Editorial

In 2004, Voters Get To Plot A Course
Directing 21^st Century American Politics

It’s hard to believe that it’s been four years since the 1900’s faded into 2000 and the advent of the new millennium. Now there are those among us who are saying the world has changed in those few years, and in 2004 we must continue to gird ourselves against seen and unseen terrors, but that if we trust in government policies we will be secure. Not surprisingly, the price of that security seems to be the precious coins of individual rights, liberties and personal freedoms.

So 2004 will be something of a watershed year. It is an election year! All of us who vote will have a chance to decide how we want America to proceed while we are still at the start of the 21^st Century. We can support current policies, or we can change the government and redirect the country’s path.

Happy New Year!

And in that spirit, let us also declare that we don’t think the world has changed that much! We as a nation have faced many horrors in the past, some of them not only in recent history but of a greater magnitude than the worst we can expect from Islamo-fascists and their despicable totalitarian motivations. At the start of 2004, we should remember that for almost fifty years, the bulk of the latter half of the 20^th Century, everyone lived under the threat of total, complete annihilation through world-wide thermonuclear war.

We didn’t bow down or crumble under the constant pressure of that widespread and darkest of clouds, so there is every reason to be hopeful this 2004. There are new storm clouds, to be sure, but the sky is blue and the sun is still shining through in most places on the globe.

Viewing with increasing skepticism those who would talk about the sky falling is the right course for 2004. There is no reason why we cannot hold to our individual liberties, freedoms and principles and still remain strong and secure; we’ve done it before. Those who would say otherwise should have their motives reviewed.

Let us begin 2004 recalling the words of a Founding Father, Benjamin Franklin, who declared: "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Let us make a New Year’s resolution not to forget those words when we go to the polls in 2004.