A Conversation With Myself
-
Kevin Godbee - Jul 3, 2014
- 7 min read
Fred Brown
Over the next weeks and months, I will endeavor to write a series of essays that will be on a different plane than those in the past. Basically, the Pipe Pundit will attempt to go ethereal.
What has me disturbed and agitated is the state of things in our nation, outside of what is going on, or not, with the political process.
I’m more interested in individual rights than group rights.
Several years ago, I interviewed that great Southern Gentleman, Shelby Foote, the famed Civil War author. He invited me to his beautiful 1927 English Tudor cottage in Memphis, Tenn., to talk of things past.
During the rambling conversation, he said something that zipped by me at first, but then continued to buzz in my brain.
"Eventually," he said in that mellifluous and distinct soft Southern drawl so familiar to millions of PBS TV viewers, "we will lose all of our icons."
He meant, of course, most of those of the Civil War era and up to the present. They will be replaced with a type of toxic political correctness.
During our long afternoon talk—Shelby was generous with his time with me, for which I am forever grateful—he smoked a Dunhill billiard, about a Group 3.
Shelby Foote (L), Fred Brown (R)
Not being particularly careful with the pipe, when he completed a bowl, he dragged over his office trash can and banged the pipe on the insides of it, emptying the pipe of its ashes.
I cringed, of course. Not knowing the age of the pipe (Shelby was a World War II veteran, stationed at one point in Ireland), I could just see ancient briar splintering and shattering and being dashed to bits.
As for the icons, Shelby said he did not necessarily mean those few Southerners who reached high regard during the Civil War, such as Gen. Nathan Bedford Forest, a defensive genius, but also flawed in his concept of human rights.
No, Shelby said he meant all of America’s icons, the Washingtons, the Adamses, the Jeffersons, the Paines, the Eisenhowers, the Kennedys, etc.
He feared that they and their accomplishments would all be overtaken by some radical mutation of political rightness. He feared that fairness and freedom of rights, the very fabric our society depends upon to conduct its daily life, would erode. We tread a thin layer in the world of the rights of man.
My thoughts on individual rights and your thoughts on personal rights will, naturally, differ.
We come together under various banners and can come together under certain circumstances, such as the American Constitution. But as we have seen, even that hallowed document can be shaved to reflect a certain philosophy of rights: mine, yours, the community at large, a specific group, business enterprise, religious body, even the complicated matter of giving birth.
In the beginning, America’s Founding Fathers were loathe to tread heavily on individual rights, and indeed were willing to fight for freedom of states rights, as it meant in 1776.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal," is the lead sentence in the second paragraph of the U.S. Declaration of Independence.
How far we have come from those days in our treatment of each other and the respect we have for individual rights. It is absolutely appalling that as a pipe smoker I am considered a pariah in my community, state and nation. I am a social outcast.
Who or what gives you the right to infringe upon my right to enjoy a particular endeavor that will not harm you in any way?
I can hear it now: "Oh, but you are so wrong. It does harm me. Your second-hand and third-hand smoke damages me and infringes upon my rights not to smell the evil whiffs of tobacco."
Let’s see. Proof of second-and-third-hand smoke being of significant harm to others is not satisfactorily conclusive for starters. Third-hand smoke damage to others is much like a mirage—in the eye of the beholder.
Okay, so now I no longer am able to smoke in any public buildings or places. In some communities (and the list is growing as politicians glom to the controversy like glue and seek to be re-elected on the backs of smokers and those who enjoy tobacco) it is illegal to puff in many parks and public golf courses, where fresh air abounds!
Soon, I expect laws to change in a manner that disallows a smoker to light up in his own car, which will one day be traded in for a new set of wheels. The "third-hand" smoke zealots will see to it that a car that has been clouded with tobacco smoke will be unsafe for human habitation, claiming that the evil leaf has embedded in the seats, floors and roof of the car fabric.
Again, I expect the same attitude will transfer to home ownership: unlawful to smoke inside our outside the home due to third-hand smoke infestation in ceilings, floors, curtains, beds, decks, wood framework, basement walls. I can envision a required toxic inspection to go along with the structural inspection.
Laws enacted by Congress on the federal level and by legislatures on the state, will eventually overwhelm the tobacco industry, including pipe tobacco manufacturers. Maybe not in the near future, but certainly in that white dot on the horizon.
