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Originally Posted by Bold Brooklynite
All Americans are rich and powerful ... because all Americans have equal economic opportunity and equal voting power ... one person = one vote.
And our rights are being defended ... and very well I might add ... against the vicious people who would gladly murder all of us ... including the members of this forum. We're all safe and free at our keyboards right now because of the efforts and dedication of our armed services and police forces.
Bush has been president for 5.5 years ... and not one American has had his or her basic liberties stripped away ... so your attempt at creating hysteria is meaningless.
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Equal economic opportunity my ass. Like Warren Buffett so eloquently noted (and I can't do it justice), a lot of "opportunity" is luck. None of us chooses who our families are or what economic situations we were born into. Rich kids start with a lot more financial support behind them than the rest of us, and if you really can't see the disparate starting points we all have (and how those affect our paths in life), then you must live in a wonderful imaginary American world.
Look. I'm not afraid of a bunch of terrorists. I am afraid of a bunch of terrified, short-sighted and well-intentioned American citizens handing over every liberty we have in the name of defending our country when someone engages in some clever rhetorical fear-mongering. That's letting the terrorists win. Muzzle the press, delegitimize and stifle dissent, alienate sympathetic allies, and you wind up with a place that may be "safe" but that is so much less than the great nation we're supposed to be. Not in my name, thanks.