Being Un-American : The Battle to State Your Opinion

A response to hate mail I've gotten accusing me of being un-American. Stifling political opinion hurts a democracy. Editorial by Everett Griffiths
December 1st, 2005

I got a caustic email a couple months ago accusing me of being "un-American and bitter because my party lost." Although I, too, like to rant, such a message showed a fascist mentality in some of our fellow countrymen.

First and foremost, what country are you from if you think that it is "un-American" to criticize our government?If mindlessly supporting our leaders as they drive us all off a cliff is your idea of patriotism then I suggest you move someplace more "patriotic" like North Korea or Iran. There you will find the unquestioning "devotion" to the "beloved" officials which you consider somehow virtuous. It is in fact nothing less than mental slavery under the guise of nationalism. Respect is not freely given; it must be earned.

Secondly, criticism of one political party doesn't equate to support of another. Wake up and smell the corruption: Republicans and Democrats both have some nasty excrement on their hands and you'd be a fool to openly endorse either party unequivocally. Not all criticism lobbed at our bungling president or his incompetent cronies stems from bitter Democrats. When a president sends our friends and relatives to die for his fabricated justifications for war, I frankly don't give a damn if he's a Republican or a Democrat. The 9/11 hijackers' acts of retribution were horrible, but at least they were consistent with their values of "an eye for an eye." Christianity preaches "turn the other cheek," and "do unto others," so when Bush claims to be a Christian and then launches "preemptive warfare" I have to wonder what fools could witness this and still believe that our president is either honest or a Christian. Party aside, a liar is a liar and a zealot a zealot.

Instead of watching from the stands, I choose to exercise my American freedom of speech and petition our government for a redress of grievances -- that's in the Bill of Rights. James Madison once said "if tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." How is it not tyranny when the Patriot Act has allowed ordinary citizens to be imprisoned for years without being charged with a crime? How is it not oppressive when the wealthiest citizens and corporations receive more and more tax breaks while the poor lose funding for student loans and medical aid?

My party is "We the People," and when hecklers call me "un-American" for expressing my sentiments, I fear that maybe my party really has lost. You wouldn't be going out on a limb to call the voting irregularities in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections evidence of outright fraud. Jeb Bush and Kathleen Harris were patently guilty of disenfranchising black voters. Many voting districts now use Diebold and Sequoia machines to either cast or count ballots, but the programming used is deemed proprietary, so We the People cannot see how or if our votes were actually counted. It's all the more suspicious when these same corporations made huge contributions to the Republican party and Diebold CEO Wally O'Dell promised to "deliver" Ohio to George W. This brings to mind a quote attributed to Joseph Stalin: "It's not who votes that counts. It's who counts the votes." If someone claims to be the elected president of the United States when we're not sure how the votes were counted, all I can say is thatincredible claims require incredible proof. No Republican or Democrat had the courage to demand that every single vote be counted; in all likelihood both parties were guilty of stuffing ballot boxes, but thanks to electronic voting and the lack of paper trails, we'll never know. It doesn't matter which party wins in this game when the clear loser is We the People, and the most American thing I can possibly do is to point that out.