Freedom (This is a MUST READ!)

When I was a little kid, I asked my dad about an image I had seen of really huge numbers of prisoners being marched to their execution in a forest clearing, guarded by perhaps five or ten men with rifles. I wanted to know why they didn't just rush the guards? I mean, it's one thing if they were heading to another crappy day at work camp, but these people were being led off to be killed. I mean, for God's sake, what did they have to lose?

I was six. My dad looked at me. He had served in the latter days of WW2 in Europe as a U.S. Army intelligence officer. No parachuting onto the decks of enemy U-Boats at night to steal Enigma machines --- just newly-minted, 2nd Lieutenant grunt work. He'd been to the camps though, seen some horrible things. When I asked him why they didn't fight back or run for the woods, he said, without any arrogance or contempt or jingoism, "I don't know Billy, I can't figure that one out myself." Then there was a long moment. "But I can't imagine Americans just walking off like that, either."

Now before the combined military might of the European Union responds with a very harshly worded letter, let me clarify something: When he said he couldn't imagine Americans marching off to their deaths, he meant, obviously, Americans like the ones he knew. Kids who grew up hunting, kids who got a BB gun for their fifth birthday (never Christmas though --- you could shoot your eye out!)

I don’t believe for an instant in any genetic nonsense about slave races or nations of pure-bred heroes. That’s a deadly trap, and the end result of such thinking is a place on the watchtower machine-gunning starving prisoners. But humans are the most successful species this planet has seen not for being ferocious or fast or strong or even intelligent, but for their malleability. Humans can, and do, adapt to anything. It is their culture that determines what is in their hearts.

Consider the case of Jews in Germany, during the 1930’s: Here was a people who had been so tormented and prosecuted and psychologically beaten down that they came to believe the outrageous slander that they were guests in their own county. Behind their shuttered doors at night, they created cocoons of astonishing culture and beauty, a symphony of violins and cellos and poetry and literature. They were far over-represented in occupations we rightly esteem as among the most noble of our species: surgeons, musicians, teachers and scientists.

By any measure of human decency, these were the people that should have been helping to lead a ravaged Germany back to respect and prosperity. Yet they were massacred in their millions by brutes and sadists who could barely write their own names.

If it is possible to write a clearer lesson on human nature, then I cannot imagine it, nor can I imagine the amount of blood it will take to convince people unwilling to look reality in the face; that reality being that compassion, culture, law and philosophy are precious, rare and acquired habits that must be defended with force against people who understand nothing but force. The great failure and staggering tragedy of European Jews is that they could not accept that some of their neighbors were not as decent, humane and educated as they were. A culture that learned to survive by turning inward simply never was willing to face the reality of what they were up against; namely, that hoping for compassion and humanity from the likes of the Nazis was akin to reading poetry to a hurricane. This denial --- and that is the only word for it --- is, in the final horrible analysis, a form of unconscious arrogance, a refusal to see things for what they are. A people of astonishing internal beauty simply could not look into the face of such ugliness without turning away. And now they are dead.

And there are many intelligent, enlightened, gentle and good-hearted people today who believe exactly the same thing. If we let this moral blindness continue to gain ground, then they will get us all killed, too. And then who will put their boot on humanity’s neck for the next thousand years?

I recently visited a website that featured a picture of Star Trek’s Mr. Spock, with the caption: My hero! Someone who thinks his way out of trouble! The implication, of course, is that force and violence are universally to be rejected and despised as unworthy of thinking people (or Vulcans).

Well bucko, Spock carried a phaser as well as a tricorder, and he used it when he had to. If the Star Trek future represents a hope for our species at its most reasonable and open-minded best, it would be well to remember that the Enterprise carries a hell of a lot of photon torpedoes because the cause of human decency cannot be advanced if all the decent humans lie dead.

Freedom is preserved by free people. Our 40th President wrote that “no weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women.”

Free people know in their heart that they are free. Back again for a moment to a culturally rich, bathed in literature and opera, non-simplisme culture like 1940s Germany: I also asked my father what would happen if the Gestapo came for us one night. He said he couldn't stop them from taking us, but he could damn sure take a few of those bastards with them, and I decided right there that I'd do the same thing.

In the Warsaw Ghetto, in Solzhenitsyn's Gulags, in countless other miserable terrifying pits of murder, some people woke up to the idea that resistance is NOT futile. Which is why that old saw, which in my terribly, tragically misspent liberal youth I used to sneer at as the mark of a real idiot - "they can have my gun when they pry it from my cold dead fingers" - suddenly makes a new kind of sense to me.

That is not the statement of someone who doesn't want to give up a snowmobile or a Beemer. That is a statement that draws a line in the sand for the government, or any other oppressor, to plainly see. You want to take this freedom away from me? COME AND GET IT.

