To the Editor:
It is hard to take Dan Rothfarb's cant ("I Will Raise No Flag," The Dartmouth, Oct. 4, 2001) seriously. Whatever value he might have added in making some rather obvious points about free speech and the silencing of dissent is lost in his nauseating moral equivalency and self-righteous distortion of current events.
It is really not that hard to find some things about Hiroshima and Nagasaki that make us morally superior to the terrorists. We were not trying to kill as many people as possible in order to go to paradise, and as horrible as our bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was, we helped rebuild Japan in the aftermath. In contrast, I'm still waiting for some of Osama's millions to make their way into the Fireman's Fund.
While Mr. Rothfarb is "frightened" about "rhetoric," the rest of us are busy worrying about our families and friends being attacked, potentially with chemical, biological or (yes even) nuclear weapons. Rothfarb is so upset that Jerry Falwell "continue[s] to preach intolerance of many Americans' way of life," he never noticed that Falwell himself was (rightly) drummed off the public stage.
It is right to worry about civil liberties, and to defend the right of dissenters to speak (especially when they constitute a minority). But it is also right to defend your homes from invasion. Most Americans recognize this, which is why the "peace movement" is not as compelling as Rothfarb tacitly hopes.
