Subject:  Madison School Board

I don't know if you heard, but Madison, WI (where I live) was the center of a controversy
regarding the mandatory reading of the Pledge of Allegiance in the schools (a new Wisconsin law
attached to the budget bill by two of the sleaziest legislators in the gang). The school board decided
that playing an instrumental version of the Star Spangled Banner would be most inclusive and let
the individual teachers decide if they'd do more.

This was turned into "Madison School Board Bans Pledge". The AP picked up the story and Rush
started bitching about it on his show Tuesday. By Wednesday,  the dittoheads had flooded the district
with their venom and now it appears that the board is going to knuckle under.

This letter was published Saturday in both the Wisconsin State Journal (rightwing rag) and Capital Times (liberal) ....

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To the Editors:

Few Wisconsin residents may realize this, but yesterday, the state was attacked by a ruthless gang of thugs wishing to force their worldview on the rest of us. The minions of hate, fear and anger used electronic warfare and intimidation to attack the citizens of our state. They used this very paper to spread their vicious attacks.

The enemy call themselves the "Dittoheads". Yes, the power of darkness, the voice on loan from the devil, Rush Limbaugh,
called on his disciples of deceit to rain down their e-mail bombs on the Madison School Board.

In their infinite capacity for injustice, they assume that every community in the country is made up of lily white Christians
and expect them to act in lockstep obedience to their wishes. They simply choose to ignore the fact that Madison has a huge community of foreign nationals in our schools, yet they expect them to pledge allegiance to a foreign flag. They choose to
ignore the large pacifist community, after all the Rushites consider them traitors. They choose to ignore their own posturing
on local control and mandate to our community what they think is right.

We may not have bodies buried in rubble, but we do have our community's soul being torn apart by hate brought to us by
those wishing to deprive us our right to self-determination.

Some may consider Madison an embarrassment, but the future may show just how heroic the Madison School Board was
in this fight for our Constitution, or Russ Feingold in protecting our liberties. That is, unless the madness of blind patriotic
furor win out over enlightened reason.
 

D. A. Friedrichs
Madison, WI