Published on: Wednesday, February 24, 2010

By Brian J. Karem

All I can say, is I certainly hope it wasn’t in a civics class.

That’s my response to the story on our front page this week that had a young eighth grader called on the carpet in January because she wouldn’t stand for the Pledge of Allegiance at Roberto Clemente Middle School.

The American Civil Liberties Union has stepped in, demanded an apology and the school system has agreed to it.

Thank heavens civil minds will prevail.

This is of course a cue to go off on a diatribe about the need to stand up for the first amendment.

I could, and have, preached in the past in public settings, at colleges and on national television about the need to support the first amendment.

I’m going to bypass that need to vent now and move on to something else:

Where is the common sense?

Don’t get me wrong; I dearly love this county – which has been my home for nearly two decades.

I also dearly love my country, which has been my home since I was born at St. Anthony’s hospital in Louisville Kentucky a few days after John F. Kennedy took the oath of office.

But this story tells me the country in which I was born is not today the country in which I live.

This story centers on the sad state of affairs I see in this county and country in regard to all that we hold dear.

This story centers on the sad state of affairs I see in this county and country in regard to all that we hold dear.

Those rights we fought so hard for in our revolution, and preserved through our forgotten War of 1812 and have held dear to our hearts through the trials and tribulations of war and economic depression since the inception of the Republic seem to be gone.

Pffffft. Up in smoke. Gone like the World Trade Center’s twin towers.

If I sound flip it’s only because if I don’t laugh, I may cry and I really don’t think you’d be able to read my words through the tears.

Everywhere I look, whether it's a county cop tasing a 23-year-old for speaking his mind, or a county schoolteacher demanding a child go to the counselor’s office for not standing for the Pledge of Allegiance, there is a sick perversion ongoing in this country.

We say we stand for freedom of choice and free speech, but as the rock band Devo once sang, “Freedom of choice is what you’ve got. Freedom from choice is what you want.”

When we become too comfortable, when we become complacent, or tired or scared and retreat from those ideals we hold most dear, only then can we be conquered.

A flat economy or even the Great Depression couldn’t destroy us. The British burned the White House – burned it to the ground, leaving nothing but a shell and our nation didn’t fall. We were invaded and Pearl Harbor bombed and we rose to the challenge.

John F. Kennedy told us we could get to the moon at a time when we didn’t have a computer around that could do as much work as my cell phone does today – and we got there.

We have always risen to a challenge to be our better selves. And yet, today, we find ourselves retreating from our best and being subverted by the worst.

Are you afraid of terrorists striking again? Then mind the police and keep your mouth shut. You want to get an education? Then sit down, shut up and stand when I tell you to and say the Pledge of Allegiance.

“With Liberty and Justice For All,” become nothing more than words when we don’t consider what they mean; Hollow, horrible stumbling blocks that destroy us rather than deliver us from tyranny of evil.

Today we need to rise to the challenges of the 21^st century and educate our police, our teachers, our doctors, our lawyers and everyone else about the true meaning of being an American.

Our freedoms were purchased by the blood of our ancestors who felt so strongly about the need to have a fair chance at the pursuit of happiness they either fought and died for the cause in numerous wars, or fought and died for it by living through unbearable conditions as slaves, or immigrants to get here.

We owe them better than that. We owe them the dream they had. Martin Luther King’s dream, George Washington’s dream, John Adam’s dream – the dream we all have and share.