I believe gun ownership is the truest form of freedom, and here's why: It says you are your own person, responsible for your own actions. You are not willing to be collectively punished for the misdeeds of others. In fact, those that abuse this freedom by committing crimes are thought of and dealt with much more harshly by gun owners, as a rule, than Hollywood celebrities, precisely because a free person understands the responsibility that comes with freedom.

To the many thoughtful and intelligent Europeans and Canadians who scorn the 2nd Amendment of the US Constitution as the dangerous plaything of illiterate, mindless oafs who enjoy loud noises, let me simply refer you to that great unbiased and incorruptible teacher: History.

Ask yourselves why intellectual elites so love totalitarian states where people are unarmed and dependant sheep. Look at the examples of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, and Saddam, and the horrors they have inflicted at will on their own people. And when contemplating your ever-so-sophisticated foreign policy, ask yourselves what real options you are left with when facing a determined, heartless bastard like Hitler, Napoleon, Ghengis Khan or Attila.

Maybe the time for real evil like that has finally gone. I hope you are right, I really do. I don't want to go fight those bastards; I'd rather barbeque and watch the Gators. I'm sure the Jews in 1930 Germany thought such things could never happen again, not in the heart of European culture and civilization. I'm sure every bound and beaten musician, surgeon, philosopher and painter being lined up at the side of a ditch thought exactly that.

Try and understand this about Americans like myself and others who can look such horrors in the eye: We are not going out like that. Get it? We'll put up with handgun murders if we have to, but we are not going down that road. As a general rule, we are quiet, peaceful, decent people with better things to do than referee endless bloodbaths abroad. But it is possible to get our attention. And believe me, you have it now, and I believe the time will come when you will regret calling us cowboys and Nazis and idiots, because the day may come when you once again need the help of a free and determined people, fighting forces you ignore not from superior sophistication but from sheer moral cowardice.

Great Britain, the philosophical home and mother to this nation, has responded to a horrible shooting tragedy by essentially disarming their entire population. That is their decision alone to make, and history will record whether it was a wise one or not. But consider this:

A Marine Corps officer wondered to himself whether such an order would be carried out in the United States. He was surprised to see that most of his men would not follow an order to disarm the populace by force.

This, to my mind, is the fundamental difference between the Europeans and the U.S.: We trust the people. We fought wars and lost untold husbands and brothers and sons because of this single most basic belief: Trust the people. Trust them with freedom. Trust them to spend their own money. Trust them to do the right thing. Trust them to defend themselves. To the degree that government can help, great - but TRUST THE PEOPLE.

It would take an army --- not an army of celebrities or trial lawyers, an actual SHOOTING ARMY --- to forcibly disarm this nation. Who will do the dirty work? Volunteer citizen soldiers, that's who - and the first guns they'd have to turn in would be their own.

See, we don't have shock troops here, boyo. No Republican Guards, Special or otherwise; no Hussars, no Cossacks, no SS; we lack Praetorian elites, Napoleonic bodyguard units - any of that ideologically inculcated poison. Just kids serving their country, making some money for college. You think those people would fire on a crowd of American citizens fighting to preserve the Constitution, when they themselves have taken the same oath? Think again.

Unlike the those poor, unarmed, psychologically battered Jews, Poles, homosexuals and uncounted other souls lost in the mid 1940s, NO ONE is pulling ANY kids out of this crowd's house at night and going home fully staffed, ready to try again tomorrow. Understand? THAT is the point.

Kick down 100 doors of self-proclaimed French pacifists, grab the women and kids, and haul them away. Then try again in Texas, with 100 NRA members. Collate, or rather, have a surviving relative collate the results. Extrapolate the abductors' rates of casualties to determine the total number of murdering swine needed. See what percentage of jackbooted thugs have a suicide wish and then determine the number of men you will need to disarm, kidnap and murder 50 million armed people.

These trust the people freedoms are so deeply engrained in the fabric of America as to be almost hereditary, I think. I used to worry that we'd bred that out of us, and then along comes Todd Beamer and company on United Flight 93, who, first among us that day, realized they were being marched to their deaths and decided to do something about it. Not for themselves, because by taking that action they knew they were doomed. They did it for us. Not only to save the lives of those on the ground for whom their aircraft was headed, but to remind us of who we are as a people, to add to the list of ordinary Americans who can gather extraordinary courage and resolve because they have been trusted all their lives by their government and their fellow citizens.

We are a nation of unruly immigrants, self-selecting people who placed bold action above endless suffering, sold what little they had and bought passage to take a chance on a place they had never seen except in their quiet hopes, a land our 40th President, Ronald Reagan, described as “a beacon, a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home." Intellectuals have called Ronald Reagan a moron, but that is to be expected from people incapable of being moved by anything other than the sound of their own bitter and small voices in a world too full of hope for them to grasp.

We are, and remain, the descendents of people who had had quite enough of being told what to do by inbred aristocratic fops and unelected, intellectual sadists. When Europeans call us simplisme, they show themselves incapable of recognizing the difference between intelligence, of which we are amply endowed, and intellectualism, that circle-jerk of coffee table revolution and basement politburo planning that we have never had much patience with.

