Speak Out

I wrote the following words about 10 years ago, but they are still relevant today.  - MW

The direction this country has taken troubles me, and it is time to speak out.

First, let me say that there are many terrible things in the world and when a tower full of civilians , or a shopping mall, or a wedding party, gets blown up and innocent people are killed, it is right to respond, but the lives of the twin towers have been avenged long since, and it is time to look past that.

Secrecy is the refuge of the scoundrel. This applies to secrecy in government as well as in business. As we add to secrecy, we multiply scoundrels.

There is nothing more troubling than American citizens being held without bond, without being charged and in secret. The very idea that this can happen in the "Land of the Free" is shocking and contemptible. What happened to "Innocent until proven guilty" or "due process". Have the sons and daughters of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams become so afraid that we must sell our souls to the devil for our safe cages?

An ancestor of mine fought in the Revolutionary War. Now, after 200 years, we are no longer safe from our own government.

Our hold on Liberty has been tenuous at best. At no time have we been truly free of tyrants and demagogues, and the very nature of freedom has become a spectre without substance, an unreachable ideal as dangerous to the mind and soul as any drug. Understand, there is no absolute freedom this side of hell, nor ever shall be. But the principles on which this country was founded are much more simple than that: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. A person has the right to keep his life and freedom and to have a reasonable chance to live a decent life with his own two hands. He has a right to expect no-one will break into his house and seize his possessions or put him in jail or slavery or maim him or kill him without due process and trial by his peers. He does not have the right to destroy his neighbor or deprive his neighbor of any of the rights he himself enjoys. Is this so wrong, or hard to put into practice?

It is time to defend the basic idea of liberty. Not, "I can do whatever the hell I want despite you." That is just another kind of slavery. But the liberty to think your own thoughts, to live your own life as long as you leave the rights of others alone. The right to live a decent life by your own two hands.

Our rights, our freedoms are not in danger from half-crazed zealots from a faraway desert. Our freedoms are in danger from our own fears. We are being led by the hand into a corporate cage, where we have all the security and respect of pigs bound for slaughter. We will be well-defended from the wolves, but not from the butcher's knife. Like domestic animals, we will have the freedom to run the confines of our cage, as long as we make no attempt to escape.

Speak out against injustice, but even more against secrecy. Corporations and assassins work best in the dark, and cannot stand the light of day.

Work for real and fair elections. If we lose the electoral process we have only bloodshed as a way of making change.

Speak out.

There are things more valuable than life. Dignity, honor, justice, these are worth dying for. Speak out against "Life at any cost", for such forms the links of your chains.

Speak out against racism. The Muslims are no more our enemies than the Jews were a century ago. In each culture there is good and there is evil and there is much that is merely misunderstood, requiring only that we all treat each other decently.

Speak out against vengeance, it will only be followed by more vengeance. Only mercy and justice in equal parts are strong enough to bind our wounds.

Speak out for due process. Suspicion without proof is not enough for judgment.

Speak out.