Saturday, September 22, 2007

Dearest Massachusetts,

What a disgrace you have become. Founded by those willing to die for freedom, the Pilgrims sacrificed themselves on your soil. So willing to maintain that freedom, the Minutemen died clutching their muskets. The very birth of the nation that houses you began as a struggle to keep weapons of war in the hands of ordinary citizens. As the British marched to seize cannons and ammunition from storehouses in the country, the men of Massachusetts thought death was worth the price of keeping the citizens armed and able to protect themselves from any and all threats including those from their own government.

And now look at you, one of the most, if not the most restrictive gun laws in the country. You try to dictate how your citizens live and spend their money and protect themselves. Your government, the great protector, the great father, will take care of and coddle its people. Submit to you, and their well-being is your promise. You know how everyone's life should be lived. You the bastion of freedom, the birth place of a nation born from liberty's womb, all hail to you my leader.

Where have your sons gone, the ones who choose death over anything less than complete and unfaltering freedom? Who dares to call themselves a citizen of Massachusetts yet allows a standing army of well-armed police to march around and conduct random searches on an innocent populace? Where has your love of liberty gone? Were you not born of those wanting to die if they could not have their freedom? Does your fellow New England state not live by that very motto, "Live Free or Die"?

Massachusetts, you have lost your way. You have become the very opposite of what you symbolized. Massachusetts, the home of the individualist, the zealot that wanted freedom from any and all government restraint. Come to me all who desire the freedom to be what you want, and by God, take up your arms and fight if anyone should tell you how to live. Random search and seizure? Not here. Sacrificing liberty for perceived security? Not here, we will take our security into our own individual hands, thank you. Take our guns? You must be joking, we started a war that begat a nation the last time someone tried that. But no, you willingly give away your source of individual protection, you let a standing army live amongst you, to "protect" you. You not only let yourselves be watched over like children, you gladly contribute your hard-earned income for that right.

It is my wish, dearest Massachusetts, that you may find yourself again. That you will regain your standing as a home for those that treasure freedom above all else. That your citizens won't let fear get the better of them, that they'll realize "death is not the worst of evils". But until this wish is fulfilled, I must stay apart from you and watch from a distance how the cancer of fear destroys the dream you once were.

Sincerely,
Your child and former resident