Tuesday, July 7, 2009 — To my fellow citizens of Stanly County and these United States; I, like you, am a common individual. I bear no titles of nobility, officialdom, nor errantry.
I am by no means a wealthy man, nor feign that I ever shall become such. I aspire no political office, reign of rule, nor position portending towards demagoguery. I desire, as you, to be a fearless citizen of simplicity, bettering the lives of family, friends and countrymen, willingly being of ready spirit to sacrifice to defend future generations, God willing, that same luxury.
By grace I’ve been born into this nation, as many of you, to come to know that desire and believe in its utmost preservation.
However, my close kindred in common goals and agenda, the burgeoning of freedom against all qualms brought by tyranny within or without a wondrous land such as is given us: That desire to be a member of free populace cannot survive if apathy be mine, be our, weak but brief assenting nod at tyranny cloaked as necessity. Freedom, that precious and God-given design by sacred intuition within us all, no matter what our lot or latitude in life, is now threatened by the ideology that idiocy can save by means that even children know as madness.
Government has reneged its divine duties: to engender at all costs, individual liberties of its masses under the mandate of protecting citizenry, not only against crusaders of amoralism that beguile and seduce with the cries of tolerance unto absurdity, but of its own self, which has become parasitical as representatives forget those represented. But there is more than governmental avarices at stake.
The poor have lost their true voice. Our children are slain before they enjoy life. Our adolescents know not the deeds of great heroes and heroines. We are filled with loss of virtue as we rationalize away our lives to vices now called virtues.
Apathy had led to what we are experiencing. Our slumbering souls have resisted the desire. We have reaped what we have sown. We have allowed our liberties to evolve into shackles. We have slept, as vagabonds sung treasonous lullabies. My fellow countrymen, you know of what I speak.
It is the passion within you that something is dreadfully wrong. It is the feeling not of a visible enemy upon defensible horizons, but an insidious serpent lurking in the shadowy future waiting to strike without warning.
It is a firm emotion, deep within your immortal soul to become as those who became, when this country arose to its destiny.
It is a call to great words, faith and national repentance. It is a rallying song of more than mere patriotism, comradeship, or national pride.
It is Independence. Can you hear it? Independence is that desire. It is the end of apathy and it’s longing to rise again within those who would call themselves countrymen.
In these befuddling and dark days may we remember this desire and so live as to never be forgotten for it.
Daniel J. Poole
Oakboro
