When I read something like that, it makes me want to cry. I admit it, a grown man who hasn't cried more than once in the last twenty years. The USA was once the best hope this world had. But people like bin Laden and Ashcroft have worked hand in hand to set us back decades, and if things don't change soon, centuries. Instead of rising to the occassion and working to fix the problems of the day, so many people in the US have retreated into a mindless fear of the international world - blindly striking out at any perceived threat, real or imaginary. Where once we were a beacon to the world signifying freedom, we've become a country of cowards that no longer believes in the core values of our constitution. We, as a people, have decided to sacrifice the future of our own freedom for a false sense of security today. Our forefathers did not sacrifice their lives for our country to throw it all away for a little rhetoric and bluster on the part of some politicians who have more to gain through conflict than through peace and stability.

The truth is that freedom is never free, but the cost of freedom is not just the cost of our soldiers lives - nor 1000x that in Iraqi lives, it is equally the cost of the lives of those who died on 9-11. Freedom and risk go hand in hand, you can not have one without the other. The more we follow Ashcroft in the retreat from civil liberties and the more we follow Rumsfield and his circle of neocons away from a global consensus, the more we as a country lose what made us free. You can not protect our liberty by dismantling it.

Robin Williams didn't write that. Ever see, "Good Morning Vietnam?" - Adrian Cronauer was played by Williams who clearly understood the core of who Cronauer was. Obviously the character is not the man, but anyone who could really get Cronauer would never succumb to such narrow-mindness.

In fact item 11, the one line that Williams really did say has been left off the version you were sent. The real author of the first ten lines remains largely unknown. But the missing 11th line contradicts the previous 10. It was probably added by somebody who thinks Springsteen's "Born in the USA" is a glorification of the USA, not realizing the true meaning of the quote used. It goes like this:

11) "The Statue of Liberty is no longer saying 'Give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses.' She's got a baseball bat and she's yelling, 'You want a piece of me?"

You can usually find the facts at snopes.