[Leica] A Tale of two flags

[Christopher Crawford]

What, exactly, does the confederate flag have to do with someone putting
razor blades on your front seat? It looks like one of your neighbors has
one flying from his boat, which is his right. The United States is still a
free country, and that means the freedom to have beliefs that you don¹t
like; it even means the right to have truly evil beliefs. If, as so many
liberals are so desperate to do, we ban symbols and beliefs that offend
some or even most Americans, then we cease to be the free society that Old
Glory stood for.

To have a truly free society, you must have a wide ranging and diverse
political scene. The weakness of American democracy is that it shuts out
all who don¹t belong to the two mainstream parties, which are really not
that far apart in their philosophies. There is no place for the communist,
the fascist, the religious fundamentalist, the radical feminist, etc. What
that¹s done is force those who espouse extremist ideologies to try to
infiltrate and destroy the two centrist parties, and those parties in turn
have sought bribes on a massive scale from the very wealthy and the
corporate world to keep themselves in power, and the American people have
lost.

In many European countries, and in Israel, they have proportional
representation in parliament, so that fringe and extremist parties can
have a few seats in government and a voice. Most people don¹t support
them, but by giving them a small place at the table, they let the sane
parties govern while also serving as a warning to the centrists that if
they stop serving the people, the people have a choice. In short,
extremists can keep the governing parties honest, but the American system
didn¹t work that way, and now the mainstream American parties can¹t and
won¹t govern. As a result, we may actually end up with extremists in REAL
power here.

As for your front seat, it has nothing to do with the boat flying the
confederate flag, unless you think the boat¹s owner did it to you. In any
case, you¹ve pissed off someone pretty badly!

-- 
Chris Crawford
Fine Art Photography
Fort Wayne, Indiana
260-437-8990

http://www.chriscrawfordphoto.com  My portfolio

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Christopher-Crawford/48229272798
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On 9/19/16, 8:20 PM, "LUG on behalf of Barney Quinn"
<lug-bounces+chris=chriscrawfordphoto.com at leica-users.org on behalf of
bjq1 at mac.com> wrote:

>
>Someone scattered some single edge razor blades on the drivers seat of my
>car overnight. I noticed them before I got in the car. Thank God. I want
>to tell you what I saw and felt. To my eye the scene was very much
>dominated by the so called confederate flag. To me it symbolizes so much
>I do not want this Nation to be about. It feels to me as if these
>negative and hateful things are close to overwhelming us. A boat docked
>several spots ahead of Net¹s Pride is flying an American flag which is
>flapping proudly in the breeze. To me Old Glory symbolizes what I think
>our Nation should be about. Fairness, Justice, Tolerance. Just as the
>American Flag in this picture is small, and isn¹t so easy to see it feels
>to me as if these very worthwhile and necessary goals are now only a
>glimpse of something distant and far off swamped and overwhelmed by what
>is going on this election year. That is what I felt. It is what I saw. It
>is why I took and posted the picture.
>
>Thanks for the razor blades. I have been warned. Let me return the favor.
>For those of you who think that the system doesn¹t work, that you have
>been passed,  and that this justifies your anger and tactics because the
>system needs to be shaken or and taken down. You may not think that you
>have much to loose. But you do. Far more that you realize and you may
>well not know how much until it is gone. Beware. The fire that you seem
>so anxious to start can just as easily consume you as it burns everyone
>else.
>
>http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Barney/Net_s+Pride.jpg.html
>
>I apologize for the rant, but it was very important to me to say this.
>
>Thanks,
>
>Barny
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Leica Users Group.
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