PATRIOTIC RETIREMENT

[flo]

You guys are goin down the doomsday slope on an oiled banana peel in here lately...

love the mental image I get from this . . . 

[Wilma]

Pam, you go, girl.  I am not going to spend the rest of my life looking for the worst to happen.  If it happens, it happens.  I have found that everytime I was disappointed about not getting something I wanted really badly, something better turned up.  Something better is around the corner and I am going to be here to go around that corner.  Want to go with me?

[Diane Amberg]

Hey! Wait for me!

[pam]

Wilma I'm already on the road 

[sixdogsmom]

Just like Willy! 

[greatguns]

I read it, I loved it, I laughed.  Thanks!

[Varmit]

I am going to say something here and then leave this one alone.  I understand that the orignal post was meant as a joke.  However, today too many people are taking things like that to heart.  If you would have asked me a year ago if we would be in the place we are now, I would have answered with a resounding no.  I would not have believed that the citizens of this country would have elected a person so hellbent on overiding our Constution.  I would not have believed that it would take a state admendment to define what marriage meant. 

Pam, if you really enjoy your freedom, if you like being able to raise your children the way You see fit, if you like being able to worship how you feel is right, then please, by all means, thank a Veteran.  You see, freedom isn't free, it comes at a cost.  It requires the sacifrice of brave men and women who would not see their country ruled by a tyrannt.  It demands that those who would live by, fight and defend it even at the cost of their very lives.  It has at its core a by-law that states that anyone who would give the blessing of Freedom for peace and security, want neither of them bad enough to deserve any of them. Remember Samuel Adams..

"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquilty of servitude greater then the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace.  We seek not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posteriry forget you were our countymen"

If my voice seems harsh or my disposition hateful it is only because I am faced with the apathy of a people who confess to love freedom but not the diligence nessecary to keep it.

[pam]

   Dude you are preachin to the choir here to use an old saying. There are more than a few veterans in my gene pool. I will stand and fight and have for what is important. I don't depend on popular opinion or even approval for that. I AM free. I DID and DO raise my children in the way I see fit. I DO worship as I see fit. I ask no ones permission and I take no ones censorship. God gave me a conscience and an inner voice, my family nutured my independance and open-minded  search for what I needed to know and I learned to respect wisdom no matter WHERE I found it.
  I "crouch" for no man, I lick no-ones boots, which is why I drive a LOT of people crazy and always have. People who matter accept me tho.

[Varmit]

Thats what I am saying, Freedom isn't just given, it has to be protected and fought for. But first it has to be won.  Hence, the Revolutionary war.

[pam]

    Nobody can "give" you what you already have. If somebody "gives" you freedom it AIN'T freedom. 

"The white world puts all the power at the top. When someone gets to the top, they have the power to take your freedom. In your churches there is someone at the top. In your schools, too. In your government. In your business. There is always someone at the top, and that person has the right to say whether you are good or bad. They own you. No wonder Americans always worry about freedom. You have so damn little of it. If you don't protect it, someone will take it away from you.
When you came among us, you couldn't understand our way. You wanted to find the person at the top. You wanted to find the fences that bound us in. Your world was made of cages and you thought ours was, too.
Everything looked like cages. Your clothes fit like cages. Your houses looked like cages. You put fences around your yards so they looked like cages. Everything was a cage. You turned the land into cages. Little squares. Then you made a government to protect these cages. And that government was all cages. The only freedom you had was inside your own cage. Then you wondered why you weren't happy and didn't feel free.
The only time freedom is important is when others are trying to put you in chains. We had no chains so we needed no freedom. We had always had our freedom, so you had nothing of value to give us. All you could do is take it away and give it back to us in the form of cages.
You took our honor and gave us your freedom. And even you know that is no freedom at all. It is just the freedom to live inside your own locked cage. "