To those who doubt our mental sophistication, I would remind you that our grandparents walked upon the moon. And why is it that of all we produce and all we exult, the only things that seem to have caught on in Europe are McDonald's and Baywatch? That says much more about them than it does about us, and none of it good, I'm afraid.

We as a nation suffer an appalling number of handgun-related deaths each year --- perhaps 11,000 of them. The number is not important; each is a personal tragedy and those lives can never be replaced.

If we attempt to reduce this horrible number by banning handguns, we are taking away the property of a person who has broken no laws by a government whose legitimacy is determined by a document that specifically allows that property, namely guns.

Destroy that trust by punishing the innocent, by pulling a plank from the Bill of Rights, and the contract between the government and the people falls apart. Once the Second Amendment goes, the First will soon follow, because if some unelected elite determines that the people can't be trusted with dangerous guns then it's just a matter of time until they decide they can't be trusted with dangerous ideas, either. Dangerous ideas have killed many millions more people than dangerous handguns - listen to the voices from the Gulag, the death camps, and all the blood-soaked killing fields through history.

The Framers, in their wisdom, put the 2nd Amendment there to give teeth to the revolutionary, unheard-of idea that the power rests with We The People. They did not depend on good will or promises. They made sure that when push came to shove we'd be the ones doing the pushing and shoving, not the folks in Washington. And by the way, gun rights supporters are frequently mocked when they say it deters foreign invasion - after all, come on, grow up, be realistic: Who's nuts enough to invade America? Exactly. It's unthinkable. Good. 2nd Amendment Mission 1 accomplished.

But back to the undeniable domestic cost: When confronted with the idea of banning handguns to reduce this horrible toll, many handgun defenders are tempted to point to the numbers killed on the highways each year --- perhaps four times that number --- and ask why we don’t ban cars as well.

The logical response is that bans on travel - cars, airplanes, etc. - are a false analogy compared to banning guns because cars have a clear benefit while guns don't do anything other than kill what they are aimed at.

While that is exactly true, I think it misses the point, which to me is simply this: We'd never ban car travel to avoid thousands of highway deaths. It's clearly not worth it in both economic and personal freedom terms. We chose, reluctantly, and with many a lost loved one in mind, to keep on driving.

Here is my dry-eyed, cold-hearted, sad conclusion: I believe that the freedom, convenience and economic viability provided by the automobile is worth the 40,000 lives we lose to automotive deaths each year --- a number made more horrible by the fact that perhaps 40% are related to drunk driving and therefore preventable.

By the same calculation, I accept that the freedoms entrusted to the people of the United States is worth the 11,000 lives we lose to gun violence each year.

I wish I could make both those numbers go away. I will support any reasonable campaign to make them as low as possible.

But understand this: 11,000 handgun deaths a year, over four years is very roughly 50,000 killed. In Nazi Germany, an unarmed population was unable to resist the abduction and murder of 6,000,000 people in a similar period: a number 120 times higher. Throw in the midnight murders of the Soviets, the Chinese, the various and sundry African and South American genocides and purges and political assassinations and that number grows to many hundreds, if not several thousand times more killings in unarmed populations.

Visualize this to fully appreciate the point. Imagine the Superbowl. Every player on the field is a handgun victim. All the people in the stands are the victims who were unable to resist with handguns. Those are historical facts.

I, myself, am willing to pay that price as a society – knowing full well that I or a loved one may be part of that terrible invoice. I wish it was lower. Obviously, I wish it didn’t exist at all. But any rational look into the world shows us places where the numbers of innocents murdered by their own governments in unarmed nations are far, far higher.

Of course, many societies have far lower numbers. Japan is a fine example. I'm sure if the United States had 2000 years of a culture whose prize assets are conformity and submission then our numbers would be a lot lower. Alas, we are not that society. Thank God, we are not that society.

It is abundantly clear that the rate of handgun murders in the United States is not uniform. Very large murder rates can be observed in small, exceedingly violent populations of every race in this country, and these rates seem to be more related to issues of income, education and living conditions. Certainly guns are freely available in areas where our murder rates are appallingly high. They are also found in very large numbers in communities where handgun crime is virtually nonexistent.

Doesn’t that tell us that there something deeper at work here? Could it be, perhaps, that the problem is not with the number of guns in this country but rather in the hearts of those who we allow to wield them, repeatedly? Could it really be as simple as apprehending, and punishing, those that would do harm to innocents and to civilization? Rather than banning guns, should we not attack the moral rot that infests these small, violent populations of every color who put such horrible numbers at our feet?

Assume for a moment you could vaporize every gun on the planet. Would crime go away? Or would ruthless, physically strong gangs of young men be essentially able to roam free and predate at will?

