The immediate thing that popped into my mind was, ‘Why is he wearing the shirt of a country that no longer exists that promotes a system that never worked?’ I spent a few moments on that, and then followed up with the companion question, ‘Would that system allowed him to do the same there?’

Here’s the question, put in different terms. If we were, indeed, living in Soviet Russia and he were to wear a shirt with a large American flag on the front with the letters USA in red, white and blue, what would he find? Would he see people who, for the most part, glance at his shirt then move on with their lives? A few people who give it a few moments consideration then move on? One guy who uses it for the basis of a student-written column, smashed together at the last minute?

On the contrary, if he were in that system, he’d find men breaking down the door to his house at 3am, rough hands shoving a bag over his head before being dragged out into the street and being made to disappear, while his neighbors, who turned him in, pretend nothing ever happened.

That’s assuming, of course, that he makes it home.

Then we think about the world in which we live in right now. If asked, I’d be willing to wager that said individual felt no threat by wearing that shirt around campus and around town all day. He went to sleep knowing that rough men stand ready to do harm on those who would hurt him, even though he is expressing silent disagreement with the very system that is protecting him.

And there’s the ultimate irony of this, and many other, situations such as this. We have professors and authors and even Senators who proclaim this country to be intolerant, awful, nothing to be proud of at all. The wives of presidential candidates who say that they’ve never felt pride in their country, until said candidate ran. The ultimate irony of all of these cases, and many others, is that they are protected from persecution by the very document that they often times find so terrible. That it is the Constitution of the United States that grants them the Right under God to tarnish and debase the very land that they live in, and if it weren’t for said document, that they would have no right at all.

The ultimate irony is that they claim that it is those who oppose them that are the oppressors. That President Bush and the ‘vast right-wing conspiracy’ to quote Senator Hillary Clinton is working to keep them down, make them afraid and to suppress them at all levels.

Really? When a movie lampooning the current President is released throughout the country with no censorship by said president, that’s oppression? When a presidential nominee slanderously says that our soldiers are bombing villages and civilians deliberately in Afghanistan, he’s really afraid to speak out? 

Ladies and gentlemen, there is only one person who is going around silencing opponents by enlisting law enforcement to track them down. One person, who’s website is being constantly updated to give ‘the truth’, though ‘the truth’ changes whenever what is being said changes. Only one person who throws the word ‘race’ around, while laying the accusation of ‘racism’ on the other side and there is only one person who is hiring groups of lawyers to prosecute those who ‘speak falsely’ about what he’s done and who he hangs out with. Only one man who has told his supports to ‘get in the face’ of his opponents, an order that carries more significance then he realizes.

Change is only good when what you’re changing to is good. Change to something that doesn’t work, hasn’t worked, and will never work is not the change we, or anyone else, needs.