Kathleen Parker: The Omen In My Mail
This morning, nationally syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker gives us a peak inside her inbox.
And it’s not pretty.
She describes receiving emails reacting to her column citing concern about Sarah Palin’s qualifications as “[n]ot just angry, but vicious and threatening.” A sampling:
I am a traitor and an idiot. Also, my mother should have aborted me and left me in a dumpster, but since she didn’t, I should “off” myself.
Parker correctly suggests that there’s plenty of blame to go around on both sides of the aisle, “… that’s the way one begins to think when party loyalty is given a higher value than loyalty to bedrock principles.” Parker writes:
Such extreme partisanship has a crippling effect on government, which may be desirable at times, but not now. More important in the long term is the less tangible effect of stifling free speech. My mail paints an ugly picture and a bleak future if we do not soon correct ourselves.
The picture is this: Anyone who dares express an opinion that runs counter to the party line will be silenced. That doesn’t sound American to me, but Stalin would approve.
Readers have every right to reject my opinion. But when we decide that a person is a traitor and should die for having an opinion different from one’s own, we cross into territory that puts all freedoms at risk. (I hear you, Dixie Chicks.)
… Our day of reckoning may indeed be upon us. Between war and economic collapse, we have enormous challenges. It will take the best of everyone to solve them. That process begins minimally with a commitment to engage in civil discourse and a cease-fire in the war against unwelcome ideas.
We could not agree more.
1 comment October 1st, 2008
