In Defense of Palmetto Bug

Fellow blogger and Masonic Forum member, Palmetto Bug - http://masonicline.blogspot.com/- is taking it on the chin pretty hard lately. It seems to be part of the harder, louder more strident Freemasonry in these modern times. I see the same kind of obsessive hate in the anti Bush people. It is not enough to just have a difference of opinion with our President, it is necessary by many of his opponents to paint him as evil incarnate and making their disagreement hate and hot anger.

Now Palmetto Bug and I are adversaries on the Masonic scene. We don't agree on much and I have whopped on this respectful Brother a little hard myself until one day I caught myself going over the line. Then I had a nice chat with myself whereupon I twisted my arm and slapped my kisser a few times and reminded myself of the message we all learned in the First Degree from The Compasses - to circumscribe our desires and keep our passions within due bounds. Not that I matched what Palmetto Bug is enduring right now but it was a bit on the snippy side.

Such things happen in moments of passion with passionate people. We get carried away and we take it up one too many notches. But realizing that and coming to grips with the imperfect beings that we are, most of us proceed on on a more level headed corrected course.

But there is a group out there today - I call them provocateurs. They are in the business to ferment dissension. They deliberately pick fights. They have a chip on their shoulder. Maybe they were wronged in the Masonic process somehow. Their answer is revenge, on anybody and everybody.

So if you take a stand, if your passion for the Craft leads you into discrediting or a challenge you open yourself up to those who would literally if you were at a bar, take you out back and beat the crap out of you.

That may lead many to become Mr. Milk Toast but I am sure that is not the way Palmetto Bug wants to operate. And that is sure not the way I want to operate either. I have some very definite ideas, solid positions and I am not afraid to stick my neck out.

That's why I believe that all of us in the Blogging Community must band together to not allow Jubela, Jubelo and Jubulum to cary out their purpose. It's one thing to have an opinion but its another thing to have an agenda which you feel a need to enforce. It reminds me of some of the PETA people and the Environmentals who burn down people's houses built in former wildlife areas or the Pro Life people who bomb abortion clinics. We can't let this kind of thing get out of hand.

I say let's support Palmetto Bug, even if we do not agree with his position. As somebody once said - I may not agree with you opinion but I will die to see that you have the right to express it or something like that. Anytime I encounter these people getting out of line I will condem them and block them. Please join me.

This verse inscribed at the New England Holocaust Memorial in Boston, Massachusetts reads:

They came first for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time no one was left to speak up.