Dear Friends,
It seems to me, the moment opinion is met with death threats, there is tyranny in the land. Donald Trump, who is not my first choice for President, recently said we should stop all Muslim immigration to the US and that statement has caused a firestorm. The RNC has condemned Trump in the harshest of terms, the media that calls itself unbiased has gone into anaphylactic shock, and now there are death threats from the religion of peace. His opinion has resulted in death threats and so there is real tyranny, the tyranny of intolerance, censorship, blind ideology and outright hatred. Such outright tyranny should send a chill down the spine of every freedom loving person, in America, and beyond. Calling for the death of a person because you disagree with his or her opinion shows a presumption that boarders on the demented. Moreover, to presume to call for the death of someone else because of their opinion, by reciprocal attribution, means anyone else has an equal right to call for another’s death for their opinion, which is a road to chaos and violence.
Carter not only stopped all Iranian immigration in the 1970s but forcibly shipped back all those Iranians who were here legally! His measures were not called draconian and there were no calls for Carter’s death. Many of the people, if not most, were horrified that the Shaw was overthrown and the crazies won the government. I had a friend, Sayeed, who was here on a student visa. He cried at the thought of going back, but the government came, arrested him and sent him back to certain death. I asked him why he was so afraid of the new government, and he told me, “They are more crazy than you can imagine…” Sayeed didn’t agree with the Ayatollah nor was he a nut job, he was a good person who happened to be Iranian and had to be arrested and shipped back because of Carter’s decree. Agree or disagree with Carter, no one called for his death, even though he went way beyond what Trump called for.
There is an old saying, “If you want to know who your masters are look at who you cannot criticize.” It can also be understood as if you want to know who wants to be your master look at who refuses criticism and calls for your death if you do. Here in the land of the free our forefathers have always resisted would be tyrants. To accept such rhetoric as calls for the death of people is tantamount to accepting the yoke of slavery. Such intolerance has no place in our society. Not just calls for the death of Trump because he has an opinion that some find unacceptable, but all calls for the death of others, like Black Lives Matter calling for police to be “fried like bacon…” or Louis Farrakhan calling for 1000 murderers to kill white people, such rhetoric demands tyranny over others and is the antithesis of freedom.
Indeed it is our very freedom that has allowed our society, based on the free exchange of ideas and opinions that has propelled the world into the heretofore unimagined standard of living we enjoy, the globe over today. Those places where opinion and ideas were met with death threats have always been backward and barbaric places where the advancement of civilization, science and culture has retreated. Humanity has only advanced when individual liberty has been protected. It is not unoffensive speech that needs to be protected, but offensive speech, otherwise civilization corrodes and the human condition worsens. Freedom, of action, speech, self protection and thought are the cornerstones of civilized man, censorship, intolerance and oppression are shifting sand that will collapse a civilization no matter how well it is constructed.
To presume to control another’s speech, thought or liberty is hubris of the highest order. Such hubris forgets that if one believes he can control another, then that other has every right to control him! Any attribute foisted on me, I can reciprocate, and foist back on you. Call for my death and I have every right to call for yours. That my friends is the path to chaos and violence and can only result in the lowering of the human condition. Take a long look at what people say. If they call for the silencing of others, limits on liberty, thought laws or religious fidelity, especially with threats of death, they serve chaos and violence and have no place whatsoever in modern civil society. They are an anachronism that belongs in the dark ages where people had slaves, burned others at the stake and beheaded people for idolatry. Those that call for the death of another because of the other’s opinion should be forcibly rounded up and shipped away, or denied entry, because such attitudes lead to retribution thereby becoming a spiral to unrest, famine and want. Whether they are college kids, radical racists, the media that calls itself unbiased, climate change alarmists or Islamists, they have no place in the land of the free. They can go live in those places that have earned the wages of tyranny and intolerance, to practice their tyranny and intolerance.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
