From: J. van Baardwijk [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> How hard did the American population try to help the Native Americans when > their fellow Americans tried their best to massacre the Native Americans? > How many of them hid NA's in their homes and fought against their countrymen? Guilty. A terrible mark on our nation's history. But I think we learned from it. > How hard did the American population try to help the blacks when they were > enslaved? How many of them hid blacks in their homes and fought against > their countrymen? Another terrible mark on our nation's history. But we did fight. Did you ever hear of a little thing called the American Civil War? > How hard did the American population try to help their Japanese citizens > when the US government locked them up in camps? How many of them hid > Japanese in their homes and raided those camps to free their Japanese > fellow citizens? We were officially at war with Japan. And the internees were just being locked up, not slaughtered. (Not that I'm defending the internment of the Japanese-Americans during WWII. It was terribly wrong but far different from what you are trying to compare it to.) > How hard did the American population try to help their blacks when racism > reared its ugly head? How many of them protected the blacks and fought > against the racists? A lot. An awful lot. And a lot of laws were passed to protect against racism. And a lot of those who did try to change the laws in the American South were beat up, locked up or even killed. > How hard did the American population try to join the fight against > terrorism after planes crashed into the WTC and the Pentagon last year? What exactly did you expect us to do? Fly over to Afganistan and join the fight? We haven't been exactly "hiding in the basement"! That is a terribly insulting insinuation. We are going on with our lives as best we can. That's the ONLY thing that I can do to show the terrorists that they didn't and can't win. Everyone I have talked to had to take a good hard look at themselves after Sept 11th. And think about what they would have done if they had been on Flight 93. And every single person I have talked to had said that they would fight. Even if they knew it would result in their deaths. I would fight, even though I know that I wouldn't do much good (I have no training and am not in great physical shape). But if I could distract a terrorist long enough for someone else to clobber him, I'd gladly do it, even if that meant getting stabbed, cut, shot, or whatever. - jmh