Laws are one way to take the handle off the pump of tobacco, or the source. Pricing is another. Collectively, laws and prices are powerful weapons in the hands of anti-tobacco lobby and anti-everything groups. They use their fight against tobacco and smoking to raise funds with which to foster their agendas. In reality, it is a smoke screen to raise money. And it must be remembered by those who support such groups, that although I am being gored now, they will come for you next!
At one time in the nation’s history, tobacco was not only a primary cash crop, but it was also a political tool. It helped to foster deals between the fledgling U.S. and other parts of the world, such as Europe.
We as a nation have much history with the green leaves of August. In the curing, leaves transform themselves from green to yellow to brown, a kind of mirror image of the nation as it began young and revolutionary, then matured.
To realize what our society has become is disturbing: individual rights, my rights to live as I please within established community laws and as long as my rights are not infringing upon another’s, are being diminished.
As long as I obey current smoking laws, I fail to understand why I must be punished further with even more draconian intentions adding more layers of legalese and pricing upon me in order to make me stop something that I very much enjoy, not only as a hobby in the collecting of beautiful briar and meerschaum pipes, but also various blends of tobaccos.
My hobby, my passion, may not be your passion. I don’t expect you to understand my feelings and thoughts about pipes and tobaccos, just as I don’t harbor the same feelings and passions you might have for, say, duck hunting, skiing, skydiving, or smoking marijuana.
Our Founding Fathers understood perfectly what could happen in the best of worlds:
A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.
Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.
All of the above was written by Thomas Jefferson, one of the best minds to hold public office. He understood the best and worst governments have to offer its people.
We can choose to be oppressed or we can stand up for our individual rights under the law.
This July 4, the nation’s Day of Independence, when the Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Continental Congress in 1776, give some thought to your rights as a person, and those of your neighbor.
Neither should be trampled upon in any way. We have come too far, paid too big a price to have our freedoms eroded by a toxic process called political correctness.
[Editor’s note: You might also like to read "The Myth of the Greater Good"]
|
|
Written by Kevin Godbee
13 Responses
Recent Posts
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 636. Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with Barry Kane. Barry started smoking a pipe in 1961 when he was 14-years old. Back then it seemed like everybody smoked, and you could buy pipes and tobacco just about anywhere. Barry is a true old-school pipe smoker, sticking to just one blend. See if you can guess which one before listening. At the top of the show Brian will give his take on Scandinavian Tobacco Group’s purchase of Mac Baren and Sutliff Tobacco and their announcement that they will be shut down.
There’s a pipe in my collection that I cannot bring myself to smoke, though I’ve had it for more years than I care to recall. It’s old, or shall I say, well experienced; that experience, that oldness came to it long before it was in my possession. The pipe is an old Comoy’s Grand Slam from the 1940s. The shape (#93), a slightly canted, stack billiard (sometimes referred to as a Belgian) is right up my alley, and it’s a beautiful example of it. It came to me with some wear and tear; nothing unusual for an old pipe, but more the signs of one that has been well loved, smoked a lot, treated as a favorite tool, cherished, in a sense, by frequent use. It’s the pipe equivalent of a vintage car that’s been driven a lot, enjoyed fully and maintained adequately, rather than one kept in a spotless garage, dusted and detailed weekly, brought out only for leisurely Sunday drives, or to be ogled behind the ropes at the next Concours d’Elegance. When it arrived, those uncounted years ago, it wanted a little restoration. Nothing dramatic needed to be done to it, but the stem was oxidized, the finish a little dingy. The cake was even and fairly thin, and the airway was relatively clean, both signs that its previous owner cared for it, but the bowl’s surface was a little drab and dull. It took little effort to reveal its beauty, to show the lovely contrasted stain and interesting grain beneath the old wax. I often think I should do before and after photos of pipes that I work on, but those thoughts always come after the work’s been done. This one would have been a great illustration of how years of handling that can sometimes make a pipe more beautiful, can other times make it just look grungy. Once I’d cleaned up the externals, it was time to address the inside bits. I approach this a little bassackwards, I realize. It would be more sensible to take care of the inside before addressing the outside, but it’s how I roll. If an old pipe