What a great night we had at Drinking Liberally this week!!! First and foremost I want to thank Jeremiah and Heather for inviting “We Love Our Soldiers” to participate, and giving us the opportunity to help raise awareness of the need for support, (moral and political) for our troops serving in harms way.

The turn out was fantastic, and I found myself wishing we could galvanize our citizenry to participate actively all the time….not only when rock stars like Rocky draw a crowd. Although, his words were inspiring, from the heart, and rang true to all of us in attendance…unfortunately, speaking truth to power, and having the courage to challenge this administration and it’s horrific record and policies has done little to date to steer us clear from disaster on so many levels. When I ponder why the entire nation isn’t on every mountain top screaming at the top of their lungs, I have to believe it isn’t because we don’t care….it’s because we don’t bother. We’re intellectually lazy, want our news in 30 second sound bites, and if it appears the issues at hand don’t or won’t affect us personally, the problem, and solutions belong to someone else. If your son or daughter bears no risk of being sent to Iraq, you’re likely to pay only passing attention, and are more apt to give Bush a pass, and all the time and money he asks for in order to “win” in Iraq.

I believe our challenge in 2008, and going forward is to energize every single citizen to actively participate in the democracy we send our sons and daughters to fight and die for. Our responsibility as citizens doesn’t end at the ballot box, it only begins there…

And that is where social/political groups like “Drinking Liberally” play such a crucial part in the process. Gathering together in a non-threatening, casual and friendly atmosphere provokes conversation, the sharing of great ideas, and inspires us to become involved in issues we may not have otherwise.

I love this group, and I hope the membership flourishes in the future. We all owe Jeremiah and Heather such a debt of gratitude for their dogged and tireless work on behalf of our SLC chapter, which would not exist without them.

I thank you all again for your generous and heartfelt contributions to WLOS on Friday. My only hope is that 2008 will be a pivotal year politically, and that the pressure to bear will be felt by those who continue to finance the deaths of the bravest and finest among us. My own family is so lucky to have our soldier, my son Justin home safely after serving 2 tours in Iraq…..but his safety does not excuse us from responsibility in doing all we can to bring home all the other mothers sons and daughters from this unconscionable foreign policy quagmire.

I hope each of us will recruit our friends, neighbors, co-workers and families to join us in 2008 at Drinking Liberally!

Happy Holidays to all, and may there truly be “Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men” in the coming year!

Carla J. Hitz