Wednesday, July 27, 2005

Who's an American, anyway?

Are Stupid White Men Really Stupid?

“We have been children long enough. We must now unshackle our minds and begin acting as independent beings.” – Noah Webster, First American Dictionary
By Dom Stasi
07/27/05

Two framed pictures hang on my office wall. Each is accompanied by a timely message.

The frame atop holds a portrait of colonial patriot Samuel Adams. (Yes, the beer guy. My hero on so many levels.) Below the picture are his words, written at America’s birth: “The liberties of our country, the freedoms of our civil Constitution are worth defending at all hazards; it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors. They purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood. It will bring a mark of everlasting infamy on the present generation – enlightened as it is – if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of designing men.”

When I look at the framed document and I see the idealized portrait - Sam Adams of the set jaw and steely eyes - I feel as though he is reaching across the centuries and speaking directly to me, admonishing me to beware the artifices of designing men.

Then I lower my eyes. What I see lowers my spirits as well. For immediately below the Sam Adams quote hangs another frame. This one contains a front page from the London Daily Mirror. Above the newspaper’s headline floats another picture, this one of a befuddled-looking, newly “reelected” George W. Bush. The headline reads: “HOW CAN 59,054,087 PEOPLE BE SO DUMB?”
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If you'd really like to know, read the rest of this well written, well thought out article at:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9573.htm

Wrap.

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