Sunday, August 14, 2005
The "Spirit Of America" Will Prevail............
Spirit of America is an organization whose mission is to extend the goodwill of the American people to assist those advancing freedom, democracy, and peace abroad. They provide support to those on the front lines: American military and civilian personnel and people who call to Americans for help in their struggle for freedom and democracy. Spirit of America is nonprofit, and supported solely through private-sector contributions. They do not receive funding from the government or military. Jim Hake is the Founder and Chairman of Spirit of America, and today I received an e-mail from him. Apparently someone in Pakistan was offering a reward for anyone who killed an American, and, well, tell you what, here is the e-mail in it's entirety!!
To: otterflogger@yahoo.com
Greetings.
The message below - "To Kill an American" - has been circulating around
the Internet. I don't know if the report it refers to is true but I
don't think it matters. It makes points that are worth considering.
Since our organization is named Spirit of America, I often reflect on
what the spirit of America is. For me, the spirit of America is about
freedom, opportunity and generosity. It's the belief that things can
be better than they are - a better mousetrap, a better government, a
better world, a better way to grill a hot dog. And it's the personal
initiative to try to make things better.
While America and Americans certainly don't own those ideals, we are a
pretty good example of them.
Our job here at Spirit of America is to reflect and help perpetuate
those ideals. Put more simply: we do our work so that freedom
prevails. Our projects in Iraq and Afghanistan are our way of
supporting those struggling for freedom and our way of fighting back
against those who want freedom to fail.
I'm writing this from Jordan so I'm more appreciative of the USA than
usual (though Jordan is a very nice country).
Thank you for your support.
All the best,
Jim Hake and the Spirit of America team
http://www.spiritofamerica.net
this message is also posted at:
http://www.spiritofamerica.net/site/blog/634
--------------------------------
To Kill an American
You probably missed it in the rush of news last week, but there was
actually a report that someone in Pakistan had published in a
newspaper an offer of a reward to anyone who killed an American, any
American.
So an Australian dentist wrote the following to let everyone know what
an American is... so they would know when they found one. (Good on ya,
mate!!!!)
---------
An American is English, or French, or Italian, Irish, German, Spanish,
Polish, Russian or Greek.
An American may also be Canadian, Mexican, African, Indian, Chinese,
Japanese, Korean, Australian, Iranian, Asian, or Arab, or Pakistani,
or Afghan.
An American may also be a Cherokee, Osage, Blackfoot, Navaho, Apache,
Seminole or one of the many other tribes known as native Americans.
An American is Christian, or he could be Jewish, or Buddhist, or
Muslim.
In fact, there are more Muslims in America than in Afghanistan. The
only difference is that in America they are free to worship as each of
them chooses.
An American is also free to believe in no religion. For that he will
answer only to God, not to the government, or to armed thugs claiming
to speak for the government and for God.
An American lives in the most prosperous land in the history of the
world.
The root of that prosperity can be found in the Declaration of
Independence, which recognizes the God given right of each person to
the pursuit of happiness.
An American is generous. Americans have helped out just about every
other nation in the world in their time of need.
When the Soviet army overran Afghanistan 20 years ago, Americans came
with arms and supplies to enable the people to win back their country!
As of the morning of September 11, Americans had given more than any
other nation to the poor in Afghanistan.
Americans welcome the best, the best products, the best books, the best
music, the best food, the best athletes. But they also welcome the
least!
The national symbol of America, The Statue of Liberty, welcomes your
tired and your poor, the wretched refuse of your teeming shores, the
homeless, tempest tossed. These in fact are the people who built
America.
Some of them were working in the Twin Towers the morning of September
11, 2001, earning a better life for their families. I've been told
that the World Trade Center victims were from at least 30 other
countries, cultures, and first languages, including those that aided
and abetted the terrorists.
So you can try to kill an American if you must.
Hitler did.
So did General Tojo, and Stalin, and Mao Tse-Tung, and every
bloodthirsty tyrant in the history of the world.
But, in doing so you would just be killing yourself. Because Americans
are not a particular people from a particular place. They are the
embodiment of the human spirit of freedom. Everyone who holds to that
spirit, everywhere, is an American.
Author unknown
Pass this around the World
---------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------
Well-thought, and well-written words. Thanks for the e-mail, Jim. So, all you people who immediately are jealous of Americans, have nothing good to say about them, and blame them for all the ills of the world, you are living in a self-manufactured realm of fantasy. I don't profess to have a master grasp on world events, but I am smart enough to know that without the Americans we might've lost to the Nazis, and then later, could've ended up "Red or Dead". Read on...............
THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refuted his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred. to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. --And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
--John Hancock
New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton
--------------------------------------------------------
(check out some of the names, there were sure some great minds present! Till next time...)
"See you later"...........
To: otterflogger@yahoo.com
Greetings.
The message below - "To Kill an American" - has been circulating around
the Internet. I don't know if the report it refers to is true but I
don't think it matters. It makes points that are worth considering.
Since our organization is named Spirit of America, I often reflect on
what the spirit of America is. For me, the spirit of America is about
freedom, opportunity and generosity. It's the belief that things can
be better than they are - a better mousetrap, a better government, a
better world, a better way to grill a hot dog. And it's the personal
initiative to try to make things better.
While America and Americans certainly don't own those ideals, we are a
pretty good example of them.
Our job here at Spirit of America is to reflect and help perpetuate
those ideals. Put more simply: we do our work so that freedom
prevails. Our projects in Iraq and Afghanistan are our way of
supporting those struggling for freedom and our way of fighting back
against those who want freedom to fail.
I'm writing this from Jordan so I'm more appreciative of the USA than
usual (though Jordan is a very nice country).
Thank you for your support.
All the best,
Jim Hake and the Spirit of America team
http://www.spiritofamerica.net
this message is also posted at:
http://www.spiritofamerica.net/site/blog/634
--------------------------------
To Kill an American
You probably missed it in the rush of news last week, but there was
actually a report that someone in Pakistan had published in a
newspaper an offer of a reward to anyone who killed an American, any
American.
So an Australian dentist wrote the following to let everyone know what
an American is... so they would know when they found one. (Good on ya,
mate!!!!)
---------
An American is English, or French, or Italian, Irish, German, Spanish,
Polish, Russian or Greek.
An American may also be Canadian, Mexican, African, Indian, Chinese,
Japanese, Korean, Australian, Iranian, Asian, or Arab, or Pakistani,
or Afghan.
An American may also be a Cherokee, Osage, Blackfoot, Navaho, Apache,
Seminole or one of the many other tribes known as native Americans.
An American is Christian, or he could be Jewish, or Buddhist, or
Muslim.
In fact, there are more Muslims in America than in Afghanistan. The
only difference is that in America they are free to worship as each of
them chooses.
An American is also free to believe in no religion. For that he will
answer only to God, not to the government, or to armed thugs claiming
to speak for the government and for God.
An American lives in the most prosperous land in the history of the
world.
The root of that prosperity can be found in the Declaration of
Independence, which recognizes the God given right of each person to
the pursuit of happiness.
An American is generous. Americans have helped out just about every
other nation in the world in their time of need.
When the Soviet army overran Afghanistan 20 years ago, Americans came
with arms and supplies to enable the people to win back their country!
As of the morning of September 11, Americans had given more than any
other nation to the poor in Afghanistan.
Americans welcome the best, the best products, the best books, the best
music, the best food, the best athletes. But they also welcome the
least!
The national symbol of America, The Statue of Liberty, welcomes your
tired and your poor, the wretched refuse of your teeming shores, the
homeless, tempest tossed. These in fact are the people who built
America.
Some of them were working in the Twin Towers the morning of September
11, 2001, earning a better life for their families. I've been told
that the World Trade Center victims were from at least 30 other
countries, cultures, and first languages, including those that aided
and abetted the terrorists.
So you can try to kill an American if you must.
Hitler did.
So did General Tojo, and Stalin, and Mao Tse-Tung, and every
bloodthirsty tyrant in the history of the world.
But, in doing so you would just be killing yourself. Because Americans
are not a particular people from a particular place. They are the
embodiment of the human spirit of freedom. Everyone who holds to that
spirit, everywhere, is an American.
Author unknown
Pass this around the World
---------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------
Well-thought, and well-written words. Thanks for the e-mail, Jim. So, all you people who immediately are jealous of Americans, have nothing good to say about them, and blame them for all the ills of the world, you are living in a self-manufactured realm of fantasy. I don't profess to have a master grasp on world events, but I am smart enough to know that without the Americans we might've lost to the Nazis, and then later, could've ended up "Red or Dead". Read on...............
THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refuted his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred. to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. --And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
--John Hancock
New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton
--------------------------------------------------------
(check out some of the names, there were sure some great minds present! Till next time...)
"See you later"...........