isn’t pretty to look at, it’s unlikely that I’ll care much about it, and cleaning is usually the hardest part, or at least the most boring part of any restoration for me. Alcohol and pipe cleaners. Lots of pipe cleaners. That’s why I leave it for last. Sometimes, I’ll even give a pipe a test smoke before a deep cleaning, just for a point of reference. I gave it a sniff to get an idea of what I was up against, and it stopped me cold. There in that bowl was an aroma that I had not smelled in decades. My head was instantly filled with memories of being in the back room of a fabled Berkeley tobacconist’s shop where I stumbled upon a few jars of long discontinued blends. One of them, a blend called Forty and Eight, had the most engaging and unusual scent of any tobacco I’d stuck my schnoz into. It was sweet, but not in a candy store way. There were none of the usual vanilla, cherry, berry or anise notes of typical aromatics, nothing that could be compared to aftershave or deodorant soap, but something almost musky, a little earthy, something exotic. The shop’s owner couldn’t tell me what was in it, how, or where it had been produced. The old blend had been retired before he’d bought the place. The printed catalogue gave no clues, either, other than being overprinted with the word “DISCONTINUED” in bold, rubber-stamp type. (And, I don’t recall it as being “highly aromatic” as the description indicates.) There was still quite a bit in the jar. Being, at that point, an intrepid explorer of all kinds of tobaccos, whether I thought I’d like them or not, I had to give it a try. It was burly based, but also comprised a good measure of virginia leaf, and maybe some other varieties; I didn’t have enough experience at the time to really pick it apart. But, that aroma was unlike anything I’d experienced before or since. It was something now completely lost to time. Until it wasn’t. Memories are powerful things, and there is no sense more tightly bound to memory than our sense of smell. One whiff was all it took to carry me back in time, conjuring a vivid recollection of something long submerged in the inky depths of a subconscious mind. Look, I know as well as anyone that pipes are meant to be smoked, and that many feel it almost sacrilegious to have a pipe and not set it to its intended task. In this case, I simply can’t. I won’t. Ever. Rationally, I am fairly certain this pipe would probably be a great smoke. It was too well loved by its previous caretaker to be anything less than that. My choice not to smoke it is an emotional one, not something rational. Of the thousands of pipes that have passed through my hands over the years, this is the only one to create such a singular and vivid, almost Proustian recollection of temps perdu, of lost time. It revivified a long dormant memory that is mine, and mine alone, and that’s enough. I keep it in a drawer with other old English pipes. In some ways, it’s nothing special, just a nice old pipe. I don’t lavish it with any particular care that arguably befits the hidden treasure that it holds. It’s not in a special box, or displayed preciously in a glass cabinet. Every once in a while, I take it out, point my nose bowlwards, and every time, those memories return just as powerfully as they did the first time. I have no idea how long it’s been since its last owner smoked it, but in the years I’ve had it, there seems to have been very little degradation of the aroma, and that’s […]
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 635. Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with James Ravenwood. James is the boutique tobacco blender of Ravenwood Blends. His blending started out as a fun hobby, and he now has professionally packaged commercially available products with some great tin art. Part of his interest in pipe smoking goes back to fond memories of a retired Navy Veteran that lived on his street while he was growing up that would sit in his driveway smoking a pipe all day. Later, in 2011 he began smoking pipes and soon after started experimenting with mixing different tobaccos. His other hobby, that he has been doing for 30 years, is photography. He takes wonderful photos of outdoor spaces, and still life pictures of pipes and tobacco. You can see them on his Instagram @thebriarfellowship. At the top of the show we’ll have an Ask the Pipemaker segment with renowned pipe artisan Jeff Gracik.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 634! Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with Warren Ertle. Warren is an extremely accomplished musician with a PhD in music. He started early as a percussionist in sixth grade. Later his grandmother got him a cheap Casio keyboard which he taught himself to play. He started playing in blues bands in high school, and has been a pianist with jazz big bands for years. Even though he was already a professional musician, he took his first real piano lesson when he enrolled in college with his studies in classical music. He is of course a pipe smoker. At the top of the show we will have an Ask the Tobacco Blender segment with Jeremy Reeves. Jeremy is the Head Blender at Cornell & Diehl, which is one of the most popular boutique pipe tobacco companies in the USA.
