I responded recently to a certain local newspaper Editor’s challenge to us to put “an honest post” on our website. Within that challenge, he charged that our local Tea Party had “taken individual people trying to improve their lot in life and stripped them of their individuality…grouping them into a large pot called ‘public employees’ which you [we] then demonize.” He continued, “As we all know, it is easy to whip up the masses when you use generalizations and stereotypes … much harder when you bring it to an individual level.” And he said, “Freedom is hardest when you have to support, or at least grudgingly allow, something that you personally do not believe in.”
That post was Part 1; this is Part 2, and it addresses the above:
For this post, let’s look at “group them into a large pot…which you then demonize.” That’s an amazingly accurate description of how so many of the media (including some local folks) are quick to depict, describe, and denigrate both the Tea Party and many others with whose opinions, stances, political philosophies -- and sometimes even facts -- they don’t agree. It’s also consistent with the tactics of radical Muslims toward America. But does it apply to the Tea Party? A core part of our raison d’etre was and is to criticize Congress for its profligacy and absence of accountability. Is Congress a “large pot”? Is criticizing Congress “demonizing” it? As the old saying goes, it depends on whose ox is being gored.
Or, let’s look at “easy to whip up the masses…” That might well be so; as noted above, that’s precisely what major segments of the mass media do vis-à-vis Tea Party types – but with the added twist of slipping in the (however false) obligatory and gratuitous labels of racism, homophobia, xenophobia, etc., etc., etc. It’s also a classic tactic used by the power-hungry everywhere throughout history. I believe an objective assessment would show that Tea Party members and their positions are, for the most part, fact-based, fact-focused, and non-personal – especially when compared to what currently passes for main-stream professional journalistic content.
But let’s look closest at “Freedom is hardest…” If I “have to support…something [I] personally do not believe in,” that’s not freedom, but its opposite -- tyranny. Indeed, that’s precisely why the Founders adopted a republican form of government in lieu of the pure democracy of ancient Greece (which fell victim to its own inherent intrinsic fatal flaw, i.e., the tyranny of the majority.) Nor must I “grudgingly allow” it. True freedom means I’m not forced or required to do either; I can disagree with, even work lawfully and legitimately to change, those laws, by-laws, rules, regulations, policies, and practices – public or private -- which clash with, ignore, override, violate or even attempt to criminalize my principles. A couple of examples should suffice:
1. Roe v. Wade: In 1973, under the guise of fostering humane treatment for women experiencing unwanted pregnancies, the ACLU petitioned, and received assent from, a pliant U.S. Supreme Court to de-criminalize the deliberate killing of an unborn child. Thus was legitimized the abortion industry, the direct descendant of the American Eugenics movement, itself the direct descendant of the enslavement of black persons in America. Since 1973, over 50 million legal (never confuse “legal” with “moral”) abortions have been performed. In its own way, both in numbers and its heinousness, it has far surpassed its sister spawn, the Holocaust – another direct descendant of the American Eugenics Movement -- and continues today: unabated, unashamed, and largely uncondemned. In 1973, ethical scientists were unable to state definitively that a fetus, whatever its stage, was already human; today, they can -- and do. That it’s long past time to revisit the morally repugnant Roe v Wade is obvious, but for our discussion, the main point is this: Freedom cannot mean that I must support, “grudgingly allow,” or even accept Roe v Wade to be the law of the land or mandated national policy, without question or quibble.
2. “Obamacare”: Whether this legislation is constitutional or not is in serious question, and lawsuits challenging it are currently working their way through the courts. Under the “Freedom is hardest…” rubric, once the government has spoken or acted, there can no longer be any argument: done is done, like it or lump it. Worse, simple logic would dictate that such a definition of freedom also obviates any further need for the Constitution itself – a positing that no true American of intelligence, honor, or conscience ever can or will accept.
As we are all fully aware, words have power. They can be a tremendous influence for good – or do tremendous damage. (Witness the Matthew Snyder funeral fiasco, the current U.S. Supreme Court’s inability/refusal to recognize slander when it slaps American citizens across the face, and the mass media’s silence on the same issue – the latter, of course, in the name of “objectivity.” It seems that free speech is freer for some than for others after all, and that the consequences of defamatory speech apply only to some, as well.) I’m not a media professional, but I remain obligated to be as accurate and honest as possible toward, with, and for those to whom and with whom I communicate. If that makes me old-fashioned, that’s a label I’m proud to wear.
In closing, as before, I refer not only to Admiral Yamamoto’s wisdom in his report to the Japanese Emperor after the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, “I fear we have awakened a sleeping giant,” but also to Cicero’s perspicacity: he correctly predicted not just Detroit’s current sorry state -- and that of most major American cities – but also the cause, agents, and motivation behind that decline. (More on the latter at a later date.)
Bud Nason
We The People, Carroll County, Maryland
Cicero, on The Enemy Within:
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city; he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.”
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