Gratitude | Standing with Friends.
May 31, 2009 by Rick Koerber
Filed under Controversy, Friends
Not long ago I wrote a conclusion to one of my essays, that rings so true to me today, that I thought I’d share—
The only option is to choose; to make a choice when the options are clear, and the chaos and tension that accompanies conflict has not yet become overbearingly personal.
I made my choice early on, when I first encountered these people. I made my choice before the huge successes and before the tragic business failures that have defined the last several years. I’m not proud or happy about the business or financial failures that have so closely affected my life, and the lives of so many of my friends and loved ones. Nor can I rest from my own labor to compensate for the ones for where I bare primary responsibility. But failure, financially—short or long term, has never been the enemy of free citizens in America, or throughout history. Failure, morally—to stand up for right, for freedom, and for truth—this is a failure that I consider the most serious enemy of all. As economic freedom is threatened broadly, across all parts of the world’s citizenry, each of us are increasingly exposed the fact that we have an inescapable choice to make, individually.
How about you? How will you react when you have your day in court (literally or figuratively)? Do you think that somehow you can escape the consequences of the rocky cliffs ahead? Will you just coast along the tidal wave of life that carries you about from day-to-day while you complain as you go that your life isn’t what you want? Or, will you stand up? Will you say to freedom’s common enemy, “There is a certain point beyond which you cannot pass!”
I’m sure the slobbery thickness of brain-off emotionalism will continue to bring more people to my door in the future asking about some supposed, pretended, or actual indictment–or maybe even worse. But, in the mean time, me and those who stand with me (including the consistently growing numbers of those who will be standing with me tomorrow and the next day, and the days after that), we will keep producing, educating, and organizing. And, when we can squeeze it in (and I’m pretty sure it’s something we’ll not soon forget), we’ll also do what we can to make sure the complicit schmuck’s (including those in the media, the legal profession, and in key government positions) who keep overstepping their bounds, to the detriment of innocent and free citizens, are also made to face the legal consequences of their own wrongdoing. I doubt that they’re any more anxious to face a just tribunal than have been any of history’s well known tyrants and their dimwitted, brain off accomplices.
- Thank you Ann, Clyne, Brad, Jason, Jewel, Tom, Sonny, Steve, and Israel. Michelle was couragous, thank you dear. Also, thank you to those who would stand / will stand – as we take the Project forward despite the challenges and obstacles in our way. You never know exactly when you might be asked to make a decision to stand with a friend, or to stand for a cause or a principle. Excuses are always possible, and conflicting choices by definition must be present. But, all the talk in the world and friendly expressions built up over time — these don’t count the same as the simple, but difficult decision, to take a stand when defining moments come.
Friendship is a grand, fundamental principle (to paraphrase my greatest mortal hero) and words cannot express the feelings of friends, acting freely, to lend costly support—especially, when juding eyes are watching, gossiping lips are talking, and pointing fingers are mocking.
