Date Sent: 01/14/2008
Subject: YOU NEED HELP

A few prefatory notes seem apropos. I’m not going to descend to ad homonyms, though it would be easy. Ms. Winn claims to possess an academic background that is “Master’s degree plus.” I’ll leave it to the readers to review the vocabulary and spelling in her diatribe, then to speculate on the quality and subject of whatever possibly could have composed her master’s thesis.

However I am not Jewish, I believe as a Sadducee. However I’m not a cynic, I am an inveterate skeptic. Always, always, always I want evidence. Just because someone says it’s so does not make it so. Pope Urban VIII couldn’t make the sun orbit the earth, regardless how established were his claims to infallibility. And in that same respect, I will not bow to Bill’s or Rush’s or Karl’s or Sean’s or Ann’s definitions, simply because they or anyone else want to superimpose theirs over what is in a dictionary. (By the way, I strongly urge everyone to read Steven Leser’s excellent piece on Ann: http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_steven_l_080114_coulter_sheds_any_re.htm)

As was Howard Beale, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” Nor am I going to hide behind the skirts of “progressive” because a number of folks have gotten the better part of a population to perceive “liberal” in ways that would sicken George Orwell.

Follows is the unabridged definition for liberal (from the Latin liberalis; befitting free men): 1.) favorable to progress or reform, 2.) advancing measures of political reform, 3.) favorable to or in accord with concepts of maximum individual freedom possible, esp. as guaranteed by law and secured by governmental protection of civil liberties, 4.) favoring or permitting freedom of action, esp. with respect to matters of personal belief and expression, 5.) of or pertaining to forms of representational government rather than aristocracies and monarchies, 6.) free from prejudice, 7.) open-minded or tolerant, esp. free of or not bound by traditional or conventional ideas, values, etc., 8.) characterized by generosity, 9.) given freely or abundantly. — Syn. progressive, broad-minded, unprejudiced, beneficent, charitable, munificent; — Ant. Reactionary, intolerant.

            Websters 1986 Unabridged Dictionary.

You better damned well believe I am a “liberal.” But what should be really frightening is that anyone might not want to be thought of as a liberal. Reread the definition. Then ask around, "You open-minded, do you believe in pesonal freedom, or are you a closed-minded ignoramus who would rather be in a yoke, like a bovine pulling some cart?"   

Ya know, it isn’t interesting, it’s tragic how the country has been put through seven years of hate-mongering attacks by the Right upon any and all who would question the legitimacy or propriety or wisdom of a government policy. As if Danny Inouye, hospital ward partner with Republican Senator Robert Dole, should have, like ex-Georgia Senator Max Cleland, lost more limbs serving his country, to “prove” or merit some association with the notion of patriotism. In May, 1965, I was on patrol with PFC Hendrix, along the Korean DMZ, between Libby and Freedom Bridges, just north of the Imjin River. PFC Hendrix got exploded by a remote-detonated North Korean anti-tank mine. The hole in the soft earth was three feet deep. I wonder if Ms. Winn ever scraped human confetti from a blouse or jeans, or how many others who pound their proud chests mightily over patriotism have.

I raise my military service for another reason than to suppose the efficacy of an allegation of hypocrisy: the oath those entering US military service is much akin to that sworn to by George Washington, when he took the Office of the President of the United States — “… to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” The First Amendment guarantee of “freedom of speech” applies especially more to text and matter we disagree with than to that which pleases us. Were I to encounter someone burning the flag, my concern wouldn’t be nearly as much with the profanity of the gesture, but to the horrid perceptions of desperation the offender had that led him or her to the act. And I will be forever grateful that in this country, one can do that, and that we have a constitution that protects the right, regardless how odious it truly would be. Where else but in the good ol’ liberal USA is pissing a lot of people off protected by such a sacred document?

Lastly, I’m not going to carouse the refulgent, error riven assertions by Ms. Winn, to some economic acumen. The false choice of an American style market-based economy versus some unidentified, debt ridden socialist country becomes silly in the face of the Bush/GOP more than doubling of the national debt to nearly $10 TRILLION, a dollar that’s falling faster than the stock market, more homes headed to foreclosure than at any time since the Great Depression, and a future for our progeny that looms horribly dire.

As to other recommendations I ought to bone up on economic theory 101, I don’t know whether she’s referring to the Wealth of Nations, or Keynesian theory, or Ayn Rand’s “uncompromised greed is good” hypothesis, or Ricardo’s comparative advantage postulates that have been shown inapplicable in a global economy that engages Third World labor, or something else. I stand prepared to accept any recommendations, even those from Mr. Greenspan.

Nonetheless, I will not cave to Ms. Winn’s or anyone else’s allegations that my or another’s discourse produces nothing but “NEGATIVITES” [sic]. (Must be a genuine Bushie.) Furthermore, I’m not about to leave this country. I love it to the core, so much that I would defend with my last breath Sue Winn’s unperturbed right to excoriate or author stupid and ignorantly.

— Ed Tubbs