Alert, Alerter, Alertest :: September 11 Terrorism Essays

Alert, Alerter, Alertest   Our military at home and around the world is on high alert status and we have taken the necessary trade protection precautions to continue the functions of your government. President George W. Bush, September 11, 2001   As an American, I am on a state of high alert much of the time. I tend to be alert to inequities, discrimination, intolerance, injustice, restriction of liberty. Give me liberty or give me death, was Patrick Henrys cry. Live Free or Die is New Hampshires motto.   I am alert to affronts to democracy. My American nervous system is on alert, like a smoke detector, to tell me of dangers and threats. I have American sensors, receptors, antennae. They are set to pick up each trace of insults and injuries to the American way of life.   We Americans have a sensitivity to mistreatment of people, to bias, prejudice, abridgements of democratic principles. Weve got 10 of them in our secular form of the Ten Commandments of Moses. B ut more than this vertex of particulars, our Bill of Rights, we have additional rights. They include the Declaration of Independences inalienable rights--life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.   They probably include Franklin D. Roosevelts Four Freedoms- The first is freedom of speech and expression -- everyplace in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way -- everywhere in the world.   The third is freedom from sine qua non -- which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which give secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants -- everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from affright -- which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor--anywhere in the world. (Jan. 6, 1941)   In addition to such exp licit statements, we are concerned about other rights that are implicit. And we are alert to them as well. Social conscience is one form of our patriotism.   A patriot of democracy believes in disagreement, in unpopular ideas, thoughts, and opinions. What is unpatriotic is mob behavior, complacency, conformity, when everyone does the same thing.