I'm going to express my thoughts about today and what it means because they’re rather political but, I hope not polarizing. One of the things I love most about being American and America is our freedom of speech and by extension our freedom of expression and our freedom to demonstrate those. I moved to Washington DC in the spring of 1973, I was in my early 20's. During that time the Shah of Iran was in power. Because of freedoms that exist in this country the Iranian students who lived in this country had the same right to speak and demonstrate. And they did, with one very big difference, they wore paper bags over their heads so they could not be identified and they did their demonstrations on the downtown streets of WDC during lunchtime, the busiest time of the day, nearly every day, disrupting auto/bus traffic, pedestrian traffic. Their chant was "The Shah is a US puppet, down with the Shah!"
I know that the students from Iran are not exactly the same people who, 30 years later flew planes into 3 large buildings & a 4th into a field on 9/11, but they do come from the same extremist mentality that took advantage of our freedoms, that oppose our freedoms, that want to curb those freedoms, that resent our freedoms. We must never let that happen! But with the way we are so polarized politically, we may internally combust; we have our own people trying to curb our freedoms. I do realize that freedom comes at a price and a great many people paid that price on 9/11, and many are still paying that price today. Thank you to all who have sacrificed your lives far too soon, so that we may continue to live in freedom.
To all the politicians and those of us who must vote, think carefully, stop the name calling, the lying, think of what we have paid for our freedom and what we must continue to pay, vote for what you think will help, not against someone because of their race or religion or some other irrelevant thing. Vote, vote, vote! Voting is an obligation, not just a right.
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