I would like to bring up a slice of small-town Americana from the past. A heroic point of view most Americans today would find hard to accept. I was told by my mother and father, “All Americans have free speech. You can say what you believe, even a Nazi has the right to speak their beliefs.”
A few years earlier, my father and several people from our small town were taken a world away to stop the evil that the Nazis were inflicting on the world. Those Nazis killed sons, uncles, fathers, and cousins who came from my home town. People my parents knew and lived among. So, saying even Nazis had the right to free speech in America was not a theoretical statement. I’m sure there was pain in saying such a thing. All Americans have the right to our opinions and our right to speak our truths. A racist, a fool, an anarchist, a religious zealot, even a Nazi has the right.
Good citizens died for those idiots, and those who don’t know they’re idiots, to have the right to speak out.
There are attempts to silence free speech today. (Finger pointing is part of the problem.) Silencing free speech for anyone, regardless of their opinions, should bring down the wrath of All Americans. If some of us don’t have that right anymore, none of us do.
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