Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.
Ronald Reagan

SOPA Truth is a post from: The Inquisitr

July 4th, also known as Independence Day in America, was this past Saturday, resulting in large quantities of grilled foods, fireworks, and alcohol consumption, much to the chagrin of history buffs and hardcore patriots.  But most of the country missed a key component of the weekend: truly celebrating Independence Day.  How do you really celebrate Independence Day?

Politics.

I’m not talking about politics at the local level, or even the state level, but politics in the national and international arenas that should be the focus of attention on July 4th.  Most Americans are too self-absorbed and/or ignorant to know how good we truly have it – even if you don’t like our President, you think some of our laws are unjust, or you’re incarcerated, you’re still pretty well off.  Americans as a people enjoy many freedoms that citizens of countries around the world will never have, and the day that is meant to evoke such reflections has turned into a bloated festival of food, booze, and shenanigans.

China imposes many restrictions on its citizens, not the least of which is internet censorship.  Honduras, a South American country, is shadow-controlled by the military and staged a coup against the President.  Many Mexicans live in fear of the continuing drug war violence.  England is quickly becoming a high-surveillance, low public freedoms police state.  Not to mention all the problems of Africa, India, the Middle East…

Yet many Americans don’t realize that our freedoms are so great, so large as to allow us to heavily criticize our own government, move freely throughout the country, or have “basic” services provided to us relatively cheaply and unaffected by government hands.  We aren’t jailed for gathering in public groups or persecuted based on where within the United States we were born.  We have running water, mostly-stable electricity, computers, cars, gadgets, and much more that large portions of the world will only ever dream of.

Rather than being concerned with how much wealth can be acquired (an activity that has largely resulted in widespread disaster as a country), American citizens should instead occasionally remember that we started out as a group of mostly-English exiles who were looking for something better.  We should remember that our country was formed based on ideas of freedoms across-the-board, self governance, and a better life.  We should remember that no matter how vitriolic the political rhetoric becomes, we are a single nation of free people seeking to hopefully achieve what is best for ourselves, the future, and the rest of the world.

Life is about much more than the latest episode of a TV program or stalking celebrities – attention needs to be given to the critical issues at hand, and consideration given to the proper place of the general public’s obsessions.  This is why the way to truly celebrate the American Day of Independence, on July 4th, is to read, consider, and discuss politics.  Real political issues, not merely the party favorite one-liners of menial consequence.

The Founding Fathers would be ashamed of Average John Q. Public today, so it is fitting on a day in memory of them that the public attention wanders across the plains of political enlightenment.

President Obama, it seems, understands this.

Kyle Brady is a contributing columnist for the Inquisitr, an entrepreneur, and has a future in science fiction.  He can be found at his blog, via email, or on Twitter.

How to Really Celebrate Independence Day is a post from: The Inquisitr

As the reality sets in that what’s now being called the New Revolution and the Sea of Green shows no sign of receding, more in depth analysis seems to be coming out.  The tail end of last week showed a bit of partisan bickering while both the US left and right seemed to be looking for ways to use this against their political opponents. Interestingly, now it is a site called The Bipartisan Report that looks to throw a little cold water on the exuberance Americans are seeing in the pursuit for Iranian freedom.

Tom Regan writes there:

Come on people. Mousavi is certainly more “liberal” in terms of his opponent (that certainly the way we want to see it in the west), but Obama (the real one) is absolutely correct when he says there will be little difference between the two. We all know why – the president doesn’t get to call all the shots in Iran. Mousavi, a former premier under the mullahs, for heaven’s sake, is a saavy politician and he is probably correct in thinking the election was stolen. But Mousavi is not Iran’s Obama – he is Iran’s John Kerry. He talks a great game, but he’s been part of the political establishment for a long time.

Tom is a former blogger for NPR, and has a long history writing about Iran, but I think it’s his experience here that’s jading the larger picture the rest of us are seeing.

It’s a protest that’s no longer about a re-count, a President, or about hatred for the West and an institutional Jewish Israel.

Following the declaration last week by Mir-Hossein Moussavi’s office that the election had been fixed, Iranian filmmaker and current president of the Asian Film Academy Mohsen Makhmalbaf was named the official spokesman of now jailed presidential candidate.  He recently penned an editorial that was printed in the UK Guardian entitled “I speak for Mousavi. And Iran,” which purported to do just as the title dictated:

Before the revolution, Mousavi was a religious intellectual and an artist, who supported radical change but did not support the mullahs. After the revolution, when all religious intellectuals and even leftists backed Khomeini, he served as prime minister for eight years. The economy was stable, and he did not order the killings of opponents, or become corrupt.

In order to neutralize his power, the position of prime minister was eliminated from the constitution and he was pushed out of politics. So Mousavi returned to the world of artists because in a country where there are no real political parties, artists can act as a party. The artists supported Khatami and now they support Mousavi.

Previously, he was revolutionary, because everyone inside the system was a revolutionary. But now he’s a reformer. Now he knows Gandhi – before he knew only Che Guevara. If we gain power through aggression we would have to keep it through aggression. That is why we’re having a green revolution, defined by peace and democracy.

What we’re seeing emerge in Iran is a desire for a new political system, one perhaps less based in theocracy, and one more rooted in democracy. The desire is to have a system less governed by corruption and connection, and rooted in personal freedom. It’s no longer simply about one candidate, one election or one set of reform goals.

Honestly, for most of us, that’s what it was all about in the first place.  I had a conversation last night with a politically conservative friend of mine who expressed confusion as to why Americans of all political stripe and without an ounce of dissent are supporting Iranians when they were so divided over whether to support Iraqis and their pursuit for freedom.

I argued, after a bit of thought, that I think the difference here is that the rallying cry didn’t come from someone who was an American partisan of any stripe.

“If a conservative goes to war, he’s an imperialist hawk,” I said.  “If a liberal goes to war, he’s a meddling bleeding heart”

“Freedom is only okay depending on how its achieved?” he asked.

“There are easy ways to turn the process of freedom into an argument when it comes from someone with other agendas,” I responded. “When it comes from someone who’s crying out “Let me be free,” it’s hard to argue with that.”

Continued Protest in Iran Signal Shift in Goals [#iranElection] is a post from: The Inquisitr