LETTERS: ASSAULT ON FREEDOM

To the editor:

A final assault on American citizens' freedom was launched at the president's summit on America's future in Philadelphia in April. It was attended by aspiring dictator Clinton, ex-Presidents Bush, Carter and Ford and aspiring future dictator Gore. The main theme of this fiasco seems to have been an attempt to convince the American people that they should give up their remaining freedoms in favor of becoming citizen-servants.

The dictionary defines a servant as a slave or bondman and a slave as a person over whose life, liberty and property someone has complete control. So if every citizen becomes a citizen-servant, or to put it more bluntly, a slave, then who is going to control our life, liberty and property?

There seems to be a growing number of people in our country who would rather accept slavery then to accept responsibility or to bother to do their own thinking, but I am not one of them. Judging from my observations of some of the past slave masters such as Stalin, Mussolini and Hitler, I would just as soon not be a slave for anyone, but thanks for the offer.

I am going to quote two statements made and give the readers five guesses as to who made them:

1. We're here for the first president's summit for America's future to mobilize every community and challenge every citizen, and to ask our young people to become citizen-servants too.

2. When we got organized as a country and we write a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans, it was assumed that the Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly. However, now there's a lot of irresponsibility, and so a lot of people say there's too much freedom. When personal freedom is being abused, you have to move to limit it.

So there you have it. We are being told in no uncertain terms that we have too much freedom and we should willingly submit to being enslaved. Of course, there was no explanation as to how freedom can be abused with all the thousands of laws we have to control our every move. Also, the "a lot of people" mentioned in that statement weren't identified. I would guess that it would be an aspiring dictator plus several socialists who have infiltrated our government.

RAY UMBDENSTOCK

Cape Girardeau