials become ever more self-serving. Political rhetoric is used to fire the partisan furnaces any time the regular guy might actually get some real legislative support.

The healthcare legislation, known as ObamaCare, is a perfect example of partisanship being used as obstruction. Rallies and slogans to defeat the legislation were truly divorced from the realities of the bill, because in partisanship only passion matters, not reason. Privately funded 'grassroots' rallies, where misguided Americans shout slogans against socialism and declaring any government healthcare insurance will be incompetent, while at the same time protesting potential cuts to their Medicare and Social Security Benefits, make no sense. To citizens of developed nations on the outside, looking in, the passionate slogans shouted by American citizens about the 'Coming Socialist Horror', defy common sense. It is clear to the citizens of most developed nations that there should be a social safety net that governments provide for their citizens.

When common sense is on the fringe, we are in real trouble. The next chapter is meant to establish just how far common sense has been pushed from the middle ground. On September 11, 2001, supposedly, the world changed forever. Perhaps, it did change, but I am unable to understand the complete transformation of our national zeitgeist. American reaction to that event boggled me. We seemed consumed by hate, paranoia, and hell bent for revenge. We let our emotions divorce reason from our national thought processes.

My reactions were on the fringe. How I reacted and how I felt about the attacks on the World Trade Center were considered naïve and foolish by friends and colleagues. I was vilified. I held my head in my hands many a day and wondered when the lunacy and fear mongering would end. I often despaired that the WTC attacks would lead to war that would never end.

Today, I feel a new wave in society. We are beginning to see the mess we are in. There is a willingness to embrace some new ideas in the air. The ideas in this book will first start with empowering individual Americans in their own lives, and most importantly, in their political lives. Moneyed power is not going to give up its money or its power voluntarily, and currently, our laws and legislation are very protective of that power and money.

Empowering individuals can lead to dangerous mob rule without a clear unifying vision of what the society of individuals is hoping to achieve, so this book attempts to survey the undiscovered country of common interests. Staking out today's unknown middle ground will require some compromises by all sides. A new day dawns in the American body politic where tolerance and an eye toward practical solutions for our children's futures will rule the day.

Either we have the courage to be free, or we will not be free. It is so very simple. On 09/11/2001, we proved to the whole world that Americans did have the courage to be free, and then, each day afterward, we seemed to run from that courageous truth that caused the whole world to rally to our side. The moneyed and powerful were terrified by what happened on 9/11, because it stripped away all the theater of the military-industrial complex and showed that only freedom and individual liberty could effectively combat our enemies.

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The ideas of freedom and individual liberty have never been more under assault than they are today. The Founding Fathers laid the groundwork for a society so forward thinking and revolutionary that moneyed power had a hard time accepting it, even back then. Within a few generations, the Founding Fathers' ideas and framework were under assault by those elected into power after George Washington. These elected positions of power, in concert with wealthy private citizens and corporate entities, have ever since constantly sought to curtail these rights. Lack of technology severely crippled their efforts to rein in freedom. Until the late twentieth century, the vastness of the country limited meaningful surveillance. Once technology began to offer real intelligence at a national and global scale, there was still substantial resistance to domestic spying by our own government, especially from conservative Republicans.

That changed on September 11, 2001. Now that the fear and suspicion of terrorism has transformed America, those technological abilities are being turned to the curtailment of individual freedom and liberty in the name of safety. Despite Ben Franklin's grim statement of reality, 'Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety', we have done just that. Today Americans are afraid and believe that the sacrifice of some liberty and freedom will make them safer. They are very wrong. The curtailment of individual liberty and freedom can only make us less safe. This seems counter-intuitive, but it is true. The events of September 11, 2001, clearly illustrate this truth. The cold, harsh reality of that truth is scary and makes us want to hand it off to big government. Unfortunately, big government cannot handle the responsibility-not in its current incarnation, and certainly not without instituting laws and procedures that would seem totalitarian even to our post-9/11 eyes. On September 11, 2001, the government's inherent inability to protect us from this type of attack was clearly demonstrated.