The history of civilization shows time and time again how decent, sophisticated city dwellers amass wealth through cooperation and the division of labor - only to be victimized by ruthless gangs of raping, looting cutthroats who couldn't make a fruit basket, sweeping down on them, murdering them and carting away the loot, to return a few years later, forever, ad infinitum. Vikings, Mongols, desperadoes of every stripe - they are a cancer on humanity but there they are and there they have always been.

If civilization is worth having (and I believe it is) then it has to be defended, because the restraining virtues of justice, compassion and respect for laws are products of that civilizing force and completely unknown to those who would do it harm.

Therefore, since I believe in this civilization, in its laws, science, art and medicine, I believe we must be prepared to defend it against what I feel no embarrassment for calling the Forces of Darkness. Those forces could be raiders on horseback, jackbooted Nazi murderers, ecstatic human bombs or some kid blowing away a shopkeeper.

For the gun-ban argument to be convincing, you'd have to show me a time before shopkeepers were blown away, hacked away, pelted away or whatever the case may be. You would have to show me a time in history before the invention of the firearm, when crime and raiding and looting did not exist, when murders and rapes did not exist. We may lose 11,000 people to handguns a year. How many would we lose without any handguns, if murderers and rapists roamed free of fear, ignoring reprisal from citizens or police? I don't know. You don't know either. Maybe it's a lot fewer people, and maybe, in a world where strength and ruthlessness trump all, it would be a far higher one.

You may argue that only the police should be allowed to carry guns. Consider this carefully. Do we really want to create an unelected subculture that views itself as so elite and virtuous as to be the only ones worthy of such power, trust and authority? Have we not clearly seen the type of people drawn to such exclusive positions of authority, and the attitudes and arrogance it promotes?

Furthermore, I can't see any moral distinction between a policeman and a law-abiding citizen. Policemen are drawn from the ranks of law-abiding citizens. They are not bred in hydroponics tanks. They are expected to show restraint and use their weapon as a last resort. Millions upon millions of citizens, a crowd more vast than entire armies of police, do exactly this every day.

If all of these horrors had sprung up as a result of the invention of the handgun I'd be right there beside those calling for their destruction.

But clearly, this is not the case. In our cowboy past we used to say that "God created Man, but Sam Colt made them equal." This is simple enough to understand. It means that a villager, let's say a schoolteacher, can defeat a human predator who may have spent his entire life practicing the art of war. Firearms are what tipped the balance toward civilization by eliminating a lifetime spent studying swordplay or spear play or pointed-stick play. The bad guys have always used weapons and they always will. The simple truth about guns is that they are damn effective and even easier to operate. They level the playing field to the point where a woman has a chance against a gang of thugs or a police officer can control a brawl.

I don't see how vaporizing all the guns in the world would remove crime or violence - history shows these have always been with us and show no signs of responding favorably to well-reasoned arguments or harsh language. I wish it were not true. I wish the IRS did not exist either, but there it is.

Criminals, and criminal regimes ranging from The Brow-Ridged Hairy People That Live Among the Distant Mountains all the way through history to the Nazis and the Soviets, have and will conspire to take by force what they cannot produce on their own. These people must be stopped. The genius of the 2nd Amendment is that it realizes that these people could be anybody - including the U.S. Army. That is why this power, like the other powers, is vested in the people. Nowhere else in the world is this the case. You can make a solid argument that the United States is, by almost any measure, the most prosperous, successful nation in history. I'm not claiming this is because every American sleeps with a gun under the pillow - the vast majority do not. I do claim it is the result of a document that puts faith and trust in the people - trusts them with government, with freedom, and with the means of self-defense. You cannot remove that lynchpin of trust without collapsing the entire structure. Many observers of America never fully understand what we believe in our bones, namely, that the government doesn't tell us what we can do - WE tell THOSE bastards just how far they can go.

Of course, all of this is completely whimsical, because, like nuclear weapons, guns are HERE and they are not going to go away. You cannot just vaporize them. Honest people might be compelled to turn in their weapons; criminals clearly will not. So what do you propose? Forget the moral high ground of gun ownership. Again a simple truth, often maligned but demonstrably dead-on accurate: When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.

The American Revolution surely is unique in the sense that the ringleaders - Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Hamilton, etc - were men of property, wealth and prestige; in other words, men with something to lose. Compare this to any other revolution in history, where the ringleaders were outsiders; plotters staring in the windows of prosperity, powerless. The Russian Revolution, French Revolution, etc - these were joined by desperate people fighting mind-numbing poverty and severe political repression.

And yet the Founding Fathers were men who were as well-off as any men on earth at the time, and furthermore, any of them could have been (and were) political leaders under His Majesty's government. The average colonial farmer likewise led a life far more comfortable than those of his cousins in Europe, to say nothing of Asia or Africa.

For all practical intents and purposes, these people had absolutely nothing to gain, and everything in the world to lose, by taking on the greatest military force the world had ever known. Why would they do this? What possible motivation could well-off, comfortable people have? Militarily, they seemed certain to lose, and they knew before they started - and Patrick Henry made the abundantly clear - that they would be hanged as common criminals if they failed.

