Source: American Dissident Voices broadcast, March 21, 1998
by
Dr. William L. Pierce
I
want to talk with you about freedom today.
Freedom! That seems simple enough, but it is a word with profoundly different
meanings for different people. Some of the people whom I most despise and whom
I consider the greatest threat to freedom have, in fact, represented themselves
as champions of freedom. I’m talking about liberals. The name “liberal“ comes,
of course, from the Roman word meaning „free.“ How ironic! – although I am sure
that most liberals don’t see the irony. It’s just that their concept of freedom
is so radically different from mine. (ILLUSTRATION: The Lexington Minuteman
(1900), representing militia Captain John Parker)
For me
freedom is a fairly simple thing: it is closely tied to my idea of independence.
I am free when no man can claim the right to force me to do his will rather than
mine. This definition is a definition relative to society, to government, and to
the law. I said, „when no man can claim the right...“. Thus, I don’t consider
myself unfree when a robber points a gun at me and tells me to give him my
wallet. He’s telling me what to do, but he doesn’t claim any right to do so.
I consider myself unfree if I am not able to entertain the possibility
of drawing my own pistol and contesting his request for my wallet because the
government previously has disarmed me with a gun-control law.
I also
consider myself unfree when I cannot say whatever I want to say on any subject
whatsoever, because the government has forbidden me to speak.
Freedom
or lack of freedom is a function of my relationship to society and to the
government. It is not a function of how much money I have or how popular I am or
how happy I am with my life. A lot of people talk about things like „freedom
from hunger“ or „freedom from fear“ or “freedom from want,“ but they’re not
using the word „freedom“ the way I use it. Hunger and fear are serious things,
important things, and unpleasant things, but they don’t have anything to do with
freedom as I’ve defined it here.
Before I
go on I should mention that we all make conscious decisions to impose certain
limits on our own freedom. When we marry, for example, we consciously give up
some of our freedom. When we choose to be a member of any community or any
society, we enter into a social contract: in return for receiving the benefits
of being a member of the society, we agree to obey the society’s rules. But
these things are a matter of choice for us. They are voluntarily accepted
limitations. The man with a strong sense of self-worth and independence, the man
who loves freedom, will be cautious about accepting such limitations, and he
will want to keep them to a minimum. He will be eternally vigilant to prevent
other men from changing the terms of his social contract in such a way as
to diminish his freedom.
Weaker,
more dependent men, on the other hand, may gladly accept more limitations in
return for the promise of more social benefits or more security. And that’s all
right, so long as we don’t let their weakness encroach on our freedom.
Liberals
have an entirely different concept of freedom. For the liberal the idea of
freedom is mixed up with the ideas of happiness and comfort. That’s why one
always hears liberals talking about things like „freedom from want.“ To
liberals, a hungry man is not a free man. And of course, in a certain sense of
the word that is true. A hungry man is encouraged by the pain in his belly to do
something to get food. His options are more limited – at least temporarily –
than those of a man who is not hungry. But that’s not the sense in which we use
the word „free.“ Whether a man is hungry or not, whether he is poor or not, he
is free as long as he not prevented by the government from seeking food for
himself or seeking to alleviate his poverty.
That’s
where we and the liberals differ. To us a poor man is unfree only if the
government prevents him by law from bettering his condition. To us a man can be
poor and hungry and still be free. To the liberals a poor man lacks freedom even
if he is poor solely because of his own laziness or stupidity. What counts to
the liberals is that he is poor, regardless of the reason, and therefore cannot
have everything he wants. So the liberals campaign to free him from his wants,
not to free him from laws which prevent him from taking care of his own wants.
The liberals in their campaign for „freedom from want“ very often seek solutions
in the form of more laws: laws which take away our freedom in order to satisfy
the wants of those who have an entirely different concept of freedom.
A big
thing with the liberals these days is „freedom from oppression.“ By „oppression“
the liberals mean anything which makes them feel bad or keeps them from having
what they want. To the liberals poverty is a form of oppression. So is feeling
bad because they are ugly or stupid or awkward or ill-bred or unpopular. The
liberals consider a person is “oppressed“ when he is reminded of his inferiority
by something another person writes or says. Feminists, in particular, are fond
of complaining about this sort of „oppression.“ They believe that they are free
from oppression only when they are feeling good about themselves, and
this “freedom to feel good,“ as they see it, is threatened by people who
say “insensitive“ things. The liberals believe that they are fighting
for freedom from oppression when they campaign for laws designed to protect the
feelings of people who could be offended by the comments or actions of other
people. These laws are often called „hate laws.“ The liberals sometimes speak of
„freedom from hate“ and believe that they are achieving that with their „hate
laws.“
In fact,
to hear a liberal or a Jew talk about it, you would believe that „freedom from
hate“ and „freedom to feel good“ were what the Founding Fathers really had in
mind when they drafted the Bill of Rights. To the liberals the so-called
„freedom“ of a homosexual not to be offended by the remarks of someone who
considers him a freak ranks right up there beside freedom of speech and freedom
to keep and bear arms – in fact, a bit above freedom of speech and way above the
freedom to keep and bear arms.
