Five years from now you'll be the same person you are today except for the books you read and the people you meet.

-Charles E. Jones




Thursday, June 23, 2011

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. B. Franklin

Recently, I had the privilege of attending a prestigious leadership conference in which we had a mock-Congressional session in which we practiced revising an act.  One of the sections in this act was about screening news published in a foreign language that deals with military matters.  As winners of the Veterans of Foreign Wars speech competition, we had people on both sides of the issue: those who wanted to protect our soldiers and those who were adamantly for free speech.  It was certainly eyeopening.

I found myself on both sides of the issue, wanting to protect men who die for our freedoms, but unwilling to give up those freedoms that they give us.  We ruled to abolish the section altogether because we felt that there were already many measures in place to protect our soldiers and that it would be a blatant violation of the First Amendment.

How to protect both liberty and human life when they seem to be in opposition?

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