If you wish to express gratitude for your Constitutionally protected right to worship as you please without fear of running afoul of a government mandated theocracy, don't thank a preacher, priest, rabbi, mullah or any politician... now or in history They did nothing to assure that right to you. In fact, they remain the greatest existing threats to those rights,often for what appear to be excellent reasons.

If you wish to celebrate your rapidly declining freedom in this natin to speak out freely and openly about our governement and its institutions without fear of midnight raids by jack-booted, brown-shirted thought police, dont thank any academician, professor, philosopher or even attorney. They did nothing to guarantee you that freedom.

If you are grateful that our press is free from government control, even if it has become perverted in its mission of honest, accurate reporting of factual news in favor of social engineering by members from both ends of the political spectrum and those who fall in between with other agenda of their own, don't thank a reporter, editor or publisher. They are the beneficiaries of those freedoms, not their defenders, guardians or eevn partially responsible for those rights existing.

If you like the idea that, after being forced to jump through hoops of obstructions primarily designed and imposed only to protect the powers that be in power, you have the right to assemble peaceably and to petition the government for redress of grievances they have commited against "we the people," dont' you dare offer gratitude to any politiician, judge, attorney or judicial and legal system in our nation. Again, your gratitude would be disgustingly misplaced.

If your right to quiet enjoyment of your private property not subject to the whim of a government entity has any meaning to you, don't thank any clerk of any court or any police officer and especially not any politician, teacher, reporter, clergyman, judge, lawyer, clerk, professor, writer, philosopher or anyone else fro not one of these made certain that you and your children and grandchildren have those rights today. Teh same appplies if your ancestors were dragged to this country in chains where they suffered indignities no man should ever have imposed on any other. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Josea Williams, Martin Luther King, Junior, Thurgood Marshall and no other "civil rights leader were not the source of your Divinely intended dignity and freedom to be whomever and mold yourself into whatever you wish to make of yourself.

Over the past 250 years or so, those things for which you ought to be eternally grateful were neevr bought and purchased for you by any of those people. Your "gratitude" is totally misplaced when you accept the ignorance of Bill Clinton and Al Gore who claimed publicly and frequently that ",i>government gives us those rights we Americans enjoy." You would think a Preesident and a Vice President would understand that simple premise. Those rights are ours by BIRTHRIGHT! Our Constitution accomplished only two things. They established a system of self governance that is the shining example to tthe world after all these years. Usama bin Laden and their ilk don't get it. They never will. Our nation and our people cannot be brought down from without by those who wish to steal our ffreedoms and do us harm because they despise our freedoms. We can only lose those freedoms by abdication of those rights in self delusional attempts to provide "security."

If you wish to know who you should TRULY thank for any of those freedoms most of us take for granted, go visit him (and her). They wait patiently and undemandingly for us to come by just one day out of the year, yet most of us won't bother to even think about them at all on Monday (Memorial Day - Observed) or on next Saturday, May 31.

Those "heroes" and purchasers of our freedom grow in number every day and yet we ignore them. Please change that this year. Visit a national cememtery and place an American flag on a grave - ANY grave. You see, you don't even have to know that person or anything about him or her. They probably didn't know anything about you the day they paid the ultimate price of the freedoms you claim to appreciate. You see, EVERY FREEDOM we have today was not given to us by anyone other than another average American who died while serving in the military or other service organization... some we dare not even name.

Are you TRULY grateful? Then thank a soldier who died so that you would be able to ignore his or her sacrifice.

And to Ed Asner, Alec Baldwin, Jane Fonda, Ted Turner, Barbara Streissand, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Sean Penn, Janeane Garafolo, Michael Moore and all the rest of you who spit on those of us who did serve with honor, pride and dignity, doesn't it just sicken you to know that the only reason you are free to do so is becauase the man or woman you attempt to demean and dishonor purchased that freedom for even the likes of you!?

When we do the math on that "equation of relative human worth to our society," those who hate our military and despise those who serve have had their values measured against those who did. They have appointed to themselves a self-assigned value of ZERO! They are ABUSERS of freedoms, not protectors of them, yet they seem to always be teh ones screaming loudest about wanting their rights protected. Who do they think will protect those rights? Some air-headed Hollywood "intellectual?"

Thank a dead soldier this weekend. It's a debt you've overlooked too long. What excuse do you have for continuing to ignore that debt? Just one flag, one floral arrangement and no recognition for yourself. You won't believe how good it will make you feel.