My first thread and an attempt to start a chain email. (Re: "God, the Professor, and the Marine")

God, the Professor, and the Marine

A United States Marine was attending some college courses between assignments. He had completed missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of the courses had a professor who was an avowed atheist and a member of the ACLU.

One day the professor shocked the class when he came in. He looked to the ceiling and flatly stated, "God, if you are real, then I want you to knock me off this platform. I'll give you exactly 15 minutes."

The lecture room fell silent. You could hear a pin drop. Ten minutes went by and the professor proclaimed, "Here I am God. I'm still waiting."

It got down to the last couple of minutes when the Marine got out of his chair, went up to the professor, and cold-cocked him; knocking him off the platform. The professor was out cold. The Marine went back to his seat and sat there, silently. The other students were shocked and stunned and sat there looking on in silence.

The professor eventually came to, noticeably shaken, looked at the Marine and asked, "What the hell is the matter with you? Why did you do that?" The Marine calmly replied, "God was too busy today protecting America's soldiers who are protecting your right to say stupid shit and act like an asshole. So, He sent me."

Epilogue to God, the Professor, and the Marine

I've gotten this email twice over the past few weeks and for the life of me I couldn't immediately decipher the moral of the story. Predictably, it contains two pure archetypes of right-leaning chain emails: the liberal god-hating academic and the tough god-fearing soldier, with the ACLU invoked for good measure. But after that, I get confused.

This chain email expresses a classic example of right-wing American doublethink, that is: American soldiers have fought and died to preserve our right to free speech, so therefore we should choose not to practice it. On the contrary, I would tend to believe that practicing my free speech would be the best honor possible for those who've fought and died for it. Otherwise, we're simply saying to our veterans past and present, "Thanks for taking a bullet to preserve my rights, but, eh, I prefer not to use them anyway."

The free speech soldiers have fought for is not to protect our right to express our love for our country, our devotion to the majority religion, or our admiration for our governing leaders. If that were the case we wouldn't need free speech rights at all - we'd be perfectly happy in North Korea or Burma or Saudi Arabia, for example, where such "speech" is permitted without limit. If anything, free speech rights exist to protect the unpopular, minority, and perhaps offensive opinions of any given time and place, exactly one of the core missions of, you guessed it, the ACLU.

The Marine in this scenario is actually doing more than Osama Bin Laden or Saddam Hussein ever did to stifle the right of free speech in America, and if he despises this right so much then maybe he shouldn't have signed up to protect it. Nevertheless, he is presented as a hero for physically assaulting a man deriding the notion of the existence of God. The moral of the story of course is this: "Keep your goddamn mouth shut." And the "goddamn" is key, for in this scenario God sends a proxy to strike a man who dares practice unpopular speech. The fact that He is also taking our side in a war is simply thrown in for an especially fist-pumping climax.

This email does not commend a soldier for risking his life to protect disagreeable speech. It commends him for attacking it.

The Marine Corps Oath:
"I do solemnly swear or affirm that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."

Note to this fictional Marine: "The Constitution" includes the First Amendment, "all enemies" include yourself, and "domestic" might even be inside a college lecture hall.