I want you to pass this message along to your boss;
I believe you are a paid agent for Mr. Gore, and that you are passing information to him. Please pass this along to the right person.
******************
Dear Sir (and I use the word in the formal sense only);
You don't know me. I'm just a regular person, nothing much special about me at all. I won't get into my history, my scars, my religious belief, my race, creed, or color.
I want you to know that you are not fooling me. I know what you are trying to do. I will not stand for it, sir. I will not stand by and let you do what you are trying to do.
I just saw House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, a Democrat, and Secretary of Commerce William M. Daley, a Democrat, on television.
Mr. Gephardt announced the American people that "if it were not for the Bush team trying at every turn to stop the recount, it would already be done."
Mr. Daley then said the same thing.
The utterance of those words tells me that Mr. Gephardt and Mr. Daley are damned liars.
They are unethical and politically and morally corrupt, and they are not fit to hold public office.
They are lying, corrupt, unethical bastards, sir.
There seems to be a great misunderstanding in this country right now, and I wanted you to understand how I feel about it. I don't claim to speak for anyone else. If you want to discount what I say, or somehow analyze it as being the result of some partisan political belief I have, that is your right. But you should understand that if you choose to do that, you will be wrong.
The misunderstanding appears to me to be that I am too ignorant to understand what is going on in the world, and what needs to be done to keep this country strong. It seems to me that I have been grouped into some giant nebulous amalgam of humanoids that don't know what we want, don't understand how things really work, and need to "guided" by a "leader" that "understands" our shortcomings and inability to grasp the truth of human behavior.
I get the distinct feeling that when your attorney David Boies announces on national television that he thinks he knows what the "American People" want, that he actually believes what he is saying.
You have thrust Mr. Gore into a cesspool of political turmoil. Mr. Gore, being somewhat rational at least in the beginning, did not understand who he was dealing with.
I do.
You have missed the mark on me, sir. You have missed the mark very badly.
We have a republic in the United States. You, and the people that surround you, have chosen to violate the rule of law in order to install your candidate by any means necessary. You saw a chink in the armor of the rule of law (the Electoral College) and you decided to risk your soul to attack it.
You will fail, sir.
You will fail not because you get less electoral votes, not because someone on the other side does some nefarious deed to thwart you, not because of some obscure error in your tactics.
You will fail because you are wrong, and what you are doing is wrong.
Being wrong is not always a crime. I've been wrong many times. I'm sure we all have.
But, beyond politics, beyond race, beyond ideological beliefs, beyond the hopes and dreams of any person who lives in this great country, is the basic underlying fabric of the republic. The founders of the country expressed that fabric very well. You've read all about it, so I won't get into it.
Consider these words, if you will:
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America,
And to the republic for which it stands.
One nation, under God, indivisible,
with liberty and justice for all.
Here is a story about that pledge that you may have never seen before. This is a direct quote from a speech made by Captain John S. McCain, USN, (Retired) currently representing Arizona in the US Senate.
“As you may know, I spent five and one half years as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War. In the early years of our imprisonment, the NVA kept us in solitary confinement or two or three to a cell. In 1971 the NVA moved us from these conditions of isolation into large rooms with as many as 30 to 40 men to a room. This was, as you can imagine, a wonderful change and was a direct result of the efforts of millions of Americans on behalf of a few hundred POW's 10,000 miles from home.”
“One of the men that moved into my room was a young man named Mike Christian. Mike came from a small town near Selma, Ala.. He didn't wear a pair of shoes `til he was 13 years old. At 17, he enlisted in the US Navy. He later earned a commission by going to Officer Training School.
“Then he became a naval flight officer and was shot down and captured in 1967.
“Mike had a keen and deep appreciation of the opportunities this country and our military provide for people who want to work and want to succeed.”
“As part of the change in treatment, the Vietnamese allowed some prisoners to receive packages from home. In some of these packages were handkerchiefs, scarves and other items of clothing. Mike got himself a bamboo needle.
“Over a period of a couple of months, he created an American flag and sewed it on the inside of his shirt. Every afternoon, before we had a bowl of soup, we would hang Mike's shirt on the wall of the cell and say the Pledge of Allegiance. I know the Pledge of Allegiance may not seem the most important part of our day now, but I can assure you that in that stark cell it was indeed the most important and meaningful event.
“One day the Vietnamese searched our cell, as they did periodically, and discovered Mike's shirt with the flag sewn inside, and removed it. That evening they returned, opened the door of the cell, and for the benefit of all of us, beat Mike Christian severely for the next couple of hours. Then they opened the door of the cell and threw him in. We cleaned him up as well as we could.
“The cell in which we lived had a concrete slab in the middle on which we slept. Four naked light bulbs hung in each corner of the room. As I said, we tried to clean up Mike as well as we could. After the excitement died down, I looked in the corner of the room, and sitting there beneath that dim light bulb with a piece of red cloth, another shirt and his bamboo needle, was my friend, Mike Christian. He was sitting there with his eyes almost shut from the beating he had received, making another American flag.
“He was not making the flag because it made Mike Christian feel better. He was making that flag because he knew how important it was to us to be able to pledge our allegiance to our flag and country.
“So the next time you say the Pledge of Allegiance, you must never forget the sacrifice and courage that thousands of Americans have made to build our nation and promote freedom around the world. You must remember our duty, our honor, and our country.”
I want to emphasize these words, sir, because I believe Captain McCain was right.
duty : an act or a course of action that is required of one by position, social custom, law, or religion
honor: high respect, as that shown for special merit; esteem
country: the people of a nation or state; populace
These are words only, but the concepts are things that men and women of this country have died painful early death for. They are important concepts to me. You understand that, I trust.
I am not implying that I am more perfect that the next man, or that I am more moral or righteous than anyone else, including you. But you need to understand that I firmly believe that when you put your personal ambition, your personal peccadilloes, your personal neuroses, and your personal gains above these concepts that represent the entire population of this great country, then to that degree you are a traitor to very people you claim to represent.
Good and evil do exist, sir.
Right and wrong do exist. I am not speaking in a religious sense here. I am speaking in a much broader sense. People are not pieces of meat. Human beings have a spiritual essence, despite what you may have been led to believe. How they express that spiritual essence is protected by our Constitution, and I personally respect anyone's right to their religious belief, no matter what it may be.
Mr. Gore was an honorable man that was romanced into doing something dishonorable and illegal. The others surrounding him are the same.
But know this:
I am not alone. We know who you are, and we know what you are trying to do. We know that if you succeed, this great country of ours, the greatest, finest, most honorable, most ethical, most diverse, most liberal, most intelligent, most successful country in the history of this planet, will be no more.
And we will do whatever we need to do to prevent that.
This is not a threat.
Insane and evil people ignore threats.
It is a warning, sir.
Only a warning.
Understand Sun Tsu, sir.
Ignore this warning at your own peril. |
