The Voices of Liberty

The voices of Liberty, are Freedom's song.

The voices of liberty are not the ones that you hear on the evening news.
They are not the voices of Condi, Rummy, or Georgie or any of the folks waving flags.
The voices of liberty are the ones I mentioned awhile back in my tribute piece on the life of Susan Sontag, the voices of dissent.
There are other voices that hate that liberty, the voices that start with a shout of 'you couldn't say that if you were in IraCommuStan!' and if that's where they stopped they would be fine, but they don't.
They go on to call the voices of dissent the 'Hate America' crowd, and we all know that in a with us or against us world, if someone hates you,
you're obliged, no required to hate them as well, destroy them if you can - evil must be destroyed like the left over used Styrofoam cups after a summer picnic.
Never mind we're talking about people, not garbage, never mind that evil is an act not a person.

In the last week I have watched two people savaged by these silencers of freedom, one a businessman in the business of news simply concerned for the safety of his employees a Mr. Eason Jordan, chief news executive at CNN.
Mr. Jordan's statement dates back to sometime before Nov. 20 2004, and is nothing more than a plea that the military be responsible in it's actions towards journalists and not shoot them out of the press hotel windows.

The other is a native peoples activist by the name of Ward Churchill, where Mr. Churchill goes controversy follows, always will, but that is no reason to remove the man from his means of income.
What could he have done this time?
Nothing it turns out, he's being persecuted for a statement he made Sept. 12th, 2001 that made a few simple observations about possible reasons for the attack of the day before.
The observations that these anointed keepers of true freedom have chosen to attack him for is one that the victims of the Pentagon were not innocent civilian victims, he's right but that doesn't matter to the keepers of the new faith.
The other is that workers in the financial offices of the WTC were in effect little Eichmanns and by no means 'innocent'.
That can be argued both ways but Churchill is a firebrand and self assigned advocate for the smallest of the small in the world scene facing oppression reinforced by the weight of time, geography, and economics - his job is not to say pretty things, if you want that visit hallmark.com.

These my friends are two voices of liberty being silenced by the nationalistic fascism that so easily flows when a country feels threatened.
Voices that are needed all the more in such times to be sure that we do not forget what real freedom is and to be sure that when we search the world for evil we don't forget to check the mantles of power in our own house.

--- Paul G.

Update: Feb 10 12:45am
Since I wrote this I have seen Churchills conference on the issue and he's more honest than any activist I have ever seen. I also saw Governor Bill Owens of Colorado speak and spout lies about Churchill calling for attacks against America - Churchill did no such thing, he said that that would be the result of our actions, and it has been, on 9/11/02 and 11/07/41.
A nation does not operate in a vacuum and the same for individuals, if you know that your job is taking the food out of the mouths of children in the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd world you are a little eichman a technician of death removed from the object of your action only by distance, not by moral responsibility.