Those of Us Speaking Up For Life & Liberty Will Not Go Away

Last Sunday, the following letter appeared in the DBQ TH: 

Letter: Stop your whining and do something FROM RUSSELL WISE 2291 HELLE COURT, ASBURY, IOWA Telegraph Herald| 13 comments

I really wish some of the citizens of Dubuque would stop their whining. Abortion, red-light cameras, City Council and the list goes on.

Abortion is legal, so just deal with it. If red-light cameras scare you, then take the new Jule and sell your car, as it would probably make the roads safer. If the City Council does not trip your trigger, then get off your lazy butt and run for office.

There are three types of people in this world: Those who make things happen, those who watch things happen and those who complain because they have no idea what happened.

We elect officials to represent the best interests of the people by the people and for the people, so let them do their job.

After reading it, I knew I had to reply. My response was printed in today's paper. It appeared exactly as I wrote it.

Letter: Protesters have right to speak for cause
FROM ALLEN TROUPE 2003 KEY WAY, APT. 2Telegraph Herald | 5 comments

After reading the letter from Russell Wise (TH, Aug. 19) I have to ask if he really understands what he is saying when he is telling people to shut up and stop protesting what our elected officials are doing. It seems that he is intentionally trying to silence us, keeping us from defending what the Declaration of Independence says are our "unalienable rights," including life and liberty that God, not government, endowed us with, because he disagrees with what we stand for?To protect our free exercise of them, the Constitution and especially the 1st Amendment are there.

First there is free expression of religion. Under Obamacare regulations, our religious liberty has come under attack. So people are exercising their free speech and assembly rights to speak up and protest this attack.

Pro-lifers are also speaking up to defend life from the moment it starts at fertilization. We have every right to peaceably assemble and protest in front of Planned Parenthood.

Another right is to petition the government when we disagree with what they are doing, like putting in the red-light cameras.

All we are doing is what those protesting slavery did in the 1800s. Following his logic, since slavery was legal they should have shut up. Ditto, the Civil Rights protests in the 1960s.

Sorry, we are not going to shut up. We vote, we run for office and we'll exercise our God-given right to speak up as well, to make things happen in our best interests.