Anyone who is planning to vote for a candidate for president of our country who has declared that he will be a dictator if elected, should read this article (“Russian poet to serve 7 years for reciting verses against war,” Associated Press, Dec. 29). This is what a dictatorship is all about.
Not only would our right to free speech be abandoned, so would all of our other freedoms. In 1948 when I was in fourth grade, along with the Pledge of Allegiance, we recited a version of the following which addresses the four freedoms put forth by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1941. They are what America and democracy are all about. Perhaps we should still ponder them today.
I am an American. A free American.
Free to speak — without fear,
Free to worship God in my own way,
Free to stand for what I think right,
Free to oppose what I believe wrong,
Free to choose those who govern my country.
This heritage of freedom I pledge to uphold,
For myself and all mankind.
