Giving thanks — freely

In elementary school, it was always fun sitting in class with anticipation the week of Thanksgiving and writing about what one thing you were most thankful to have. As I do that today, it’s still fun, but emotional as well, as the one thing I am most thankful for is the one thing I hold most dear: the freedom of speech.

I have been writing editorials every day since I was in the eighth grade. As I sit here at age 26, it never gets old. It’s so great that in this country when we don’t like someone we can write about it. In this column this semester, I have called President George W. Bush a “Texas hillbilly,” said that Virginia delegate Dick Black has the ethics of a “rabid raccoon,” and said those who would vote for Bush were “bubbas.”

I hold this freedom close to my heart because in other countries, where the government controls what is said and done, I would probably be dead, jailed or censored by now as an enemy of the state.

Look around the world. In Russia, writers who express opinions wanting the country to revert to communism are jailed away. In Iraq and Afghanistan, writers who speak out against the wrongful occupation of the United States are classified as “enemy combatants.”

We think that the jailing of writers for political reasons only happens in places thousands of miles away, but this censorship slowly oozes into America every day. Here in America, if you write against the government, you are watched and monitored as a terrorist threat by provisions of the Patriot Act.

How patriotic is that? Just because you don’t agree with what is going on and write your thoughts down doesn’t mean you are any more a threat or enemy combatant as the next person. It just means that you do not agree.

One of the great things about the written word is that when one expresses a written opinion, it can motivate, impress and inspire one to think. The power a single pen and notepad possess together is greater than that of the mightiest of armies.

Virginian Patrick Henry used his mighty words “Give me liberty or give me death” to move a nation tentative to revolution into a full-blown revolt. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstien used their words to ignite the Watergate scandal that took down and impeached President Richard Nixon. Larry Flynt published the Flynt Report that exposed blatant hypocrisy among Republican congressmen and led to the resignation of Bob Barr, Dan Burton, Newt Gingrich, Bob Livingstone and J.C. Watts.

Throughout this semester, many students and non-students have written letters to the editor calling my editorials “slanted” and “biased.” I thank them for that. As an editorial writer, anytime a member of the public writes in to disagree with you it is a badge of honor because you made them care enough to write in the first place. In today’s world, it’s difficult to make someone care, much less take the time to write a response.

As a writer, you know you have been successful when your words touch readers and make them think about something when they otherwise would not have done so. It’s a true use of the freedom of speech to tell others exactly what they don’t want to hear.

It makes me angry, though, that few writers take advantage of this freedom. Most writers in America today don’t take risks as they don’t want to offend, and in return when people grab a bland newspaper, they read the article headline and move on until they find something that touches them.

Touching others and making them think is what writing is all about. What results is that writers have an enormous amount of responsibility to question authority, help others and find the truth. The top item on my agenda as a writer is to find those who are hypocrites and expose them because equal treatment to all human beings should be the building block of any civilized society.

Being a writer is following in the footsteps of those who have forged an enormous legacy. To me, that responsibility is like wearing pinstripes and playing center field for the New York Yankees because you have to uphold the rebel spirit of the past. It is the reason why the one thing I am most thankful for is the freedom of speech.