"My sheep hear my voice..."

and I know them, and they will follow." John 10:27.


From the Cunning Realist:

A striking exchange from President Bush's Q+A session with an audience in Charlotte, North Carolina on Thursday:

Q: You never stop talking about freedom, and I appreciate that. But while I listen to you talk about freedom, I see you assert your right to tap my telephone, to arrest me and hold me without charges, to try to preclude me from breathing clean air and drinking clean water and eating safe food. If I were a woman, you'd like to restrict my opportunity to make a choice and decision about whether I can abort a pregnancy on my own behalf. You are --

THE PRESIDENT: I'm not your favorite guy. Go ahead. (Laughter and applause.) Go on, what's your question?

Q: Okay, I don't have a question. What I wanted to say to you is that I -- in my lifetime, I have never felt more ashamed of, nor more frightened by my leadership in Washington, including the presidency, by the Senate, and --

AUDIENCE MEMBERS: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: No, wait a sec -- let him speak.

Q: And I would hope -- I feel like despite your rhetoric, that compassion and common sense have been left far behind during your administration, and I would hope from time to time that you have the humility and the grace to be ashamed of yourself inside yourself.

History's proven that the greatest danger to a nation sometimes is not a wayward leader, but the unthinking masses desperate to surrender freedom to someone---anyone---promising to "protect" them. It's during those times that the individual's most lethal enemy is not his government, but his next-door neighbor.

Instead of "booo," the audience at the president's event might just as well have bleated "baaahhh."

-- Cunning Realist

Artwork attribution: Millie Ballance, who is not responsible for the editorial content.