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We are under attack by people in the world who don’t understand our way of life, and feel threatened by it. They say that power corrupts, and since we are the most powerful nation on the planet, we must also be the most corrupt. Therefore, for the sake of all good people in the world, they say that we must be destroyed. How do we fight against that? The FBI estimated that over 5,000 innocent people died yesterday, for what? We will go after the bad guys and ‘get justice’. We need to defend our rights, protect our freedoms, but will that stop this from ever happening again? How do we convince others that our way of life won’t harm them? How do we protect ourselves from ignorance? How much of our basic freedoms do we have to give up in order to feel safe? If we give up too many, have the terrorists won? How many people have to violently die before we can finally live in peace?
It is now the second day. I can’t stand it any more. The pictures, the sounds, the horror, the tears … why? How is my generation supposed to fix this? Our world is becoming more and more violent. Our childhood memories will include scenes of Columbine and now this … ‘Attack on America’, ‘Ground Zero’, buildings collapsing, people screaming, fire and smoke everywhere, families destroyed, and, it’s not just here. All over the world, kids are having to live with the violence created by adults who just don’t get it. Why don’t you get it? We live in one world. We must begin to appreciate, admire, and respect our differences, rather than fear them.
Can we really expect other countries to be tolerant of our country and our way of life when we aren’t even tolerant of each other. Please, for this year, can we just put our differences aside and march together as one community, one America. As we raise the American flag across the city, let’s remember what it’s meant to stand for. Martin Luther King once said, “Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly”. As many as 5,000 people lost their lives this week in a senseless act of violence; so let’s honor their memories by living up to our ideals of freedom and peace. Let’s make sure that the attack on America does not start at home.
The world, today, needs to know that we really do believe in the foundation of our country. The Declaration of Independence states, “We hold these rights to be self-evident: That all men are created equal, they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…”. The right of liberty was so important that it was addressed in the very first amendment of the Constitution (1791), called ‘Basic Freedoms’: freedom of speech, press, assembly, and the right to petition the government. We all have 1st amendment rights.
We don’t always live up to our ideals, but we can’t ever give up. Everyone says that they believe in the first amendment … until someone disagrees with them; then suddenly they shouldn’t have a right to say those things. For some people, freedom of speech only means freedom to agree with them. They believe freedom of assembly is great for an Independence Day celebration, but if anyone assembles to protest the event, then they can just move out of this country. Isn’t that a little hypocritical? Well, there was a line in the movie, ‘An American President’, that really impressed me, it said something like, ‘Believing in the 1st Amendment means defending the right of free speech and assembly for everyone, even when what is being said goes against everything that we value’. To protect the rights of people we like is easy, to protect the rights of those we hate is difficult. Freedom wasn’t easy to obtain, and it definitely isn’t easy to maintain.
As we try to resolve the problems of Columbus Day, we must remind ourselves about what really is important to the future of our people, of our country. George Santayana once said, “Those who can not remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. We must not ignore the injustices that were committed years ago, but we will never be able to move forward unless we are willing to lift our foot off of the past.
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Mike Cartier
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Comments
It is good article Madan Paudel | Nov 26th, 2003
THe event of september 11is very bad news for world.It must be stopped forever but it is not possible due to role of superpower countries.their role should be ahead for povr=erty alliviation of the the world country other wise it imay occur sometime.
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