you know, "the land of the free"?
Jerry Pournelle fondly recalls a land that he once knew; a kinder, gentler, freer land: "Perhaps the world is safer now that we are involved everywhere, and have had to close the people's house of government, the building most recognized everywhere in the world; a building anyone would walk up to, walk inside, photograph; visit the seat of government of the land of the free, and it wasn't disorderly conduct to do it. But permit some of us to remember earlier times, when there were 26,000 nuclear warheads aimed at us, but we did not close down the symbols of freedom." Yes, well, perhaps he's noticed that we no longer (as Fred Reed notes) live in either a democracy or a republic...
But we were born free... weren't we? |
