To the editor:

I have always appreciated the Iowa State Daily opinion page for providing students and alumni the opportunity to use their First Amendment rights. Never was this more evident than yesterday.

Tim Shanks showed the vehement force that freedom of speech can carry.

Shanks wrote of his “reason to discriminate against foreigners” because of one isolated incident involving a driver turning onto the sidewalk on which he was walking. Now this would anger pretty much anyone, but does it give him a reason to hate a group of people? No.

His isolated incident doesn’t even consist of poor logic. Poor logic would suggest that if the driver was a female and a foreigner, then all foreign women would not know how to drive. Instead, he identifies her only as female and somehow takes a leap of logic in using this incident to justify his disgust for foreigners.

The only statements he makes linking his letter together is a comment on how foreigners can’t park their cars in one space. Perhaps that’s a safe generalization, but somehow I doubt it.

From my experience, that’s just as much a domestic problem as it is a foreign one.

He attempts to shield his illogical and incoherent complaints by suggesting that he “doesn’t normally discriminate against foreigners” and stating that his suggestions apply to “everyone, not just the foreigners,” but, like a beacon, his ignorance shines through.

This ignorance, sadly, is not going away. As long as there are people to propagate it, such as Shanks or John Rocker, people will discriminate based on race, gender, or any other random characteristic. Individual events like Mr. Shanks’ encounter can fuel unnecessary and illogical hatred when they are publicized.

Shanks has every right to complain about his situation. However, everyone else has the right to ignore his brand of logic or write in and complain about the ignorance his generalizations represent.

That is our duty.

Our right to speak gives us an opportunity to say whatever we want, be it as ignorant as discriminating against races based on parking ability or making insensitive comments like Aaron Woell’s analogy about rumors spreading like “AIDS in Africa.”

As citizens, our focus needs to be focused on carrying the corresponding responsibility, not leaving it for others to correct.

Otherwise, there might come a time when we don’t have such a liberty.

Tim Kearns

Freshman

Political science