What Kind of Extremist Will You Be?

Early morning, April 4, a shot rings out in the Memphis sky,
Free at last, they asked for your life,
But they could not take your pride.
In the name of love, one more in the name of love.
-- U2: Pride (In the name of love)

Most everyone who is reading this knows what happened to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968. Some of you may even know what happened to my son, Spc. Casey Austin Sheehan on April 4, 2004. If you don't know, Dr. King and Casey were murdered by the same malevolent entities: people and ideologies that say we have to be mortally afraid of the "ism" du jour and we, as Americans who have the "moral high-ground" in the world, can send our innocent children to invade innocent countries and kill innocent people to fight the "ists" that go with the "isms." In Vietnam we were fighting the evil Communists, and in Iraq we are fighting the evil terrorists. Our war against Communism out-stayed its welcome in the 1980s and the military industrial war complex was running out of excuses to build bombs, tanks, bullets, ships, submarines, and soldiers; so in 2001, our leaders who serve the war machine had to switch our enemy of the state to terrorism.