Jack wrote this in August, 2005. I am scheduling this post during the summer of 2020. I wonder what Jack would have said now about America being a place where people can still express their ideas.
We’re in a time when a lot of Americans are going to have differing opinions about whether we should be fighting in the war we’re fighting now. We all came to whatever position we occupy on the issue from different directions. We’ve arrived in different places.
Beginning any discussion about this war we’re fighting with the inference that people who differ in their opinions are dupes, tools, being used by ‘liberals’, or ‘war mongering conservatives’ isn’t condusive to any discussion at all.
About the only thing America has left of some idealized America of the past is that people can still express their ideas, mostly without fear of being arrested or mobbed.
I’m planning to continue expressing mine without calling any names, without implying anyone’s a fool for holding a differing opinion.
There’s no moral high-ground to be attained by any of us for waving our past military experience around, the friends and relatives we lost in some forgotten war.
That one’s already behind us.
We can learn from the divisiveness it caused in this country, if we’re lucky, and leave the airwaves open for differing opinions without rancor.
Jack
So Far From Heaven 