Big government not only failed to uncover the plot, it failed to stop the first plane from hitting its target, and in fact, it failed to stop three out of the four airplanes hijacked on September 11, 2001. The brave people on board stopped Flight 93. They were free people, acting on information available in a free society; they were the ones to stop the only plane that did not hit its target. This is not meant to condemn the government and the military for failing to stop the other three planes. It is the nature of the bloated bureaucratic beast that is government to react slowly. Government is too big and pondering to react to the increasingly fluid and flexible attacks of 21st century terrorist organizations. Only, we as a people can compete with those organizations. In the years since 09/11/2001, we have given away more and more of our ability to defend ourselves against terrorists. Every time we cede an individual right or liberty, we make ourselves less safe, not more.

Today, the people on board Flight 93 would not be able to stop the terrorists. Today, all communications are subject to snooping due to the Patriot Act. Some DHS flunky would now cut off the cell phone calls that allowed those people on board Flight 93 to come to an enlightened decision as to what action to take. Perhaps, the passengers on Flight 93 fashioned weapons from pocketknives and nail clippers, which would now be denied them. Even after the 9/11 disasters prompted greater security at airports, passengers stopped the next terrorist attempt aboard an airline. The shoe bomber of 2003, Richard Reid, made it through security and was going to do his dirty deed on board, but he was noticed and restrained by passengers. Passengers stopped the Northwest Airlines bomber of Christmas 2009 as well. These passengers, who ignored seat belt signs and other restraints on their freedom within the cabin, stopped another potential act of airplane terror over eight years after the WTC attacks. Big government failed again, and the answer government provides is always to further restrain passengers and eliminate individual rights.

We are spending a lot of money and setting many bad precedents with these "no constitutional rights" zones being created in our nation's airports. The fear of giving up one's rights makes many want to stay away from airports, but the pressures of business force a different action. Air travel is essential in today's world, so many reluctantly comply. Without clear alternatives, the reluctant comply fatalistically. This fatalism is not justified.

There is an alternative course of action that does a better job of protecting us from terrorists, while still protecting individual freedom and liberty. It is individual freedom and liberty that make us stronger and harder to attack. Conversely, we are actually weaker and easier to attack when we are not protected by the flexibility of freedom. We should roll back much of the body scanning and random searching of individuals, driven by shadowy, computerized databases. A secret no-fly list is simply not very effective when it contains the names of so many innocents. America is free, and its people must have freedom of movement without being required to show their papers. This is what it means to live in a free society.

If America's solution to the terrorist threat is to end the free society we live in, then the terrorists have won! One of the positive effects of America's old style freedoms was the incredible ease that our citizens could move about. A salesperson could hop on a plane at a moment's notice and save that important account, for example. There is an ignored, and difficult to quantify, but very real, economic cost to these burdens that the new security regimen has brought. This drag on our economy has been completely ignored for the last decade.

Reducing this security burden should free up many millions of dollars to be spent more effectively. Specifically, we should have more air marshals. We should harden all the cockpit doors and allow pilots to carry side arms. If we had done nothing more than the aforementioned, we would have prevented repetitions of the World Trade Center bombings. There is no need to repeal the Bill of Rights within airline terminals. The fact is the terrorists are not likely to strike the same place, the same way, so where do we repeal the Bill of Rights next? Everything in our large, mobile society is a potential weapon to be used against us, and we seem on course to eventually expand the 'No Bill of Rights' zones to every corner of the nation.

The passengers on Flight 93 showed us the way. They demonstrated the power of the people. The greatness in America lies in her people and the diversity of those people. Due to the history of individual freedom and liberty, one hundred people plucked from the streets and put into an airplane will contain a wide range of people and skills. This is our strength. Among those passengers, may be current and former military personnel, police and firefighters, nurses and doctors, and even some gangbangers, bikers, and an assortment of bad asses, malcontents, and ne'er do wells, but they are all Americans...as messy as that is to live in. If we had done nothing to reform airport security after 9/11, there would have been no recurrence of 9/11, because the passengers on Flight 93 demonstrated the true mettle of Americans.

The phrase, "Let's Roll!" should be immortalized in the American pantheon. Those passengers personified America in their final acts of courage. These civilians, these common Americans, were thrown together by random chance, but they did this nation proud when they stopped that plane. They truly saved lives by sacrificing their own. They made terrorists realize that Americans were not the sheep that we are often portrayed as.

It is the consideration of what happened on Flight 93 that we find the most confidence that our Founding Fathers' elevation of the rights of the individual above all else, truly is the correct course. Not only is this the correct course, but a more defensible course than ever before. It is what makes America such a complicated, trailblazing experiment in human culture. We need to take back our country from the fear-mongers and take charge of our own safety and security again.

