Crowds can fool us into dehumanizing our neighbors
I was a teenager when the controversy over the Nazi demonstrations at Marquette Park in Chicago unfolded. I went not because I supported their cause, but because my friends were going, and I got swept up in something far bigger than I understood.
I remember rocks, bricks and broken concrete flying through the air. I remember the anger. I remember how quickly a crowd can stop thinking as individuals and start acting as one.
Looking back nearly 50 years later, I understand something I didn’t then.
Free speech is one of America’s greatest freedoms. It protects ideas we agree with and ideas we find offensive. I also recognize how personal this can feel to me, given that my father, his cousins, the Darcy brothers, Uncle Elmer in the OSS, Uncle John in the 42nd Infantry, and many of their friends fought in World War II. My father was awarded a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star. That history is always with me. I have to consciously set it aside to stay clearheaded about what I saw and what it means.
Free speech has never meant freedom from consequences, criticism or responsibility. Words can inflame. Crowds can turn dangerous. Choices have real effects on neighbors, communities, and the country.
I share this not to defend Nazis nor excuse the violence that followed against them, but because I was there. It taught me how easily ordinary people like myself can be pulled into anger without fully understanding what they’re becoming part of. That’s the war I fight inside my head every day.
History doesn’t repeat itself exactly, but it often echoes. When we stop listening, stop thinking critically, and start seeing fellow Americans as enemies instead of human beings, we … check that, “I,” begin walking a dangerous path.
My hope is that “we” protect both free speech and our responsibility to one another. They are not opposites. They are what make a free society possible.
Tom O’Neill, Fairfield
Did Iowa State keep its grant because Iowa voted for Trump?
One of the jobs of government is to fund engineering research to make our lives better. For example, the Trump administration reaffirmed a 2024 research grant of $2.4 million to Iowa State University regarding renewable energy. One hopes that ISU’s project really deserves our tax dollars. Winning projects should be based on merit, not on a corrupt system of rewards.
Well, in truth, we are officially living in a corrupt system of rewards.
On July 15, President Donald Trump’s Department of Energy asserted in writing that it chopped funding for 283 energy projects in 16 “blue” states and left 340 research projects in “red” states alive and well. The money spigot got turned on or off not based on merit but, according to the agreement filed in court, “based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state, i.e., whether the recipient’s location and/or place of performance was in a Blue State or a non-Blue State.”
ISU’s $2.4 million survived the chopping block. Why? Because ISU is on the friends list with all the other red state universities. Trump’s playbook is corruption 101: Reward you friends and punish your enemies.
Chip Lowe, former director of Drake Law School Business Clinic
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Crowds can fool us into dehumanizing our neighbors | Letters
Reporting by The Register’s readers, Des Moines Register / Des Moines Register
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By The Register's readers, Des Moines Register | USA TODAY Network
