“It’s a free country.”
Is it?
If there’s one thing people in this country seem to do, it’s overrating the level of freedom we enjoy as Americans.
There are actually three types of people in our country — folks on the left, folks on the right and those who are neither. Far too many of them believe deep down that their fellow citizens only deserve the freedoms that they value.
Folks on the right seem to believe the Second Amendment is all but sacred and they should not only be allowed to own whatever weapons they want, they shouldn’t have to be inconvenienced at all in acquiring those weapons. After all, militant Negroes could attack their neighborhood at any moment or animalistic rapists — probably also black — are eyeing your eight-year-old daughter.
When I was a newspaper columnist in the late ’90s, I attended the last legal gun show in Southern California at the Fairplex in Pomona. I don’t know what I was or wasn’t expecting, but there were definitely two things that flabbergasted me.
First were paper targets of then-President Bill Clinton and wife Hillary. You could set them up on your private gun range and fire rounds into two of the most hated opponents of the Second Amendments.
Second were long guns mounted on tripods, advertised as being able to protect yourself and your loved ones when the dreaded black helicopters bearing United Nations troops came to your town.
Those same folks value the part of the First Amendment that mandates freedom of religion, as long as that religion is conservative Christianity and believes almost none of the actual teachings of Jesus. Many of them base their beliefs more on Leviticus in the Old Testament than on anything in the gospels. Jews are borderline OK, as long as they live in Israel. Muslims, Buddhists or Hindus? Sorry, pilgrim.
As for the ladies and the homosexuals, as long as they obey their husbands and stay in the closet, they can be almost-Americans. If they’re white, of course.
Of course, to be a real American, you’ve got to love Trump.
Folks on the left aren’t as well organized. Take the gun issue. While millions of folks on the right will base their votes on that one issue, those on the left are far more likely to vote for someone shaky on gun control if they’re pro-choice as well.
The fact is, there are people on both sides who want people to be a little less free in opposing the issues they care most about.
If we could be a little less rigid and a little more tolerant, that might help.
I’m not holding my breath.