This book's overriding theme is about America's citizens standing up and setting the agenda for the politicians. Years after September 11, 2001, the course we took as a nation was obviously wrong. We allowed the politicians, liberal and conservative, to tell us what was best for us, rather than recognizing that the passengers of Flight 93 had shown us the way. The people of this nation must step up and take control of the ship of state by exercising their rights as free American citizens.

Let the politicians work out the details, but the leadership must come from us. Freedom is not free. We must think and understand the issues. We must question authorities that seek to retain power for themselves. Of course, America's citizens cannot take the power back if we are too afraid. Politicians will always feed our fears to preserve their power and take the path of least resistance to stay in office. Unless we stand up and take responsibility for our nation and her policies, the government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall perish from this Earth.

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Star Trek, the original series that only ran for three seasons has had an undisputed influence on the growth and direction of technology in America and in the world. There have been books and TV episodes dedicated to track the etymology of gadget after gadget to a particular Roddenberry-inspired device. This technological legacy has been documented elsewhere in detail, but many of the social messages and legacies have been lost and forgotten. Gene Roddenberry is one of the visionary thinkers of our time and I am heavily influenced by his vision, as our society is as a whole.

My passion for the TV show, 'Star Trek - Original' runs deep. Maybe it was because I was born in 1962, so I was just at the right age, I do not know. That being said, I cannot deny that my ideas on foreign policy are influenced by the imagined future evolution of nationalism on the planet Earth. After all, for me, the Federation was where 1960s America was leading the globe and then the universe. In the Federation of that far future century, war had largely been done away with, though there was always the occasional skirmish to be worked out. Peace reigned on Earth.

At the time the series was canceled, few would have guessed how broadly and deeply the series has now penetrated our society. It is one of the legacies of a time when we had a single vision being pumped into our living rooms by the television. Much of 'Star Trek' tech has found its way into our technological world, and engineers citing the show's influence on their ideas of what was possible often celebrate this. However, there was more there in that television series that should have made it into the 'idea commons' of the American zeitgeist. I see the broader and greater legacy of the series as largely unfulfilled and ignored in the post- 9/11 era.

There was a Russian on the bridge of the Enterprise during the height of the Cold War. Would there be a Muslim there today, or are we just too full of negative emotions to include a follower of Islam today on the bridge? Socially, the series was just as far advanced as it was technically. Martin Luther King actually implored Nichele Nichols to stay on the show when she told him that she was planning to abandon the Uhuru role. Martin Luther King convinced her of the social import of her role. He recognized the powerful social statements being made by Star Trek. Much of that social legacy is what is unfulfilled today and yet that was mostly what was so great about the series. The whiz-bang stuff was fantastic, but by setting things far in the future, Roddenberry could tackle difficult social issues from an objective distance and he did so with a phaser-like focus.

Kirk's long speeches about humanity's longing to be free rather than safe ring hollow in today's world of strip searches at the airport and CIA rendition. The Dignity of the Common Man, the real desire to let guilty men go free, rather than imprison one innocent man, were real ideals, real beliefs. They were time- honored, time-tested beliefs that taught us that despite the flaws, freedom and individual liberty were the best way to go even in the 23rd century.

There was a distinct libertarian vein in the plot lines. Those libertarian ideals have been almost completely lost in the real world. Can you imagine what Dr. McCoy would have said were Spock to advise the captain to torture a captive to obtain information?! In episode after episode, these basic ideas about humanity and the dignity of the individual are there, loudly proclaimed.

The all-powerful Federation was always forced to respect the dignity, not only of the common man, but also of the common sentient life form, no matter what their technological advancement. Could the "Prime Directive" stand up to today's torturous logic? Or would it be considered "quaint" like the Geneva Convention? We need only cue a William Shatner soliloquy to hear this vision of freedom and individual dignity eloquently and passionately espoused.

The real legacy of Star Trek is in danger of being lost. The Dignity of the Common Man was the most central theme and how that dignity had withstood hundreds of years of technological advancement. Through it all the essential rightness of it as a guiding principle never dimmed, or so predicted Gene Roddenberry of our future.

True fans of this series, who believed in it so fervently, should consider the deeper social message of the series and how it relates to today to help change the course of our nation. Americans need help understanding why they should stand up to the surveillance society. The fear-mongers will say we have to let the government turn this technology onto us, 'to keep us safe'. Progressives should promote the dignity of the individual in the way Gene Roddenberry did when we were young, but now is not here to do today.

