The Core of Free Society

Last week my hubby so lovingly tivo'd "Austin City Limits with the Dixie Chicks." As I was listening to them perform "Not Ready to Make Nice," I was reminded of the experience that represented for them and I couldn't help but feel sad. I remember how angry I was when I first heard about it. I couldn't get over how incredibly hypocritical it was that we were fighing a "War on Terror" that was supposedly about protecting our "free nation" and fighting against a people who hated the freedom we stand for, when our very own people were doing the same thing, hating the very freedom we stand for. How can you fight for freedom and then condemn us for expressing that freedom?

A nation that loses it's right to speak and question it's leaders, loses it's freedom. The minute we give over that kind of power is the very minute we give up the very freedom we're trying to protect.

What freaks me out is that there doesn't seem to be many people who get that. I was watching Fahrenheit 9/11 for the second time the other night and Britney Spears comes on and says something about how we should just trust whatever our president says or does.

My last post was about my class I'm taking right now. I referred to some students in my class who basically said that cultures who don't live by our "enlightenment" ideals, basically modernism, are ignorant and living in blind obedience to authority. They referenced the Nazis and how easily people gave them the power to do what they did.

The interesting thing to me is that we could be so easily manipulated. Our nation is uninformed. Matt was telling me the other day that some people he works with had never even heard of Barack Obama. Not only are we uniformed, but we'll believe whatever Fox News tells us to believe. We are surrounded with propaganda and we fall for it, hook, line and sinker.
Just the other day a friend of mine said that people who live in Boston are terrorists. Why? Because they are liberals who don't just buy what the Republicans sell. Let me just say, after the handling of 9/11, the war in Iraq, Katrina and more, why would we? When a nation has been deceived time and time again, it is only appropriate that it begin asking the tough questions. And no, that doesn't make us terrorists. It makes us informed citizens, participating in the democracy that men and women have given their lives for.

I'm currently reading a book titled, "Bitter Fruit." I'm only a few chapters in, but basically it is about "the untold story of the American coup in Guatemala." Interesting book so far, but a line caught my attention today as I was thinking of these things. The first democratically elected President of Guatemala was Juan Jose Arevalo. The book says, "he delighted in the clash of opinions which represents the core of free society."

That seems to be a far cry from the free society our government honors today.