12-10-2009
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Brad Harrington
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Subject: A Patriot's Open Letter
This open
letter, written by Bradley Harrington to our political
representatives, is an excellent articulation of the most fundamental
issue currently facing our country. We are in nothing less than a
battle for the enlightenment ideals of individualism, unalienable
human rights and liberty that is embodied in our Declaration of
Independence and Constitution.
A PATRIOT'S OPEN LETTER
By Bradley Harrington
"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility
against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."
— Thomas Jefferson, Letter To Benjamin Rush, 1800 —
An Open Letter To Our "Representatives" In The United States
Government:
As a patriot, and as a former military veteran, I need to tell
you a few things. I know that you folks have a lot to do, and
don't really want to take the time to listen to me. But I
strongly suggest that you do; for that attitude, you
see—of being to "busy" to listen to the people who
populate this country—is part of the problem I need to
discuss with you.
For hundreds of years, people like me have kept this nation
strong and free. Many of us are currently serving America in
the Middle East; a lot of us still surviving served in Vietnam.
Our fathers served in Korea; our grandfathers in World War II;
our great-grandfathers in World War I.
All the way back, we have fought, sweated, battled, bled and
died to protect our nation from attack. Whenever you called
upon us to serve, we were there. We didn't question your
right to send us off to war; we assumed that you had our
ideals at heart; we believed that you knew what you were
doing, and we unhesitatingly took out whoever you named as
our enemies. Hundreds of thousands of us were killed in
that process—but, as long as we knew that we were
defending liberty's torch, even the laying down of our lives
was not too high a price to pay.
In the Revolutionary War, we fought to separate ourselves from
the tyranny of King George III and to establish this nation,
"conceived in liberty," as a safe haven for individuals to
peacefully live their lives and pursue their happiness. Those
were, and are, our ideals, and we have always viewed America,
her history and her institutions as mankind's last, best and
greatest hope. And, for many decades, our efforts and
achievements enabled our nation to shine as a magnificent
beacon to the "poor and huddled masses" yearning to be free.
"Patriotism," to us, you see, is not blindly following our
leaders wherever they might lead: it is respect for, and
admiration of, the principles of freedom that animated the
creation of the United States. It is a profound passion we
have, at the very core of our souls, in regard to man's
unconquerable mind and the indomitability of the human spirit.
Patriotism, to us, is not loyalty to a government, but loyalty
to an idea, and it drives all of our thoughts and actions:
the idea that men and women have a right to be free.
Have you been doing your job as well as we have been doing
ours? Have you been as true to the ideals our nation was
founded upon as we have? Or have you used your power to
"engage in a long train of abuses and usurpations?"
(Declaration of Independence, 1776.)
Today, we observe that you and your laws have reduced our
economy to a shambles; have aided and abetted the destruction
of our social order; hampered the processes of our courts;
stifled our productive capacities; and ensnared the citizens
of this nation in a web of offensive and arbitrary decrees
that can be designed for one purpose only: to turn us into
serfs. And, now, as you sit in your citadels of power in
Washington, D.C., you tell us, when we protest, that you are
"busy." Busy doing what? Taking away our liberties and
turning this once-proud, once-free nation into a shoddy,
second-class "welfare" state?
I respectfully suggest that you'd better think again: for not
all of us are mindless automatons to be led like sheep to the
slaughter. Many of us know our history, and have read the
Declaration, and are fully aware of the part that says:
"That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of
these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to
abolish it..."
We military patriots haven't perished in one war after another
so that you, our so-called "representatives," could destroy
the ideals we have always combated to defend; we fought one
revolution to protect those ideals in 1776. So, take notice:
if you, in your colossally arrogant, controlling ignorance,
continue to take us down this corridor of coercion, we might
just decide that it is time to do it again.
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Bradley Harrington is a former United States Marine and a
free-lance writer who lives in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
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