Just hours to go before Dubya’s annual State of the Union love-in. Anyone want to open a book on the number of times the word “freedom” will appear in the transcript?
Update, 18:36: Twenty-one times.
Meanwhile, a survey of 100,000 US high school students found that one third say the first amendment goes too far in allowing freedom of speech, assembly, press and worship. Half of these kids believe that newspapers shouldn’t be allowed to print stories which haven’t been approved by the government and three quarters reckon that flag burning is a crime. (BBC story)
If these kids are tomorrow’s congressmen, senators and presidents, then tomorrow’s United States is starting to look a lot like today’s North Korea.
It was a nice concept, revolutionary in its day.
But we have so lost the path of what the US could be and should be, that we may not ever find it again. We certainly have the know how to turn ourselves into the greatest totalitarian state in the history of the world.
There are still some of us who are stunned at the almost daily onmygodwhathavetheydonenow announcements and revelations out of Washington. But middle America seems to have lost any desire to demand any accountability out of our leaders. Or perhaps it’s just that the assault on the commonwealth is on so many fronts that paralysis sets in.
Beyond the more visible national level, there are many, many local changes that dovetail into overall master plan. The legislature of the state where I live, now firmly Republican, has so rewritten its legislative rules that the opposition party is there basically for appearance sake.
Keeping appearances is the new thing: Keeping the appearance of a two-party system while working to make sure one party is in power for the foreseeable future, keeping the appearance of freedom of speech while locking the protesters up in a cage five miles from the event, keeping the appearance of environmental protections while gutting the actual regulations, and so on.
It’s all about the men behind the curtain: the radically conservative politicians, religious fundamentalists, and their obscenely wealthy patrons putting up smokescreens while they remake the US in their image.
As regards flag burning, our constitution in the U.S. provides plenty of means to protest the actions of our country’s leaders without burning the symbol of its unity throughout more than 200 years and an emblem that countless men and women have fought and died for. I believe that flag burning SHOULD be outlawed. I don’t see any “speech” in setting Old Glory on fire. As long as there is the right to peaceable assembly and protest in the U.S., you can have your say that way whether you’re conservative, liberal or somewhere in between the two.