The Minority Voice – Sunday, December 12, 1943
In spite of a long-advocated tolerance, there are times when all of us find annoyance because someone has disagreed with us. But the fact remains that to establish something on the basis of opinion without proof, or authority without reason, is as difficult now as it ever was, or more so—even though it may be annoying. In governments, as long as we have known anything about them, as far back as history has anything to say concerning them, men who have attempted by sheer authority to impose edicts without reason and fiats without the conversion and support of those whom they affect, have seen the beginning of trouble—but not the end. But governments are not the only ones who have been historically guilty of such things. Men in their private lives have been guilty. Social, religious, scientific, and professional movements, societies, and institutions have sometimes been guilty.
Ofttimes constituted authorities—like individuals—have made the mistake of assuming that anyone who had an opinion contrary to the majority was necessarily wrong, or of unsound mind, or disloyal, or dishonest. Indeed, it has gone further than that. In those places where a single sovereign will has held dominion over ill the destinies of all his subjects, men who presumed to have a contrary opinion have often been obliged to change their views, or have their mortal existence cut short—a sort of permanent censorship designed to insure unanimity of opinion by liquidating all contrary views.
A more civilized and refined form of the same kind of practice is to call a man a name when he disagrees with you—publicly proclaim his disloyalty or incompetence or dishonesty—discredit his reputation. “Name calling,” someone has said, “is a subtle way of diverting attention from the facts.” We shouldn’t call a man a name merely because he has an opinion of his own. He may be right—and even if we’re sure he isn’t, it doesn’t necessarily follow that he is dishonest or disloyal, or of unsound mind. In the name of tolerance and reason, it must be recognized that he who disagrees with us is not necessarily an undesirable citizen. If that were true, then there are more than a hundred and thirty million undesirable citizens in this country alone, because no two people think alike in all things.
The minority voice—the unintimidated right freely to express honest contrary views—is essential to the survival of freedom and to the maintenance of progress, and, in the affairs of men, any institution or any country in which there is the imposition of one mind and one will in all things, is a fundamentally weak institution or country, leaning perilously to one side, and lacking the structural strength of opposing forces.
By Richard L. Evans, spoken from the Tabernacle, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Sunday, Dec. 12, 1943, over Radio Station KSL and the nationwide Columbia Broadcasting System. Copyright – 1943.
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December 12, 1943
Broadcast Number 0,747