Well…you would think that at least one repub would have a bout of clarity about their hypocrisy touting that they are the party of “freedom”…freedom for who? Surely not for young people trying to learn the true history of this country….surely not for half of the country who are women and are having their rights taken away by the repubs ever damn day…certainly not the Florida lawmaker who gave her phone number out on the House floor and told women and girls to call her so she can help them with abortion care and the evil desantis had her arrested…certainly not our friends in the LGBTQ community who are fleeing red states to keep from being attacked an murdered just for being who they are…and certainly not the young athletes who now have to have their genitals “inspected” before they can participate in sports in Idaho….this sure as hell is not “freedom” and it is clear by comparison to blue states that it is the repubs in red states doing all of this….taking away people’s rights and exposing them to hate is not freedom for them…I guess it is freedom for the repub haters who are passing all these fascist laws…geez…
Tag Archives: freedom
What happened to the fourth amendment?
Well…for quite a while now, I have been concerned by the daily erosion of the protections of the fourth amendment both by the courts and by the legislature of the federal government. I don’t understand it, either…when there is so much outcry about any infringement of the 2nd amendment and the rabid howls from the right when even sensible laws controlling guns are proposed, and yet with the revelations that the NSA has been infringing on the 4th on a daily basis…only a few repubs have come forward to oppose this big brother dragnet. The most egregious justification for it is the general one of “safety” and that the government is “protecting” us from some amorphous threat that is out there but they won’t tell us what the threat is or what they are doing to protect us…this creates the next question which is why should we believe agencies that lie on a daily basis?”. This boils down to one quote that I use quite often that distills the balance between risk and freedom: “..those who give up essential liberty for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety…” Ben Franklin…geez…
Find the cost of freedom…
Well…from the revolutionary war that founded this country up to the tragic deaths of our four diplomats yesterday, there are few words that amply describe what the cost of freedom is….I think these are the best courtesy of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young…”Find the cost of freedom…buried in the ground…mother Earth will swallow you…lay your body down…”
Welcome to the Soviet Union…courtesy of the Supreme Court..
Well…as I sit here today, I am saddened, outraged, and stunned by the latest nail in the coffin of individual freedom here delivered by the supreme court over the past few days. It hasn’t been enough that this court has muted the individuals voice in politics by the Citizens United decision allowing unlimited corporate money to buy elections, then they allow employers to take away any rights the individual has in the workplace by not allowing lawsuits against egregious violations of many laws that were written to protect workers rights, now, they gut the fourth amendment by allowing police to create “emergencies” that allow them to enter anyone’s house without a warrant. This latest case that this wrong headed court has ruled on allows the police to bang on any door without cause and then if they hear any noise that the police construe to be “destroying evidence” can enter the house without a warrant…even if no one int he house is suspected of any crime. Yep, you heard it again, it’s more of the “trust us” baloney that you always hear from the police…guess how this one is going to be used? Any critic of police tactics that has the guts to speak out better watch out….the knock will be coming to your door soon and not getting to the door fast enough can be construed to be resisting arrest…someone please save us from ourselves….geez….
A little more on binLaden…
Well..I know I commented on the death of bin Laden in the earlier post but I have a few more thoughts that I would like to share….some of them kind of personal….in that terrible week in 2001, so many punches hit that when I look back, I wonder how I got through it as well as I did….on the day of the attacks, my beloved mother-in-law died heaping shock upon shock…and only a week later, the job that I had held for 28years was eliminated and I was out of work for the first time in my adult life. If you’ve read this at all, you know it was initially intended as a chronicle of the life of an “overqualified and unemployed” old guy looking for work in the worst economy in the past century….and that as really the focus for the first few months…oh, getting off track here.
When I thought about bin Laden’s death this morning out for coffee, my mind goes to the changes for the worse in our society that came from the overreaction of our government to the threat…the warrantless wiretapping, taking your shoes off at the airport, getting groped by strangers as a price for flying…how do we go back from this restriction on our freedom? After all, we did this to ourselves and, as Ezra Klein said this morning ” we can undo this if we have the will”, that was a paraphrase…not a quote…and I hope we start undoing these as soon as possible…
I need to talk a little about Egypt…
Well…how can you not be proud of the human beings who rose up and took control of their own destiny in Egypt? I have been watching this story unfold and have been humbled by the dignity of the protesters that said enough; enough of being treated like children who were not mature enough to set their own course and run their own country. I am a little disappointed by the lag in our government’s response to the events there, but I also understand that diplomacy is usually deliberate and works in small increments.
