Where is this generation? Asleep at the switch!

Today's generation hasn't faced its responsibility to truly defend the Constitution or keep this country truly free as generations past have. They have grown up assuming freedom will always be there. But many of my generation has found these freedoms are sacred and every once in a while someone tries to take them away, a little at a time, so that no one really notices until it's too late. That's what has happened since 9/11/2001. It didn't happen by the al-Qaeda but rather by our own elected President and Vice President.

I wonder what it is going to take to wake them up. So far we know only of abuses on suspected terrorists but the day will come when we learn that there was spying done on ordinary Americans whose only crime was using their Constitutionally protected freedom of speech and say something that annoyed the powers to be so they could start to look deeper into their pasts. It happened in my generation, we protested Vietnam and brought the war to an end. We now know FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and the likes of politicians like Sen. Joseph McCarthy were scaring people with power for years. They spied on Dr. Martin Luther King for many a years because he was perceived as a threat to society and the common good. Now we learn today that Hoover wanted to gather up 12,000 Americans and suspend habeas corpus over 50 years ago according to NY Times reporting today. At that time we were lucky we didn't have President Bush and Vice President Cheney as they most certainly would have gone along with Hoover and arrested the 12,000 so called threats to society.

I don't know why the history lessons weren't mandatory over how Hitler gained power in Nazi Germany while using the laws of Germany and making minor changes until they had sweeping powers. The Germans were asleep at the switch then too, just like so many here are as well. And then one day it was too late.

In the spirit of Christmas on this eve of Christmas Eve, think about all the blessings we have had as a country and remember those who have died to save our freedom and way of life in past wars and this current Iraq and Afghanistan war. It is up to us who are home to be vigilant and speak out when the loss of our freedom is threatened. That time is now so wake up America.