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# FROM
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/from-20030303/
- Published: 2003-03-03T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T01:42:35.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica, #archive-import, Homeless

*THE STREET*

*By Charles Springer*

I appreciate the freedoms we have, like being able to express our opinions about the government and private organizations. This is one of the freedoms guaranteed under the original Constitution signed in 1776\. These rights are for EVERYONE in this country, as I have stated before, no matter what color, religion or economic station we have.

This piece of paper is what separates us from the rest of the world and why people from all over want to come here. I find that when these rights are violated in any way shape or form then we become no better than the people doing wrong in other countries.

We become hypocrites to the rest of the world when this happens. We lose respect in the world community. When I speak out against the things that this government does whether it is local, county, state or federal, I speak out of love for this country, its people and the ideals that we are SUPPOSED to stand for in the world community.

I do not say these things out of malice or hatred for anyone individual, but for the hatred of the ACTIONS of certain groups and organizations who seek to undermine what I and many veterans fought and died for since this country was formed. The basic freedoms we as Americans enjoy may soon no longer exist.

This is not because of Saddam Hussein, or the terrorists. They are the result of what is really wrong, which is that we no longer question authority and continue to look the other way when our administration goes against the will of the people. Look at the slashes in education in California, for example. The Governor and Legislature put special interests above the education of our children. How? The deregulation of the power companies that led to the spending of the surplus to bail out the power companies.

The people who govern seem to take great pride in our seeming short attention span and the fact that when the media hype dies down about an issue we tend to forget about the things that have caused our state and federal budget crunch. We as Americans have a responsibility to ourselves and our children to open our eyes to the reality of this whole big picture. To question the authority and to not trust what they say because of the smoke and mirror antics of our governing body as a whole. We need to start to USE the rights we HAVE left and speak out. We need to take our country back from the corporate ghosts that have lined their pockets at our expense. And tell our leaders that WE ARE the government — not them.

Maybe we should read these documents to see how much of our freedom has already been taken from us and how much of our integrity as a country in the world community has declined at the expense of our trusted leaders. Thank you all who read my column for allowing me to exercise my right to freedom of speech as a homeless man in America. (Charles Springer is homeless in Santa Monica.)

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 3, 2003.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/030303.pdf?ref=smdp.com)