You Must Speak Your Mind — Freedom Depends On It — Even When You Are Being Blatantly Offensive
As anyone who has read my series called The Amtrak Vignettes knows, I’ve been on a train across the United States a time or two.
Recently, a loudmouth from Brooklyn was on the train. He was about 6 foot, 5 inches, about 300 pounds, a man’s man, from Williamsburg when it was still Williamsburg. He was wearing his bright yellow “Don’t tread on me” t-shirt.
We were on a train headed for the San Francisco Bay Area, so lots of liberals on this one. And this guy spoke his mind with a resonant voice and loudly. I loved it.
You would be able to hear the liberal sphincters snapping shut all around with every increasingly politically incorrect statement from him, if it were not for the fact that he spoke those inconvenient facts at however many decibels an aircraft engine is.
The man’s man had a collection of foreign exchange students around him as he held court, seemingly taking in his every word. He had gathered these disciples over the course of the train trip. It was something to behold. He had an Indian, a Chinese, and a French, though certainly others like me were also enjoying the colorful take on the affairs of the world.
During one of the few pauses, I said “Hey, I like that shirt,” and asked him, “But where’s that accent from? Montauk or something?”
Montauk is at the absolute end of Long Island, sticking all the way out into the Atlantic.
He said, “Aww man. There is no bigger insult you can give a guy from Brooklyn than to say he’s from Long Island.”
To which I said, “Well, actually Brooklyn is on the same island you know.”
If you look at a map, Brooklyn and Queens, both east of the East River, are part of that same geographic island. They are quite literally ON Long Island.
He was not having it, “Yeah, but it’s not the same!”
It’s fun to give a guy the razz.
A little later, another guy comes up and says, “I like your shirt.”
You could feel the weakness being exuded by this guy, especially when standing right next to man’s man. I did not like it. I did not like the exuded weakness. He is the kind of guy who finally found a spine in life the morning after Trump was inaugurated for the second time, after he heard Rachel Maddow, followed by his wife both mournfully acknowledge the inauguration as legitimate. Only then did he find his spine.
This scene took place about a week after that.
The formerly spineless man added about the t-shirt, “I guess you can finally wear it now!”
You see, Trump had just been inaugurated the week before, so the weak man who was new in the conversation was saying, “Now that someone has been inaugurated, we allegedly free Americans are now allowed to wear shirts that speak our minds as long as they agree generally with the ma
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LewRockwell.com is a libertarian website that publishes articles, essays, and blog posts advocating for minimal government, free markets, and individual liberty. The site was founded by Lew Rockwell, an American libertarian political commentator, activist, and former congressional staffer. The website often features content that is critical of mainstream politics, state intervention, and foreign policy, among other topics. It is a platform frequently used to disseminate Austrian economics, a school of economic thought that is popular among some libertarians.
