Dear Editor - a response to pro-war

People in Massachusetts and other parts of the east coast might not believe this, but where I live, you can't throw a rock without hitting a conservative who thinks the protests against the war are unpatriotic. I recently read a few letters to the editor of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette that caused me some consternation, but in the end I felt somewhat thankful that this disease never affected me the way it did others here in Hoosierland.

One woman wrote:

So go ahead and protest the war, the president, the military. They are all fighting to make sure you have every right to do so without retribution.Okay, I will. However, these rights would still be mine even if the nearly 2,000 American soldiers hadn't been sacrificed by George W. Bush. You see, we've had these rights since a little piece called the first amendment was added to the Constitution of the United States.

Another letter stated:

As the war goes on, the worst side of the people begins to develop. Time and malcontents weaken the spirit of patriotism and self-sacrifice.Lady, in case you didn't know it, "Dissent is the highest form of patriotism." - Thomas Jefferson

• "The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then." - Thomas Jefferson



• "We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it." - Edward R. Murrow



• "Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels - men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion." -Dwight D. Eisenhower



• "To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."” - Theodore Roosevelt



• "All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent."” - Thomas Jefferson



• "Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism." - George Washington



• "The highest patriotism is not a blind acceptance of official policy, but a love of one's country deep enough to call her to a higher plain." - George McGovern



• "Without debate, without criticism, no administration and no country can succeed -- and no republic can survive." - John F. Kennedy



• "Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear." - Harry S. Truman

Sorry, every now and then I feel a desire to reach into the proverbial bag of quotes to prove my point.

I think the really sad part of reading the letters is that the paper didn't appear to make any effort to publish any opposing viewpoints. Perhaps they didn't want to be seen as unpatriotic by their adoring conservative readership.

They ended the letters with one from a gentleman who was a little miffed with Pat Robertson's call for assassination, but not before another man who seems to think former oil-man Bush and his administration have nothing to do with the current glut of high prices at the gas pump. He even went so far as to . . . well, I'll let him tell you:

The high prices have been caused by the liberal Democrats who pander to the environmentalists, who don'’t want us to use our natural resources such as oil. Bush has proposed drilling for oil in the wildlife refuge in Alaska, which would increase our supply of oil and make us less dependent on foreign oil.Who do I think is responsible for the high prices? OPEC and . . . well, allow me to call upon the wisdom of Honest Abe Lincoln to finish this piece. He obviously could foresee much more than his own demise:

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country... Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed." - Abraham Lincoln - 1864