November 2, 2022
Dear editor;
This is in response to “First Amendment, Bill of Rights Key to Democracy” by John and Nisha Whitehead in The Voice October 13.
The Whiteheads’ commentary is a meandering, somewhat paranoid anti-government diatribe with a paucity of factual reasoning. Most troubling to me is the apparent elevation of Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers para military group as an icon of free speech, or First Amendment rights. Roades and four accomplices are on trial for seditious conspiracy that is, “conspiring to overthrow, put down or destroy by force the U.S. government, or to try to levy war against it, or to oppose by force and try to prevent the execution of any law.” The charges stem from their alleged behavior before, during, and after January 6, 2021, the date to certify state electors’ votes concerning the normal transfer of power to the newly, legally-elected president by the then current vice president.
The Oath Keepers were not simply exercising their First Amendment rights to free speech. By Rhodes’ own admission, weapons were amassed and stored in the D.C. area and the accused were prepared to assist, violently, if necessary, the disgraced former president’s failed attempt to prevent official certification of electors’ votes declaring Joe Biden as the winner of the presidential election in November 2020; riots ensued, the Capitol was stormed, lives were lost, and luckily, Rhodes never received a call to arms from Trump. a small-minded, flag-hugging, narcissistic, big mouth, emboldened by dark money and social media and enabled by similar-minded, hypocritical, power-hungry, cowards in Congress, in turn supported by a repressed unthinking herd [quite reminiscent of Nazi Germany almost 100 years ago] nearly succeeded in collapsing the American experiment.
All the players are still here. Threats to our democracy and all the freedom we tend to take for granted are eroding away.
If “We the People” continue to be enamored by those who routinely and boastfully force their issues outside our rule of law, then…?
David Hoehne, Aurora