But, things have changed….events move much faster these days and we need to adjust our foreign policy to be able to keep up…and I am tired of hedging our bets when people are trying to become free…it is one thing that we need to support anywhere that the flower starts to burst through the ground….let’s stop basing our actions on fear and and the belief that we are the only ones that know what freedom means…..
To the people of Egypt…Well Done!
This is what freedom looks like…
Well…it’s about 5 am and I haven’t been able to sleep, and part of the reason is this idea that came to me last night when watching Countdown with Keith Olbermann. The story that was the catalyst dealt with the Koran burning that a Florida church is proposing for the anniversary of 9/11 as some sort of protest against radical Islam. The story had the normal hand-wringing about the effect this would have on our standing in the world, especially on our troops stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan. and was the theme of General Patreus’s remarks yesterday saying that this may put our troops in more danger. The consensus being that the church should not do this; ignoring the fact that it is not Christian-like to spew hate, I think the answers we are giving to the world are wrong. What we should be saying to the world is “This is what freedom looks like”. Freedom is loud, freedom is vulgar at times, but it is also wonderful and brilliant. Freedom gives everyone the right to say what they think and we should all be standing up for that right. We should be living what Voltaire felt; that I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to my death your right to say it.
That is the message the world needs to hear; that the repressive societies need to hear. Our leaders need to say “this is what freedom looks like”, it’s messy, stupid at times but it’s also what makes this the greatest country in the world and we won’t apologize for it, but will hold it up to the rest of the world and say let’s see you do better!
Find the Cost of Freedom….
This one has been bubbling ever since Tom got me a copy of “Four Way Street” by Crosby Stills Nash and Young and I heard this wonderful little song that ends the album. The lyrics go like this: find the cost of freedom buried in the ground, Mother Earth will swallow you, lay your body down…and then it repeats…all a capella. I’m going to finish this one up later today or tomorrow…but it’s going to be about the most poignant way that the cost of freedom is measured. I’ll try to not be political because that will minimize the overwhelming meaning of that sacrifice.
I have all kinds of thoughts and fragments of ideas running through my head right now from the current sacrifices being made by our military but also of Martin Luther King, the Kennedy Brothers, the four Kent State students, and the many who gave their lives during the civil rights struggle trying to make this country a better place. But I’m having trouble making sense of the fragments; to make something cogent from the feelings that come whenever I hear that song. I will keep trying because I think it’s important for all of us as Americans to make sure these sacrifices were not made in vain; that they are not used as props for political gain or to divide us…maybe we can use the universality of this great gift to help us understand that we are all still Americans no matter what the issues are that some use to tear us apart.
How can they be for freedom and liberty?
Well…I’ve talked about this before to my friends, but not since I’ve had this post….How can the republicans be for freedom and liberty when they have no problem with using the government to control personal behavior? They want to de-regulate corporations and business; to give them the freedom that they want to take away or to keep away from individuals. Doesn’t anyone see anything hypocritical about this? Oh, but that’s right, they are the party of the hypocrite..the party that spews family values out of one side of their mouth all the while visiting prostitutes (David Vitter, that means you) or vilifying gay people in the name of religion (Ted Haggard, I’m sure you’ll recognize yourself here) while he was visiting male prostitutes. And let’s not forget ole Newt…on his third or fourth marriage with at least two of them ending because of his affairs. But that kind of behavior is not really what this is about…it’s about the right wing elites who use your and my freedom as a political prop…who don’t care about your freedom to be let alone; who want to control what women can do to their bodies, to control what everyone can put into theirs, and to control who you can marry.
So, the next time you hear them talk about the Obama administration “taking away our freedoms”, remember it’s the repubs who want to use the government to control you and your life, not the Democrats. Geez….