Letter To Obama

This is mandatory summer reading.

Because something had to be done.

So we marched. We staged sit-ins and teach-ins. We burned draft cards and blockaded induction centers. We declared 'summers of love'. We stuck daisies into rifle barrels aimed at us. And some reacted, as you said, 'by attacking the symbols, and in extreme cases, the very idea, of America itself'

Because the 'very idea of America itself' had become so distorted that it allowed for the napalming of children in their villages, and Mutually Assured Destruction through thermo-nuclear war, and the killing of presidents and civil rights leaders, and the destruction of the environment, and police riots against protesters, and the exploitation of migrant workers, and the oppression of blacks, and the subjugation of women, and even the slaughter of protesting students.

And the idea that hundreds of thousands of us could be forced to go kill other people against our will.

And if that's what the flag represented to the other side, then it damn well needed burning.

So call them 'excesses' if you will.

But those 'excesses' led to...

An end to the nuclear arms race.

An end to Vietnam.

An end to the draft.

Full legal rights for blacks.

Full legal rights for women.

Legal rights for gays.

Environmental protections.

Occupational safety laws.

And far far far more than I could ever list in one diary, so many things that seem so ordinary that they are the culture... now.

Though I will presume to list one last thing...

It's partly because of those 'excesses', and because people did not 'react merely by criticizing particular government policies' that you were able to become the Democratic party's candidate for president of the United States.

Just something you might want to think about, the next time you feel like bad-mouthing us DFHs.