Mark A. Goldman, you and I are brothers. You were spot on in your letter about our government and how it operates. (“The government continues to deny our rights and freedoms,” May 27.)

The lobbyists, special interests, the Fed and the bureaucrats are truly the ones running our America. The mainstream media (our fourth check) is unconscionably compliant in this process and does all it can to pull us apart as Americans. That way we’ll stay distracted and uninformed about the freedoms and unalienable rights slowly being stolen from us.

Instead of concentrating on what separates us, why aren’t the media and the American people emphasizing what we all have in common? Unless you’re a left or right progressive, a socialist or a Marxist, if someone went through our Constitution and Bill of Rights with the majority of everyday Americans, liberal or conservative, my bet is that you get a minimum of 95 percent agreement. Let’s start there.

This administration promised during the campaign to not renew the Patriot Act, one of the most egregious pieces of legislation since the Federal Reserve Act. Eight years later, the Patriot Act is alive and expanding day by day. I’ll close with my favorite quote from Josef Stalin. (For you people who aren’t into history, in a little over a one year, he committed the largest and most efficient extermination of a race of people in history, more than 7 million.) “America is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold; its patriotism, its morality and its spiritual life. If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within.”

I do believe I hear the sounds of a cave-in.

— Brian Dougher