In a message dated 4/17/03 2:30:33 AM Eastern Daylight Time, tstowell@chattanooga.net writes: > Personally I'm quite proud to be an American at this point - proud that our > President would seek to spread freedom abroad and not keep it all for > ourselves. > > Of course as someone else said just recently - you are free to disagree. > Tim My point was - this is not the venue for world/national/local politics. Someone wrote to the board recently that when she/he was young the USA was free. Many have used the argument that their brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, etc. etc. etc. have fought for our freedom and that we pay the price of their lives for our freedom; therefore it isn't free. When I was born, the Korean War had just ended. The families who had relatives who fought in that war must have felt the way we do today. And they all paid the price of war - with lives lost. So if that is your criteria for a free country - then perhaps we have never been free. Freedom is (in part) a state of mind, isn't it? There are those who live in the USA who don't feel freedom. There are those who live in (through some eyes) oppressive countries and they feel free. Needs are based on individuality and the connotation of freedom varies from person to person Part of our nation of freedom is being "allowed" to determine the measure of freedom we want or need to feel. And then - of course - some must determine if it is our nation's rules and laws or their personal lives and choices that give them the sense of freedom - or not. Do the people who have never lost a loved one in battle feel freedom more than those who have paid the price of losing a loved one in a war? How lovely if everything was black and white and so simple to explain. And how boring life would be. MK Harrison <A HREF="http://mkharrison.com">mkharrison.com</A> <A HREF="http://www.rootsweb.com/~gabarrow/">Barrow County, GA</A> <A HREF="http://www.ancestry.com/landing/homelandsweeps2/landing2.html?SourceCode=3913&iid=3913%3A+Sweepstakes+1">Ancestry.com</A> I don't know what kind of weapons will be used in the third world war, assuming there will be a third world war. But I can tell you what the fourth world war will be fought with - stone clubs. -Albert Einstein Copyright © 2003

MK, > Freedom is (in part) a state of mind, isn't it? There are those who > live in the USA who don't feel freedom. There are those who live in > (through some eyes) oppressive countries and they feel free. Needs > are based on individuality and the connotation of freedom varies from > person to person Part of our nation of freedom is being "allowed" to > determine the measure of freedom we want or need to feel. Wow. Brilliant. I think I may steal this if it's okay? :) Derek Nichols Echols County