Most Americans thought the 2008 election was decided last November. But here we are, more polarized than ever and fighting, once more, for the democratic will of the majority to be manifested. The divisive, ugly debate about the Democratic proposals to provide real health-insurance reform is not just about quality, affordability and accessibility, it's also about who will govern the country.

Will reason and civil debate decide the outcome? Or will deliberate misinformation and appeals to base emotions decide?

Thomas Jefferson believed strongly that reason would always prevail. "If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form," he declared, "let them stand undisturbed as monuments to the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it."

Was Jefferson correct?

Because today we are witnessing an orchestrated campaign that depends on lies, not reason. And according to the polls, opponents who favor the status quo have achieved some degree of success with their canards. Their objective is not defeating health-insurance reform (though that is sought), but far more importantly, as Republican Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina so gleefully expressed it, to create "Obama's Waterloo."

If they defeat Obama, they defeat the people's will of last November. To this end, a cabal of conservative strategists has directed its minions with instructions to disrupt public meetings and undermine public trust in elected officials -- not, unfortunately, that such an exercise would take great effort. We all know the U.S. Congress, as an institution, suffers badly in public opinion polls.

A look at what is being put out there by the leading opponents of health-insurance reform reveals a consistent message of deliberate untruth: Obama aspires to be a dictator, and your elected Democratic officials cannot be trusted. They want to kill old people; Obamacare is but a first step in taking away your freedom and destroying the American way of life as you know it.

This unsavory attempt to using distortion and fear to bring about a stampede of unfavorable public opinion is being waged by the very same people who "swiftboated" the 2004 presidential campaign of Sen. John F. Kerry. Thanks to them, we once again are seeing death threats to public officials and even a revival of racist armed militias.

Critics of the health-insurance plans now under consideration in Congress have turned town hall meetings into veritable rumbles, shouting down and shutting out any opinion save their own. They have manipulated the media into covering the dramatic, to the exclusion of fairness, and leaving unreported ideas offered in civility and reason. The folks shutting down town hall gatherings through intimidation and anger are shutting democracy itself.

Winston Churchill once said of an opponent, "The Honorable Member is never lucky in the coincidence of his facts with the truth." Such is the case in all we have seen and heard for weeks; none of the so-called facts proclaimed by those opposing reform are consistent with the truth. They offer the public a fictitious "death panel," a nonexistent march to "Nazi-style socialism" and false reports of administration calls to turn one's neighbors into the police.

Sadly, America needs real health-insurance reform. We also need to engage in honest debates about the future of our economy and all its parts. We cannot become a global leader in any sector if we fail to invest in education, health care, energy and technology.

So here we are, eight months later, at the same crossroads we arrived at Nov. 4. We the people spoke then. We need to speak now, not in raised voices, but in a clear and strong, reasonable voice.

Are we done with stacking public meetings to the point where the opposition is excluded, literally?

I ask you, in fact, I implore you, to ask yourself, will you help lead this civil discussion about America's future?

(Sept. 1, 2009)