Of course, the answer is, they did it to be free. And they did it to make the rest of their nation - the poor, the disenfranchised - free as well. And it is clear as crystal from their collective writings that they took that risk to make Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore and the rest of us in their unseen posterity free, too. They could look down the dim, moonlit riverbanks of the future and see a society worthy of their sacrifice and determination. They knew that God, (or for me, chance perhaps) had put them together in a time and place where bold, courageous action followed by much suffering, doubt, blood and fear could, perhaps, unleash in mankind an energy source the likes of which they could not imagine.

So for me, a child of that bet - that guess, that commitment, that roll of the dice - for ME, I owe them the defense of that freedom, and I will do my poor mite to pass it on as best I can. These men pledged to each other their Lives, their Fortunes and their sacred Honor. They pledged that to ME. I owe them. I do not have the right to take away someone else's freedom and property - it is offensive to me to even contemplate it. Of course, if someone breaks the freedom/responsibility covenant by committing a crime, then all bets are off. To that extent, I view handgun murderers not just as criminals but as traitors as well.

I hate seeing our kids get shot on the street, I hate it, I hate it. But that is the cost of freedom. People get horribly killed on Spring Break road trips to Florida at age 18. They're driving drunk. We could prevent them from going. We would save lives. Enron and MCI steal like the worst characters from Dickens, taking people's Christmas dinners so they can have gold plated faucets. We could regulate more, make things harder for the millions of honest businesses that build and trade honorably each day. The day may come when someone flies a Cessna into a stadium. We can ban the airplanes. Ditto for pleasure boats. We can ban and confiscate and regulate to our hearts content, and we will undoubtedly save many, many innocent lives by doing so. All for the price of a little freedom.

I believe we should punish the perpetrators. I will not agree to restrict the freedoms of the vast numbers of people who abide by the concomitant responsibility and live lives of honesty and decency. And there is more than the physical restriction of freedoms: There is the slow erosion of self-reliance, self-confidence and self-determination among a nation. The more your government restricts your options, the more you psychologically look to government to keep you safe, fed, clothed, housed and sustained.

There is a word for people who are fed, clothed, housed and sustained fully by others, and that word is SLAVES.

If Congress were occupied by angels and Michael sat in a throne of glory in the Oval Office, I would listen to what they said for my own greater good. But no government is made of angels, not even the Canadian government in all its decency and compassion. So who determines how much freedom we trade for how much security? People do. People are not unknown to place their own interests above those of others. There is even a vanishing remote chance that Jean Cretien has at some point perhaps put personal interest above those of his constituents.

The real genius of the Founding Fathers was that these great and good men had the foresight and the courage to look into their own darker motives, and construct a system that prevents the accumulation of power.

The Constitution they created could only be torn up by force of arms. And that is why the Founders left that power in the hands of the people, who together can never be cowed by relatively small numbers of thugs holding the only guns.

As PJ O'Rourke points out, the U.S. Constitution is less than a quarter the length of the owner's manual for a 1998 Toyota Camry, and yet it has managed to keep 300 million of the world's most unruly, passionate people safe, prosperous and free. Smarter people than me may disagree with that document - I'm for not touching a comma.

So as a proud son of those brave men, I'll take freedom - all of it - and because I accept the benefits of those freedoms, I'll solemnly take the responsibilities as well. I may someday lose a child on a trip to Spring Break, but I'll never lock them in the basement to keep them safe. And I'll accept the fact that living in Los Angeles puts me at risk for being shot to death because I feel the freedom is worth it. I breathe that freedom every day, and hey, we all gotta go sometime. I'll continue to fly experimental airplanes because I am careful, meticulous, precise and responsible, and yet the day may come when I am out of altitude, out of airspeed and out of ideas all at the same time. Oh well. I have seen and done things up there that you cannot imagine and I cannot describe. Freedom.

I respect and admire Canada. Although we have chosen certain diverging paths since the days of the Revolution, we have been, and always will be, the best of friends despite our differences. Canada is unquestionably as decent, modest and good a society as exists on Earth today. And yet while Canadians frequently point out that they are free of our vices, I perceive that they are free of our greatness as well. You can't have it both ways.

Me, personally, I'll take the spirit, ingenuity and passion that can plant the American flag on the moon over pre-paid health care. I can buy health care. Thirty three years after watching the event as a ten year old boy, I’m still trying to go to the moon. (Some of us in the Mojave desert may still have few tricks up our sleeve on this one. We're still free to build airplanes and spacecraft from our garages and fly the goddamn things. Try and keep up with a nation that builds working spacecraft in the garage. As a hobby. Out of pocket. For FUN.)