Soon now, supposedly, our neighborhoods will shift from grinning pumpkins, skeletons in various assortments, and zombies dashing about to pretty reindeer, angels, and flashing lights illuminating homes with sparkling stars and laughing, scurrying Santas. But, lest we forget, there is the turkey season, fancy pie aromas wafting from kitchens, and a national pardon of a big Tom Turkey. Remember, now, that only one of these holiday personalities is a pipe smoker. And that is the hefty, bearded fellow in a bright red suit sitting in a sleigh with a herd of deer hitched up and ready to streak across the globe, bringing tidings of joy and many presents. Ok, the scene is set for the next couple of months, right? So, before we get too far off the beaten path, let’s just take a deep breath of fresh autumn air, shall we? Ahh. That’s better, isn’t it? What’s got the Pundit in a snit is not all the Halloween spooks who came a-jostling for candy. Or the wild turkeys gobbling in the backwoods or all the fuss and feathers over the big one—Christmas. No, it is that we might need to take note of all the little things that mean so much to us. Like a good sunrise (seriously, Pundit has not gone all Pollyanna.) Mayhaps we need to appreciate more of what we have than what we have not. Or something like that. Like, a good pipe in the morning with coffee as the dawn brings us coolish weather now that we have flipped the calendar to autumn. But it also brings beautiful leaves that have become a spectacle of technicolor in the wind. It is the little things. The rereading of an enjoyable book and finding something you did not see or learn in the first go-round. Or a stunning phrase you commit to memory with the re-read, while smoking that favorite pipe. And you notice a superior puff that just seems to be different. It’s in the air and the seasons of meaningful little things. It’s aromatic! Or perhaps it is that sense of satisfaction knowing and appreciating you made it to another day. With the world in a kind of rinse-and-repeat history, reminiscent of a Shakespearean play, it is perhaps a good moment to remember some of Pipedom’s philosophers whose cogent thoughts brought light to clear a path in the mists of confusion and confounding opinions. Ok. No gloom and doom. Just some down-home thoughts. Think of times in the past when history was running off the rails. It took our pipe-smoking thinkers (the mind workers of the world) to speak of better pathways to more light. Think for a moment, with a pipe in hand, these wizards of the world and word: Albert Einstein, J. R.R. Tolkien, Mark Twain, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Edwin Hubble, Bertrand Russell, C. S. Lewis, and Jean-Paul Sartre. All learned and enlightened. They offered wisdom instead of storms of meaningless roads to nowhere. All while smoking their pipes! Maybe especially with the help of their pipes in the art of thinking and philosophy. Recall the words of Mr. E=MC2 when he said, “I believe that pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgment in all human affairs.” Amen and amen! Dealing with world-rattling events takes a calm and objective view of things, to the Pundit’s way of summing it up. You just don’t go messing around with quantum physics without a calm and objective approach, methinks. Or as the extraordinary physicist Robert Oppenheimer said after he and a team in the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos Labs developed a way to split atoms into bombs during World War II. “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” said Oppenheimer referring to the development of the first nuclear bombs dropped on Japan. It must be pointed out that Oppenheimer was more of a cigarette smoker than a pipe smoker. Nonetheless, pipes were part of his personality. Now, if you have read some of the great authors of the past and present, their pipes were always nearby. Reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle can be a three-pipe problem at times. S. Lewis and Jean-Paul Sartre require time with your pipes to reflect on the existential problems and solutions these authors provide in learned novels and other narratives. Or take Edwin Hubble and Bertrand Russell, philosophers of another world. Pipes are required for reading. The quantum lode of ideas Pundit is attempting to sort out is that our pipes are relaxing and stimulate our thoughts and creativity. Especially in these last months of the year. Many times Pundit has had that light bulb flick on while smoking my beloved pipes. And friends in Pipedom, it ain’t easy to turn on the lights in Pundit’s rock pit head. Now it’s time for a quote from a Pipe Smoker of the Past. Shelby Foote was born Nov. 17, 1916, in Greenville, Miss., and died June 27, 2005, in Memphis, Tenn. A fact is not a truth until you love it—Shelby Foote. A parting thought: It is said that famed Southern author William Faulkner carried a packed pipe in a coat pocket wherever he went. That’s one effective way to deal with workday conflicts and confusion. A calm and objective judgment in our everyday human affairs, as the quantum man said.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 633. Our featured guest tonight is Jon David Cole. JD is the Owner/Tobacconist at The Country Squire in Jackson, MS, and the accompanying online store. We’ll have JD and Brian talking about what’s new at the store and in the business in general. At the top of the show, Brian will discuss tobacco growing, what happens to the leaf, and provide updated information on where tobacco is being gown today. Tobacco production originated in the United States and we were once the #1 producer. It’s quite different now.
Well said.
I mourn his passing and wise thoughts, one of the best voices ever, calm, soothing. As our Freedoms are eroded the younger Gen has no idea because they were raised in the present. I was born during WWII and can see the magnitude of erosion. Pity my Grandchildren. Rest In Peace Shelby.
