Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Piece...

As this year's election cycle progressed, we heard increasing rumbles of speech, media and voter supression, truth squads, loss of First Amendment rights and other potential horrors. Election day has come and gone, leaving us nervously glancing around, wondering how and to what extent, if any, our rights to free speech will be affected under a new administration. Thus far, even before massive voter fraud helped The Annointed One seize office, any hint of question or criticism has been strongly discouraged, and, in some cases, severely punished. Witness the endless threats and strong arm tactics, cyber terrorism hacking and street corner thugs working the crowds like so many bouncers in a barfight. On election night, a young man was arrested for wearing a McCain Palin tee shirt on the street near an Obama rally; had it not been for the bravery and integrity of its governor, Missouri would have enacted Truth Squads to arrest anyone who criticized the Democratic Candidate during the campaign.

As truth and facts have been scrubbed like so many web pages in Google land [in exchange for a promise to its owner for a seat in the new administration], so have they been kept out of media. Investigations into voter fraud have been tepid to non-existent, as have those into questionable [illegal] campaign funding, and no one is really sure what is going to be left [no pun intended] of our First or even Second Amendment rights when this administration gets through with them. Thus, trepidation rules in many camps.

But the wise words of Martin Niemöller remind us that, no matter what happens, we must stand firm against the proscription of free expression. We must stand together, stand firm and stand out against any attempts at the suppression of our right to free speech, for, as Thomas Jefferson noted, we must hang together or we will surely hang separately. There is strength in numbers, and our numbers are growing daily. Much to the surprise of many [this author not among them], membership and interest in government, political and media reform continue to skyrocket; emails continue to pour in to us all en masse while new groups and coalitions continue to grow, expand and form. It appears that most Americans are not at all comfortable with the way things seem to be going, and the Designee has not yet either been able to prove his natural born American citizenship or been sworn in. Already, Buyers' Remorse appears to rule, even before any new Executive Orders are signed.

First spoken in the late 1940s after the Second World War, these simple words must never be forgotten:

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me--
and there was no one left to speak out.

Chilling words, chilling truth. Pastor Niemoller was imprisoned from 1937 to 1945 in concentration camps, and was transferred from Sachsenhausen to Dachau in 1941. He survived to spend the rest of his life speaking out. We must all continue to do the same.