Our readers write

Time again for ‘We the People’

To The Editor:
Many, in America and around the world, heard Glenn Beck making an impassioned plea to Americans to reclaim the Civil Rights Movement. Many understood that, because Mr. Beck is white, to mean that Mr. Beck was robbing the black community of its right to claim the Civil Rights Movement for its own.
Mr. Beck was, in my opinion, attempting to show that “We” is not “we blacks” or “we whites.” “We” are Americans that have stood for “civil rights” all along. We are a people called Americans. We are not a people divided by race, religion, creed, color, or national origin or financial standing, but a people united for All.
Americans have united against slavery, and against the mistreatment of ANY person or people, especially those that are citizen’s or legal immigrants in our country. We are a people that have even given of our lives, and the lives of those before us, to seek to protect peoples in other countries from oppression and murder. There are many within our borders that fall outside that ideal, but they are not the true Americans. The true Americans are those that seek to stand upon the founding principles of our great nation as presented in the documents that “WE THE PEOPLE” are founded upon.
The divisions that have occured in the name of “civil rights” have caused this country to slide into being a nation of people pitted one against another, rather than a nation seeking to glorify the One that has created us in His own image. When we seek our own good, rather than seeking the good of others, we become a selfish and perverse people.
We are not operating within the principles of freedom, but of oppression. We seek to oppress those that don’t want us to have what we want. “We” need to be a people that again want freedom for everyone, and not just a chosen few.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said it best when he said, “But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.”
Again he declared, “And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’”
Dr. King’s most famous words are also found in this same speech, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
Yes, Mr Beck was correct. It is indeed the time for “WE THE PEOPLE” to reclaim the “Civil Rights Movement.” We then will no longer be a people divided by many of the things that indeed have begun to divide us. Then we can truly judge men based not “by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” We then will be a country of “ONE NATION UNDER GOD.” We then can again be “WE THE PEOPLE.”
Phillip Senn
Troy

Published in The Messenger 10.06.10

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