Te sakam Iskra!

(that means I love you Iskra, in Macedonian, her language, which I hope someday I'll be smart enough to learn.)

Iskra is my sweetheart, friend, and future wife.

There are no words in any language to express the love I have for her, much less the love she truly deserves.

It's the 4th of July. I'm supposed to be "patriotic." Blah.

I love God, my family and friends, and all people of good will.

I want to love my country too. I really do. And I once did - look at my Usenet postings if you don't believe me.

But true patriotism requires me to say that while I love what my country once stood for, and even much of what it claims to stand for today - I do not love our "government" and I will never understand why people support or encourage or even tolerate it.

July 4 was once sacred to us precisely because we threw off a foreign occupying "government" that was oppressive and tyrannical by the standards of its day.

But I would welcome King George back with open arms if his tyranny were the worst I ever had to see.

Why, oh why, do people believe every @&!@$# think that the !*@$@$ so-called "government" tells them?

Government: "It's illegal to copy MP3s." So people think it's illegal.

Government: "It's illegal to ingest chemicals we don't like / don't control / profit from artificially restricting supply of / whatever." So people think it's illegal.

Government: "It's illegal to own guns for self-defense, or for defense against a tyranical government (which, of course, we will NEVER become)." So people think it's illegal, and let strangers rob, enslave, rape, and murder their supposedly "loved" ones.

Government: "It's OK to butcher your unborn baby." So people think it's OK. It isn't (hint: read the 5th and 14th Amendments. better hint: THOU SHALT NOT KILL.)

Government: "It's OK to butcher millions of Iraqis/Serbs/Afghanis/Iranians/whatever (through depleted uranium, 'sanctions', cluster bombs, low-yield nukes, whatever)." See above.

The CONSTITUTION is the highest law of the land, folks. So-called "laws" contrary to it are null and void.

My theory: people need something or someone to worship. Hardly anyone around here believes in God, so they worship some level of government instead. How is this worship? Well, they obey it. They pay tithes to it. They consider its word law (whether it truly is or not). They defend it, even to the death. They allow it to do things that they know are unspeakably evil, all in the name of a "greater good."

I'm sick of it. God must be too. He wasn't too crazy about the politicians or religious leaders of Jesus' day.

OK . . after 4 years I've finally overcome enough laziness to actually register a /. account. Whooppee.