Freedom's Just Another Word for Something We Don't Have
I miss freedom. America used to be a free country. Good times.
This is all before my time, but I've read there actually were days when the Republicans were in favor of human liberty. They argued that freedom and independence encouraged people to feel the spirit and loose the creativity to be more productive and more effective than people who had to look over their shoulder because of a government that was forever prying into their affairs, in the nominal name of the "fatherland" or the "motherland" or the "homeland". Countries with that lesser degree of freedom, Republicans argued, were decadent and corrupt and doomed to fall by the wayside. Only the free would prosper.
There were no acceptable limits to be put on freedom. There was actually a saying that went with this: "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice." I actually agree with all that. But in the war against terror, the very first thing we surrendered, at the request of this President, was some of our liberty. And, since then, the President has been taking more of our liberty away secretly, and illegally. I would prefer to die for my liberty than live as chattel. I would rather a bomb explode in my living room than have Big Brother sitting there, listening to my phone calls (and if he's anything like my actual brothers, hogging the remote).
What is the counter-argument, anyway? It's better to cower before the terrorists? It's better to let them dictate how we live our lives? In the name of defeating them, we will surrender the very values that make us superior? The best way to defeat terrorism is abject surrender? I don't understand how people can make that argument, and call themselves "patriots". Another word springs to my mind, actually: It's "traitor".
10:04:15 PM 
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