And everyone who has taken America's disdain for intellectualism as a lack of intelligence has woken up looking at our dust trail as we speed ever faster beyond them. We're not just a smart country - we're THE smart country. Behold the list of inventions and Nobel Prize winning scientists. Einstein was an American. Of course he emigrated here --- we all did. Germany threw him away - he's ours now, by his choice, not ours. Ditto Von Braun and numerous others, not to mention the legion of homegrown geniuses like the Wright Brothers and Robert Goddard, just to draw two names from the narrow field I know best. Staggeringly brilliant men and women, the best, most active minds on the planet pulling for the same team.

Canada is free of many of the foreign policy disasters and failures of vision that the United States has been correctly charged with, but they are free too of the satisfaction and pride of being history’s singular bulwark of freedom and prosperity, and the eternal, unintimidated scourge of tyrants and murderers from the Barbary pirates, through the armed might of the 20th Century’s parade of totalitarians and right up to Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden and the criminal lunatics that run North Korea.

Our failures and disgraces cruelly remind us that we, like every other government, are composed of fallible men and women with no divine ability to read the future or foresee all outcomes. But these failures are failures of action, action borne of confidence and a belief in our way of life, and come all the more painful for their contrast to the everyday standards to which we hold ourselves as a people and a nation. For it is an undeniable fact that no great nation in history has held a shadow of our measure of power, and yet exercised it with such restraint, nor does any time in the bloody history of warfare reflect a people so magnanimous in victory against enemies sworn to our murder and destruction. From our first hour, we have been, and remain, the beacon of hope and freedom for a world desperate and longing for such an example, and we can measure our success in building such a place by the numbers of those who are literally dying in an attempt to come and be part of it.

So take your pick: Freedom or security? Greatness or goodness? Passion or decency?

Our respective ancestors made their choice and here we are. I respect anyone’s right to chose differently. I only speak up to defend the choice we Americans made as a deeply spiritual one, borne of reflection and danger and a spectacular triumph against all odds. I cannot stand idly by to hear people denounce our freedoms as the dimwitted macho posturing of a mob of illiterate uncultured idiots who are so vulgar and uncouth as to still believe in Hollywood myths manufactured for our simple, complacent, unsophisticated nature.

From the Revolution until today, the choice for full freedom with all its accompanying excesses and failures is a profoundly well-reasoned, moral and ethical choice, and the result has been national and personal success unparalleled in the history of this world.

I am deeply proud to be a member of such a magnificent group of people. I hope to God I can give back as much as I owe.

You are the most cynical SOB I've ever met on Free Republic.

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Thank you very much for the complement. That cynicism has been hard won through considerable cost, work and experience. It required years to liberate myself from the pretty lies I and others where programmed with in our youth.

I no longer believe ministers or priests don't molest kids or that 30% aren't engaged in sex with congregation members. I no longer believe presidents are intelligent gods who don't hump interns in the Oval Office. I don't believe all cops and politicians are honest. I used to believe education was education and those who educated were infallable.There are many things I no longer believe.

I take each person and event on a case by case basis separate from intimidating trappings or aura of office, from descriptions by media, from glorifying picture on a war, and from the opinions of those around me. It's a road less traveled. When you deal with me, you must stand rigorous inspection.

I think you to be among those who cling to earlier programming and to wishes that the world not be as it is. That's as charitable as I can state it.

only to be victimized by ruthless gangs of raping, looting cutthroats who couldn't make a fruit basket, sweeping down on them, murdering them and carting away the loot, to return a few years later, forever, ad infinitum. Vikings, Mongols, desperadoes of every stripe - they are a cancer on humanity but there they are and there they have always been.

One slight historical correction. While the Vikings were without doubt ruthless raiders, they were hardly morons who "couldn't make a fruit basket". They had a fairly sophisticated economy based on trade and agriculture in addition to raiding, and were some of the most talented navigators, boat builders, and sailors of the day -- perhaps the most talented. They were also skilled artisans whose metalwork is on display in museums around the world.

In fact, one could draw some parallel to the Germans of the 1930s here: a talented, culturally rather advanced people that were able to reconcile that trait with a frightening streak of cruelty and bellicosity.

Actually, RLK, I continue to pity you. You sound like countless other folks who have been "burned" by religion (I do not equate organized religion as being equal to Christian faith) and are living a life in reaction to being burned. My mother was one. I've met countless lapsed Catholics and Christians who sound just like you, though with a less acerbic bite to their writing. They decry the same problems as you, and have the same reactions as you. Unfortunately, my friend, you are not especially unique in your sentiments.

You seem to feel that the yardstick measuring the worth of your life is one related to your ability to throw words that bite and hurt. Well, that puts you in good company with others -- Maureen Dowd of the New York Times comes to mind, though she is admittedly of a different political persuasion. But your yardstick is foolish, and as you pound away on your keyboard, slaying the dragons you see out there on the horizon, you are merely blowing in the wind or climbing ladders leaning against the wrong tree. Maureen Dowd thinks she wins the "best biting wit of the year award" each December, but she sways no one with her writing and just gives New York liberals a warm feeling in their heart while drinking their coffee.

