Land of Free, Home of Brave

Land of Free, Home of Brave September 13, 2008
Filed under: Uncategorized — Chris @ 12:35 pm

Editor’s note: this is the closing piece of episode 3 of Unconvention.tv a and the last of the reprints here
I love America; Hell I even love Americans, I am proud to be an American, albeit not in a Lee greenwood kind of way.  I wouldn’t wear a flag pin, because I don’t do broaches.  I think that patriotism means more then “saying you’re patriotic” and putting a “support our troops” magnet from super America on your car.
I love what the US has achieved solely based on the concept of “intestinal fortitude “literally they had the guts to do it.  I don’t just love our country though, I love South America too, Europe, Asia, Africa, all of your continents, even Antarctica. I am just a big fan of the world and its people in general.
What I am not a fan of is people shooting each other, Lead bullets, rubber bullets, pepper spray what have you, I believe the world to be a better place when we aren’t firing projectiles at each other period.
Of course sometimes we have to, revolution is part of evolution, Thomas Jefferson said “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.” The manure part of the quote that often gets left out, he also might have wanted to mention that it is important not to over water his particular Liberty garden, or you’ll wind up killing everything.
Its funny, politicians love to evoke the revolutionary war, and make grand claims about the founding fathers, but the reality is not all the citizens of the colonies were behind them, most of the public was just as happy under England’s Rule, the founding fathers did what they believed in. at the end of the day it s all about a triumph of the wills, who want it more.
Of course if they did win, the question is “what do they want”, the protestors all seem to be saying they want a chance to “discuss” their views with the delegates, do they really think the delegates are unaware of the junior grade riots going on outside the convention center?
Do the protestors really think that if they got to yell “No more Bush” to a room full of his loyalists that its going to accomplish anything besides being a mild irritant?   Do they realize that while a number of the delegates are elected officials, the vast majority are just citizens like themselves? That if they really wanted to have an influence on them, they could easily join the part, and then have a much easier time of having their voice heard.
on the run
Sometimes we yell to be heard, sometimes we yell to hear ourselves
What I wonder is if this isn’t some sort of cultural tourism on both sides of the aisle; protestors getting to relive the 68 convention, which is a bit like doing a historical reenactment of the Alamo – their side didn’t win.
The cops also having their own ’68 flashback where they have to hold their ground. I’d hazard a guess that the twin cities police have unholstered more weapons in the last week then they have in the past six months.
I wouldn’t trade jobs with them for anything, think about it: somebody throws a rock at you; you’re going to get mad. Throw a rock at them or worse, the police have ability, to defend themselves they have the access to weapons and they have the restraint not to use them. How long would you get hit with rocks, in a crowd that outnumbers you 10 to 1?
All this noise to be part of a waning news cycle, each side gets bragging rights, but what really gets accomplished save that the rift between the two sides grows wider.  When do we build bigger bridges, instead of widening the river? Of course this is Minnesota and we do have this problem with bridges…