Dear Editor:

Go ahead wave the American flag and sing with gusto the Star Spangled Banner and cross your heart and take off your hat while you repeat verbatim our country's Pledge of Allegiance. Who's the real enemy of freedom in the United States?Our grandfathers and great grandfathers knew with certainty back in the 1940s the answer to that issue. The name Mussolini galvanized them with hatred to risk their lives, knowing intrinsically that the principles of the Italian dictator were bad and an enemy to freedom.Mussolini was the "F" word with a snake hiss sound attached at the end.("f"acist try saying it slow) fascism is an economic system related to capitalism only in that you are allowed to have private property. But the F word with the snake hiss piece won't let you do what you want with that real estate or gold coin from grandpa and you need a permit to cut that tree down, to have a shed on your property, or to get a license to own a critter and work with your own God given two hands.You must pay out in taxes to sustain the tyrannical bureaucracy required to manage its infrastructure and negotiate those inspectors invading your privacy. Eighty some years later we in America elect a man who also exhibits these fascist traits to run our executive branch of the federal government. My point is that we knew who the enemies of freedoms were back then on a grass roots level. Something between then and now has robbed us of our discernment.There is a story about an Italian theater during WW2 showing matinee news reel films. The presidential motorcade ran out of gas in front so the dictator himself went inside for a show. He sat down and the manager came down to speak to the stranger in the first row delaying protocol by not standing and speaking allegiance to their leader. The manager politely informed Mussolini that he didn't like the president either but those were the rules. The manager was taken outside and never heard from again. It's actually a whole lot less drastic then what we get today if we protest within 500 feet of our leader in Washington by getting whisked away by the CIA.(Manhandling, strip searches, and incarcerations are paid for by our taxes.)But the one we elect is an easy blame shift for the real culprit and that is the "We the people" who let it all happen i.e. the stealing away of our "republic under God." Education or the lack of it in government schools has produced this biproduct coupled with the poor modeling of our passive parenting multi-generationally. May I personally misquote Karl Marx the father of Communism : "Government is the opium of the people."Nullifying federal and state laws on the county level like the majority commissioners did a few months ago in the battlefield USA is a way of taking ownership and responsibility for the world we live in for the benefit of our children and grandchildren.Robert DagesLehighton 912Board of DirectorsElected Republican Committeeman,Jim Thorpe