In Memory of Danny Pearl

Several years ago, back in high school, I was a student in an independent studies class, where we picked our own topic to study, were mentored by someone in that field, and produced a Portfolio in the first semester, and then a Product the second semester (i.e. as a writing student I wrote a book, one kid composed a small symphony, etc.).

Part of the ISM program was toastmasters, and one of the speeches we had to give was a "Make Me Care" speech, where we had to, like the name suggests, make our audience care about whatever we were talking about.

I have to admit those were some very powerful speeches my classmates gave. We had a rule, what happens in ISM stays in ISM, so we never talk about all those things to anyone else. But this posting is my own speech, and it's about a topic I share with everyone I meet, not just the ISMites, so I thought I would share it with you today.

I first gave this speech in December, 2006. Why am I only posting this now, more than 3 years after I gave the speech?

I guess it's because the time is right. Because it was on this day 8 years ago, that Danny Pearl, the man I talk about in the speech, was kidnapped, and because his killer, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was also involved in the 9/11 attacks, is being tried in CIVILIAN COURT. Not tried as the War Criminal, that he is.

Why is that? Well, because apparently some idiots decided waterboarding was a good way to get answers, and now KSM's confessions are supposedly not good enough (considering how proud he sounded of confessing Danny's murder I'd say it was every bit legitimate, though I do not condone the use of torture).

And now, because the American people are so clueless and divided, justice could be hindered by technicalities. It breaks my heart to see how short the memory of the American people is.

So I post this as a reminder. In memory of Danny Pearl, and of those lost on 9/11.

Let us not hate those guilty of their murders, but let us at least serve justice to their memories, or we risk letting history repeat itself.

Here is the speech:

We're all humans here. And humans have emotions, right? Right.

Let's focus on one in particular for a second. How many of you have something or have had something-or someone even-that you absolutely hated? You just couldn't STAND this person or thing or school assignment, whatever. Even now you feel sick thinking about it, right?

Now we've established that…I want to tell you a story.

This story is about a man named Daniel Pearl. You may remember him, you may not. It has been nearly four (now 8) years since he turned my world upside down.

Danny was a journalist, a musician, a comedian, and a family man. To know Danny was to know joy, because while yes, he did have his moments like everyone does, he was almost always ready to make you smile. His view of life was so different from the average man. He loved life and embraced it. He was passionate and alive, caring for everything and everyone, and always ready to help.

Danny was, in early 2002, kidnapped in Karachi, Pakistan. I will never forget those following weeks, or the day I walked into my homeroom, in seventh grade, and saw him on the cover our little news magazine.

The picture even now wrenches me. Danny was crouched down against a wall, head bowed, his hands chained in front of him, under a headline that said "Kidnapped: Journalists Under Attack."

My childhood, my innocence, that had somehow staggered past the horrors of 9/11, finally died then and there. I had never seen a picture like that before and understood it was REAL. I finally realized this was REALLY happening. And for the first time in my life, I was afraid, terrified. I don't like admitting that the terrorists were able to scare me, but I was.

I learned that Danny had been slaughtered mercilessly some days later while I watched the winter Olympics. I wanted to know why he was killed, how the man we all adored so could be allowed to suffer so horribly and die alone.

I know why now though.

HATE.

Danny's killers were Jihadi terrorists. They killed Danny because they hated him-not for who he was, but what he was. Danny was American. He was Jewish, and he probably in all likelihood-being a journalist-knew more about them than they liked to admit.

After they killed him they took out their hate even more. When his body was finally found four months later it was cut into ten pieces, stuffed into plastic bags, and left under mere inches of soil to rot.They thought they were making an example of Danny. They wanted to make us afraid. They thought nothing of his wife, the son he never got to meet, his parents, his friends, even strangers whom he touched.

I was thirteen years old and though I hid it well I look back and see that I was probably quite insane for a long time. The day I finally understood Danny was gone, I felt this ripping, screaming, bleeding hole in my very soul. I lost a lot of who I was that day, and never got it back. This book (At Home in the World) I have with me today was what I used to calm myself, pressing it against the pain, reading it over and over again just to know that the world hadn't entirely lost such a great being.

But I'd begin to see something else coming out of the hate crime that nearly destroyed me and so many others. Something else that would, in all irony, save us, and bring us out of the darkness anew.

The LOVE.

What they didn't tell us on the news I found for myself over the next several years. To make sense of what had happened to them Danny's parents and friends began working overtime to prevent the hate from spreading. That's what the terrorists want, they said. They want us to hate and fear-which is what they do. But we won't.

The same year, on what would have been Danny's 39th birthday the first Daniel Pearl Music Day was held, and has been every year since. The music days celebrate Danny's love of music as well as his caring for all people. Musicians from all walks of life all around the world perform on the same nights, connecting to each other in their music, and in their desire to understand each other instead of hating. I wrote a song myself and played it to his mum over the phone this past October.

Danny's father Judea began dialogues with a Muslim named Akbar Ahmed, and the two of them put all the issues in the world into a simple and neat solution that would be so absurdly simple to reach if only we'd all stop hating each other.

But that's the key.The hating.I don't know what you guys hate. I don't know where your wrath and annoyance is directed to, but I know this: Hate kills. It kills the people haters victimize just as it kills the haters themselves.I doubt any of you would even think of taking a knife to your ex's throat or chopping your ISM portfolios to pieces-ok scratch the last-but I do want you to make an effort to stop hating needlessly, for your sake as well as others.

Look at Danny's face, now, and remember it. This picture was taken on Danny's wedding day. A day when love and joy was etched into every line, every curve of his face. When you feel that painful boiling in your chest, look for that smile he has in your heart, and LOVE.

http://www.danielpearl.org/

Danny:

Yes, WE are the patriotic Americans.

Is it bad form to call conservatives the patriotic Americans? Sarah Palin was mauled in the media and blogosphere for this insinuation during the general election:

"We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, pro-America areas of this great nation. This is where we find the kindness and the goodness and the courage of everyday Americans. Those who are running our factories and teaching our kids and growing our food and are fighting our wars for us. Those who are protecting us in uniform. Those who are protecting the virtues of freedom."

Politically, this was probably not the best choice of words; candidates running for office during a general election need to make the broadest appeal manageable for support.

Taken outside of that context, however, the change in rhetoric among conservatives is probably warranted, and a long time in coming. The left have generally given themselves all license to redefine terms and shift the language of a debate when facts alone couldn't produce a decisive political victory. Granted, it's not a practice that's unique to the left; nor is it unique to our time: "Anti-federalist" was coined by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison in their effort to discredit opponents of constitutional federalism.

But much of what passes for "acceptably-neutral" language in the press and professional culture has decidedly been shaped more by left wing politics than any genuine concern for maintaining ideological neutrality. Why, for example, are pro-life activists consistently named "anti-abortion rights" protesters in the Associated Press? Perhaps it's done for the same reason why editors of Time magazine dubbed California's Proposition 8 supporters "anti-equal rights" activists (Proposition 8, as you may know, was California's ballot initiative which preserved the state's definition of marriage as a union between one man and one woman).

A much-older, but ongoing example of the left's hijacking of language is the use of "progressive" to describe their political philosophy; implying, of course, that all contrary viewpoints must be ipso facto "regressive," or at least a stagnant hindrance in their crusade against inequality in all its forms. Does anyone honestly believe this effect was accidental?

Given the way the "progressive" label continues to exclude conservative views, and the brazen language shifts that have occurred over the years, no conservative should ever feel embarrassed to claim ownership of an adjective the Left have refused to wear proudly when their country needed it most: that of a proud, and Patriotic American.