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Je suis Charlie.
Despite not speaking a word of French -- and even with its pricey rate -- $186 a year -- I've just bought a year's subscription to Charlie Hebdo. Like back in first grade, I won't be able to read the words but I should be able to figure out the pictures. And the purchase is a small statement that we're not going to put up with this kind of outrage without responding.
I know it's not much, but it's the only solidarity I can express right now.
Along with writing this.
For, while it's obviously no comparison, I've seen a little too close for comfort what the crazies can do when they don't agree with something that appears in the free marketplace of ideas.
In my case, it was a column I wrote for the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader a while ago. It attacked the National Rifle Association, which I continue to believe is one of the foulest, most malignant tumors on America. It was a tad biting. Here's the ending:
"The strongest lobby in America isn't big business, isn't big oil, it's big gun," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said, urging Americans "to stand up and say we've lost too many children."
We have. We do. We will, until we put down our guns. And that isn't likely as long as the NRA continues to stand for No Rational Arguments and No Reality Allowed.
But the NRA's big lie continues to convince Americans that without our precious guns we are in peril.
Sadly, we know all too well that there's a very real possibility that "the great masses of people ... will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one."
Adolph Hitler wrote that in "Mein Kampf" in 1933.
I received 138 responses within 72 hours -- something I believe was orchestrated by the well-oiled media machine of the NRA. Among these were several death threats -- which I took seriously -- along with this kind of trash:
"YOU KNOW WHAT? S**** YOU AND YOUR ******* IDIOTIC STATEMENT ON THE NRA. I AM IN THE NRA. ARE YOU WILLING TO KILL ME TO GET MY GUN? BECAUSE IF YOU'RE NOT, YOU ARE NOT GONNA GET IT ************. **** YOU."
Because of this I feel an extremely close kinship to the men and women of Charlie Hebdo. France, both democratic and secular, has a long proud tradition of satire and pricking over-stuffed balloons and Charlie was just honoring this long-standing tradition.
A tradition we must defend absolutely, at all times. That's why I am a card-carrying (I always wanted to say that!) member of the ACLU because I believe in the absolute right to free speech, even when it makes me sick to my stomach as with ACLU's backing of the rights of the Ku Klux Klan in Skokie.
But that's the whole point. Majority views we don't have to worry about, but we MUST protect all the idiotic, hateful, spiteful, mean and just downright crazy points of view if the phrase "freedom of the press" is to have any real meaning.
The Charlie Hebdo staffers are true martyrs for the cause of free speech. I raise a toast to them.
As for their attackers, all fluent in French, I have only this to say:" Brule en enfer": Burn in Hell.