It will happen. The mass of the people are inured by their X boxes and other devices. The idea of individual sacrifice does not appear in the lexicon of the ‘me’ generation and as such we are condemned to become another Spain. This country was not built by flaccid individuals sitting in Starbucks thinking of things they personally dislike, it was built by those who went out and just got on with it. When a vocal minority, be it in the media or finance enslaves the majority in conjunction with a professional political class you have the end my friends.
It is the result of what I see as “vilification” advocacy: vilify those that do what you disagree with and ostracize them. Then take away their rights. Problem is, if you do it in one sphere it makes it easier to do it in others. Well said.
I find myself more libertarian aligned: do as you please as long as you aren’t hurting anyone else,respect property rights, limited/small government, non-intervention, etc.
The problem we have in this country is that both parties and their supporters love to trample on personal rights in the interest of personal rights and advancing agendas. They pick and choose which rights are more important than others and trample over the ones they care not for.
What drives me nuts is that both of these parties pay lip service to protecting the rights of others while dealing blows right and left to personal rights. Democrats trumpet freedom of speech yet are constantly fighting people over their use of their 1st Amendment rights. Republicans claim to be the party of personal liberty and “the government can’t tell me what to do,” while being on the forefront standing in the way of equal rights for homosexuals who are not harming anyone.
Nothing will get solved until everyone learns that personal rights are just that: personal. They differ from person to person and family to community. If no one is harmed and nothing illegal is happening, then butt out and mind your own business. Period.
If gays want to get married, then let them get married. They sign the same papers and get the same rights as married folks. They can also suffer the same way as a straight couple and get divorced all the same.
Back to the origin of this entire conversation: smokers need to be left alone. Let em smoke. Especially on private property. I can sympathize with the whole public smoking ban, but I believe the owner of an establishment should have final say over their premises. Thankfully cigar bars exist so there is somewhere to have drinks and smoke indoors with others. The only other agreement I can have with the anti-smoker brigade is about cost of care. I am ok with insurance premiums being higher for smokers because it is a personal choice, the cigarette/dip/pipe/cigar didn’t leap into your lips by force. You pay for your own choices and take responsibility.
That is what liberty is about: owning your choices and actions.
Liberty!
Excellently stated my friend.
I don’t want to get off on a rant here, as I generally agree that rights are being eroded. Not just in good ol’ U.S.A., but in other so called “democratic” nations. I am always warmed when I see the spark of realization light up in people who genuinely believed that they are free. Freedom has been a myth that has been propagated ever since those founding fathers many americans love to quote so often declared independence.
“Thomas Jefferson, one of the best minds to hold public office.” was also a slaver, so the contents of his mind are definitely in question. Many other people were alive at the same time who held quite different thoughts on the issue. His thoughts on freedom were mixed, at best, and his mind was a rotten cesspool that unfortunately, had much influence in his day. Perhaps that’s too polite, but what is really on my mind would have this deleted, no doubt.
Another founding father, James Madison, “was concerned that if voters could determine policy, it would challenge the privileged.”
That whole declaration of independence thing wasn’t for the people. It’s not a part of the traditional american textbook, as any american can no doubt attest to, but it is a part of the history all the same. They sure as hell weren’t looking out for the average american, and those foundations are still strong today.
My only criticism is that it’s probably best to leave these “founding fathers” out of these types of debates and not use them in support for arguments. Generally, they were a bunch of capitalist jerk-off’s who had no intention of empowering the average american individual. They were looking out for their own, and their own kind. So perhaps it is better to focus on the American spirit, which comes from the regular american you’re apt to meet on the street rather than these crusty old buggers who are best forgotten.
Their legacy is still ringing out through time, so it’s no surprise that your rights are being trampled on today. It’s been that way since these folks got together so long ago.
Where is the american spirit, in the face of all of these changes? The average american likely has a wildly different view from all of the policy and carnage being churned out of your halls of “justice”. It’s the privileged, elite few, entrenched into this terrible mixed up system by those founding fathers that are trampling all over your rights. Or well, the few scraps of rights you have left. Better to look at your neighbours, friends, and family members and ask where it all went wrong and what can be done to make it right. You’re probably not going to find the answer in a dusty old document written for privileged whitey with a few thousand acres of plantations…
You bring up and make some very valid points about the Founding Fathers. Yes, there track record on human rights has been embellished amongst the layman, a lot of that blame can be laid at the feet of public schools, especially at the elementary level.
