Guest Column by Jennifer Vogt-Erickson

Jennifer Vogt-Erickson is a member of the Freeborn County DFL Party.

After the nightclub attack in Paris last November, many people overlaid the tricolor on their Facebook profile pictures. There was an outpouring of grief and support. In contrast, I’ve only seen a few mentions about the horrific attack in Nice, France, on Bastille Day.

Maybe we’re getting too wrung out to respond, even in a limited way. The next shock came a day later with an attempted coup in Turkey that killed over 250 people. Two days later, an Iraq War veteran carried out a mass shooting against law enforcement officers in Baton Rouge.

Even though most of us are not directly affected, it takes an emotional toll. Being rattled repeatedly before we have a chance to reach equilibrium again can make horror seem normal, but we must not become numb or indifferent.

Listen to leaders who appeal to the best in our hearts, not those who cultivate our worst fears. We must remain courageous and know that it if we do, our countries will be immune to terrorists — both foreign and domestic — who want to disrupt peace.

If we give in to fear, which is easy to do, terrorists will make a much larger impact than killing and injuring civilians. They could conceivably cripple our democracies–not directly, but by frightening us into handing power to opportunistic strongmen.

As France’s President Hollande pointed out, “Human rights are denied by fanatics.” Democratic societies must not give up their noble defense of human rights. The rule of law which undergirds civil society must prevail.

After the 9/11 attacks, we felt vulnerable in a way most people living in the U.S. had never experienced, and we didn’t always use sound judgement in its wake. Overall, the press didn’t sufficiently question the flawed reasons for invading Iraq (non-existent WMDs, fabricated ties to the 9/11 attacks) until too late, and the actual reasons turned out to be more about George W. Bush’s daddy issues and Dick Cheney’s enrichment of cronies in the defense and oil industries. This folly directly cost nearly 5,000 American and countless Iraqi lives. The psychological damage to many survivors is difficult to understate.

Iraq spun into chaos soon after the initial U.S. invasion, and it’s still on shaky footing 13 years later. Over 250 people died in a bombing attack in Baghdad two weeks ago. None of my Facebook friends overlaid the Iraqi flag on their profile picture or even posted about it. It’s mostly off our radar, even though what’s happening is partially a consequence of the U.S.’s failure to foster a working government after toppling Saddam Hussein. Iraq has turned into a seedbed for radical Islam, with consequences for the entire region and beyond.

On Facebook, Ted Nugent responded to the Nice attack by lauding Newt Gingrich’s call for the U.S. to deport all Muslims who follow Sharia Law, even though following Sharia and supporting terrorism are not the same thing. Nugent added, “We must demand a real American president ASAP! America must defend ourselves. Killemall!”

Disputing Obama as a legitimately elected leader aside, Nugent thinks we should answer attacks like Nice with indiscriminate retaliatory killing. Such an action would, in legal terms, be a crime against humanity. This puts his moral reasoning on the same level as that of terrorists. We all feel grievances strongly; the difference is in response.

Fortunately Nugent isn’t a political leader, but he does have a large audience. He has nearly 3 million followers on Facebook. His primitive onstage persona was entertaining when his younger self, clad in a loincloth, swung on a rope out over his fans, but he’s morphed into something troubling now. He’s advocating tribal principles to govern an advanced society, and he’s casually promoting monstrous cruelty in response to monstrous cruelty, instead of pursuit of justice.

That sentiment is no longer even beneficial to an isolated mountain valley in Afghanistan with few modern conveniences, and it should be unthinkable in a mature democracy with a space exploration program and routine medical breakthroughs.

Is Nugent’s public statement cold-blooded enough to finally make the Freeborn County Fair Board decide he has gone so far that the reputation of our family fair is more important than honoring his contract to perform here in August?

The true heroes of our age defend rule of law, civil liberties, and universal human rights. We must move beyond an endless cycle of counterattacks, which only benefits terrorists, dictators and their weapons dealers. Everyone else, of any identity, suffers. We are all human, and we are bound by our humanity.

While our natural instincts toward tribalism probably used to be an evolutionary advantage, we are too connected in this time, with far too much firepower at hand and too many life-sustaining advancements to lose, to let those instincts dictate our actions.