I am not afraid!

I refused to be ruled by fear.

I refuse to let all their anti-American legislation to force me to walk away from what I do here. I will NOT let their arm-twisting and legal wrangling make me shed the part of me that is willing to speak freely.

I am an American. I am a child of the 1st Amendment.

I will not be told to hold my tongue. If I am, I will not obey. The right to speak freely, to criticize those who hold high places, to condemn those who commit heinous crimes in my name. I reserve this right without being called a traitor, guilty of sedition, or un-American.

I am none of these things. I'm a believer in America, in Americans, in the dream that was America.

I once saw a tee-shirt that said:

"If this is no longer the land of the free, I sure hope it's the home of the brave."

I find this an appropriate phrase, even though I spotted this shirt in the mid-eighties. Hell, I thought it was fairly appropriate then.

I was pretty radical in my youth. Not noisily so. But radical still the same. I had a feeling this stuff was coming, and tried to warn everyone throughout the Reagan years. I even pointed out the things that made me edgy during the Clinton administration.

Like the acceleration of the Drug War, which I saw as a way to test the public's response to attacks on the 4th Amendment in particular. How much liberty they'd be willing to trade for the illusion of security.

I won't bow under the pressure or shrink in fear from their bullying. I had my fill of bullying when I was a kid.

Never again.

After all, what are they going to do--take away my Birthday?

"If this is no longer the land of the free, I sure hope it's the home of the brave."
:kick: & :thumbsup:

of my own mouth, or my own pen...yet, the other day i had occassion to visit a government building in relationship to some family stress--and, before i got there, i was careful to take off the PEACE BUTTON i happily wear everywhere i go. i thought it prudent so as not to incite the scumbags against me or my family stress. They have somehow managed to intimidate me... I, the family's rebel extraordinaire, the one who inherited every drop of our revolutionary blood flowing down our own family line from the days of the American Revolution ...and, while i sat there looking at the posted pictures on the wall of the bushit boy and his bushit mexican-american attorney general alberto gonzalez i thought...what travesty, what a betrayal to the American Revolution, to the Constitution, to the blood flowing through my family line, and to our Freedoms that these two scumbags have power to install themselves against the people of the United States and i am sitting here without my PEACE BUTTON and everyone around me here seems to be an emotional extension of the picture of those two scumbags hanging on the wall.

And i think, everyday that passess by, and the scumbag is not impeached and his administration is let to stand...is one more day that they have to let their evil stench of intimidation and lies flow ever so much more deeper into the fiber of this this country and the soul of citizens who find themselves, like i was, afraid to express our thoughts through our words, or through a PEACE BUTTON, or through the written page.

BUSH, HIS ATTORNEY GENERAL AND THE REST OF POPPY'S EVIL PUPPET ADMINISTRATION ARE REALLY THE STOMPER OUT OF FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND ANY VALUE ATTACHED TO A DEMOCRATIC FORM OF GOVERNMENT.

May their stench of intimidation never flow past you.

the worst type of sycophant I've ever seen--so far up Bush's ass he worsens the stench. They are all traitors.

Republican relatives avoid our home for a variety of very good reasons.

afraid.

If they lock us all up, at least we'll meet interesting people in the camps.