Truly, this vision of freedom is the great legacy of Star Trek that should stand the test of time. Eventually, all the technological predictions will be far surpassed, and the interplay of the characters is all that is left. What Roddenberry was saying about the world, about the universe, was that no matter how the landscape changes, post 9/11 or not, there are certain guiding principles of humanity that will help get us through and that will set us apart in the greater universe.

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Progressives will need to embrace the ideal that there are strong synergies created by individual freedom. An embrace it must be, because there is no question that individual freedom is a scary thing. People will have more freedom to be stupid as individual liberty increases under this progressive course. There is the actual likelihood that society will be less safe in some ways, though more safe in other more important ones. Freedom is not having to allow your wife or daughter strip-searched at the airport. Nonetheless, there is something very scary about allowing individuals to be free, because one's fellow citizens will have the freedom to make bad choices.

Life is full of risk, and our nation's return to greatness will travel a risky road, there is no doubt. We will be trusting in our fellow citizens to use their new freedoms wisely or at least not destructively. Trust is a difficult word for Americans these days, but trust our fellow Americans, we must. Sometimes, even I doubt my fellow Americans' sanity and responsibility, given the current state of affairs.

Despite my doubts about American sanity and responsibility, as a bicycle commuter, I put my life in the hands of my fellow Americans several times a week. Essentially, I trust that Republicans and Democrats et al will at least drive responsibly. I put faith in the system of licensing that trains and then tests drivers before allowing them to drive. This is a system of licensing that is run by government. The government is licensing citizens to command a deadly weapon on the road after some training and testing. There is a distinctive libertarian nature to bicycle commuting as I trust my fellow citizens to be responsible drivers with limited oversight by authorities.

Over the years, I have often commuted to my jobs on a bicycle. I found that I did not have the disposition for the gym and would rarely go. However, one must get to work and that generally involves a commute. Most of the time, I have found ways to commute on a bicycle at least some days, and it has paid off in health benefits for me over the years.

That is not to say that there are no risks to bicycle commuting. I have to ride in traffic and share the road with multi- ton vehicles that are operated by strangers of varying degrees of driving skill. After having commuted tens of thousands of miles, I have to thank the driving skills of many anonymous American drivers over the years to be able to write this. I have had to trust my fellow Americans with my life, and they have come through for me. That experience makes it easier for me to embrace the idea of freeing my fellow Americans so that they might lead this country back to greatness.

Not only has my bicycle commuting allowed me to trust my fellow Americans more, I have also realized what a powerful and efficient machine the bicycle is. I have saved many gallons of gasoline and doctor bills through the benefits of this wonderful machine, but it goes beyond these basic positives. The invention and widespread adoption of the bicycle in the late 19th century changed the world, but America especially. The bicycle is an incredibly efficient device when it comes to converting human effort into distance. The bicycle became a great equalizer for the poor, but hard-working soul in America. Previously, transportation independence required a horse and a horse required a lot of food, housing and other maintenance that was relatively costly. The bicycle brought to the common man a means of transportation that could simply be parked overnight without food or water being required.

The bicycle was a game changer as we entered the 20th century, becoming a platform for many early internal combustion engines. The rise of the automobile diminished the bicycle's importance in the West, but in much of the developing world, it continued to be the go to vehicle. A case could be made that China's current economic power had its germination in the efficient use of the bicycle by the populace for much of the 20th century.

During WWII, the Dutch utilized the bicycle to continue to resist the Germans. The Germans had stripped the country of mechanized vehicles. Those vehicles not confiscated were useless because all the fuel was under German control as well. The Dutch were left with their bicycles. The Dutch leveraged these human powered vehicles to create chaos and sabotage all across Holland. The two-wheeled partisans of the Netherlands were a pain in Hitler's @$$ the entire war.

Now in the 21st century, the bicycle provides an opportunity in our society where we can experiment with rolling back our legal Nanny-state. Right now, for all practical purposes in America, bicycles do not really have to follow traffic laws. Of course, on the books, they are supposed to follow the traffic laws, but in practical terms, the police mostly ignore the bicyclist. Police understand the dangerous and vulnerable position the cyclist is in. Unless a cyclist engages in extremely dangerous behavior, police allow bicyclists a certain amount of latitude as it relates to traffic law. Many cities ban cyclists on sidewalks, but on certain busy streets, riding on the sidewalk is the only sane thing to do. The police often blithely allow it as common sense policing by not enforcing a stupid and dangerous law.

