Quote:
Originally posted by Spinzgirl
Granted, I may sound a bit paranoid, but it's just a gut feeling I get every time someone is called anti-American for not wanting to go to war. Freedom of thought is being squashed by brain-washed followers, but it's on a peer level so as not to look like the government is perpetrating it.
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Spinz, who exactly is quashing your freedom of thought? or speech? or free assembly? Do you have the names of americans who are in prison right not because they spoke out against the president? or of those who's families are under persecution because they marched in peaceful demonstrations against the new Bush doctrine of preemptive attack? Who's house has been burned to the ground by angry mobs because they dissent from the majority opinion? This is not Uganda, or the Congo, or Pakistan, or North Korea.
These rights are being used daily in this country, by millions on either side of the debate. When I reasonably, thoughtfully, and articulately disagree with your ideas and opinions, I do not deny your right to free speech, I engage it. When my carefully considered ideas and opinions are in agreement with those who are in power, do not malign my rationality and call it "lockstep". These rights and these freedoms do not promise imunity from public engagement of opposing views; they revel in it.
The day that this ceases, the day that people are imprisoned for their thoughts, their words, or their peacable assembly, and most importantly, the day that Bush stays in office one hour past his removal via free elections, and thus becomes a true dictator, I will join you in taking up arms.
Until that day, do not belittle the value of freedom by crying tyranny.
-sm