- "Any time we deny any citizen the full exercise
of his constitutional rights, we are weakening our own claim to
them."
- -- Dwight D. Eisenhower?1963
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- People penned in 'free speech zones.' Arrested for
wearing
pro-opposition buttons. Fired on by police with rubber bullets and pepper
spray-filled paintball projectiles for protesting government
policies.
-
- Where is this un-democratic, repressive country?
-
- It's here and now in the good old USA.
-
- What's worse, instead of the entire population rising
up in arms to protest these police state tactics and subversion of
constitutional
rights, many fellow Americans are saying, 'They should have used real
bullets.'
-
- Charming.
-
- George Bush said, "I'm a uniter not a
divider."
-
- He failed us there.
-
- We've been split into two bitterly polarized
camps.
-
- Three years and a little more than a month ago, after
9-11, this country was more united than at any time since WWII. People
all over America wept with collective grief. Most of the world, too. The
nation and world were together as one global family.
-
- Where is it today?
-
- How did we go - in just three years - from that
overwhelming
unity to the point where some people want fellow Americans to be killed
simply for holding a different political view in three years?
-
- Where did we lose the ideals and principles of democracy?
If they aren't gone, they're certainly in grave danger.
-
- Free speech is guaranteed in our Constitution. That right
was won and preserved for us with the blood of Patriots throughout the
course of our history. We took pride in carrying on that tradition
saying:
-
- "I may not agree with what you say but I'll defend
to the death your right to say it."
-
- And now?
-
- We have started a new saying that goes, "I don't
agree with what you have to say and because I don't...I want you
killed."
-
- The question is not so much how did we get here, but
how can we get back? Can we return to respecting others' opinions that
differ from ours? Can we return to the democratic vision in the
Declaration
of Independence and Constitution of our founding fathers?
-
- We must again learn to respect each other as human
beings,
as Americans who love our country and want what's best for her.
-
- If we disagree, we should be able to discuss it freely,
without hate. Let our votes decide. Let it be a fair election.
-
- Let's not forget the men and women who died for our right
to disagree and vote.
-
- To you from failing hands we throw
- The torch; be yours to hold it high.
- If ye break faith with us who die
- We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
- In Flanders fields.
-
- --Excerpt from "In Flanders Fields" by
-
- John McCrae (1915)
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