R. Lee Wrights
Contributing Editor

R. Lee Wrights is a writer and political activist living in North Carolina. He is co-founder and editor-in-chief of the free speech online magazine Liberty For All and an editor at Free-Market.Net.

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Lost friend
by R. Lee Wrights

I lost a true and valued friend today. Not just a personal acquaintance, but a cherished compatriot in liberty. I lost him to this damned war.

Now, my friend did not die on some Middle-Eastern battlefield. In fact, he did not die at all; but I lost him just the same. A war being waged half way around the world has torn us apart at home. The war hawk swoops down upon the peaceful doves that can do nothing but scatter into all directions, each hoping that he is not the one the falcon chooses to follow. A difference of opinion has left a friendship battered and dying, it’s remains strewn upon the battlefield of philosophy, principle, and pride. And I find myself at its wake, wondering if there was something I could have done, and mourning its loss.

I hope you will forgive the somber tone of this missive, but alas I have grown melancholy. I tire of defending a position that should be self-evident to any thinking individual. I grow weary of having to remind intelligent people that in times of war the citizens are always deceived by those that own the government. I am sick that friends would turn away from me in favor of blind patriotism and fear of the unknown. I am saddened as I look back on my life and remember the casualties of wars that were not caused by bomb or bullet. Lost friends never to be resurrected, and never to be forgotten.

And just as the hopelessness begins to engulf me, I remind myself of something Thomas Jefferson once wrote to a friend of his. He penned:

“The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.”

Our third president had a way of saying the most with the fewest possible words. I realized, I cannot afford the luxury of wallowing in this self-pity. I do not seek the easy way out and that is what brought me to this melodramatic rant in the first place. My unwillingness to accept the premise that Americans, by some miracle of nature, have rights that supersede all other nationalities’ has caused this friendship to become an unfortunate casualty of war. I have to accept that my stubborn adherence to the principle that all people are created with equal rights, and deserve equal protection of their rights, means that I must bear the heartache of lost friends occasionally so that my children might some day be free.

Bear this story in mind as you deal with your friends in liberty, and strive to find common ground rather than separate foxholes. Do not permit a politician’s war, driven by manufactured fear, to distract you from the battles for liberty we must fight here at home. The State likes nothing better than for us to be at each other’s throats, enabling them to steal our freedom undetected. Do not allow patriotism to blind you to the people that mean the most to you and to how much you have in common with them. Let your affection for freedom out weigh the differences of opinion which might tear you asunder and learn to work together toward common goals. Just as President Jefferson wrote to a friendly adversary, so should we always remember:

"I never consider a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend."

Learn to separate politics and philosophy from personal feelings. Learn that some times it is okay to agree to disagree; and, think about what a dull, boring place the world would be if we all agreed on everything. And, when you reach the point where you cannot agree to disagree, try not to allow the impasse to become the chasm into which a valued friendship falls to an early death.