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Monday, December 29, 2003

Give Me That Old Time Liberalism

2:14 PM

He will speak like Democrats used to. She will speak the words we need to hear from a citizen leading the still greatest experiment in Freedom the world has ever known. He will remind us that we are a people who believe in freedom so much we will pay the price of an open society rather than accept the slavery of a closed one only for some dubious promise of safety. That is not America. She will tell us that the lesson of 9/11 wasn't how vulnerable we are. America has always been vulnerable to those who will use our freedom to strike us. But how often has it happened? Rarer than hen's teeth. He will say that the lesson of 9/11 was and is how a great and open nation of free people living free have the embedded durability of our cherished system to shake off everything from a great Civil War, to the two wars to end all wars, the assassination of presidents and great citizen leaders, even the stealing of elections, and still the ship of state will right itself every time and remain the envy of all people who dream of living free.

With a clear and ringing voice she will have us remember that there was honor in never striking first. He will say that there was greatness in climbing up from the bloodied ground and striking back with justice and the unquestioned might of a nation united.

Those days can not come again, but the principles can, we just need real leaders who truly believe in the American way. We need men and women of vision; we do not need men and women who vent in rage and revenge and bully talk! We are America. We beat Hitler and Tojo at the same time, and we did it with unquestioned right on our side. We did it with absolutely no brag, or arrogance from the White House or the houses of state.

We cannot let anyone change us because we are afraid of being hit first. When did we become the bloated silver-spoon on the school playground that cried for sympathy and railed in self-pity and self-righteousness when he was sucker-punched by some loudmouth bully? Give us back our honor and our freedom�give us back men and women who know that being an American means that we have to live and act above the fray of lesser nations with old, corrupted systems.

Give us leaders who have the superiority of the rule of law and rationality, not the rule of arrogance and born-again true-believers of intolerance who revel in their dependency only upon their own kind. Give us men and women who are not afraid to be wrong and say so. Give us leaders who talk and lead out front, not preach and hide in back. Give us leaders who lead with big ideas, not small ideology. Give us leaders who love words and books and art and all the things that lift up our eyes and minds to see and know what we can become, not what we have been. Give us leaders who have known war and peace and love peace more because they saw the blood and felt the fear.

But mostly give us leaders who know that above all America is a state of mind, not a state of mine or yours, or us or them...then no one but the most base and evil will feel the need to strike it down because it is not theirs. But when they do, give us leaders that will lead us openly as we strike back with deliberate pace, united, with right and might.

Where? Please tell us where such men and women are to be found today when we need them more than even breath itself? Because to breathe the air of fear and hatred, the air of isolation and incivility, is to not live and breathe as Americans at all.

2:14 PM / Editor / permalink 0 comments

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