America – Freedom of Speech and Accountability

America isn’t easy! America is advanced citizenship. You have to want it bad, because it is going to put up a fight. It’s going to say, “ You want free speech.” Then let me see you acknowledge a man, who’s words make your blood boil, who is standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs, that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim this country as the land of the free; well then the symbol of this country cannot be just a flag. The symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising their rights to burn that flag in protest. Show me that, defend that, celebrate that in our classrooms. Then you can stand up and sing about the land of the free. I have heard politicians for years and I have been operating under the assumption that the reason politicians devote so much time and energy shouting at the rain was simply that they don’t get it. I was wrong! Most politicians’ problem isn’t that they don’t get it; politician’s problem is that they can’t sell it. We have serious problems to solve in this country and we need serious people, which get it, to solve them. Whatever your particular problem is, I promise you that our, present leaders are not in the least interested in solving them. They are interested in two things and two things only. Making you afraid of it and telling you who is to blame for it. That is how you win elections. You gather a group of middle age, middle class, and middle-income voters. Who remember with longing an easier time and talk to them about family and American values and character and you scream about patriotism and you tell them that someone else is to blame for their lot in life.

People must realize that you must help the helpless; you cannot help the clueless.

We must lift our brothers, but we cannot carry them. I firmly believe that you must be held accountable for your life. Life is not easy! You can make it here if you try. We all should help you try. But we should not do it for you. If we do, you cannot grow. And our country will be weaker for it.