Text Transformation-Rough draft

Folks

I’d like to sing a song about the American dream

About me

About you

About the way our hearts beat way down in the bottoms of our chests

About the special feeling we get in the cockles of our hearts

Or maybe below the cockles

Maybe in the sub-cockle area

Maybe in the liver

Maybe in the kidneys

Maybe even in the colon

We don’t know

*

 America Under Attack

At 8:45 a.m. EDT, the first of two airliners crashed into the World Trade Center, opening a horrifying and apparently coordinated terrorist attack on the United States, which saw the collapse of the teo 110 story towers into surrounding Manhattan streets and a later attack on the Pentagon.

*

Of course people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a facist dictatorship, or a parliment, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger. It works the same in every country (Goering).

*

 In the fields the bodies burning

As the war machine keeps turning

Death and hatred to mankind

Poisoning their brainwashed minds

*

“America is a nation with a misson–and that mission comes from our most basic beliefs. We have no desire to dominate, no ambitions of empire. Our aim is a democratic peace–a peace founded upon the dignity and rights of every man and woman.”

*

They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason(Hemingway)

*

No weapon has ever settled a moral problem. It can impose a solution but it cannot guarantee it to be just one. It’s not right to respond to terrorism by terrorizing other people. And furthermore, it’s not going to help. Then you might say “Yes, it’s terrorizing people, but it’s worth doing because it will end terrorism.” But how much common sense does it take to know that you cannot end terrorism by indiscriminately dropping bombs?

*

“Make no mistake, the United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts. Freedom itself was attacked this morning by faceless cowards. And freedom will be defended.”

 *

Politicians hide themselves away

They only started the war

Why should they go out to fight?

They leave that role to the poor

*

Land of the free because of the brave.

*

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety,is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself (Mill).

*

It is only a living organism that faces a constant alternative: the issue of life or death. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action. If an organism fails in that action, it dies: its chemical elements remain, but its life goes out of existence. It is only the concept of “life” that makes the concept of “value” possible. it is only to a living entity that things can be good or evil (Rand).

*

“Our mission in Iraq is clear. We’re hunting down the terrorists. We’re helping Iraqis build a free nation that is an ally in the war on terror. We’re advancing in the broader middle east. We are removing a source of violence and instability, and laying the foundation of peace for our children and our grandchildren.”

*

Let’s impeach the president for lying

And leading our country into war

Abusing all the power that we gave him

And shipping all our money out the door

*

Man’s motive power is his moral code. Ask yourslef where their code is leading you and what it offers you as your final goal. A viler evil than to murder a man, is to sell him suicide as an act of virtue. A viler evil than to throw a man into a sacrificial furnace, is to demand that he leap in, of his own will, and that he build the furnace, besides (Rand).

*

Bush said “Bring it on!”.

And mothers of soldiers wept until dawn.

*

Let’s impeach the president for spying

On citizens inside their own homes

Breaking every law in the country

By tapping our computers and telephones

*

” I believe the most solemn duty of the American president is to protect the American people. If America shoes uncertainty and weakness in this decade, the world will drift toward tragedy. This will not happen on my watch.”

*

“Yeehaw!” is not a foreign policy.

*

 What if Al Qaeda blew up the levees

Would New Orleans have been safer that way

Sheltered by our governments protection

Or was someone just not home that day

*

I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they’d never expect it.

*

“The situation in Iraq is unacceptable to the American people and it is unacceptable to me. Our troops in Iraq have fought bravely. They have done everything we have asked them to do. Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me.”

*

Freedom isn’t free, but you can’t buy it with blood!

*

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper

*

“We go forward with trust that the author of Liberty will guide us through these trying hours.  Thank you and good night.”