People do not gain power in U.S. society because others recognize their attributes and lift them up as leaders. Instead, power goes to those who gain recognition by trumpeting themselves, planning, and fighting for position. It is extremely rare to see a new leader evolve, reluctantly, at the behest of fellow citizens who see a need for that individual�s wisdom and gifts. Nowhere is that currently more evident than in the boasting and clawing for position and power by men and women in the U.S. presidential campaigns now underway. �I want to be president!� is the undignified bawl of every single one of them. When a new U.S. president finally takes office in 2009, after the waste of millions of dollars, after all the bragging falls silent and the bloodletting stops, he or she will not have been recognized or lifted up by the people. That person will be someone forced upon the people by the corporate structures of business, media, and politics. This phenomenon has become the norm in our culture, so much so that the people no longer recognize the fatal flaw. 

Cindy Sheehan is a rare exception to the self-centered and self-promoting grasp for power that rules, not only in the U.S. but throughout western culture. Cindy Sheehan has been through the refiner�s fire, beginning with the untimely and violent death of her son in war � ironically a war constructed in shifting sands by men who grasp and gain power they have never earned.  

Ms Sheehan was lifted to international recognition and power by others who saw her camped outside of Crawford, Texas. She wanted only to speak to a president who never earned his own keep, and who demanded recognition like a spoiled child. She was lifted to power from a place of desolation. Losing a child has a way of breaking a parent beyond the resources upon which they had always drawn. Being preceded in death by one�s own child brings a parent into an intimacy with death, and a deeper respect for the real meaning in life. It can leave a parent grovelling on the ground, wanting only to follow their offspring into the grave. Only one who has experienced such anguish can fully understand this anguish and desolation. Cindy Sheehan discovered the capacity of her own human spirit to rise from death to new life. Seeing her resurrection and talent, we called upon her to lead us. She is an honorable woman and worthy leader; and we could see that. 

The wisdom of Ms Sheehan�s decision to take herself out of  a web of exploitation and political entanglement, woven by the corporate media, was one born in the trenches of the people�s war against war itself. The handsome, hard lines drawn on her face reveal nothing less than true character and integrity. The current, not-so-clever attempts to malign her by those who hold unearned power can never erase those lines. The attacks on her person can never undo her leadership and her contribution to the movement against war. Her decision to denounce and leave the fraudulent Democratic Party is the most powerful statement she can make against war. 

It is no wonder that she is being attacked. Her decision is rattling the two party � one party system that attempts to fabricate an image of being anti-war while funding war. In complicity with Washington, the corporate media has attempted to co-opt the anti-war movement. Cindy Sheehan has strategically denied them their power and place. Thus, Cindy�s greatest act of leadership to date has been to remove herself from the game they created around her heroic stand against western imperialism and war.  

Axis of Logic names her our Featured Activist.

Paul Richard Harris and Les Blough
Editors, Axis of Logic

� Copyright 2007 by AxisofLogic.com

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