In order to discover true American history, you have to go further than public schooling by taking college courses or picking up a book that was written by a vetted expert on the topic and not a blowhard with an agenda.
The Founding Fathers wrote all of our documents with the common man in mind, but much more so the land owning adult male in mind. Also, there has to be some context applied to the times in which these documents were drafted and passed. Slavery was common all over the world and was more or less a necessary evil. When the 3/5 Compromise was involved with the question to allow slavery or not, it was ultimately decided in order to maintain “a more perfect union” it would be imperfect, but would be a topic to revisit down the road.Except that topic was revisitied and was given a formal conclusion before the turn of the 19th century with the Civil War.
Our country is absolutely not perfect, but this is as good as it gets believe it or not, depending on your view of society. Go visit Central or South America, the Middle East, Africa or Asia and tell me the USA stinks. The only debate would be between Democratic socialized Europe/Canada, Australia and America.
I am a strong advocate of fixing things at the local level because ultimately it is about the only place where a community of individuals can affect change that is meaningful. The federal level is not run by the everyday man, so it has to begin at the local level first. Plant the roots of true liberty there by pushing back against the DC status quo and its influence and overreach to the local level.
Unadoptedlamp, I respectively disagree with your remarks concerning the founding fathers. I’ll leave it at that for this forum. Enjoy the 4th of July.
Fred, very well spoken.
“Freedom has been a myth that has been propagated ever since those founding fathers many americans love to quote so often declared independence.”
This is such pure, unmitigated BS that I find it difficult to respond to in a civil manner.
Freedom is never absolute, my freedoms end where yours begin except where they overlap by mutual consent. With the exception of a few absolute rulers, everyone throughout history has had to make compromises with their neighbors in order to coexist.
The United States is not and never has been a perfect society. It is, however, a society that has provided a larger percentage of its population the ability to live life as they choose than any other in history. There have certainly been segments of our population that have been less fairly treated than they should have been. Welcome to the real world. I have been in combat. I have risked my life so that others could have the freedom that I took for granted. I have been shot while doing so. I would do it again. This doesn’t make me a hero in any sense of the word. It makes me an individual who knows the cost of freedom and firmly believes that it is worth the cost.
That was a great piece by Fred Brown, like the proverbial frog in the slowly heated pot, many cannot see the loss of freedoms, because it has been implemented so incrementally. It would have been unthinkable in the lives of the founders for someone to be offended by the simple act of a man smoking his pipe, and the government rushing to the collective rescue of the population by passing legislation for our greater good.
In a conversation with an Arizona state senator, he talked to me about how the collective mindset now is all about accommodating everyone’s lifestyle preferences instead of respecting individual rights…that strikes at the heart of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness…and continuing down that road will eventually herd us towards being loyal subjects…those that refuse to be “loyal”, will not be tolerated.
I am glad that the comments have remained civilized, kcvet. My comments are not engineered to inflame american sentiments. To the contrary. I am merely suggesting that perhaps if people did seriously study this historical record and make an attempt to understand the perspective, they may begin to see that the “problems of today” are in fact deeply rooted in the past. Perhaps the american people can rise up with another revolution, led by the people, for the people. They are certainly capable. With the constant bombardment on your personal rights and freedoms, it seems essential. Blind patriotism will not solve any of the current problems, and in fact, it can only make it worse. There is nothing wrong with taking a hard, honest, and critical look at the things we value. Therein lies the truth, and sometimes, the truth hurts. Pick up the pieces and look for a way to move forward.
For the record, I have been living in foreign countries for quite some time now. From north america to south america, europe and beyond. There are many “free” countries, and america does not particularly stand out among them. It’s just the way it is and these places are all more or less the same, if you group similar “free” nations, of which there are many. Perhaps one difference is that americans may be coaxed into standing up for their rights. It has yet to be seen.
So rather than clinging to a mostly distorted version of the past, perhaps it is time for americans to look toward the future and decide what that should look like. I’ll be cheering you on.
Tobacco legislation is the least of your worries. The US Constitution sounds great, but it has been meaningless, except as a propaganda tool. America gained it’s wealth from slavery, drug dealing (tobacco) and genocide. It has recently been the victim of a coup and since the end of the second world war has been meddling in the world to a degree only The USSR did, for one aim; Freedom wasn’t it.
Yes, tobacco legislation is getting pretty horrific. But to pretend that this is some Holy War for Freedom is ludicrous.