I Got a Death Threat Tonight

March 10, 2009

I got a death threat tonight and that brought me a certain amount of joy.

After all, we really aren’t doing our job of raising the issue of conscientious objection to war if no one notices enough to threaten us.  I have had several similar threats over the years, but none recently.

They tend to run in the same vein.  A person calls the Center and tells me I am being unpatriotic or shaming the honor of the soldiers who died for my right to freedom of speech.  I reply that trying to shut me up shames the honor of the soldiers who died to protect the very right the caller would end.

Sometimes callers say I should go “back to France” (which I feel is a vast improvement over the equally clever “go back to Russia” of my high school and college years).  I reply that they will take this country away from me “when they pry it from my cold dead hands.”

Then they offer, as one man put it, “to be the first in a long line” to arrange my death.

Entertained enough, I reply “If it makes you feel big and strong to threaten a 56 year old lady, go right ahead.”
Invariably, they reply with the click of hanging up the phone.

Oddly, I have yet to speak to a member of the military who didn’t think our work served a useful purpose.  Nor one who couldn’t answer correctly the question “How do you know if a recruiter is lying?”

The people who call and threaten me as far as I have been able to determine are not and have never been members of the military.

So I’ve got to wonder what kind of sad life someone has to have to make a death threat to a peace organization such as the Center which takes no side in any war.

And I have to laugh because if I take it seriously I would have to quit.