Obama With a Hitler Mustache Is Freedom Of Speech Gone Too Far

Today is the Jewish Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. I am Jewish, but at age 13 I decided I would celebrate only the holidays I believed in, and after having studying and reading, this holiday did not make the list.

Passover is my high holy day, not Yom Kippur. I am not one to follow tradition, never have been.

But I will take today to write about something that bothers me and that reared its ugly head yesterday. I went to the post office in the morning as I do most mornings and again there were a couple of unsavory characters out in front asking people to honk to defeat Obama. And they had a picture of Obama, my President, Your President and in fact their President, with a Hitler mustache.

This offends me, as it should offend everyone. One whole branch of my family died in the camps that were part of Hitler’s master plan. There are generations of cousins that were never born that I will never meet. Hitler was in his own class of evil. He should not be compared to anyone, least of all a president lightly.

Being who I am, I have had political discussions with people, a lot of people, on all ends of the political spectrum. And not one person that I know, no matter how they disagreed with me, never mind disagreed with the President would use a comparison of him to Adolph Hitler.

You cannot make an argument to me that anything Obama has ever done earns someone the right to compare him to Hitler. It is just wrong. We have all kinds of law about what can and cannot be near a school, so why is that allowed 200 feet from the middle school?

Of course the answer is that it is free speech. I believe in free speech. Free speech means I have to support his right to stand in front of the post office with that offensive sign.

But I don’t have to like it. So, yesterday when I was walking into the post office, the people holding the sign said something to me. I told them “on behalf of my great uncle who died in the ovens that he could go to hell.” He replied: “That’s not very nice,” to which I replied, “Neither is what you are doing”

Today is the Day of Atonement. I should, by Jewish law, repent of what I said yesterday. Only the problem is I don’t repent. I looked in my heart, and I wasn’t sorry. In fact, I am pretty sure I would do it again.

Freedom of speech means that he gets to offend me. Freedom of speech also means I get to tell him to go to Hell. There is no sense in life for feeling sorry for something you really are not sorry about.