There are other ways to heal yourself than just being angry. I know you won't listen. Perhaps someday you'll be transformed like Saul of Tarsus. I'll conclude all my remarks on this note.

I respectfully submit that you are wrong. George Bush might be disappointing you but he is first and foremost a man who intends to be an effective politician. This requires that he pick his battles and especially select his hills to die on.

A most effective politician - but not very good for this country. Yes, it will keep him in power and yes he might win battles - but to what end. Not to the betterment of this country.

We have been hearing this 'Bush knows what is best' for quite some time now - when will we see any evidence of this? I am being serious here. WE got a tax cut - that has evaporated - what else?

There has to come a time when even those who think he walks on water are going to have to admit that he may not know what he is doing, or that he may know exactly what he is doing and that is very frightening.

"A most effective politician - but not very good for this country. Yes, it will keep him in power and yes he might win battles - but to what end. Not to the betterment of this country.
We have been hearing this 'Bush knows what is best' for quite some time now - when will we see any evidence of this? I am being serious here. WE got a tax cut - that has evaporated - what else?

Time will tell -- specifically, the next two years. But it looks like you are focusing on your own needs ("where's my tax cut") and not national needs. Your motives for criticizing Bush do not sound especially upright.

BTW, I equate the term "effective politician" not cynically (e.g., like those who think all politicians are crooked, and an effective politician is one who is especially good at getting away with it) but the way one would view Abe Lincoln as an effective politician. Everybody hated Abe during his two terms -- the Northerners, because he didn't hew to the party line for the newly formed Republican party, and the Southerners, for obvious reasons. Yet Abe was a man moved by his faith and his strong convictions. Time has proven him to be great. Read the books "Freedom" or "Lincoln" to get a glimpse at a President who led the nation through a very difficult time and was wholly unpopular. His own backers in some ways hated him more than his enemies in the South, whatever the issue -- taxes, slavery, the Emancipation Proclamation, conscription, conduct of the war, selection of military commanders, political alliances.

Is Bush a clone of Lincoln? Of course not. Yet, I think that the issues facing Bush are equally daunting. He has to steer a nation and a world into and through tense military times that could end satisfactorily or cause the eruption of a worldwide war. At the same time, he has the opportunity to have the most siginficant impact on the nation's economy that any President has had in a century. These things take time. And thankfully, most Americans are trusting him to do it right, not whining on the sidelines about how he isn't addressing their own pet issue.

There are two many Freepers who focus on their own little selfish project or issue, and yap and yammer away how Bush isn't doing this or that. Such narrow focus is beneath us. And, my guess is that those who complain most vigorously are ones who have never held leadership positions in their company or organization.

The issues facing our nation are weighty. I trust Bush's instincts and his decision-making ability. I do not think he walks on water. And, I will let the test of time prove whether my forecast is right or not. I would not trade places with him for all the money in the world. I also cannot conceive of another Republican whom I would rather have in the Oval Office.

I only used the tax cut because that is the first thing the blind supporters of Bush bring up. It was insignificant to me or anyone else.

His strange friendship with Fox and allowing Mexico to ignore the soveriegnty of this country. His continued support of illegal aliens and the worse than open border with Mexico - even though it has been proven that ME men are coming across the border - paying 30,000 a piece to drug runners to get them here.

He may be the first sitting President to criticize the Christian relgion because a Christian made a statement regarding another religion.

He, if not orchestrated than pushed, Lott's debacle. The congress and the executive office are/should be totally separate. HE crossed the line, publicly and in a big way.

He is getting dangerously close to playing the race card - has pushed more big spending measures than the Democrats - has often and loudly proclaimed 'Islam is a religion of peace' and threatened anyone who 'harrasses' them - while doing nothing in the same vein for the Christian or other religions in this country.

While pushing through more and more restrictive legislation for American people, he is protecting the rights of illegal aliens.

It took a year to check out the workers at the airports or to register ME aliens.

He is singling out Iraq for attack -why? They might/do/did/will have biological weapons. WEll, guess what? So do a lot of other countries. They might/do/did/will have connections with the terrorists - well guess what? Washington may be the only place in the world that doesn't know or suspect Saudi Arabia absolutely did have connections and financed many of them. We do know N. Korea has nuclear weapons and so does China. Both of those may very well be more of a threat to world stability and the US in particular than Iraq. It seems to me Iraq is pretty well contained. If we were afraid of them exporting biological warfare - wouldn't we have our borders and ports a little better manned. No we would rather make a 'regime change' over there. What exactly is our purpose for the war? We have big trouble brewing right here in our own hemisphere. This could, if not already, spill into this country.

Now those may seem like 'selfish little issues, or narrow focus' but I consider them quite large. Since evidently you 'have held leadership positions in your company or organization', and I therefore I am unqualified to speak - what is a large issue? Do you realize how very frightening and insulting that statement was. It is saying, 'you are just too ignorant to even speak against the President - how dare you'. Did you really read that before you typed it? Do we now have to be qualified to have an opinion on the President or the direction of the country? Are you willing to extend that qualification into the voting booth also? Now those are your qualifications - suppose those in power have other qualifications in mind?

