What makes a country great, what makes our country great, and one of the greatest on earth, is not that our laws allow us to do but what we will fight to allow others to do, even if it is something we, ourselves, do not necessarily believe or support.
What many of my "liberal" friends never got, when I began writing on the LNG issue, is that regardless of what I myself believed, everyone deserved to hear the truth and deserved to hear both sides of the issue. Everyone deserved to hear what the real issues were and from there determine whether or not they wished to pay the consequences for higher or lower energy bills.
I went from being labeled a far left liberal, homeschooling my children brainwashing them so they'd never fit into mainstream business, to being labeled a far right conservative. A sell out to the big corporations and in the back pocket of this, that or the other person or corporation, etc., ad nauseum.
The fact of the matter is that what makes what you believe so great is the fact that you have the freedom to believe it. If what you believe influences people around you, changes others lives, has a bearing on how others earn a living, pay for education, feel about themselves, hopefully you have given careful thought and consideration to what you believe. Hopefully, you have studied the pros and cons of what you believe. Hopefully, each of us has enough integrity to change our beliefs if we discover what we believe was based on "misinformation" or simply, the more we find out the more our beliefs change. Sometimes the base of what we believe stays the same and we just become more knowledgeable about it, other times our belief changes, completely.
Regardless of whether or not we change a belief, what makes us great as individuals is when we fight, when we defend, the rights of someone we do not agree with to speak out, to actions, to freedoms, we ourselves do not necessarily agree with. It is this that makes us, collectively, a great nation. This is the reason so many wept, around the world, when our towers were hit September 11th. More than dreaming of our material riches they dream of the day when they can speak, can live, openly and with no fear of retaliation with a collective nation of people who, unabashedly, will come to their defense if the need should arise even if they do not have the same belief because beyond the individual beliefs is the unifying conviction that humans should be free to find their belief, not have it forced on them.
We have limped here. In many places around our country we are here in the name of some laws, only. Our justice system lags far behind even those. It is only when we, individually, and collectively, open our mouths, stand firm with our feet, and say, "I do not believe as you do, but I will defend to my death your right to believe it" that our country has a hope of becoming that which we yearn in our hearts for it to be. For that which, world wide, others already know it to be.
I know Keith Olbermann is considered by many a liberal, maybe even far left, who has evolved from a sports commentator to a political pundit in an ongoing feud with Fox's Bill O'Reilly. I trust, by now, you know I don't pick people by what their politics are, I chose to listen if the idea they are conveying is sound and their research is solid. On the issue of the supposed Muslim Mosque allegedly to be built at "ground zero" I find Mr. Olbermann's remarks well worth listening to.
We cannot expect to call ourselves free and great and think we will not be tested. How just or fair would that be? Our belief in the Torah, the Bible, the Quran, the Kitab-i-Aqdas, or an Atheist manifesto means nothing if it is the only book we are allowed to believe in, the only book our country protects. We are better than that our beliefs and convictions run deeper.
From Lincoln's Gettysburg address:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. (From the Nicolay copy of the Gettysburg Address, on permanent display as part of the American Treasures exhibition of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.)
Interestingly, public reaction to the speech was divided along partisan lines. The next day the Democratic-leaning newspaper, the Chicago Times, commented, "The cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat and dishwatery utterances of the man who has to be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the President of the United States." In contrast, the Republican-oriented New York Times was complimentary.The newspaper printed the entire speech, calling it "a perfect gem" that was "deep in feeling, compact in thought and expression, and tasteful and elegant in every word and comma." The Republican predicted that Lincoln's brief remarks would "repay further study as the model speech."
From Lincoln's Gettysburg address:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. (From the Nicolay copy of the Gettysburg Address, on permanent display as part of the American Treasures exhibition of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.)
Interestingly, public reaction to the speech was divided along partisan lines. The next day the Democratic-leaning newspaper, the Chicago Times, commented, "The cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat and dishwatery utterances of the man who has to be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the President of the United States." In contrast, the Republican-oriented New York Times was complimentary.The newspaper printed the entire speech, calling it "a perfect gem" that was "deep in feeling, compact in thought and expression, and tasteful and elegant in every word and comma." The Republican predicted that Lincoln's brief remarks would "repay further study as the model speech."
1 comment:
Outstanding post!
When people walk through life with blinders on, sometimes it is impossible to get them to even listen to other ideas. Not a shred of critical thinking, only what they firmly believe, no matter how wrong. I feel very sorry for those people.
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