SECURITY FIRST, LIBERTY LATER...

[kpete]

WE ARE ASKED every day to forget. We should forget the parallels of yesterday to today. Tomorrow will be a wash. We are now told all our calls, all we type and output is input for those who only mean to keep us safe. Security first, liberty later.

It is 1971 and Mirek says: The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.

With this he is trying to justify what his friends call carelessness: meticulously keeping a diary, preserving his correspondence, compiling the minutes of all the meetings where they discuss the situation and ponder what to do. He says to them: We’re not doing anything that violates the constitution. To hide and feel guilty would be the beginning of defeat.

KUNDERA MIGHT TELL ME we must not forget, we must write now, so others later will remember. If we fail to remember, what we will forget is ourselves. We will be nameless, but safe, together. Anonymity is the mask power wears to hide the dark and bleak things power must do.

http://theheretik.us/2005/12/29/on-memory/#more-1706

[fasttense]

1. Give me liberty or give me death. n/t

[kpete]

2. Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little

But know that we will be watching your choices. Now is the time for true patriots to stand up and be counted, regardless of party.

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

-- Benjamin Franklin


Do what the Founders did. Think about the threats to their personal and family safety during the time of the American Revolution. The men and women who fought for this nation's freedom, who sacrificed personal comforts and safety in order to bring forth a nation born in liberty, they set up a government by and for the people so that we would no longer have to endure the whim of a King. Do not throw all of that back in their faces simply for political expediency.

Put your nation first.

http://firedoglake.blogspot.com/