Text 273, 89 rader
Skriven 2007-04-25 14:52:00 av LEE LOFASO
     Kommentar till en text av ROGER NELSON
Ärende: Fascist America, in 10 ea
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Hello Roger,

>BF>"As Americans turn away quite leisurely, keeping tuned to
>BF>internet shopping and American Idol, the foundations of democracy
>BF>are being fatally corroded. Something has changed profoundly that
>BF>weakens us unprecedentedly: our democratic traditions, independent
>BF>judiciary and free press do their work today in a context in which
>BF>we are "at war" in a "long war" - a war without end, on a
>BF>battlefield described as the globe, in a context that gives the
>BF>president - without US citizens realising it yet - the power over
>BF>US citizens of freedom or long solitary incarceration, on his
>BF>say-so alone."


>BF>"Right now, only a handful of patriots are trying to hold back
>BF>the tide of tyranny for the rest of us - staff at the Center for
>BF>Constitutional Rights, who faced death threats for representing the
>BF>detainees yet persisted all the way to the Supreme Court; activists
>BF>at the American Civil Liberties Union; and prominent conservatives
>BF>trying to roll back the corrosive new laws, under the banner of a
>BF>new group called the American Freedom Agenda. This small, disparate
>BF>collection of people needs everybody's help, including that of
>BF>Europeans and others internationally who are willing to put
>BF>pressure on the administration because they can see what a US
>BF>unrestrained by real democracy at home can mean for the rest of the
>BF>world."

RN>This would have made some good propaganda for the snooze and in keeping with
RN>your anti-American rants.  The moral of all this is don't believe everything
RN>you read and only half of what you see.

"What is patriotism, and what is not?  Who is patriotic, and who
is not?  Patriotism is about dissent.  It's about criticism and civil
disobedience." - Howard Zinn, historian, age 84, WWII veteran

Speaking about Henry David Thoreau, who wrote "Civil Disobedience",
Zinn continued - "He was arrested for not paying his tax because he was
protesting the Mexican-American War in the way there are tax resisters
today for protesting the war in Iraq."

Henry David Thoreau went to jail.

So did Cindy Sheehan.

While Thoreau was incarcerated, his mentor (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
is rumored to have asked him "Henry, what are you doing in there?"
Thoreau replied, "What are you doing out there?"

Remember that blind and deaf girl named Helen Keller?

"Helen Keller was a patriot.  She was a radical, an educator, an
agitator, a socialist.  She spoke at Carnegie Hall against war,
supported the labor unions of her day.  She refused to cross a picket
line at a theater that was showing a play about her." - Howard Zinn

And what about that true American patriot, Mark Twain?  Twain was
most critical of President Teddy Roosevelt congratulating a general
who was involved in a massacre in the Philippines.  In fact, Twain
was very critical of the Spanish-American War, especially the war
in the Philippines.

"It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make these
people free and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their
own way; and so I am an anti-imperialist.  I am opposed to having the
eagle put its talons on any other land." - Mark Twain

Those words could just as easily apply to today's war in Iraq.

Howard Zinn, a World War II veteran, praised Mark Twain.  The late
Kurt Vonnegut, who was also a World War II veteran, praised Mark Twain.
Many other Americans have praised Mark Twain as being a true American
hero.

"To omit or to minimize these voices of resistance is to create the
idea that power only rests with those who have the guns. ... I want to
point out that people who seem to have no power, whether working people,
people of color or women -- once they organize and protest and create
movements -- have a voice no government can suppress." - Howard Zinn

Whether it is protesting the war in Iraq, gun violence in our schools,
lack of access to health care, or any such issue of note, there can be
nothing more patriotic than dissent.

--Lee


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