These
new „freedoms“ that the liberals have invented – freedom from oppression,
freedom from bad vibes, freedom from hate, freedom from being offended – have
been given an enormous promotion during the past decade or so. Several large and
well-funded Jewish organizations – Morris Dees’s Southern Poverty Law Center,
the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, the Simon Wiesenthal Center – have
been working together with the Jew-controlled media and bought politicians to
push so-called “hate laws“ through state legislatures. These laws attempt to
protect people – especially those considered „disadvantaged“ by the
liberals, and that means non-male, non-White, non-heterosexual, or
non-Gentile people – from being made to feel bad by outlawing „oppressive“
thought and „oppressive“ expression. Some of the laws aim at punishing a
person for having „oppressive“ thoughts when he commits a crime. For example, if
a homosexual solicits you and you punch him in the nose, it ordinarily would be
a misdemeanor assault in most jurisdictions. But if you say, „Take that, you
filthy pervert!“ when you punch him, it becomes a felony in those areas where a
„hate“ law is in effect. Instead of being fined a few hundred dollars, you can
be sent to prison for five years.
Other
laws, based on the same „freedom from oppression“ theory, criminalize any speech
or other expression which might „oppress“ a “disadvantaged“ person – that is, it
criminalizes so-called „hate speech.“ Jewish and liberal groups have succeeded
in pushing such speech-limitation laws through several state legislatures. They
also have succeeded in convincing a substantial portion of the public
that “hate,“ „racism,“ and „discrimination“ are illegal, even in those
states where they have not yet succeeded in enacting „hate“ laws. Thus,
they have intimidated many people into limiting their own speech, in the belief
that to say something Politically Incorrect might result in a prosecution. And,
I am sorry to say, in many cases they have gotten away with these infringements
on the freedom of other Americans: infringements committed in the name of
„freedom from oppression.“
It is
infuriating. It is also ironic. It may lead to the shedding of blood. I’ll give
you an example of a recent infringement, and I think you’ll agree with me that
it is something which justifies the shedding of blood.
Florida
is a state with lots of liberals and even more Jews, and in order to protect
„disadvantaged“ people in the state from „oppression“ they have enacted several
„hate crime“ and „hate speech“ laws. These laws are all unconstitutional, and
they clearly are intended primarily for the purpose of intimidating the citizens
of Florida into conforming their speech and behavior to liberal norms – although
the liberal and Jewish elements in the state certainly would like to see
the Constitution actually changed to favor their concept of „freedom“ over ours.
Late
last month nine students at Killian High School, in the Miami suburb of Kendall,
Florida, were arrested and hauled off to jail after they published a pamphlet
satirizing their school’s administration. They were charged under two of
Florida’s „hate“ laws, because the principal of Killian High School is Black,
and he was treated unkindly in the pamphlet, which even included cartoons
depicting the Black principal engaged in sexual intercourse. It was the
principal who called the police and requested that the students be arrested. One
of the charges against the students carries a penalty of five years
imprisonment.
The
Jewish Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith joined the Black principal,
feminists, eager-beaver politicians and bureaucrats, and others in praising the
action against the students, who range in age from 16 to 18 years. One of the
more eager members of the lynch mob who praised the arrests was Henry Fraind,
deputy superintendent of schools. He told reporters, „Free speech doesn’t give
anyone the right to use a word that would inflame. They do not have the right to
incite the feelings of outward racism.“
Unfortunately, Henry Fraind is all too typical of the sort of
vicious, Politically Correct bigots we have put in charge of the education
of America’s children. I don’t know whether or not he really believes
that Americans don’t have the right to use words which inflame or which incite
feelings of racism, but it’s clear that he would like for the use of
such words to be illegal – and I’ll bet he also would like to see people go to
prison for using words which incite Politically Incorrect feelings about sex,
sexual orientation, religion, and a number of other things.
