This email is a sham. You should always check with snopes.com, where it's been shown to have largely been invented out of someone's imagination. It was apparently written by Bush supporters in an attempt to more greatly polarize our country along political lines. Then lots of people forwarded it around without checking it, I guess because they liked the idea of a polarized country and had no concern for the truth.

snopes.com: The Fall of the Athenian Republic

I agree with your outrage about what's going on today, which of course was championed by Bush, who supposedly all the smart and peace-loving people voted for in 2000, if you believe your own reposting. But I disagree that the US was founded on or has ever had a "free market." The freer markets have been in the US and between us and other countries, the more suffering they have caused. In the early part of the last century, horrific work conditions, terrible quality of consumer goods, no protection for unions, no antitrust laws -- that sure was some party!

Now we seem to have an even worse system in some ways, where the government steps in to protect the wealthy by shifting their risk to the poor. This week's moves with direct equity investment is just one more example. Free money for the big banks to play around with -- when it was their own money, they weren't exactly careful.

Anyway, enough politics for now. I just hate that email and all the other divisive things that are floating around, invented out of thin air by partisans who just can't stand to the idea of a fair fight.