In the bicycle, we have a machine that can help us conserve fuel and cut down on gridlock and pollution. Large-scale adoption of commuting by bicycle would bring untold benefits, many of them intangible and difficult to predict, but benefits will be delivered for sure. Instead of having the police give bicyclists an 'unofficial' pass on traffic laws, we could institutionalize the freedom of the bicycle. Simply exempt bicyclists from all traffic laws nationally except where the cyclists endanger others. By exempting cyclists from traffic law, we can take a step in this grand experiment to inject greater freedom into our society. Police would still be allowed to ticket or even arrest cycling citizens for truly reckless behavior. On the other hand, police will allow cyclists to choose whether they will come to a full stop at that stop sign or ride on the sidewalk. Put cyclists on their honor to not make mischief for the rest of society and allow them unprecedented freedom.

There are very positive social effects to be achieved by this cycling freedom experiment. This national policy will encourage a hardy breed of Americans that wish to be freer to adopt the bicycle as their main mode of transportation. Freedom of requirements to carry papers, like drivers licenses, or the freedom to ignore that stop sign, because you are a human powered vehicle should be powerful motivators for the true American. Non-riders who object will just have to accept that a good look both ways at a slow clip on a bike conserves enormous energy for the rider and allows them sufficient time to assess whether it is safe or not. Over long distances, this energy conservation is essential to actually completing one's commute sometimes.

Doubters of the great libertarian-socialist experiment that this book promotes can start their research on the wheels of a bicycle. It is so appropriate that this be the vehicle to demonstrate the validity of the ideas of freedom AND social interconnection. The bicycle is one of the most efficient machines ever invented to convert work into distance. The bicycle is an invention of peacetime that became the basis of a mechanical world, first for the individual unable to afford a horse and then as a platform for small engines ushering in the great petroleum-based modern world.

Many people currently in power see the average American as a lazy slug that will never change their ways and deserves abridgement of their rights due to their weak will. The bicycle holds the key to change some of the current calculus in America's balance of trade AND demonstrate the power of free individuals. If even a small percentage of Americans switched to bicycle commuting, the amount of energy and money saved would be enormous. If large numbers of Americans biked a couple thousand miles a year on their commutes, healthcare costs would likely fall and the energy savings could make America completely energy independent, especially if it is in conjunction with a strong nuclear power program.

Progressives on bicycles can truly alter the entire playing field. Progressives can be the true game changers. Two-wheeled progressives completely change the economic calculus that currently seems to doom America. Two-wheeled progressives in sufficient numbers can deliver a future that is unimagined by anyone right now. Citizens and politicians could wake up in ten years and see the country in the black again. The power of the people would be clearly and unequivocally demonstrated by such an economic and social miracle. Politicians would have to acknowledge the power of the people. The people would gain the confidence that freedom and individual liberty really is the right answer just as Ben Franklin had said at the very beginning!

All that has come before in this book is interconnected and the bicycle is no exception. We must deliver the economic miracle to ourselves, not to the moneyed and the powerful. We cannot deliver the miracle, if we are divided. The people will have to stop fighting over the scraps and work together to take back the economy and the country. These pages are meant to convince Americans that there are solutions to the seemingly insoluble issues before us and therefore a reason to come together.

Of course, the pages that came before certainly advocated spending some money. This is not an austerity program. The bicycle can seriously help fund the progressive agenda that has been outlined here, but not all of it. This agenda really is not pie in the sky. It is a plan to progressively restore American greatness based on common sense and hard work. What could be more patriotic than that?

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The visions of America you read in this book are from a man who considered changing his citizenship from the United States. I was disgusted by the endless news cycles of sex and drug scandals during the last decade of the 20th century; the cannibalization of our leadership seemed stupid and self-destructive. All the while, individual rights were being consistently eroded under the thin guise of public safety. During this time of personal political despair, I considered becoming a Canadian citizen. I explored the details of making such a citizenship change and reasoned it was feasible and doable to shed my American citizenship. However, in the end, I could not do it. I could not have my, as yet unborn, children not be Americans. I could not let go of being an American myself. America is an ideal that I could not abandon for my children or myself.