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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 1/18/18

Silence Is Betrayal: Get Up, Stand Up, Speak Up for Your Rights

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From Counterpunch


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"We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds: we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretence; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical. Are we still of any use? What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, straightforward men. Will our inward power of resistance be strong enough, and our honesty with ourselves remorseless enough, for us to find our way back to simplicity and straightforwardness?" -- Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was executed by the Nazis for participating in the German resistance movement

I'm tired of liars, scoundrels and cheats.

I'm sick of circus politics, sex scandals and partisan hypocrisy.

I've reached the limits of my tolerance for individuals who have bartered their morality, consciences, integrity, religious beliefs and liberty for political gain.

Enough already.

This is not a reality show. It is not an experiment in political theories or a contest over who generates the biggest laughs, or the highest ratings, or the best polling numbers.

Enough with the deafening silence in the face of outright corruption, base immorality, denigrating language, demoralizing greed, abject cruelty, derision, cynicism, violence, oppression and tyranny.

The United States of America is run by a cabal of racist, classist, sexist, militaristic, misogynistic, greedy, heartless thugs who are obviously satisfied that their latest CEO -- Donald Trump -- is doing such a great job of keeping the nation polarized and pole-axed by his reality show antics.

After all, why hire a statesman when you can hire a buffoon who will entertain, enrage and incite a nation to the brink of madness.

They -- the powers-that-be, the Deep State, the controllers, the financiers, the war hawks -- want us at the brink of madness. They want us in a state of civil unrest. They want the riots and the mob violence and the political discord and the state of panic. They want us to fight each other and be incapable of taking a united stand against tyranny.

They want us silent and subservient.

We have been silent too long. We have been silent for all the wrong reasons.

We have been silent when the universe demanded that we get up, stand up, and speak out.

There comes a time when silence is betrayal, warned Martin Luther King, Jr.

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John W. Whitehead is an attorney and author who has written, debated and practiced widely in the area of constitutional law and human rights. Whitehead's aggressive, pioneering approach to civil liberties has earned him numerous accolades and (more...)
 

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