"freedom from political tyranny and religious oppression..."

[Q]

Published on Monday, July 12, 2004 by the Seattle Times

Assaults on Justice Undermine Constitution
by August Wilson

As I look out over the audience, I see that some of you are the rear guard of a people who arrived in America searching for freedom from political tyranny and religious oppression, and some of you are the rear guard of a people who arrived in America seeking opportunity, and some of you, like myself, are the rear guard of a people who arrived in America chained and malnourished in the hold of a 350-ton Portuguese, Dutch, or British vessel. And some of you have been in America long before any of us.

We have all shared a common history as Americans. Most of us can trace our ancestry back to a ship's log or an airline manifest. We are all a testament to the strength of the American character and to the resiliency of the human spirit. I had wanted to come here today to encourage you to have a belief in yourself that is larger than anyone's disbelief; to talk about how your talent, your truths, your belief in yourself, are all in your hands. But there is a greater urgency that commands our attention.

We have turned the corner on the 21st century. Our prosperity is not guaranteed. Our freedom and our survival are not guaranteed. We live in a global community where the majority of our fellow human beings in Africa, South America, the West Indies, Asia and the Middle East are at the bottom of a social system that leaves them chained to a cycle of poverty and oppression.

Away from home we are engaged in a war that robs us of our energies and steals from our national treasury. That it is a war based on false premise and carried out with escalating misconduct and protracted deception is not our immediate concern. A more pressing matter is that the foundation upon which this country has stood from its inception is in danger of crumbling from assaults upon its principles and the articles that guarantee our liberties.

Two hundred and twenty eight years ago, an insurgent band of colonial subjects of King George, responding to a tyranny that reached across the Atlantic, citing a long list of grievances, declared their independence from the Crown. They envisioned a nation, unlike any other, in which every citizen had equal rights to property, equal protection under the laws, and the inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of their own happiness. They envisioned a true democracy governed with the consent of the governed. --- http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0712-08.htm

[kayell]

1. bump

[porphyrian]

2. It's our civic duty to remove the current administration...

...and to try them for their crimes. If convicted in a fair trial, and I believe they would be, they should pay. Anyone who attempts to hinder or otherwise threaten the integrity of such an important trial should also be tried. If this process fails, then our justice system will be proven corrupt beyond a reasonable doubt, and it will be our civic duty to immediately fix it.