by Mario Hernandez
Daily Lobo columnist
I have always thought the human race's greatest gift was free will and the ability to let free expression bloom.
However, it seems in recent times that this gift and our ideas are being stifled. We are being told what to think, what we can read, what we can write and what we should and should not say.
For an example of this, we need only look to our own city and our own school. Anyone remember two teachers from Highland High School, Allen Cooper and Geoffrey Barrett, who were suspended for refusing to take down war-related student artwork posted in their classrooms? What about Ken Tabish, a counselor from Albuquerque High School? He was suspended for his refusal to take down a "No War on Iraq" sign from his office. Also, recently UNM has decided to flex its anti-idea muscles by firing Richard Berthold after some controversial statements he made.
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The issue here is not whether you agree with the stance of these punished faculty members - it is the silencing of these teachers and the apparent disregard for their First Amendment rights. One could understand if they were fired from a private school, but all four were punished by public institutions. The tired argument that a public institution should not be allowed to express opinions is one that does not apply in this case. After all, three of those faculty members were suspended from an institution that requires the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, and the acknowledgment that we are a nation "under God." This pledge comes every morning without regard to people who might not be Christian.
The sad thing is that censorship of dissenting ideas is happening all around this country. People from all walks of life are being punished and ridiculed for expressing ideas contrary to the leadership of our country. Students in Fayetteville, Ark., were arrested on trespassing charges after trying to enter a mall for lunch while wearing T-shirts that proclaimed, "Support the troops, not the war or Bush."
Phil Donahue was fired by NBC, despite excellent ratings. In an internal memo, the network said that it didn't want to air Donahue's anti-war views. Ed Gernon, the executive in charge of producing the miniseries "Hitler: The Rise of Evil," was fired because he drew comparisons between Bush and his fear machine and Hitler's use of fear to trick the people into relinquishing their freedoms.
All across this great country, people are afraid to speak out against Bush and his agenda, because they fear they will get fired from their jobs, suspended from school or assaulted. This is not the country our founders had in mind when they wrote the Constitution. There is something inherently wrong in a country that lets this happen.
Gernon's comparison of Bush and Hitler was not entirely unfounded. Similarities between Hitler's rise to power can be seen in our country today. Hitler used post-WWI fear to control the rationality of the public and to get the masses to willingly surrender civil rights. Bush used fear after Sept. 11, 2001, to manipulate us into thinking that the Patriot Act and various other terror-related bills were really what was best for us, though they passed at the expense of some of our civil rights.
Hitler and the Nazi Party consolidated the news networks into the control of a few, as has happened in this country. The news networks, after all, are owned only by a few different people in the U.S.
Hitler sought to silence voices of dissent by censoring news stories and by censoring the people who reported the news. Our administration has done some of the same things by putting pressure on networks and even going so far as to not call on reporters they know to be anti-war in press conferences and other interview settings. The time has come for the people of this country to realize what is happening and what can happen if the wrongdoing continues. You might say that our country could never become a police state, but that is the exact same thing many Germans and Italians said before their countries took that route. Speak up and speak out. Don't be afraid to voice your opinion, because when we become afraid to say what we feel, all is lost. As Benjamin Franklin once said, "Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither."
Truer words have never been spoken.
Mario Hernandez is a UNM political science major
