An exchange with Carl Nemo got me thinking about the concept of freedom. I’m embarrassed to say that, put on the spot, I can’t really say what freedom is to me. As the old saying about pornography goes, “I know it when I see it.”
But define it? Hmmm, I’ve gotta think about that.
I’d like to invite people to give their thoughts on what freedom, within the context of being an American, is.
By Maggie Van Ostrand
The woman just can’t win. That statement doesn’t refer to Hillary’s getting or not getting the nomination for president of the U.S., it refers to the if-that-doesn’t-get-them-I’ll-try-this attitude that has kept her in the public eye only a tick less often than Britney Spears.
Cheney the fascist and Bush the duped Crusader. Both have made millions while looting America of its most precious thing–our freedoms. So much done in the name of Christianity, but as a Jew I know true Christians don’t murder innocent men, women, and children in the name of democracy while destroying Democracy in their own land. A real Christian is kind, understanding, and generous. A real Christian does not murder unless it is in defense of family, self, and homeland.
As the likes of Mr. Huckabee and Mr. (Fred) Thompson have now chosen to infuse their own brand of Christian fundamentalism into their Presidential campaigns (with the former sharing his firm intent to change the Constitution to better match “God’s Law” as he alone interprets it), I thought it might be enlightening to pass along some of my own personal experiences and thoughts on such fundamentalist beliefs and my dealings with those who extol them.
Below is a parody I wrote of a very famous speech. I think it is applicable considering what is going on in America today and with an election coming up. I think the author would approve, too.
The U.S. military worried Sunday about “mixed messages” from Iran, listing a dramatic drop in Iranian-made weapons reaching Iraq but no reduction in the training and financing of Shiite militants.
The report card further muddles U.S.-Iranian relations as Washington ratchets up its anti-Tehran rhetoric in the shadow of a recent intelligence report that the Islamic Republic halted a nuclear weapons program four years ago.
A second suicide bombing in two days, meanwhile, killed six people in Anbar province, birthplace of the Sunni movement against al-Qaida in Iraq that has been a major factor in a recent downturn in nationwide violence.
This year, for the first time, expatriate Democrats can cast their ballots on the Internet in a presidential primary for people living outside the United States.
Democrats Abroad, an official branch of the party representing overseas voters, will hold its first global presidential preference primary from Feb. 5 to 12, with ex-pats selecting the candidate of their choice by Internet as well as fax, mail and in-person at polling places in more than 100 countries.
Nearly 40 years after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., some say his legacy is being frozen in a moment in time that ignores the full complexity of the man and his message.
“Everyone knows — even the smallest kid knows about Martin Luther King — can say his most famous moment was that ‘I have a dream’ speech,” said Henry Louis Taylor Jr., professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Buffalo. “No one can go further than one sentence. All we know is that this guy had a dream. We don’t know what that dream was.”
King was working on anti-poverty and anti-war issues at the time of his death. He had spoken out against the Vietnam War and was in Memphis when he was killed in April 1968 in support of striking sanitation workers.
Much has been made in the Democratic presidential campaign of “experience” — Hillary Rodham Clinton’s versus Barack Obama’s.
From the biographer’s and historian’s perspectives this is an interesting point. Clinton’s first political experience was as a Young Republican, then as a student activist alongside her boyfriend at Yale Law School, Democrat Bill Clinton. Following him to Fayetteville, she taught law at the University of Arkansas and then became a corporate lawyer, once he stood for Arkansas attorney general and governor.
Each GOP primary produces a new winner, none of them the longtime national frontrunner. Meanwhile, the Democrats feature a tight race between an African-American and a woman — pure history in the making. It can’t get any better than that, the upshot being I might actually cast a ballot that matters for the first time in my life!