SILENCERS

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back. Let's think about silencers.

F0r most of our history, our government and our society has gone to extremes to silence people.

Tories were tarred and feather. Some were hanged or shot.

On both sides of the Civil War atrocities were committed to silence people.

Because he renounced slavery, Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts was savagely beaten in the Senate chamber until his lights nearly went out forever by Preston Brooks.

President Lincoln was silenced.

Native Americans were silenced with relocation and near genocide.

After Reconstruction the KKK and laws of the Southern states silenced a whole lot of citizens whose skin did not resemble the color of white sheets.

James Garfield was silenced.

William McKinley was silenced.

During the years leading up to Prohibition, anti-saloon forces gathered great political power around a single issue and silenced politicians who opposed them.

John F. Kennedy was silenced. His brother, Bobby, was silenced. Medgar Evers was silenced. So was Dr. King and Malcolm X.

Countless others have been silenced either by violence or political pressure.

You get the drift.

Today we see the same thing going on. Violence has been used to silence those who hold opposing political views.

Political pressure is being applied too. Once upon a time “NRA” stood for the National Recovery Act. It was legislation passed to rebuild the country.

Today, it stands for the National Rifle Association. That NRA is a single issue political organization that uses the same tactics as the anti-saloon forces to silence politicians or make them say things they might not normally want to say. The jingoistic lies about alcohol promulgated by anti-saloon propaganda are tantamount to the lies about guns being promulgated today by NRA propaganda. The lie is that citizens are safer if they own guns.

What makes us safer is our faith that our God of love through us is healing humanity.

Silencing hurts us. We get candidates who may not be as qualified, as intelligent, or as compassionate towards their fellow citizens because they do not hold extreme views.

However, the good news is that time, history, and (we might argue) our God of love gradually transforms societies as well as individuals. The gun insanity that grips our nation today may be an interesting subject of a documentary tomorrow. On that day, people will watch and wonder how Americans could allow themselves to be so easily and tragically silenced.

Blessings…