Not interested in free speech?

I am back to watching the news again, and with that comes the apprehension and worry that I've tried to avoid feeling. People bashed President Bush in many different ways while he was in office. They burned effigies of him, the screamed for impeachment, they yelled that he was a war criminal and that he needed to be put on trial for such crimes. How did President Bush handle that? He did it in a very American manner: He smiled nicely and reminded us all that every one of us has the freedom of speech. Every one of those people had the right to say such things and to make such hideous accusations, let alone burning mock-ups of him. The gentleman in Iraq who threw his shoes at the President wasn't American, but when the incident occurred the President again smiled and said that he was glad to see that Iraqis were able to exercise their freedom to speak.

Fast forward to this past several days. President Obama was mocked by gay rights activists in California. His idea of how to handle it was to mock them in return and to appear more pompous than usual. People were protesting Obama's policies in Lafayette Park in Washington, D.C. and he had the park service and the Secret Service aided by capital police remove those people and close down the park. Somehow that just does not seem to be a very American way of handling dissenting points of view, unless you grew up in the USSR and China. What does the President have to fear from people using their rights to protest? Why does the administration feel the need to discredit anyone that might be part of the tea party movement? Is he so afraid that the truth about his ties to socialism will come out? It certainly is not because of the tea party movement, or people like Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck that are causing us to feel as though he's afraid. He is showing us that he is afraid by closing down parks where people have the right to assemble and speak their minds.

Mr. Obama, tear down this wall! The current administration has put up a thick wall of "transparency" that does not exist. He has instead created a wall of half-truths and propaganda used to make people like me look like a bunch of loons. When asked specific questions during interviews, we see that he knows how to tap dance and play "slight of hand" when speaking. When will there ever be an actual answer to our questions? The only way that any of this will change is if we are willing to walk into the voting booth, and vote for real change. Not the idea of change. He sold people on a one word slogan, without actually defining what kind of change he was going to implement. Now, we need to send a message to him, that his brand of change is not wanted, and not welcome.

Susan McCracken

Vernon Hills