After my August 9th write-up in the North County Times, I tallied the phone calls from the community - pro and con. The outcome was amazing to me.
Fully 80% percent approved of my stand and my stance. 20% regaled me with some obscenities - one woman in the vilest fashion that I have ever heard come out of a woman's mouth.
While I was very pleased with the overall results, my vanity told me that I had swayed the reporter with my common sense approach and gentleness - and that, had I spoken out in more abrasive ways, the write-up and consequent community reaction would have been different. But I did get across the three tenets of Revisionism: No gassings, no Führer order, and inflation in the numbers of "victims." That is a heavy-duty load - against which four out of five in my favor isn't bad.
Now a close friend of mine sent me a write-up of a kindred soul who had challenged the readers of a paper in the Midwest. Here is what this patriot, a gentleman named Robert Boatman, wrote:
In Defense of Free Speech
Under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, nothing is sacred, nothing unspeakable. As Americans, we have always enjoyed the right to question the veracity of purported truths without being told that certain subjects are off- limits, without our lives being threatened if we dare to investigate the politically incorrect side of an issue.
Well, I'm afraid there's trouble right here in River City.
The editorial I wrote in The Statesman questioning the veracity of the Anne Frank story drew an outpouring of letters filled with comments like the following:
"I'm afraid of people like Boatman - "
"I'm afraid of our local press - "
"I am horrified - "
"How in the world did Robert Boatman's Speakers' Corner meet editing standards - "
"I shiver to think what might come next - "
"What sickens me is that the editors at The Statesman chose to print it - "
"[the editor] justified the printing with the lame excuse that Boatman cited sources - "
"inexcusable - "
"I never thought I'd see the opinion in my own local newspaper - "
"He managed to insult this entire nation - "
The response from The Statesman itself was telling:
". . . there is a fine line between what is legitimate expression and what is not. Because some feel that we crossed that line by printing Boatman's opinion, we are evaluating our policies and guidelines for what we print."
Boatman goes on two write:
"Free speech?
"I received many more phone calls than The Statesman received letters. About 95 percent of them were supportive of what I had written. The 5 percent that were emphatically not supportive went well beyond what any newspaper could legally publish.
"There is a clear and present danger in knee-jerk responses to cliches and stereotypes. Such an attitude can cloud the mind. It can transform a pile of books on a coffee table, including several on World War II history, into "books about Adolf Hitler."
"It can transform a Museum Replica of a Sabre-Tooth Tiger fossil into a suggestive 'cougar skull,' a gold-plated reproduction of an 1860 U.S. Army Colt into an ominous 'large revolver,' a metal cigar humidor into an 'ammunition can.'
"It can even transform a personalized license plate bearing an abbreviated phrase entirely appropriate for a freelance writer into a secret, menacing message.
"One of the sources quoted in my editorial, Dr. Robert Faurisson, is currently on criminal trial in Amsterdam for having written a book 20 years ago asking some of the same questions I ventured to ask. They're going to send him to prison for giving voice to his doubts.
"Of course, there is no Dutch First Amendment. The Netherlands is not the United States. But then, one might wonder if the United States is still the United States.
"In today's society, any expression of anger or indignation -- if it is directed toward the prevailing truth-of-the-moment, or if it dares bring into question our society's current obsession with victimhood -- becomes 'hate.' And that, as we all know, is the most serious of our new class of thought crimes.
"The Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution, every single Amendment that so definitively separates our free society from the rest of the world, is in jeopardy. And it's not the hateful reaction to my 'nightmarish ravings' and 'dangerous speech' I'm talking about.
"To put things in perspective, Rodney Page will be spending the next decade behind bars because he uttered the wrong words at the wrong time. I think we all better wake up to the truly evil forces that threaten our country."
Having read the above, I now know that there are two of us who tested the public mood by stating some pretty politically incorrect things in no uncertain terms in our respective local papers. What is interesting is that Boatman's experience mirrors and tops mine - ***almost all the callers were supportive of what we were saying***.
But did the papers give a platform to the cross-section of the folks whom it purports to serve? Of course not. The only thing you hear "officially" in our papers is noises from the Wailing Wall. When will they ever stop? The people are clearly fed up.
Ingrid
Thought for the Day:
"It is a comfortable feeling to know that you stand on your own ground. Land is about the only thing that can't fly away."