The answer is love - always

Looks like we have something to thank Richard Girnt Butler for, after all.

Butler, the now deceased leader of the Church of Jesus Christ Christian/Aryan Nations, helped forge a moral steel in the very region he attempted to contaminate with his gospel of white supremacy and hatred. It is largely because of Butler and his beautiful nemesis, the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations, that a nationally publicized visit to Coeur d’Alene by the notorious Westboro Baptist Church in October 2010 fizzled. Instead of the violence those vile protesters sought — successful lawsuits paid their bills — they were greeted and overwhelmed by counter-protesters’ messages of love. An indelible moment was captured by The Press when North Idaho College students Kristen Smith and Coedy Labolle were shown reading verses from the Bible to the Westboro Baptist visitors and a pair of Butler’s stale leftovers.

Like all conscientious Americans, we condemn the protesters last weekend in Charlottesville, Va., who insist they were exercising their right to free speech. In the landmark 1969 case Brandenburg v. Ohio, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that free speech is not protected if it is “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.” In other words, if your goal is to incite violence, you can’t hide behind the First Amendment’s broad shield. And it’s difficult to argue that you’re gathering with peaceful intent when you’re packing semi-automatic weapons.

But that is there, and we are here. As a letter to the editor today hints, vestiges of racist attitudes haven’t disappeared from our North Idaho landscape. But as the Westboro experience taught us, we’re better equipped than most to deal peaceably with various forms of hatred. Maureen Dolan, the Press reporter who covered the Westboro protest and counter-protest, noted then and again this week how a diverse cross-section of locals united to stand up against hate. Well-known local conservatives and liberals, Second Amendment and First Amendment advocates, whites and blacks, gays and straights, all joined forces to represent in human strength what one hand-made sign proclaimed:

Hate Gets You Nowhere.

That’s a lesson Richard Butler taught masterfully.