by Jenna Ranger
Angela Kaaihue, GOP Nominee for the 2nd congressional district, is likely the most openly racist member of the Republican Party to date. Recently, she went on a racially-charged Facebook rant about the Japanese. She called them “murderous,” accusing them of “stealing,” and being “conspirators,” among other accusations, and using racial slurs. Kaaihue even went as far as saying she would put “Japanese in internment camps.”
State GOP Chair Fritz Rohlfing said late Friday evening: “I want it understood by the general public and the media that the recent inflammatory comments made by candidate for Congress Angela Kaaihue do not represent the views, values, or the sentiments of our party and its members.” This is where he should have stopped, but Rohlfing went on to say: “Her vulgar, racially bigoted, and religiously intolerant descriptions of Democratic Party candidates are offensive, shameful, and unacceptable in public discourse.” Now, I don’t disagree that her statements were vulgar, etc., but as an American citizen, Kaaihue has the right to share her statements publicly if she so chooses.
The First Amendment (Amendment I) to the United States Constitution prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering with the right to peaceably assemble, or prohibiting the petitioning for a governmental redress of grievances.
This is an issue that is becoming increasingly popular in the media. Justifying taking away a person’s First Amendment rights, based upon political correctness. Political correctness does not correlate with what the founders set out to do when they started a revolution. The beauty of the First Amendment is that it allows our system to correct itself. Essentially, you can say whatever ignorant thing you want, but others are allowed to say so in the town square.
Rohlfing is encouraging his fellow GOP members to disavow Mrs Kaaihue, understandably so, though she will be on the ballot in November regardless.
Couldn’t Rohlfing, as an elected official in The United States of America, where the law of the land is the U.S. Constitution, have stood against her statements, without suggesting that her statements should not be allowed in public, by deeming them “unacceptable in public discourse?”
Imagine what would happen if Mrs. Kaaihue’s First Amendment rights were being violated for saying she really hates cheese, because Chairman Rohlfing liked cheese. It’s ridiculous, right? It’s the same principle.
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