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I submitted the following letter to the Editor of The Seattle Times. I thought you might find it interesting as well.I'm grateful to see the Seattle Times reporting that John McCain has had to calm his supporters who have accepted the propagandistic hate speech the Republican Party and their cronies package as 'campaign rhetoric' and now accuse Barack Obama of being a terrorist. However, to fulfill the role given to the Press by the people whose revolution created this nation and forged the Constitution which was intended to define the nature of its government, The Seattle Times, its editors and writers, are also obligated to provide to the citizens an understanding of the reason that the freedoms of speech, religion, the press and assembly were protected in the First Amendment.
This nation was not founded by speech alone. The founders and the unnamed thousands of others who also took part in the revolution, did not cast off the corporate oppression that wore the costume of the British Crown through peaceful assembly. The events which surrounded that revolution have been scrubbed from our carefully edited history books, so that We The People do not realize that it is we that hold the power, and not the government which had been instituted in our name. Your duty as The Press includes that of providing the context in which the events you report occur, and on certain issues, you have performed this duty admirably.
However, there is one crucial fact which the people of this nation MUST be made aware of, and that is that the founders and the people who trusted them to lead in their name were ALL terrorists. They committed acts of violence intended to do away with the government which did not serve to protect their unalienable rights. That word, which has been used as the central focus of an Orwellian culture of officially sanctioned Republican hate speech, has the power to set us free. It can show us that acts of violence, in themselves, are not an evil to be abhorred. The Seattle Times, and the rest of the Press, have the power to refocus the ire brewing in the people of this country, and to point it squarely at the people who have created the problems we face today. But to do so, every writer, editor, photographer and the rest of the people who are The Press must stand in the shoes of those who fought to create this nation. To speak this truth is to torch the edifice of lies that has been used to smother our freedom, and that will make each of you a terrorist as well. It is your duty. Do it proudly, or shutter the newspaper and cower in your darkness.
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I write pointed political and business short stories at klurgsheld.wordpress.com
