William Kostric: American Hero

It began like any other protest against healthcare in the news these days… President Obama was traveling to a small New Hampshire town to give a townhall-style meeting to a group of concerned citizens, to answer their questions about the healthcare bill presently in Congress.  Along the way to the meeting, protestors lined the streets holding signs.  One man, standing inside the grounds of a local church, held a sign saying, “It is time to water the tree of liberty!”  And then, it got crazy: the man was wearing a gun.

The news media reacted in a frenzy, trying to ascertain the man’s motives and the legality of his actions, repeatedly asking the local authorities why the man had not been arrested.  The response was simple: to wear a gun on private property is not against the law in New Hampshire.

There are times and places in history when events come into focus, interact with other events and forces, and create new meanings.  This was one of those times.  The second amendment of the United States Constitution has long guaranteed citizens the “right to keep and bear arms”.  The first amendment has guaranteed citizens the right to “peaceably assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances”.  This man, William Kostric, chose to exercise both of those rights, the right to bear arms and the right to speak freely, at the same time.

In exercising his rights, William Kostric shocked America.  He shocked the liberal news media, which has long maintained that guns are shocking and barbaric, their end always death.  He has shocked many Americans, long conditioned to believe that, whatever the second amendment said, decent, law-abiding citizens cannot carry guns in public.  Yet William Kostric was within the law.

When asked to defend his actions, Mr. Kostric replied that he was merely exercising his rights, and that rights not exercised tend to be lost.  In exercising his right, Mr. Kostric stood up for the rights of millions of other Americans who treasure the right to keep and bear arms.  In exercising this right, he has become an American hero.  Heroes are exceptional people; they perform acts of courage and valor.

Doubtless, Mr. Kostric checked the law, and made certain that he was within his rights in painting his sign and carrying his gun, but he could not be certain that the fascist “secret service” of the President would not arrest him anyway, that his rights would not be trampled on and violated.  He risked the disapprobation and censure of his fellow Americans, most particularly the blowhards of the news media.  And he did all this to make a statement: we retain our rights.

Chris Matthews, who has turned out to be a sadly representative portion of the news media, showed precisely how distorted the public discourse in America has become when he interviewed William Kostric, and attempted to divine his motives.  I encourage everyone to watch the interview.  In short, Matthews becomes emotional and shouts at Kostric, repeatedly rudely accosting him.  Kostric responds calmly, stating that his views are detailed, begging viewers to research them, but graciously summarizing them and detailing his complaints.

This interview is symbolic of what the discourse in America has become: blowhards with sexy thirty-second soundbites dominate thought.  They are rude but impassioned, crazy but moderate, uneducated but opinionated.  Every one of Matthews’s questions is answered, but he does not concede that he has treated Kostric unfairly.  He instead condescendingly responds to Kostric that “…you speak in a different way than most people.  I think, what the trouble is, you alarm many people to believe that when you bring a gun, violence might be afoot, because they associate a gun with violence, and they associate a gun with force.  But you say you’re not interested in using force to get your way politically.”

Let us pick this statement apart: first, Matthews complains that Kostric speaks in a different way than many people.  What exactly does this mean?  Syntactically, it means that he uses a different manner of speaking than many people… if this is what Matthews means, he is being at best condescending, at worst, attempting to distract attention from the content of Kostric’s statements, which he clearly finds threatening.

Next, Matthews complains that Kostric alarms people by carrying a gun, because people associate a gun with violence.  This is the height of disingenuousness.  As Kostric pointed out, the other protestors were not alarmed; nobody was “hitting the decks”.  The alarm was in the news media, who was all over the fact that Kostric was wearing a gun.  They amplified the fact and contextualized it by juxtaposing it with the possibility of violence.  Matthews himself is the real source of the association that he speaks of.

Finally, he says “But you say you’re not interested in using force to get your way politically” as if this is incredible… that someone who possesses the miniscule amount of power that a hand gun contains would not wish to wield that power to inflict his will on others.  Mr. Kostric’s tongue is clearly a far mightier power than his gun, as he calmly replies that he is not interested in using force, as if Matthews had asked a polite question, not nearly accused Kostric of having criminal intent.  Matthews’s inability to understand the simple concept of exercising a right so that it will not be lost is telling.  There are no brains in the news media today.

In the end, it appears that Mr. Kostric merely brought his gun to the protest to make a statement: even in our era of waning civil liberties, there are some states, and some locales, where our original, constitutional rights, can still be exercised.  We forget how far we are straying from our roots.

Huzzah, Kostric!

A final note: Despite the Matthews interview, the news media has done a horrible job in explaining William Kostric to the American people representative of this is Joan Walsh’s piece at Salon.com, which attempts to depict Kostric as a violence-advocating radical.  I will leave you to read the this piece, compare it to Kostric’s interview, and decide which is faithful.

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