Hello. My name is Ben, 16 years old, and if I could hold your attention for just a moment I would like to introduce you to my new channel, YoungAndAware, something I have just made in an attempt to encourage our older generations that may or may not doubt my generation’s capability in becoming aware of world issues and forming proper understandings of them, and this channel is also to encourage my generation to become aware of such things. I have decided to remain silent up until now because I had seen no extremely motivating factor that I could be sure about, mostly conspiracy theories and the like which I am capable of being skeptical towards… but President Obama passing the Nation Defense Authorization Act of Fiscal 2012 is something that I cannot deny. It happened, and I am sure of it. And of course if you know this act then you can probably foresee why I am against it – the assassination and indefinite detention bit of it and this foresight does not undermine anyone’s opposition to it. It used to be, and probably still is, when young American children were first indoctrinated into the united states public education system, including myself, we were taught to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Of course we did not know what that title even meant, nor did we know what the words really meant or what they stood for; we didn’t know what a republic was, probably not what an allegiance was or what indivisible meant. I mean, how could we? We were in kindergarten! We were struggling with spelling tests which include words such as “help”,”share”, and ”play” – those were our vocabulary words! If they wanted us to know what it actually meant and what the lyrics stood for then those would have been our vocabulary words and understanding the meaning and purpose of the Pledge of Allegiance would have been in our curriculum, but this isn’t the point I wanted to make. The point is that it specifically states, “Justice for all” and also, “to the republic for which it stands.” Well, I don’t know about you but in a republic the People are the Sovereigns, not the government, and I don’t know about you but when a citizen of the united states – a citizen of our own country – can be killed or indefinitely detained if they are suspected, without a fair trial or due process, of being a “terrorist”, that is NOT justice! Maybe we have been led to believe that places like Guantanamo are necessary, fine, I can at least understand the origin of that point of view, but when a law is passed where the Attorney General or the President, without any checks and balances, can commit atrocities to our own citizens, how can you agree with that? How can you support it? Of course the media has led us to believe, “it is only going to be used for our protection, to stop terrorist acts.” I say screw that kind of protection, the protection in this bill. Benjamin Franklin once said, which has been paraphrased in many ways, “He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither.” You’ve probably heard it before; it’s very common but not trite. I say screw fearing terrorism; in fact encouraging us to fear terrorism is a form of terrorism in itself. I fear our government now, more than any terrorist. I fear my government is going to come to my house and shoot me in the head now or hold me captive in some god forbidden place, most likely one of the over 600 prison camps which have been established all around the united states, or rather “Residential Centers” as they like to call them, maybe even just for posting this; for being a practitioner and apologist for freedom of speech and freedom of thought. When opposition to the government becomes known as terrorism, which is NOT the definition of terrorism at all, and thought and cognitive curiosity and rationality is seen as thoughtcrime, we are in some serious trouble. It already is seen as thoughtcrime, but it’s not official – yet. I refuse to remain silent anymore, as it has come to be that our silent consent indirectly affirms our support towards so many things that we aren’t even aware of and I have had enough. I guess you could call this a Declaration of Intolerance.