DenverDoug seems to think a lot like me. He is one of my daily reads, and in this entry he says a lot of things that I've been thinking. I have been trying to keep politics and religion low-key here lately, I don't know what's come over me. So today's entry will be a break from all that non-expression. First off: politics. Patriotism, specifically. Even *more* specifically, jingoism. I was a patriot when I was born, and I'll be one when I die. But I'll be damned if I'm gonna get forced into competing with my patriotism against every other sonovabitch who feels like waving a flag. I wasn't flying a flag before Sept 11, and I'm not flying one now. I'm what's known as a quiet patriot. I don't feel the need to demonstrate the fact that I love my country, or that my heart is sore afraid for her. Our enemy is here, now. Our enemy is the one who would spit on the constitution... the one who would forget the famous words of Ben Franklin, "Those who would give up essential Liberty to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Yes, the bad guys want to control us. But they have to be sneaky about it... little things, like stealing presidential elections, will be followed by the bigger things... a de facto police state, a dictatorship, the total gutting of our constitution. Yeah, right, it can't happen right here in America! That's what they want you to think. They're counting on that complacency. I have been saying stuff like this for the last coupla years, and I'm gradually seeing it happen, and it's pretty damned obvious where we're heading. The attorney general won't release the names of those whom he's imprisoned because he doesn't want to encroach upon their civil liberties. Yes, he actually said that. And it must be assumed that those whom he has imprisoned are foreigners who can somehow be connected with the terrorist movement. But wait... that's quite an assumption right there. After all, he won't tell us who they are... and, of course, whoever they are, their civil liberties are being stomped to the ground and danced upon. Maybe they deserve it, maybe not. But that's nowhere close to how this nation should be run. And each day that we let it continue makes them stronger in their convictions... the conviction that we can be run over, sucked in to anything that they want to do to us... because we fear for our safety. Yep, they think that we're a nation of chickenshit cowards. OK, enough of the politics. Religion is next. A fellow in a mail-list that I'm on made a profound statement: people who say that they believe in god aren't necessarily stupid. There are some who just need that in their lives, for whatever reason. More, however, realize that life is so much easier when they pretend to believe. Even better, they can pretend to believe and get others to do the same and that gives them power and money. And they don't have to believe anything at all, they can just laugh all of the way to the bank. I'll go easy on religion today, and leave it there. Karen and I went to Lawrence tonight and took Brian out for his twelfth birthday. He wanted to go to a mexican place in North Lawrence, and it was OK, I guess. Not quite up to par, actually. And you have to realize that, to me, Taco Tico is the epitome of Mexican Fare... It was enjoyable, though. Karen and I had a nice trip up there and back, like we always do, wherever we go.