MB Civic

Dear Mr. Norris:

I am an evangelical minister and martial arts enthusiast who was quite surprised to read your recent piece on World Net Daily.

You are, of course, entitled to your opinions (even when they are only weakly supported by actual facts and knowledge), to free speech (which George W. Bush did more to stifle and endanger than any president in history – and which President Obama is restoring as quickly as he can), and to gun ownership (despite it being anathema to the spiritual underpinnings of all martial arts).

Regarding your opinions, not only does it do you little or no credit to cherry-pick statements of the founding fathers in order to support your extremely narrow positions, it is also inappropriate to do so, since quoting the founding fathers out of context to support secession or overthrow is only slightly more disrespectful than quoting Scripture out of context to support narrow, unloving, unforgiving and ultimately un-Christian positions.

It is interesting that you cite the Declaration of Independence language re the people’s right to overthrow the government. Yet you seem to miss what is perhaps the most important phrase therein: “Prudence…will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes…all experience has shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.” Instead, you seem to be focusing on the language that follows: “But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.”

Even were it true that President Obama was somehow moving toward “absolute despotism” (a patently absurd accusation), one can hardly call two months of a presidency “a long train” of anything. Indeed, what truly astounds me is that you fail to consider that it was under George W. Bush that this country was, in fact, subject to a “long train of abuses and usurpations [toward] absolute despotism” vis-a-vis the centralization of power in the executive branch and the shredding of the Constitution on his watch, including rescinding habeus corpus, eviscerating posse comitatus, illegally wiretapping American citizens, approving torture as an acceptable form of warfare in spite of the Geneva conventions, and any number of instances of the diminishing or outright curtailing of various freedoms, civil rights and civil liberties. Where was your voice during the eight years that this was going on?

As well, as noted parenthetically above, your vocal support of gun ownership is anathema to the martial arts you have studied and/or practiced for most of your life. There is not one form of martial arts of which I am aware (and I know of most) that would support the violence associated with guns – even in self-defense or defense of property. Every form of martial arts of which I am aware is underpinned by a strong spiritual belief that is almost pacifistic in nature: hence, the old saw that “one learns martial arts never to have to use them.” Indeed, the underpinnings of martial arts are far more Gandhian than…Hestonian. You seem to have some cognitive dissonance here.

You talk of Texas seceding from the U.S. and add “I’m not saying that other states won’t muster the gumption to stand and secede…” All I can say is, if the majority of the people in Texas, or in any other state, actually believe as you do – or are moved by your uninformed, ill-informed and borderline treasonous rhetoric – and move to secede, I, for one, will be happy to see you all go. Please. By all means, secede. And take your self-pitying paranoia and violent tendencies with you.

Respectfully,
Rev. Ian Alterman
New York City