Op-Ed Ginorio: Stifle division? Never!

In Bill Buley's Coeur d'Alene Press article from Wednesday, Nov. 10 titled, "Stifle Division," Coeur d'Alene Regional Chamber's Upbeat Breakfast panelist Jeanette Laster is quoted as saying, “We need to stifle division." The Executive Director of the Human Rights Education Institute went on, “We need to come back together as a community and listen to each other and respect each other and bring kindness to the table. Just stifle division."

Throughout this article, a warm feeling of community was encouraged and divisiveness was disparaged. I assume that Ms. Laster's words were intended to be a soothing balm on the raw post-election nerves in our community. I absolutely assume her good will, and the good will of the other speakers.

However, there seems to be a glaring and un-reflected-upon assumption behind her words. The assumption is that division is the problem, and that if only the raucous Plebeian rabble which has become so prominent in our local affairs would be silent, all would be sweetness and light.

In fact, it is no stretch to read her words as an encouragement for dissenting viewpoints to be silenced. That is what stifling means. In common parlance since the time of "All in the Family's" Archie Bunker telling his wife Edith to "STIFLE!" this word means to impose silence where once was open speech.

The last thing that we should do is to stifle our own political expression, or the free speech of another! Totalitarian police states stifle opposition, both through raw oppression and by terrorizing dissidents into self-censorship. Vaclav Havel, the playwright who became the first president of a free, post-Communist Czechoslovakia, once said that the worst thing that the Communists ever did to him was to make him reflexively censor himself.

What we need is respect for the opinions of those with whom we disagree. We should see an increasingly involved electorate as a revival of the civic duty of active citizenship. Common people have been awakened by serious concerns about what their government is doing in their name. They are not a mob with torches and pitchforks. They are fellow citizens with valid concerns!

Remember the old Norman Rockwell painting, "Freedom of Speech." Just because today's public is less humble and more angry does not steal the truth from that image.

Be humble enough to consider that someone who might be your employee might actually have insights that you may lack. Success itself can blind a person to certain realities.

We citizens must never stifle ourselves or allow anyone to stifle others. If we are to genuinely come together as an intellectually diverse community of individuals, we need more speech and not less about our very real divisions.

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In Maine and then Idaho, Ralph K. Ginorio has taught the history of Western Civilization to high school students for nearly a quarter century. He is an “out-of-the-closet” Conservative educator with experience in special education, public schools and charter schools, grades 6-12. He has lived in Coeur d’Alene since 2014. Email: rginorio@cdapress.com