By Tim Wingate
- Based upon, modernizing, paraphrasing and quoting Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s “I have a Dream Speech.”
232 years ago when the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all people, yes all people of all the races, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of every color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the American people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have come to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of liberty. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of fear mongering to the sunlit path of equal liberty, equal opportunity, equal justice for ALL Americans. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial division, the tar pits of class division, from the encumbering weight of being divided against ourselves to the solid rock of brotherhood, people hood, human hood. This is our hood! Our country! The blood, sweat and tears of the people have poured out to care for, protect, and enrich all of us not just a few who profit at the expense of the sacrifice of the many. Not the elites who divide to conquer! Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children. To make alive the promise of individuality, life, liberty, property with a government that secures those promises, not one that infringes on those rights by fear and intimidation.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This coming sweltering summer of American's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Two thousand eight is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Americans who embraced the message of liberty by Dr. Paul needed to blow off steam and will now be content, will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to political business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until American rights are recognized as unalienable, unchangeable, unlimited. The whirlwinds of this freedom revolution will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my brothers who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.
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