The Canadian Record (Canadian, Tex.), Vol. 113, No. 28, Ed. 1 Thursday, July 10, 2003 Page: 2 of 32
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2
THURSDAY 10 JULY 2003
" 76e (fawzcUott R] i011 )
opinion
page
by laurie ezzell brown
Bustin' a mutton
At each rodeo performance there was a Mutton Bustin' competition.
They mounted the wolly beast and came out of the chute hanging on
for dear life as the rodeo clown followed close behind.
PHOTOS FRONT PAGE: Little Cowboy Re id Long, 'I'rick Rider
Wendy Ratchford Lattin and Rodeo Clown Stacey Lattin.
RECORD
INCORPORATED FEBRUARY 1998
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Periodicals postage paid in Canadian, Texas.
Published weekly
in Canadian, Texas, by Nancy M. Ezzell.
POSTMASTER: Send address changes to
The Canadian Record, Box 898, Canadian, TX 79014
BEN EZZELL Editor & Publisher 1948-1993
NANCY EZZELL Editor & Publisher
LAURIE EZZELL BROWN, Editor
editor® canadianrecord. com
TONYA FINSTERWALD, Advertising Manager
advertising@canadianrecord.coni
CATHY RICKETTS, News & Features
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MARY SMITHEE, Office Manager
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Design & Production: KIM McKINNEY
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photography LAURIE BROWN, CATHY RICKETTS
SETH DAVIDSON
MEMBER
2003
TEXAS PRESS
ASSOCIATION
NOT ONLY IS FREEDOM NOT FREE, as we are reminded in times
of war and patriotic fervor, but none of us who love our freedoms can
ever be absolved from the responsibility of protecting them.
That—in essencS, if not intent—is what a Fourth of July advertise-
ment published by the Hemphill County veterans' organization con-
templates. The text of the ad follows:
"It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the
press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of
speech. It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, who has given us
freedom to demonstrate. It is the soldier, not the lawyer, who has given
us the right to a fair trial. It is the soldier who saluted the flag, who
serves beneath the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag."
Many soldiers have died or been injured gaining and defending
those freedoms. That is an undeniable truth, and one to which we pay
particular tribute on Independence Day, as we do on Memorial Day
and Veterans Day.
It is not, however, the whole truth.
The reporter who stands up against threats of retribution, who risks
his livelihood to write an unpopular truth, and who sometimes faces the
business end of a bullet or a bomb while doing his job is also a foot sol-
dier in the battle for enduring freedom.
In the decade between 1993 and 2002, at least 366 journalists were
killed while carrying out their work. While some were killed in conflict
situations, many of them were simply hunted down and murdered—of-
ten in direct reprisal for their reporting. In Colombia, in Russia, in
Bosnia and the Balkans, in India, Rwanda and Tajikistan, in Alge-
ria—the most deadly country, where fifty-eight journalists were mur-
dered between 1993 and 1996—and more recently in Iraq, journalists
have given their lives for the cause of freedom, and their sacrifice is no
less noble because they were not aimed or trained in combat or wear-
ing soldiers' uniforms.
It is the journalist who has given us freedom of the press, and who
fights every day of his life to defend it, to keep that freedom alive in ev-
ery heart.
Vaclav Havel was a playwright—a poet of sorts. In December 1989,
he was elected President of the Czechoslovakia Republic. He was a
standard-bearer of democracy whose literary work was banned follow-
ing the invasion of his country by Soviet troops. As a citizen, he pro-
tested the oppression of the ruling Communist regime. Because of his
political work, he spent nearly five years of his life in prison.
Surely this man was a freedom fighter, a leader in the battle for de-
mocracy. It is the poet and playwright who tests the bounds and limita-
tions of acceptable speech and who determinedly defies popular
consensus. It is the poet who not only gives us freedom of speech, but
reminds us of its glorious power.
In the spring of 1970, four Kent State University students were shot
and killed by National Guardsmen while protesting what they believed
to be an unjust war—a belief that much of the world now shares. In the
summer of 1989, it was a student who stood alone before a tank in
Tiannanmen Square to protest the repression of China's government.
Those students were soldiers in the cause of freedom, and are repre-
sentative of many who, in their youth and hunger for knowledge, have
challenged the presumptions of the comfortably entrenched around
the world.
It was a group of lawyers who—in the winter and spring of
2003—defended the rights of several black men and women in Tulia,
Texas who were wrongly accused, railroaded through an indifferent
court system, and convicted of crimes they did not commit. These law-
yers were soldiers who defended every citizen's right to a fair trial, re-
gardless of the color of his skin, or the color of his accuser's skin.
They were hardly the first to fight this battle, and will not, God will-
ing, be the last. The risks they took in that divided Texas community
were no less than those of a soldier in the front lines of battle. The cause
for which they fought was just as vital to our enduring freedom, and the
victory just as worthy of our remembrance.
It was, come to think of it, a group of lawyers and teachers and edu-
cators and preachers and farmers and merchants—some of them sol-
diers—who signed this nation's Declaration of Independence and who
wrote the United States Constitution which serves as the very frame-
work of this free and democratic society.
To suggest—as the veterans' ad does—that it is only the soldier who
has put life and limb on the line for the freedoms we celebrate, is wrong,
and dangerously so. It does a disservice to every freedom fighter who
has stood in the front lines of battle armed only with moral conviction to
defend those very same rights. And it condemns us to a world in which
war is the only solution when freedom is threatened—a premise which
is as unthinkable as it is unendurable.
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Ezzell, Nancy & Brown, Laurie Ezzell. The Canadian Record (Canadian, Tex.), Vol. 113, No. 28, Ed. 1 Thursday, July 10, 2003, newspaper, July 10, 2003; Canadian, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth220587/m1/2/: accessed May 7, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Hemphill County Library.