To: TokyoMex who wrote (52887 ) 2/7/1999 1:52:00 PM From: sean o'connor Read Replies (2) | Respond to
Calm down Joe, you're scaring the children. The world's a tough place, always has been. Survey 1966-1970, 500,000 people on the White House lawn, another 500,000 boys in Vietnam wondering what happened to high school. The Russians crush Prague while we sit on our hands. A billion Chinese suffer the Cultural Revolution as their thoughts are put on trial. The Mideast doesn't rumble, it explodes in shooting war. In Mexico City students in the spirit of the times protest the injustice of spending billions on the 1966 Mexico City Olympics. One problem, they forgot they were not in the USA, result 200-300 protesters were machine-gunned were they stood. In Ireland, Bobby Sands and 2 of his IRA cohorts didn't fast, they starved themselves to death, naked in their cells as the British watched. Starvation was rampant in Africa and Bangladesh, the color line was absolute in South Africa. SE Asia was tough on Americans and their allies but if you lived there, watch out. Upwards of a million Vietnamese died just getting in the way and Pol Pot was just starting his plan to return Cambodia to the Stone Age . If you could read or wore glasses, you might have been one of his several million victims. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, George Wallace, Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, Bobby Clark and countless others challenged the powers that be which proved to be dangerous, indeed. Look at 1939-1945, if you want to see the earth tremble. Americans tend not to appreciate the stability we enjoy here and what brought us to this condition. We stand on the shoulders of those who went before us and they were not all giants, but mostly common folk. What we struggle to preserve at home and export to the world is freedom, based in the rule of law going back to the Magna Carta and incarnate in the Constitution of the United States of America. The ruled and rulers must heel to the rule of law otherwise the seeds of tyranny and destruction are sown. Those who came before did not sacrifice to preserve our rights to a materially rich life but to preserve the freedom and dignity God granted to every individual. From someone who lived it, "I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man" Thomas Jefferson. This is the battle afoot today, whether we heel to principles of the 50 generations that came before or kneel to the altar of nascent tyranny.
