Light the Fear

The Failure of Fear

The Right Wing of America is experiencing its own "call to arms" these days, driven exclusively by fear. They fear diversity.  They fear free expression.  They fear due process and equality under law.

So they rouse each other to increasingly disgraceful, violent and open resistance to our shared country. They call themselves patriots, but they are only loyal to their vision of America.

To the real America, they increasingly look like traitors.  They advocate violent opposition of our lawfully elected government, and they spit on and hurl insults at members of Congress.  Classy.

Boo-hoo, the country has people of colors, religions, orientations or choices you do not like.  Believe me, most of us wish you weren't in our America either.  Waa-waa, the government does things you don't agree with.  Believe me, Bush and Reagan did plenty of things we didn't agree with.

Like it or not, the Right Wing lives in this country with the rest of us, and for how long we, the not-so-silent majority allow this fringe minority to swelter in their own self-induced delusional frenzy is actually a very salient and important question.  

We have far more to fear from domestic, Right Wing terrorists than we do from jihadists.  Watch any tea party gathering, and that is abundantly and vividly clear with undeniable audio and video.

From the birth of Obama, to strident denial of the true causes of our economic meltdown (tax cuts for rich, lack of investment in middle class and American infrastructure) to the recent healthcare debate, the Right Wing wants to hurt us.  They want fear to rule.

But we can stop them.  We did it with healthcare, and we can continue to do it on every other important challenge facing this country from energy to education to infrastructure reinvestment.  

The Republicans are killing their own party, gripped by fear, dominated by fear and offering nothing more than fear and more of the same economic warfare they've sanctioned and waged on America for the past twenty-five years.  

They will die off eventually, and good riddance.  That kind of hate eats its own, and karma is a bitch.

For the failure of fear requires only the perseverance of good persons.  

In the face of admonitions to hate, to judge your fellow human, to sever the sacred bond that binds us together as citizens of the Earth, say NO, and stand up with light and hope.

When fear-mongering politicians or pundits encourage you to believe, when all other rational facts tell you otherwise, that you can somehow separate yourself from the rest of us, that you can protect what is yours, while diminishing and disrespecting what is mine, understand that this is a lie.

If we are to survive, fear must fail.  

We are in this together, for good or ill, stuck together on this crowded planet, like we are stuck together in this troubled, compromised country, and only by resisting fear and planning for the sustainable success of all will we find a way to right our wrongs and live together again in peace.  

The Limits of Free Speech

When is free speech no longer free? At least when it incites the death or physical harm of other humans, right?  This photo is powerful because it demonstrates the moral divide that separates the world's cultures right now.  We must navigate this gulf in fundamental opinions about basic human rights in order to foster peace, or certainly we will perish. 

 

Free speech and the exchange of ideas and feelings is critical to resolving our differences, but along the way, shouldn't there still be limits to what you can advocate publicly. 

 

What is the point of "free" speech, if you are not free from death for uttering certain things.  Should the _expression of some idea or opinion be enough to warrant your death?  Never, if the word "free" has any of its basic meanings.  The painful reality of free _expression in a multi-cultural world with due process is that you loose the ability to simply kill someone who insults your beliefs or mocks your lifestyle.

 

This is also why these enlightened principles are critical to a democracy. There is no right to kill another human (saving self-defense), and so how does a democracy integrate a culture whose religion grants such divine rights of  killing your critics.   How can we resolve a God-given right to smite an enemy granted by one's religion against the civil obligation to respect the bodily integrity of all others?

 

Certinly the legal defense of your own sacred tenets cannot extend to actually killing anyone for simple speech or publication of critical or satirical comment on those tennets, and so why is it ok to advocate it?  Topics are not off limits if speech is free, but the type of language and the actions urged by such language should be off limits when inciting violent death, shouldn't they?

 

These protestors in London use signs readable by English-speakers, but if you read Arabic, you will see these types of slogans and threats in most if not all Muslim demonstrations.  It will be a true test of Earth's democratic systems for how we deal with our own integrated Muslim communities who endorse and advocate this kind of violence against fellow citizens in public, and an even bigger test of Muslim nation's self-rule whether they encourage or sponsor such hate. 

 

The covenant between the people and of the people that forms the basis for our shared community of citizens includes the right of free _expression, but when one group's _expression threatens the existence or physical safety of another group solely engaged in commentary on them, the freedom of both parties must be balanced in favor of the greater good.

 

Most basic of the rights of being a citizen in a free society is the right to bodily security, and there should be consequences for violent speech that leads to actual violence.  For example, what is the moral responsibility or legal  liability when a Danish foreign service employee is killed in an alley by a mob in response to these protests? 

 

Free speech and the attendant necessary limits to insure public safety make no guarrantee to address one culture's ignorance or negligence towards another culture, but it should protect our basic safety.  If you can't yell "Fire" in a crowded movie theatre, why can they call for the bloody dismemberment of a cartoonist?

 

For this very reason a multi-cultural democacy has a strong interest to foster dialogue among citizens by at least limiting their ability to publicly advocate violent action.  By limiting anyone's ability to bully or threaten another person, the law should foster more constructive dialogue while insuring the basic bodily integrity of all voices in that dialogue. 

 

On both sides of this global conflict, Democratic and Muslim communities must address the open, public-rallying by one set of humans advocating the destruction or death of another set of humans.  What happens in this conflict as more and more on each side give up and simply join the calls for the complete destruction and death of the other side?

 

What happens indeed....