&uot;In a democratic society, the only treason is silence.&uot;

&045;Anna Quindlen, from &uot;The Sounds of Silence&uot; in Newsweek, April 21, 2003

When I gave up writing &uot;Notes from Home&uot; for the Albert Lea Tribune three months ago, I thought it was for good. After many weeks of thought and soul-searching, I just couldn’t see the point of continuing to write. I didn’t see how writing columns against American arrogance abroad and selfishness at home was going to make a difference. Most Americans had made up their minds about the moral and religious rightness of our invasion of Iraq. They had turned their back on their responsibilities as citizens &045; to provide for the poor, to help raise healthy and well-educated children, to build a better society for everybody &045; in favor of tax cuts that allow them to spend more of their &uot;hard-earned&uot; money on themselves.

The editor for the paper, Dylan Belden, who is a much wiser man than me (at least about some things) convinced me to take a &uot;leave of absence&uot; while I tried to regain some perspective (and some hope for the future). He didn’t think I could quit writing forever. He was right. And even though I now know that I was wrong about how long I would be &uot;absent,&uot; I found productive ways to use the weeks without deadlines.

One hard lesson I have learned is that I ran away from my responsibilities as a writer in the public forum. It’s not something I’m proud of. Anyone who is a regular contributor to an editorial page accepts the responsibility for continuing to write even when things aren’t going well. When I read Anna Quindlen’s column in Newsweek, I felt &uot;convicted&uot; by her conclusion, that the only real treason possible in the United States is being silent &045; especially in the face of injustice arising out of arrogance and ignorance.

I also discovered that I could still write about some things, and was able to continue producing the version of Notes from Home that runs in the Alden Advance. That series of essays mostly contains observations about family, child rearing, and community; only rarely do I write about more &uot;political&uot; themes. Because it wasn’t so political, because it wasn’t on the &uot;Opinion&uot; page, I wasn’t consumed with frustration and despair every time I tried to write something.

So after some &uot;alone time&uot; to think about things, I’m back on the editorial page, with a new column I’m calling Making a Difference, because that is what writing political commentary should be about. Writing columns where you mock and attack without a sense of how this helps build a better society is posturing, whatever ideology it’s based on.

However, even though I’m going to try writing again, I’m still angry at what I see as a betrayal of the public trust by our current elected leaders. They have manipulated information and lied to us. They want to be in charge of the world, and don’t want to have to follow any rules other than the ones they make for themselves. The result is a &uot;compassionate&uot; society that requires poor parents to treat their jobs as more important than their children, provides free medical care to an unborn fetus, but not to a pregnant woman, and treats dark-skinned foreigners with suspicion and contempt.

And we, the American people, prefer to believe the lies we are told because they allow us to swell our chests with pride; kicking butt in Iraq raised our &uot;self-esteem.&uot; Unfortunately, our good feelings about ourselves are more like the euphoria produced by too much drugs and alcohol than anything that resembles real joy or true patriotism. Our good feelings require us to look away from some dark and ugly truths.

So this is where we come to the heart of making a difference: Calling attention to the way we deceive ourselves is one of the jobs of someone who writes for this page of the newspaper. Nobody ever promised it would be fun, or make the writer popular. But that’s what it says on the bumper stickers, isn’t it? That which is popular is not always right, and that which is right is not always popular. Sometimes you just have to get a little cranky in order to help people see that.

David Rask Behling is a rural Albert Lea resident. His column appears Tuesdays.