Politics: Reminder

Perusing my erstwhile hometown newspaper, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, I came across the following letter to the editor, which inspired me so that I am including here in full, as well as linking to it.

We owe our freedoms to those who reject political obedience

I guess it's touching that so many Americans believe they owe their freedoms to veterans who have fought their wars (of whom I am one). But, in reality, wars don't defend our freedoms. Every war severely limits freedoms by creating suspicion and fear, by suppressing dissent and debate and by increasing police surveillance, arrests and persecutions of those who dare to speak out.

Tyrannized by a government-controlled party line that brands peace as unpatriotic, most Americans are too fearful to even think critical thoughts, much less express them. Only flag-waving obedience is regarded as acceptable.

We have freedoms in America -- such as we do, and they are limited -- only because of those who have publicly opposed political oppression, and been abused for it. Those who never speak up for an unpopular idea or against the ones in power have never truly exercised their freedom. We owe our freedoms to those who have thoughtfully and painfully taken unpopular stands, for civil rights and liberties, for the rights of labor, for the right to believe or disbelieve in religion.

Abject obedience is labeled patriotic, but it doesn't preserve our liberties and is the easy route for the conformist mind. As Thoreau observed, "A very few . . . serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and are commonly treated as enemies by it." Thus, we don't owe freedom to those who served in these foreign and dubious wars, or to the authoritarian military they served under, with its ideal of automatic allegiance, which nullifies individual moral choice. Generals are rarely friends of freedom.

JIM SCOFIELD
Johnstown

Amen, sir.