Jon Voight

A friend of mine, who is of the ultra-conservative mindbent (yes, I have friends on both ends of the spectrum) posted an admiring note on Facebook on Jon Voight. Voight has been back in the news with a scathing open letter to President Obama, accusing the President of orchestrating a great lie upon the American people. The letter is really disgusting. And it pissed me off to no end. Here's my reply to that Facebook post:

Jon Voight is utterly and completely off-base. His letter is nothing but misrepresentations, outright lies, and outrageous and unfounded accusations. During the Bush years, Voight was staunchly in the camp that believed that to criticize the President, particularly in a time of war, was to criticize the country and was therefore unpatriotic. From an interview with Bill O’Reilly in 2008: “When I hear people saying quite unthinkable things about our President, when I see our President defaced, which is defacing our country – he’s the leader of our country, he’s the leader of the free world – my heart is very heavy.” Except now we have a different President, one he doesn’t agree with, so Voight feels free to say unthinkable things about our President, and deface our President, and therefore deface our country.

Voight bothers me for a much deeper reason. He accused President Obama of creating a civil war. (Actually, he phrased it as a rhetorical question in an interview with the Washington Times). Nobody in the Administration – or Congress, or anywhere else in the government – had ever brought up a “civil war” until Voight did. He, himself, has raised the spector of violent conflict within the people of our own country.

The last I checked, inciting violence is a crime. As Americans, if we don’t like our politicians, we bitch about them and then vote them out of office. We don’t advocate civil war. Advocating war among ourselves is not only un-American, but it’s treason. So Jon Voight is, therefore, a liar, a hypocrite, un-American, and treasonous.

If you don’t like what Obama and your other elected officials are doing, fine. Work to elect somebody else. Do it peacefully. Respect the fact that others have different opinions, and just because they’re different doesn’t mean they’re not patriotic Americans just like you.

In his letter, Voight states “We can weed out the liars and agitators”. Look in the mirror, Mr. Voight.