HITLER QUOTE: Reminder to reject ‘demagogues’

Christie Hoium is quoted in Bill Buley’s recent article, “Off Message” as being offended, shocked and bemused by a reader board in front of the restaurant “Breaking Bread.” She is described as being unable to fathom why the owner would post a quote from Adolf Hitler, “To conquer a nation, first disarm its citizens.”

Ms. Hoium, precisely where did you develop your sensibilities about Free Speech? Are you perhaps a product of today’s intellectual Gulags, our university system, where “toxic” speech has been banned? Where did you acquire the sense of entitlement that has you demand that the utterances of others conform to your comfort?

It is the duty of every American citizen to safeguard our Republic from those who would build their utopia on the ashes of our liberty. Every single one of us has a duty to strive to understand how a free people could exchange liberty for security.

This means that each of us should consider, among other cases, why the citizens of Republican Rome and Weimar Germany exchanged their freedom for slavery. We must keep alive the words and deeds of Augustus Caesar and Adolf Hitler so we will be better at rejecting the siren song of future demagogues.

Such demagogues always create their totalitarianism by seizing control over expression, turning schools into indoctrination centers, displacing the family and legislating compliance.

Intolerance like yours, which silences free expression, inevitably lead to slavery. So does disarming citizens. Preserving our freedom requires genuine tolerance.

RALPH K. GINORIO

Coeur d’Alene