The Letters to the Editor section of the Jewish Link has become a battleground over the past month. “It Is Time for Change” (March 29, 2018) opened a Pandora’s box as the writer noted the common fear Teaneck students faced during the lockdown and pushed for gun control.
As I read the article over breakfast, I began to hold my coffee mug just a little tighter. It’s happening again, I thought. Don’t get me wrong; I am petrified of the possibility of a mass shooting. I wish I didn’t have to curl up in the corner of my classroom for a lockdown. I wish that gun violence victims were still alive, and I thank God that our lockdown was nothing more than a drill. Also, because I am a thinking human being, I think strong background checks are essential. But somehow, I still don’t think that a school shooting automatically translates to drastically changing our gun laws. Somehow, when I sat in the designated lockdown area of my classroom filled with chilling fear, I wasn’t thinking about banning guns.
As a conservative, life hasn’t been easy for the last few months. Many activists and respected columnists have put forth the notion gun violence must motivate gun control. The letter I referenced earlier, written by a fellow 11th grader, uses the fear associated with the recent lockdown to immediately segue to a passionate plea for gun control. I don’t blame the student who described the need for drastic gun control as an undisputed belief. The culture in most schools has become so restrictive of pro-gun beliefs that students feel scared to express opinions in opposition to gun control. Ben Shapiro, editor-in-chief of the Daily Wire, received many letters from students who were guilted into the March for Our Lives, even though they disagreed with the gun control beliefs directly associated with the march. Like these students, I am extremely saddened by gun violence, and I want gun policies that will make our country safest. I simply have a different opinion on how we should protect ourselves. The fact that many conservatives are scared to exercise their first amendment right and express their views is a deep issue that saddens me greatly. So why have conservative beliefs been so vilified? Who or what is behind this?
“Fake news” has become a household term. Whether you believe in its validity or not, almost all of us have talked about it. I truly think this catchy phrase is responsible for the shaming of conservatives. For those that believe “fake news” is a new phenomenon, Pew Research published [a report of] MSNBC’s coverage of stories with tone in the final week of the 2012 election: “MSNBC’s coverage of Romney during the final week (68 percent negative with no positive stories in the sample)…For Obama…fully 51 percent of MSNBC’s stories were positive while there were no negative stories at all in the sample.” Other news outlets, namely CNN, have used the high emotions that come with a gun debate to push their agenda. Colton Haab, 17, shed some light on these biased actions to WPLG-TV: “CNN had originally asked me to write a speech and questions and it ended up being all scripted.” He did not attend the town hall. I remember watching the CNN gun control town hall from my history classroom. I saw Republican Senator Marco Rubio bravely keeping his cool as he was called “pathetically weak” for saying that the problems we are facing can’t be solved by gun laws alone. Think about it. Is it that crazy to say that? Even if you disagree, don’t you think that other people can disagree without condemnation?
My dismay increases as I think about an early promoter of this type of news. In “Mein Kampf,” Hitler wrote, “The function of propaganda is, for example, not to weigh and ponder the rights of different people, but exclusively to emphasize the one right which it has set out to argue for. Its task is not to make an objective study of the truth, in so far as it favors the enemy, and then set it before the masses with academic fairness; its task is to serve our own right, always and unflinchingly.” This role of the media is a primary foundation in fascism and is extremely toxic. Whether you are conservative, liberal, Republican, Democrat, religious, secular or identify with any other group, I think we should all try to be intellectually honest. We shouldn’t take what we hear in the media blindly. Perhaps then we can unite and truly try to solve issues instead of using them to push an agenda or a fight.
Moshe Fogelman
Junior at Heichal HaTorah