Even if
Mr. Fraind understands that the Bill of Rights is still a bar to the type of
„hate speech“ laws he favors, he seems pleased that the laws, unconstitutional
though they are, are on the books and serve to stifle the ignorant and the
timid. And there are, I’m afraid, far too many other people, who’re not activist
bigots like Fraind and not even especially liberal, who would vaguely go along
with him. They’ve gradually been persuaded by two generations of television
propaganda that people are entitled to „freedom from oppression“ and that
there should be some sort of penalty for saying or writing things
that “disadvantaged“ people find „oppressive.“ They believe that the government
has – or should have – the authority to compel us all to write or say only
„nice“ things. Perhaps that shouldn’t be surprising in this feminized age. The
feminine spirit gives priority to niceness and getting along with everybody and
not hurting anyone’s feelings. The masculine spirit gives priority to freedom
and to truth and to saying what needs to be said, offensive or not – but
masculine priorities have become Politically Incorrect in this age.
It is
interesting to note that of the nine students thrown into jail for producing and
distributing their „insensitive“ and „oppressive“ pamphlet, five are girls. One
of the students is Asian, and three of them have Hispanic surnames. Most of them
are honor students. This “diversity“ didn’t stop the prosecutor from charging
them, and it didn’t stop the police from leaving them locked up overnight in the
Dade County jail with murderers and rapists. Four days after they were charged
and arrested the state reluctantly dropped the charges against them.
The feminist prosecutor who was responsible for the arrests, Katherine Fernandez
Rundle, told the Associated Press that dropping the charges against the students
was „a difficult decision“ for her, even though she knew the laws were
unconstitutional and unenforceable. One gets the distinct impression that she
and other authorities involved were sorry that they couldn’t prosecute the
students and felt that keeping them in jail for a night was letting them off too
easy – for exercising their constitutional freedom of speech.
The
parents of the arrested students have talked about the possibility of suing, but
I have the feeling that a good, old-fashioned necktie party, with the Black
principal; deputy superintendent of schools, Henry Fraind; and Kathleen
Fernandez Rundle as the guests of honor would be more appropriate. Too much of
the blood of our forefathers was spilled securing the freedom which these
Politically Correct bigots would like to take away from us – too much to permit
them to continue trampling on our Bill of Rights with impunity.
These
arrests last month in Florida are a pretty clear-cut case of our freedom –
freedom of speech – coming into conflict with freedom as defined by the liberals
and Jews: namely „freedom from oppression,“ freedom to feel good. But it is by
no means the only such case. This sort of thing is happening more and more
frequently these days, and our freedom all too often is subordinated to theirs.
Believe me, they really would like to re-write the Bill of Rights, taking away
all of our freedoms and substituting theirs instead. And that’s what they
actually are doing, step by step.
There
are three categories of people responsible for the gradually increasing loss of
freedom in America. First, there are the Jews, as represented by groups such as
the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and
the Simon Wiesenthal Center – and of course, by the masters of the mass media.
These are cold-blooded, hard-headed people who know exactly what they are doing
in trying to take away our freedom. I’ve talked at length about their activities
and their motivations on earlier programs, and I’ll talk more about them in the
future.
In the
second category are the hard-core liberals, the people who grew up in the 1960s
and 1970s believing that they were „oppressed“ if mommy or daddy reprimanded
them for not picking up their dirty socks and underwear or if the kid next door
was better looking or had more toys than they had. They built their ideas about
„freedom from oppression“ and „freedom from want“ into a sort of nut-case
religion, which has been adopted by a lot of really wacky people, people with
serious problems of retarded personality development: the feminists, for
example. This religion also has been adopted by a lot of amoral opportunists who
don’t care about freedom one way or another, but who find it profitable to
go with the flow: who find that it helps them get a good press and more votes.
But it’s
the third category of people that we really have to worry about. Those are the
people who have been too passive, too selfish, or too cowardly to stop the Jews
and the retards and the opportunists: the people who have let them get away with
it and have put up virtually no opposition to the theft of our liberty.
I’m
talking about us. I’m talking about those who really believe in freedom
of speech and freedom of self-defense, but who are so afraid of being called an
„anti-Semite“ or a „racist“ that they remain only silent spectators when our
freedom is raped the way it was in Florida last month. Too many of us have let
ourselves be buffaloed by the very clever Jewish tactic of calling their
campaign against our freedom a campaign against „hate.“ Too many of us who see
through this tactic are still afraid to stand up and denounce their „hate laws“
– and them – because we are afraid of being thought „haters.“
Let me
leave you with this thought. Cowardice and freedom are not and never have been
compatible. If we want to be free again, then we must find the courage to deal
properly with those who are stealing our freedom.
* * *
