4th of july 2008: do we celebrate or begin again?

It is easy to take liberty for granted, when you have never had it taken from you.

Dick Cheney

• we’ll ask the prisoners at Gitmo and get back to you, dick…

• we’d like to ask those who died in Iraq for your oil buddies… just don’t how to reach them

• maybe you could survey, face-to-face, some of those who are no longer free to use their limbs or who lost their peace of mind, their sanity… ask them if your freedom to wage an illegal war was worth the price of their freedom

Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and

another of darkness on the confines of two everlasting hostile empires.

^{Thomas Carlyle}

how do i sort it all out? all the information. all the voices, opinions, arguments, trash. How do i know even what freedom is or what it means. this, a Bureau of Justice stat from 2006: 2,245,189 prisoners or an estimated 497 prison inmates per 100,000 U.S… millions of people in jail in the land of the free. In 2008, we have achieved this milestone: with almost 3 million incarcerated, now ONE OUT OF EVERY 100 AMERICANS IS IN JAIL. They say, in the articles i’ve read, that this is historic.

Men fight for freedom, then they begin to accumulate laws to take it away from themselves.

^{Author Unknown}

perhaps we can make plans now to honor freedom and the anniversary of the historic declaration of liberty in these United States of America. for example. . .

we can help to free Troy Davis on Fourth of July 2008 by flooding the Georgia State Board of Pardons & Paroles with e-mails and hard letters. Amnesty International (AI), among other groups and individuals, is advocating for release of Davis, who has been on death row for 16 years for allegedly murdering a Savannah policeman. AI claims the case has been tainted from the start, with a questionable police investigation, a lack of funding to ensure adequate defense, and an increasingly restrictive appeals process, which has thwarted attempts to present new evidence in the case… Davis was convicted in 1991 solely on the basis of witness testimony, seven out of nine of whom have since recanted or changed their testimony. No murder weapon was found and no physical evidence linked Davis to the crime. Several cited police coercion, and others fear of one of the remaining two witnesses, whom they allege actually committed the crime.

we can discuss The Prison-Industrial Complex with family, friends, and neighbors on Fourth of July 2008. And talk about how crime pays for US prison companies. And, in the land of the free, how U.S. prison population dwarfs that of other nations.

we can e-mail ohmproject’s essay, Police State 2.0: It’s Here to everyone in your e-mail address book on July 4, 2008.

The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.

^{Edmund Burke}

how do i know the real deal from all the noise? what if i now think the NRA’s position on the 2nd Amendment is worth considering.

what will my fellow progressives think as i ponder who poses more danger to my life and freedom…criminals or politicians? i wonder what one million plus dead Iraqis would say to that, if we employed a medium to get us through to the other side, that is.

my senses are overloaded. my brain is taking in more information than it can  process in one day… so initial reactions make severe course changes when my brain finally gets back to me…

as i convulse reading Valtin’s essay, New Reports: U.S.-South Korean Killing Fields, 100,000+ Executed. How do we talk American accountability for committing such horrific acts? As we continue to torture prisoners of war, how do we talk about it at our Fourth of July barbecues?

Here is my advice as we begin the century that will lead to 2081.  First, guard the freedom of ideas at all costs.  Be alert that dictators have always played on the natural human tendency to blame others and to oversimplify.  And don’t regard yourself as a guardian of freedom unless you respect and preserve the rights of people you disagree with to free, public, unhampered expression.  

^{Gerard K. O’Neill, 2081}

tell me. tell me please… this 4 July 2008, do we celebrate or begin again?

My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.

^{Adlai Stevenson}