Don't WAIT!

My great-great-great-great-grandfather James Johnson was born in Limerick Ireland January 16, 1761, and at age three came to Virginia colony with his parents, residing near Rockbridge. In 1780, aged 19, he became a 'blue coat', a regular soldier in the Continental Army. He served in the " Maryland Detachment of the Southern Line ", commanded by Gen. Nathaniel Greene. As such he was in many of the critical battles that broke the back of the British plans to split the colonies. He fought at Guilford Courthouse and at Eutaw Springs where was wounded four times but stayed at his post and fought on. He was later captured and spent over a year chained to the deck of a British prison ship, in the harbor at Charleston, SC. He later stated that his clothes " rotted off of me" on that prison ship. He was released after the war ended in 1783.

Johnson received a Continental Congress land grant for this service and chose his land in what is now Henderson County in the mountains of North Carolina, building a cabin there, by his own hand, in 1791. This cabin still stands and is owned by a branch of my family who has Johnson's copy of his land grant. They also have his brown bess musket, the "assault rifle" of my ancestor's day!

All of these things and my knowledge of them, are precious to me as are our freedoms-- rights and freedoms that he, and generations down to our present time, have fought to achieve and maintain. These rights, these freedoms, are not negotiable! Freedom is not free, and never has been. There are costs associated with it, costs of the sort my ancestor paid with his blood. A free society is never perfect and bad things do happen. We do not let these things cause us to abandon our rights as American citizens. As George III found out, we are not subjects, we are free citizens. I will not give up freedom of speech because some say hateful things. I will not give up my freedom of religion, nor freedom of assembly, because some misuse these rights. I will not give up my individual right to keep and bear arms, because some sick or evil individual commits crimes with a weapon. The second amendment, as Jefferson so well stated, is there to protect all the rest of the Bill of Rights and the constitution! Let us hope we never need to use it in such manner.

James Johnson's descendants even today include carpenters, soldiers, ministers, at least one federal judge, and physicians like myself. I am proud of my heritage from him, and the greater heritage of my country which has always valued freedom and individual rights to a greater extent than most of the world. I urge you as my representative in congress, to uphold and preserve this heritage against the current hysteria and wave of political correctness that would squander what so many have sacrificed to create and preserve.

thank you,

Harold F. Cable, M.D.

7731 Anne Circle

Anchorage, Alaska 99504

907-748-4861