I think Jesse Helms
is an idiot and morally repugnant for holding up UN funding to further his own goals.
What can I do about it? In case you haven't been watching (reading, listening to,
etc.) the news recently, I have no influence over his decision.
Bullcrap. That's the excuse of the Germans who watched the Jews marched off to the death camps and asked "what can I do about it" and answered themselves "nothing" and went on with their lives while people died. But there were a few who refused to say "nothing," and who acted. Those were the people with courage. Are you one of them? Or are you one of those who turned their heads?
"There's nothing I can do about it." Crap. That's what my neighbors said about racism in our society -- "I don't like it, but there's nothing I can do about it." Our generation showed them yes there is, if you just have the guts to go out there and do it.
Just in about 30 seconds I could think of at least half a dozen things to do about Helms and UN funding. You want a few? What if thousands of your generation went on a hunger strike and vowed not to eat until the UN funding was restored? You think that would get ignored? Get a group and chain yourselves in front of the U.N. Get 10,000 students to march in front of Helms's house and block his driveway. Are they going to arrest 10,000 of you? Nuts. Get a large group and sit in Helms's office (or if you aren't creative enough to figure out a way to get to his office, in the Capitol Rotunda.) Have enough people so that when they arrest one set another set is waiting to take their places. You know something? After a while even the most hardened cop gets tired of arresting people who are just there because they believe things are wrong and they're willing to put their bodies on the line to say so. There's four ideas already. When you have done those, and the funding still isn't restored, come back and I'll give you more. But don't give me this CRAP about how you care so much but there's nothing you can do. There's ALWAYS something you can do. The question is whether you have the will to do it. Are you all talk and no act, or is there any backbone in you?
So far all I've seen out of you is bluster and bluff. Talk, they say, is cheap, and yours is among the cheapest because you want everybody ELSE to solve the problems you complain of instead of getting in there and working to solve them yourself.
If my generation had been like you, the South would STILL be segregated.
You know what Andrew Jackson said? "One man with courage makes a majority." So get yourself out there and make a majority. Then when you're in your 50s you can tell the snot nosed kids starting out how it was when you were saving the world. Otherwise, all you can tell them is how you typed messages on the internet while you let the world go to hell.
Your life. Your choice. Like they say, put up or shut up.
PS - You were suspended for wearing a black armband? That was ruled
unconstitutional in Tinker vs. Des Moines during Vietnam.
Yeah, tell me about it. We were part of the same movement. The Tinker decision came down about six years after I was suspended. So when they were doing it to me, the Courts hadn't yet told them it was unconstitutional. So what, I did it anyhow. You know what I learned from that? Authority doesn't always give you your rights nicely and freely. Sometimes you have to get out there and grab them.
Now go show us what you're made of. Or not made of. |
