THOLOS OF ATHENA TURNS 3 YEARS OLD TODAY

This is the right occasion to say thank you to our readers. We thank those bloggers who link to us. And many times we have been encouraged by friends who have e-mailed us and left messages of hope and comfort in the comments' section.

Art is connected to our mission as well. As the poet, Emily Dickinson said, "Nature is a haunted house--but Art--is a house that tries to be haunted." Our house in the round, our place that tries to be haunted, the Temple where we sort through our visions and get down to work, is that which we call Tholos.

And you are always welcome here.

Part of our shared responsibility, here in America, is the present crisis of conscience; and we must not lend legitimacy to any public figure, regardless of party, who excuses illegal war, or likewise favors aggression, as a means of enriching a few, or who permits scapegoating, or maintains dark prisons outside of law. There have been enough abuses inflicted on our republic and its Bill of Rights, and these have to stop.

Sinclair Lewis warned us that if there were to be an American Fascism, it would come to us wrapped in the flag and holding a Bible. Over the past five years there has been a foretaste of this; and the deceivers continue to ply their trade in the Republican Congress and the Bush/Cheney White House. Extreme republicans have left no doubt that fundamentalist religion and the Party march in lockstep, and that above the country and its laws, the Party alone is supreme. That is an insult to the structure of government our Founders conceived on our behalf.

There is still an uncharted path ahead, and it winds its painful way through a danger zone of blood money, ballot tampering, racism, corruption, and a welter of fear,-- through warrantless--and ever more secretive, police powers. And the darkest corners are only just now being revealed. The warnings about the cult of the President have gone forth.

It is to be hoped, after we come through this crisis, that there will be no more wars of aggression waged in our name. It is to be hoped that we can break the nation's addiction to borrowed money, from the hands of foreign governments and bankers. It is hoped that we can break the stranglehold which insurance corporations hold over public healthcare. But the issue that stands above all others is the question of law. Will this awful, Republican-controled Congress, keep undercutting the Constitution? Will they, in effect, legalize lawlessness? --while trying at the same time--to limit the jurisdiction of the courts?

We must pull back from the brink, because if the nation crosses this threshold, there may be no going back. For the country as a whole, we must confess and not evade our failures. Each of us must look at civic responsibility in a new light. The wisest among us have said already, that we will be a long time cleaning up after President Bush.

Albert Camus wrote about civic faith, in 1957, after Soviet Russia put down the Hungarian Uprising:

"Our faith is that throughout the world, beside the impulse toward coercion and death that is darkening history, there is a growing impulse toward persuasion and life, a vast emancipatory movement called culture that is made up both of free creation and of free work."

In that spirit, you are welcomed back to Tholos, and we hope you will join us here often.