Some of the stuff regularly being added as companions to ordinary emails between Americans about what has happened to their country under President Cheney... er, Rove... no, it's GWB (isn't it?)... and this very scary band of Republicans (and, of course, God is on their side).
There is no doubt that waging war is a difficult high stakes undertaking that is complex, vicious and dangerous. But, without debating the manner in which these wars in Iraq & Afganistan are being conducted, and without disrespect for those who lost lives in the 9/11 attack, this administration has done perhaps more damage to the American people than the terrorists did on that fateful day in September.
Here's some tack-ons to emails I have received from American friends.
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"Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expedience asks the question, is it politic? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but because conscience tells one it is right."
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
Theodore Roosevelt, 1918
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Only one tree in an orchard
Is fooled by false Spring:
A profligate scattering its gifts
To wake the winter heart.
Envy this one, you sticks of caution.
Michael Hannon
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James Madison once warned: "If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."
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"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." - Franklin D. Roosevelt
- Inaugural Address
http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres49.html -March 4, 1933
"The only thing we have is fear." - George W. Bush- Radio Address
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/09/20060930.html
September 30, 2006
posted by billmon -
http://billmon.org/archives/oo2765.html
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Garrison Keillor paraphrasing Robert Frost - " The woods are lovely, dark and thick. but I have many butts to kick, and some to poke and just one stick.."
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"...freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus; and trial by juries impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us, and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation."
Thomas Jefferson
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"The establishment of the writ of habeas corpus ... are perhaps greater securities to liberty and republicanism than any it [the Constitution] contains. ...The practices of arbitrary imprisonments have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny. ..."
Alexander Hamilton
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"To bereave a man of life, or by violence to confiscate his estate, without accusation or trial, would be so gross and notorious an act of despotism, as must at once convey the alarm of tyranny throughout the whole nation; but confinement of the person, by secretly hurrying him to jail, where his sufferings are unknown or forgotten, is a less public, a less striking, and therefore a more dangerous engine of arbitrary government."
Alexander Hamilton
