You are silent now who once stood on battlefields ravaged by destruction unimaginable, holding in those desperate places the line of freedom for others you would never know, and who would never know you. And being one of those you never knew, I would give all I have to clasp your hand one single time, look into eyes that witnessed the bloodied carnage that results when freedom refuses to bow to chains of any kind, and simply say 'thank you.

We work hard to believe that our actions really don’t affect others all that much because we want the license to act without thinking all that much.

Greed are the handcuffs and gratitude is the key. Sadly, sometimes we prefer wearing the cuffs to finding the keys.

Rights’ are ‘privileges,’ and if I am arrogant enough to demand the former without respecting the latter I will lose both.

The world brazenly touts freedom as both the inalienable right and morally liberating justification to mindlessly play in the filth that lies all around me. And the slight bit of sanity that yet remains within me asks, ‘what raging madness would prompt me to incessantly wallow in the very things that will eventually swallow me?

It is at the precise moment that I take something for granted that I have placed myself in the precarious position of losing that very thing. And if that thing I risk losing is liberty, taking it for granted is foolishness of the most foolish sort.

The assumption of ‘rights’ is the cancer of privilege.

Although it would lead me to believe otherwise, fear has little interest in intimidating me. Rather, it much prefers to enslave me.

I think we need to consider a radical rewrite of any form of patriotism that serves the individual at the expense of the community, as that is nothing more than patriotism to one's own small and solitary cause.