Column by Wyatt Emmerich
If there is any one thing we should be thankful for this Thanksgiving it is freedom.
There are many pontificators who argue that there are many kinds of freedom and that freedom is relative. Nothing could be further from the truth.
In Cuba, Neighbors for the Defense of the Revolution are making the rounds, threatening to beat up anyone who joins in protests against the decrepit, corrupt, incompetent regime. Say the wrong thing in the wrong place, you could disappear. It is a dehumanizing life of terror and fear.
In China, a dictator for life subordinates your individual freedom to the glory of the state. Churches are shuttered. Christians imprisoned. Ethnic minorities incarcerated in vast concentration camps for the good of the state, whatever that is. In Russia, a dictator thug brazenly poisons his main political opponent and sends the national police to arrest anyone who protests against such state-sanctioned criminality.
In Venezuela, all democratic institutions have been annihilated by a "socialist" dictatorship that revels in drug running, shutting down all media and destroying the economy by nationalizing private industry and dictating prices. That country, once a shining example of free market progress and development, is devolving into a hell hole.
Then there is North Korea, where citizens can choose among ten officially sanctioned hairstyles. Divergence from the standards results in imprisonment, which in that country, amounts to a death sentence. And just to make sure the point is not lost, your friends and family get imprisoned as well.
The list goes on and on. Then there is America.
We certainly don't approve of the crassness of the "Let's go Brandon" phenomenon. We believe the President of the United States deserves respect, not as an fallen individual, but as the placeholder of a magnificent office, the executive power of the greatest country in the history of the world.
That being said, what a contrast. As Americans we think nothing of the "let's go Brandon" chant other than an amusing way of expressing our disapproval of the direction of our public policy. What a grand luxury that those living in political slavery would and do shed their blood to attain.
