Alert, Alerter, Alertest :: September 11 Terrorism Essays

Alert, Alerter, Alertest   Our military at home and around the universe is on high alert status and we expect taken the incumbent security 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, discrimi soil, 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, the likes of a smoke detector, to tell me of dangers and threats. I have American sensors, receptors, antennae. They argon set to pick up any trace of insults and injuries to the American course 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 profane model of the Ten Commandments of Moses. But more than this bill of particulars, our Bill of Rights, we have gainal rights. They overwhelm 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 -- everywhere 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 loss -- which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants -- everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear -- 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 load an act of physical aggression against any neighbor--anywhere in the world. (Jan. 6, 1941)   In addition to such explicit statements, we be 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 disloyal is mob behavior, complacency, conformity, when everyone does the same thing.