San Jose Police To Record Race Of Every Person They Stop, Question[*1] .
I don’t think this is exactly what Martin Luther King had in mind. We have lost our way.
In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline.
. . . I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!
, , ,And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!
IRS? NSA? Routine, nearly daily police department violations of Constitiutionally-guaranteed rights–by militarized police departments, no less? Confiscation and punishment masquerading as “charity” and “compassion”? Routine intimidation, up to and including mysterious burglaries of political opponents and whistleblowers of the most corrupt Presidential Administration in American history? Rampant yet mysteriously poorly reported incidents voter fraud all across the nation–while those who benefit from the fraud cloak their corruption in rhetoric defending the right to vote? (Free hint: not everyone actually has the right to vote–and perhaps more importantly–those that do have the right to vote only once per person.)
We are not, none of us, free in the United States of America in the year 2013. We have become drastically less free in the past five, let alone the past thirteen years. This is not a partisan issue. This is a human rights issue.
The only solution to the problem of making some people more free is NOT to make all people less free. That is the method of dictators and tyrants. And, not incidentally, it is the method of those in power in this country right now.
