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April 10, 2013
Free speech and
a vet’s tattoo: What we can learn about threats to free speech from the
incident at the skydiving center
by Guy Rodgers,
Executive Director
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Wow! So many of you called and emailed the skydiving center at Lake Wales
Monday and Tuesday that their voice mail box completely filled up and their
phone was constantly busy.
But some of you did get through, and you emailed us regarding what you were
told by the center.
Yesterday morning, I decided to call the center myself, because some of
what you were told differed with the blog
account we posted yesterday. This email is a little longer than normal
but I’m persuaded you’ll want to know what I learned.
I talked to two people for more than an hour, one of whom was the manager
who handled the incident in question. I asked a lot of questions in order
to better understand their perspective on what happened.
Here’s what I was able to confirm.
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1) A Qatari
military officer complained to someone on the skydiving center staff
about the vet who had the tattoo that said “infidel.”
2) The person who received the complaint brought the vet back into the
office of the manager, where the three of them met privately.
3) The vet was asked to cover up his tattoo, with duct tape if necessary.
4) The vet refused.
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At this point the
stories differ. The vet claimed on his blog he was told to leave. The
manager claims she never told the vet to leave, that he voluntarily decided
to leave and said he would take his business elsewhere.
With no other witnesses it’s impossible to know which version is correct.
Perhaps the manager implied to the vet that it would be better if he left.
Perhaps the vet misunderstood what the manager was saying.
Someone posted on our Facebook page that he has asked repeatedly if the vet
was allowed to “manifest a load,” but has not gotten an answer from the
business. His point was that the vet may not have been asked to leave but
if he wasn’t allowed to do a jump that amounts to the same thing.
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But actually,
whether the vet was told to leave or left voluntarily isn’t the issue.
The issue is this: The vet was asked to silence his freedom of speech
because a Muslim soldier from another country was “offended.”
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I asked the
manager if she ever considered going to the Qatari officer and calmly
saying something like, “I’m sorry you’re offended, but here in America
people say and do things all the time that offend others. And that’s
protected speech under our first amendment.”
She said she never talked to the Qatari officer, that “it never got that
far.” The reason it didn’t is because the manager’s first—and only—response
was to deal with the vet, not talk to the Muslim.
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Unfortunately,
this is a typical Western response to these kinds of situations. It’s a
common way to try to keep peace, and this is a single, small example of a
very big problem. Rather than explaining to Muslim immigrants how free
speech works, Europeans have practiced this kind of capitulation for
decades—and today European countries have hate-speech laws that
criminalize words that Muslims deem “offensive.”
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I’m assuming the
manager meant well, that she was just trying to keep the peace between two
customers. I’ve owned businesses so I get that. But the first problem is
her solution for keeping the peace was to silence the vet rather than
educate the Muslim.
Another thing she said to me, coupled with something the man I talked to
said, reveals a second problem that demonstrates why we must aggressively
fight to protect our free speech rights.
The manager compared the vet’s tattoo to a member of the KKK taunting a
group of African-Americans. She asked, “If that happened here at my
business, shouldn’t I step in and stop the KKK person?”
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This is the kind
of faulty analogy that is at the heart of accusations of “racism” leveled
by groups like CAIR. To compare the actions of a KKK member to a vet
wearing a tattoo that says “infidel” is not only absurd. It is
reinforcing the propaganda and name-calling tactics employed by the
Muslim Brotherhood and its legacy organizations to silence anything
deemed “offensive” to Islam.
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The man I talked
to explained to me that one time a Qatari soldier wore a T-shirt that was
offensive and that he was asked to remove it, and did so. The man used this
as a justification for why the manager asked the vet to cover his tattoo.
I asked him what the shirt said. While I don’t recall the specific wording,
it was something to the effect of “What happened to New York shouldn’t have
stopped there.”
The meaning was crystal clear: The shirt was glorifying 9/11 and was an
implicit support for more terrorist attacks. This was why the Qatari was
asked to remove the shirt.
Again, comparing that shirt to an “infidel” tattoo is absurd.
My purpose in writing this today is not to heap more criticism on this
business or its manager, or to ask you to continue contacting them. Believe
me, the ACT! for America grassroots responded and the skydiving business
got the message that people were upset!
My purpose is to point out, using this example, that freedom of speech
is in peril here in America, in many ways, both great and small.
The man I talked to claimed the vet was deliberately trying to provoke the
Qatari soldiers. I don’t know if that’s true or not. But whether he was or
not is pretty much irrelevant. I know for a fact that some people sport
tattoos to be deliberately provocative, and even offensive.
Most of us ignore them. Even is someone complains, it’s rare that a
business owner will side with the complaint and ask the person with the
tattoo to cover it up. Would a business ask someone to cover a tattoo that
said “atheist” if a Christian objected? Even if it did, we know what the
ACLU would do if the business tried.
I’m sure there are those who would say the Qatari soldiers are guests in
our country and we should accommodate them. When it comes to hospitality, I
agree.
But when it comes to our fundamental freedoms, I don’t.
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I grew up
understanding that being a guest meant I had a responsibility to shape my
behaviors to fit those of my hosts—not the other way around. In this
case, the Qatari soldiers had a responsibility to accommodate our rules
and customs—just as they would expect us to accommodate theirs if we were
guests in their country.
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No doubt there
will also be those who read this who will argue we’re making too big a deal
of this incident.
There were those who said the same thing in colonial America, that the
taxes imposed by Britain on the American colonies were too small to be
concerned about.
And it’s true, the initial tax levies were actually pretty small.
But the protestors, men like Sam Adams, said the issue was not the size of
the tax but the precedent established by the creation of the tax.
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Every time an
American surrenders the right of free speech in order to avoid doing
something deemed “offensive” by a Muslim, a precedent is established in
the mind of both the Muslim and the non-Muslim. This is true when the
President does it and it’s true when a business does it.
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What we need to do
is simply, politely and clearly say “no.” No, we will not give up our
rights to express our opinions. We don’t need to be belligerent, obnoxious
or combative about it, and we should do so in a way that educates Muslims
who don’t understand what free speech means in America.
But silencing ourselves in order to keep peace is to follow the path Europe
has already trod. Just ask Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Woolf, our chapter leader
in Austria who was convicted of violating “hate speech” laws, how that has
worked out.
Yours in defense of freedom,
Guy Rodgers
P.S. Please sign
our free speech petition letter and check
out our Freedom of Speech Day!
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