Black Coffee Blues

Since finding my political voice, I have had to try hard not to succumb to reading every bit of anti-Bush sentiment on the web.  It is when you rely solely on one point of view that you have lost your ability to see the whole picture.  Although I have nary a nice thing to say about your president and your government (I know that I do not deserver a government like that which is in place today), I normally try to illustrate my distate for them by using examples of just how asinine they really are.  I try to cite directly that which illustrates my point.  And so, when I first found the Lew Rockwell site, I was naturally cautious to not cite everything possible since it had so many interesting points to make.  Instead, I simply read and digested.  I then read and digested other articles from other sites.  I read through the president’s press briefings.  I tried as best I could to see every side.  Only then could I really make any educated assertion.  Through all of that reading and digesting, I found that there were reasons I was drawn to the Lew Rockwell site.  I found that there were words and sentiments that stated what I thought and felt.  Instead of feeling like I was one voice, now I feel like there are more voices like mine.  My hope is that more voices are heard and that more people find this contageous and compelling.  And for those of you who need that extra nudge, I urge you to head on over to the Lew Rockwell site and read the article, Hitlerian Totalitarianism on the Home Front by Karen De Coster.  In said article, there are too many things to cite, but the one in particular, the one that I feel surmises how narrow-sighted and blind most of the United States (at least the portion who still is in full support of the president and government without question), the one that shows us that we need not fear any longer, but pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and start thinking for ourselves again:

The other day, I got a response from a reader regarding my recent piece criticizing Thomas Sowell for his support of war and state. All this reader could do to defend Total State was to recite lethargic, half-baked clichés that I see on SUV bumpers every day. One thing he said was, “Freedom comes to people because other people died for it. Pure and simple. Without their sacrifice, we would not know what the words freedom and liberty mean.”

Of course, no cliché is final without a “pure and simple” at the end. But what the heck does that mean? Needless to say, the underpinnings of liberty are not death and sacrifice. Nobody ever cares to explain the meaning of these numskulled remarks that are meant to sound as sweet as a granny’s lullaby, but in black-and-white they don’t mean a thing. Such clichés are nothing more than a jumble of words meant to convey total confusion through the perversion of clarity.

Freedom doesn’t “come to me” because some guy in a foxhole thought he’d roll up a little freedom in a paper airplane and fling it my way. I know exactly what freedom and liberty mean, and it doesn’t take aggressive wars and the spread of empire – in the name of passing on the good life, democracy – to define two words. To interpret words takes a brain. Critical thinking. Effort. Knowledge is the key that unlocks the lies and immunizes against indoctrination. Knowledge takes time and work. Clichés take 5 seconds to read off a bumper sticker or pull up off of Google.

The reader also grossly misused the Thomas Jefferson quote that refers to fertilizing the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots and tyrants. He used it to defend the current war when Jefferson clearly meant to throw off a tyrannical government when it has oppressed the human spirit and stood in the way of the pursuit of Life, Liberty, and Happiness. And surely, waging war and inciting domestic terror do exactly that.

How many times do we get emails telling us that we are “Unpatriotic” for questioning the president and government?  And how many times do we get death threats and unintelligible hate mail for speaking our minds about what we deserve from that same president and government?  As she stated, it takes 5 seconds to threaten someone and call them names.  It take a person with intelligence to see when he/she is being mistreated/misguided and stand up to state that he/she simply will not put up with it any longer.  I applaud anyone who takes the stand against a totalitarian government.  I applaud anyone who takes the time to question something because he/she things it is intrinsicly wrong.  I applaud the strong and determined for wanting his/her freedom back.

Remember this:

If we do not help to educate our friends, neighbors, co-workers, and family – via encouraging independent and critical thinking – we will see a fascist state that will far surpass the Hitlerian totalitarian system or Stalinist regime. We may not be starved and locked behind a fence, but the masses will be stripped of all self-sufficiency, freedom of choice, mental stamina, skepticism, and the ability to discern between what is morally right or wrong. Arming the people with knowledge, however, is our best defense against a creeping totalitarianism that will otherwise go unimpeded. The depravity of an absolute state domestically and perpetual wars internationally must not go unexposed. We must end the wars against mankind in order to win the battle for freedom.

- Karen De Coster