Well go ahead and rip to shreds and demean your fellow countrymen because we dare question the President - if it makes you feel better. It is quite chilling, however, this blind loyalty, and viciousness to anyone who questions the President.

These people are politicians - our employees. They have their own agenda. The best we can hope is their agenda and ours will mesh in places. But guess what, we have to always, no matter what party or what person is in office assume the emperor just might not have on any clothes.

The tone of the some of the speeches (all is well) (all will be well) seems like the tone I would imagine many of those European Jews used with each other behind those closed doors. They could not fathom that anything really bad could happen. I suspect it is the same for people down through the ages when their world is in serious danger. Nothing bad can happen - after all this is America - right <

" ... therefore I am unqualified to speak ... 'you are just too ignorant to even speak against the President ... Do we now have to be qualified to have an opinion on the President or the direction of the country?"

Sorry to have touched a raw nerve and forgive rapid typing that was not adequately proofed. What I did mean is that those who have never held leadership positions -- at work, at church, in a volunteer organization -- have never learned that leadership involves compromise, and that timing is critical. Those who have never led never learn that their constituents are never satisfied. I did not mean to imply that leaders are the only ones qualified to criticize the President or that leadership roles are a qualification for voting. I think you got carried away. But I do apologize for not being careful with my words.

But, I suggest you become an elder at your church, or join the board of the local YMCA, or be on the board of your homeowner's association, if you aren't a manager at your job. Your constituents will be calling and complaining constantly that you aren't doing enough. And, once you've got your feet wet you will be thinking things like:

"Can't they realize I can't do everything at once?"

"Don't they know that if I don't finesse this issue I will be totally marginalized in this role -- and might as well resign?"

"Don't they know that making sausage is messy?"

"They elected me to do a job. Why don't they trust my instincts in carrying it out and give me some time and a chance?"

I sympathize with most of the complaints you made in your long reply to me. But effecting the change is incredibly difficult. And, until you know you to change organizations you will never know how difficult it is.

It's easy to be 100% pure in your convictions if your civic duty is merely to vote and write letters to the editor. If your civic duty is to lead, about the best you can do is be 100% pure in your heart and keep everyone guessing publicly about what you are doing while you decide which battles to fight and which hills are worth dying for.

Bush's hill to die for is national security. That's why we're fighting Iraq. And I want 90% of his focus on that to ensure my children live in an America we recognize. About the worst outcome would be to undermine his military leadership for a more minor issue like immigration. But after a military victory in Iraq he will be able to accomplish more domestically -- but once again, probably only one issue at a time.

Well, you supposed that anyone who complained about President Bush had never had any leadership roles, etc. That is incorrect and presumptious on your part. But you see, I would never have made a compromise that destroyed the organization. The object here is to keep American and keep it free not pander to whatever group has your ear.

How can you say that the open border is 'a more minor issue'? If Hussein decides he would like to use one of those biological weapons he is supposed to have, how do you think he will get it here? It will have to come through our borders or ports. Why do you think the ME men are paying drug runners 30,000 each to come here? To make a better life? I suggest to ' take a few lives'. You cannot divorce our national defense from our borders - they are our first line of defense. Now more than ever in history. WE are not fighting an enemy that will attack us with tanks and big guns - they will attack one man at a time. The only way they can get here is through our borders. It is insanity to try to separate the two - although just be pretending to ignore it President Bush has a lot of people snowed on that subject.

Now as for the immigration of the illegals who are here for jobs and freebies - what good is it going to do us if we do effect a 'regime change' in Iraq only to find that our country is full of people who will 'vote with Mexico in mind' as their past leader told them to do? To not care if our states are broke, our property taxes are skyrocketing, our hospitals are broke, healthcare is becoming increasingly expensive to citizens, education is seriously impaired due to special needs of immigrants, cities are broke, basic services are being overtaxed, our law enforcement agencies and judicial systems are overrrun to the point, the illegals who break laws are just ignored (and I don't just mean immigration laws). Now if something is not done about that your children will not recognize the America we have, whether Hussein stays in power or not.

I suspect Hussein, if he does intend to attack America, already has his people in place and is probably bringing in more each day.

President Bush does not consider immigration a minor issue - it is a very important issue to him - he has shown that. His agenda for it and mine are just on opposite sides. He intends to do nothing about the illegal immigration even if it does put this country at risk to terrorists and certainly at risk economically. Now on that subject, he has not compromised - his agenda is exactly the same as it was the day he took office.

Now you go ahead and follow him blindly and viciously attack anyone who questions him. You can also attempt to believe our borders have nothing to do with national defense when you are dealing with terrorists - but once again, we should all be willing to suggest the emporer just might not be wearing anything. Even if it means you are told how unqualified or ignorant or 'just don't understand'. I fear I understand only too well.

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