Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Words of Truth

Today's author is the sole survivor of human experiments conducted by a totalitarian government. He then went on to extract revenge on those who conducted the experiments eventually causing the downfall of the government when he blew up the Parliament Building. Today's author is none other than a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. Today's author is V.

"Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense."

I will be the first to say that something is not horribly wrong with our country, but something is wrong. We are submitting more and more to the government because we are afraid. We fear terrorism so we allow the government to create new agencies that have almost unlimited power to spy on and arrest us. We fear disease so we set up an agency that has to approve every product on the market and can regulate virtually every industry. We can still say what we want but how long will that continue if we are afraid and are robbed of our common sense?

So how can we stop this slide down the slippery slope towards Totalitarianism? With words, we need to remind each other that war, terror and disease are temporary but a loss of freedoms and liberty are not. Words offer the enunciation of truth and an open dialog amongst concerned citizens will be the only thing that will save us; if it ever comes to Totalitarianism we will only need to look into the mirror to see who lets us fall.

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