Me an old radical? - gosh, maybe
Today I'm bored, it's 67 degrees, much too nice to do anything productive yet the fire of the past life burns within. To that end I will say that I have about 3 good adventures to relate soon, but not today - because I'm bored and lazy. So, I'm going to plagiarize myself today, but for a good reason.
Sometimes we think we've changed in our old age, maybe even actually improved (although how can you improve on perfection?) but at any rate we need something to bring us back to reality. For some reason I've got it in my mind that I've become radical, out-spoken and opinionated only in my old age (i.e., the last couple of years). But in scanning some old files on the PC today I find that may not be the beginning of my anti-social behavior anymore than we started global warming less than 100 years ago. So, I offer you a letter to the editor of the Lake Travis View published January 2001, you be the judge:
A letter to my Cousin Jerry in Nebraska
Dear Cousin,
I regret to inform you I am now on the road to a life of crime - in a moronic rush to absurdity our Lakeway City Council voted yesterday to make it illegal to feed the deer! After reading this in the morning paper I went out and fed the deer some of the remaining food I bought for them last weekend.
I'm holed up in my office in a defensive position (under my desk with my keyboard) waiting for the jack-booted "Lakeway deer feeder police" to arrest and haul me away. If you don't hear from me again cousin, tell the family I've been taken political prisoner and I love them - it's for a just cause.
While you, and our Uncles, including my Father, served valiantly in WWII, Korea and other conflicts around the world, I tell you now their efforts were in vain. The loss of freedom is a subtle, insidious thing that isn't as obvious and threatening as Pearl Harbor, the Berlin Wall or the bombing of the Cole - it's as simple, as subtle and as close as a seemingly good intentioned ordinance in a little village somewhere in Texas purporting to "save peoples lawns" from distress. It is the malignant cancer that begins unseen, unheard, almost unfelt within.
As an Army pilot, you stood ready to put your life on the line at a moments notice on my behalf (without asking), thank you. My Father flew missions over Tokyo, our family served in places like Saipan, Tinian, Okinawa and Korea and by God's grace returned safely to us. But I tell you now their sacrifice for freedom has been perverted. It now assures that a few dictate to the many, that although you do something irrational (like plant things deer eat in an area where deer have thrived for decades) you can limit the judgment and freedom of others if you are shrill enough.
You can dictate to others what they can and can't do within the bounds of their private property. Freedom and private property, the two cornerstones for which our ancestors left their homelands generations ago are no more, do you imagine their oppression began so much differently than this?
I tell you this today dear cousin as a warning. Reveal to no one where you live, or that you feed wild animals, or that you do not shoot them for eating your flowers for I fear that even in the rural farmlands of Nebraska your freedoms are not safe. The cancer that begins as a whisper sucks the life from the body host and spares neither patriot nor timid. I must end this now as I hear voices and sirens outside.
Sometimes we think we've changed in our old age, maybe even actually improved (although how can you improve on perfection?) but at any rate we need something to bring us back to reality. For some reason I've got it in my mind that I've become radical, out-spoken and opinionated only in my old age (i.e., the last couple of years). But in scanning some old files on the PC today I find that may not be the beginning of my anti-social behavior anymore than we started global warming less than 100 years ago. So, I offer you a letter to the editor of the Lake Travis View published January 2001, you be the judge:
A letter to my Cousin Jerry in Nebraska
Dear Cousin,
I regret to inform you I am now on the road to a life of crime - in a moronic rush to absurdity our Lakeway City Council voted yesterday to make it illegal to feed the deer! After reading this in the morning paper I went out and fed the deer some of the remaining food I bought for them last weekend.
I'm holed up in my office in a defensive position (under my desk with my keyboard) waiting for the jack-booted "Lakeway deer feeder police" to arrest and haul me away. If you don't hear from me again cousin, tell the family I've been taken political prisoner and I love them - it's for a just cause.
While you, and our Uncles, including my Father, served valiantly in WWII, Korea and other conflicts around the world, I tell you now their efforts were in vain. The loss of freedom is a subtle, insidious thing that isn't as obvious and threatening as Pearl Harbor, the Berlin Wall or the bombing of the Cole - it's as simple, as subtle and as close as a seemingly good intentioned ordinance in a little village somewhere in Texas purporting to "save peoples lawns" from distress. It is the malignant cancer that begins unseen, unheard, almost unfelt within.
As an Army pilot, you stood ready to put your life on the line at a moments notice on my behalf (without asking), thank you. My Father flew missions over Tokyo, our family served in places like Saipan, Tinian, Okinawa and Korea and by God's grace returned safely to us. But I tell you now their sacrifice for freedom has been perverted. It now assures that a few dictate to the many, that although you do something irrational (like plant things deer eat in an area where deer have thrived for decades) you can limit the judgment and freedom of others if you are shrill enough.
You can dictate to others what they can and can't do within the bounds of their private property. Freedom and private property, the two cornerstones for which our ancestors left their homelands generations ago are no more, do you imagine their oppression began so much differently than this?
I tell you this today dear cousin as a warning. Reveal to no one where you live, or that you feed wild animals, or that you do not shoot them for eating your flowers for I fear that even in the rural farmlands of Nebraska your freedoms are not safe. The cancer that begins as a whisper sucks the life from the body host and spares neither patriot nor timid. I must end this now as I hear voices and sirens outside.
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