There is a very simple test to know whether one lives in a free society: an individual knows he is free if he can go to his city’s public square and say whatever he wants and knows nothing will happen to him.
Naten Sharansky thought it up during his time in the Soviet prison camps for the crime of applying to leave the Socialist paradise.
But would America pass this test today?
Chick-fil-A is banned in Boston and Chicago for the sin of its chairman of the board publicly opposing gay marriage.
Three weeks ago we went to one in Salt Lake for a drink.
Normally we don’t. We aren’t big fans of chicken and we eat kosher (mostly). But we heard about the boycott, thought the restaurant’s billboards were witty and we were thirsty. It was our first time and we found a typical slightly more up scale than most fast food joint.
There were no crosses on the wall and not a bible on the counter and the sugar free soft drink we ordered was cold with the proper proportion of ice to drink. It tasted as bad as all sugar free drinks do, but that wasn’t the restaurant’s fault unless they are keeping the cure for diabetes secret in their deep fryers.
Still they are banned in Boston for voicing an opinion.
They aren’t the first and certainly won’t be the last for suffering for their opinion.
But lately there have been certainly been more victims of intolerance in this country. We thought about when this trend began and we think we got the date right September 11, 2001.
It was just after those 19 crazy Arab Muslim terrorists committed mass murder, that we began to be told not to say things like crazy murderous Arab Muslim terrorists.
This admonition came not from the government mostly but from the American left. Then we were told not to say Barack Hussein Obama’s middle name or publish cartoons of the nut job Mohammed. That’s what some called him in Mecca before he cut off their heads in the public square.
The scary thing most Americans agreed or at least did not vocally disagree.
From telling us not to offend our enemies we soon moved to censoring ourselves as we talked about ourselves.
Not everyone mind, we can still insult the heck out of right wing Christians and Mormons and there is even a new cachet about Jew hating. But say a bad thing about a homosexual or a girl who wants the government to pay for her $7.00 a month birth control pills all heck breaks loose.
If it wasn’t so frightening it would be funny that the American left is adopting the same tactics as those crazy murderous Arab Muslim terrorists– first boycott then threats and then guess what– violence.
Nothing like a riot to get someone’s attention and we had them last year under with the Occupy crowd.
We watched some youtubes of them. We heard a lot about how bad rich people were and how Jews were to blame for just about everything bad. Didn’t hear any mention of crazy murderous Arab Muslim terrorists but maybe that slipped their minds.
The very worst thing about this new thought patrol is what it is doing to ourselves.
Time was when any yahoo could draw a picture of a bomb on the steps of the Elko County Court House and at most face a ticket. now it is treated as a real bomb threat and given the climate of discourse we aren’t sure if it shouldn’t.
We really wish we could go back to the good old days when that great philosopher of the 1950’s said: “Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting progress in the arts and the sciences..”
Of course what Chairman Mao didn’t say was that the freedom was only going to last six weeks and after that anyone who criticized his murderous crazy Chinese communist system had their heads chopped off in the public square.
Freedom is not just another word for nothing left to lose. And we refuse to lose it. Not to a murdering Muslim or a pissed off gay or even Chairman Mao.
The public square belongs to us all.