Last year when the UNC Football game preshow was a low flyover of F-15 fighter jets, the noise was intense. So was the discussion that followed on the local email lists and blogs.

This year after a neighbor’s dog was spooked, escaped and then hit by a car during an unannounced fireworks display at the football stadium, I was quick to post the announcement that there would be a low flight of Apache helicopters on Saturday.

Predictably the lists went wild. Folks concerned about their dogs and serenity and to a large part dedicated to non-violence vs those who wanted to cite their brief military background and the chicken-little-ness of the other side.

One veteran , however, had it down:

Speaking as ex-military, believer in peace, neighborhood resident – the “sound of freedom” is people expressing their views freely, without fear of reprisal – as on this neighborhood list.

And after all of that, the Sound of Freedom turned out to be less annoying than the Sound of News as the Apaches made aless noisy than the circling TV helicopters.

In other Sounds of Freedom instances, Conservative Republican Representative Walter Jones was spending Saturday in his office writing condolence letters to families of service personnel killed in Iraq. “So far, he has signed about 6,700 letters to family members.”