THE KLUXERS, white nationalists and would-be Nazis (if they could only get their party to rise from the ashes of the Forties) made news again this week. They’re good for it about once a year. This time they were organized enough to get off the Internet for a few hours to actually put together a march, in Thomas Jefferson’s home of Charlottesville, Va., no less. And they sufficiently incited someone to plow his car into a crowd of people, killing one and injuring many others. The papers say the young suspect has a history of mental troubles. The courts will decide his legal fate, but mental troubles certainly help explain why he was at a march for neo-Nazis and white supremacists.
You may have heard that the president was heard from. And then his political opponents. Then their political opponents. Then the talking heads. Then the president again. And, after all that, the editorialists. (A critic—or an editorial writer—is one who walks down the hill after the battle is over and shoots the wounded.—Murray Kempton.)
Today, our considered editorial opinion is this, in part: We need more of these people to march. Preferably every one of them. They should identify themselves. Get photographed. Speak on the record. And give their real names.
These are people the rest of us need to keep an eye on. They’re much more dangerous in the shadows, festering like germs allergic to sunlight. Let’s see ’em. Let’s see ‘em in the open.
That may be Reason No. 219 we’ve never liked those who propose laws against “hate speech.” It would be dangerous to keep this kind of hate bottled up. It could explode at the slightest jostle. (For proof, see this past weekend.)
Many European countries have laws against hate speech. They don’t have a First Amendment over there. What they do have is a history of hate going back hundreds of years, if not longer. Consider how many people hate has killed on the Continent in the past—and not the distant past, either.
We wouldn’t deny the racist, supremacist, Nazi-wannabes their chance to vent, and chant, and light torches, and generally make a nuisance in public. (They do enough of it anonymously on their basement computers.)
What a country, thanks to the Founding Fathers and the First Amendment. We the People need to hear their nonsense. So we can know them for what they are, and what they think, to use the verb loosely. Consider it similar to reading the weekly press releases from North Korea’s keepers. Wouldn’t you rather be forewarned?
What we don’t need from these types are surprises, e.g., Oklahoma City, Charleston and this weekend. Ted Kaczynski was in hiding much too long.
March on, guys.
In the open. Where we can see you.