Freedom isn't something you can spread with a gun. It's an idea that can energize our actions. Men are free the moment they decide to be. You don't have to ask permission to get it.
Braveheart
blew my freaking teenage mind. The carnage was all a teenage boy could hope for, but the message of freedom was something so foreign, although the word "freedom" vomits forth from the lips of politicians like the magic honey of re-election.
Just before the scene where Wallace says "they can take our lives, but they can never take OUR FREEDOM," a couple of the fighters talk about deserting. Putting away their weapons and going home. That, to me, is freedom. The ability to say "hell no." To be able to live your life, to use your time and resources as you see fit.
Imagine a soldier today, throwing down his gun, and saying, "I ain't got no quarrel with the Muslims. I'm going home."
It's happened. "Since 2000, about 40,000 troops from all branches of the military have deserted"
All of our wars that have supposedly "made the world safe for democracy" have at the same time made it less free. Not only has the U.S. overthrown/assassinated democratically-elected leaders, rigged elections, and propped up dictators of the worst sort; but the American people have become sheeple. We don't want freedom. We want wealth. And we're willing to take it by bombing other countries, and taxing the justly rich.
It's time we start living like that great American—Henry David Thoreau. I don't mean we need to live in woods. Thoreau went to jail for refusing to pay his taxes. He refused to pay for an unjust war. We need to join him. We need to say "hell no, you can't use my money to bomb Muslims. I ain't go no quarrel with them."
I am not brave enough to go to prison. But I will not be stand idly by while neocons wage war in the name of my country. Sometimes, the bravest are those who refuse to fight.
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