Saturday, February 18, 2006

"Freedom was worth the risk."

I see Jeff Jarvis agrees with me regarding the Nazi slurs:

"I find it offensive, even anti-Semitic, when people equate whatever they don’t like with Nazism, trivializing its horrid crimes, and we see one prime example of this in today’s Times, in Stephen Holden’s over-the-top review of ‘Sophie School: The Final Days.’

"How would you behave during the kind of relentless interrogations that Sophie endures? If sentenced to death for your activities, would you still consider your resistance to have been worth it? In a climate of national debate in the United States about the overriding of certain civil liberties to fight terrorism, the movie looks back on a worst possible scenario in which such liberties were taken away. It raises an unspoken question: could it happen here?"

"Thus Holden is equating with Nazism and fascism and even the Holocaust with — what? — secret data analysis of international phone calls? Taking off our shoes in airports? Mr. Holden, go down to the Holocaust Museum in Washington and stare at the pile of shoes in Washington and then come back and write such tripe as this. Get your perspective, man. And they say that bloggers go over the top and journalists don’t? Bullsh*t."


One can surf all over the web and find such analogies and comparisons. It's all about America being bad. Here is a taste:

Democrats.com gives is this:

"We now seem to be watching the creation of a new World Order. NAFTA is not raising Third World countries up to America's standards of living, as was publicly intended. Instead, America is being dragged down to the Third World level of living. And once America goes in the dumper, so will Western Europe as well. And the rich Bastards doing this? Well, once they've impoverished all of us, they will still have their money and will buy everything up and have an entire country, and indeeed, an entire Western World of subjucated, endentured servants, along with a bloated military industrial machine ready to do their bidding."

and then more:(emphasis mine)

"All the work of the good people at this site and other sites could easily go for naught if someone doesn't come up with a short term strategy to neutralize this ploy. I ask, no I implore, the intelligent, patriotic, decent people at this site, working so hard to save America from dictatorship, to think about how emotion, and particularly terror, often overules our logical powers, and then in your collective wisdom try to conjure up a strategy to counter the terroism card."

OpEdNew.com gives us this regarding the Patriot Act:

"Those bagpipes you hear playing in the background provide a much-needed funeral dirge for freedom, which died this week at the hands of the United States Congress."


Today I took one of my sons to get a haircut. The woman cutting hair told me she was from Vietnam. During the course of the conversation she told how she came to be an American citizen.

10 years ago she got on a boat where one pays to be taken to America. It is very dangerous and many have died in the crossing. Her parents begged her not to go. It was said that once the boat got out of site another boat from Thailand would approach with men seeking pretty women for wives and they would just take them. So her brother helped to put dirt and make up her face in such a way to look as ugly as possible.

The boat she was on took off and sure enough came a boat from Thailand with men. One of the men started to take her. She started to act irrationally, as if she had mental problems. This is what her brother told her to do. It worked. The man left her and she made it to the United States.

Now she has a family and business and she even travels back to Vietnam to visit her family and give them money. I was quite moved by the story. I said, "I can't imagine how terrible it must have been for you to take such a risk to come here." She said, "Freedom was worth the risk."

When I got back and read that post on the Jeff Jarvis site it really made me angry. These smug elite liberals know nothing of living under a dictatorship. They don't begin to know what it really means to have no freedom. It is so easy to mock America and it's leaders when one is FREE to do so.

This is where oppressed people flee. Even when it means they may give up their life to do so. This is America. With all it's faults, it is still the best place on earth.