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Originally finished in 1992, but not published until 2012, The Head of Athena, the second Cyrus Skeen detective novel, addresses in this chapter the issue of freedom of speech, in which a notorious atheist, Enoch Paige, attempts to deliver an address in San Francisco in May 1929. The scores of people who attend the event go not out of agreement with or even curiosity about what he has to say or about what they expect him to say, but to silence Paige. His speech, they are certain, will “offend” their religious or moral sensibilities. Paige is awaiting trial for the murder of his ex-wife; his attorney has asked Skeen to investigate the crime and produce evidence that will exonerate Paige of the crime.
Skeen, who has not yet met Paige, attends the lecture to assess the man’s character. Here he encounters Sgt. Robert Hoile of the SFPD, a homicide detective with a special animus for Paige; his fiancé was murdered in much the same horrific way as was Paige’s ex-wife, and believes that Paige is guilty. He is looking for any excuse to lock Paige up again for violating his bail and for disturbing the peace.
In lieu of another column on the importance of freedom of speech (I have written a few dozen), and the May 3rd attack n the The American Freedom Defense Initiative’s Draw Mohammad Contest in Garland, Texas, I chose to excerpt this chapter from the novel. It dramatizes much of what I would have said in a regular column. The Garland police officer nullified two barbarisms when he shot and killed the two Muslim gunmen.
The most visible teaching moment from Baltimore was the unrehearsed scene of a mother chasing after her son whom she had seen on television throwing rocks at police. It was important because it manifested the hurt and determination of a mother for a son whom she loved and who was at risk of destroying his life. She was not angry at the Baltimore police. She did not look upon herself as a victim. She understood right from wrong: that no matter the provocation, it was wrong for her son to cover his face and throw rocks at the cops.
The immediate source of the riots, as we all know, was the death of Freddie Gray while in police custody. But the violence that followed had little to do with reasons suggested by the media and those like Al Sharpton: Black youth alienation, police violence toward African-American teens, poverty, White racism and economic inequality. Those are real and/or perceived consequences, not antecedents to the root causes that divide a nation by race, wealth and social status.
Commenting on the rioting in Baltimore, the Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Henniger was almost to the end of his April 30 text when he said “On Wednesday morning, the year’s first-quarter GDP growth rate came in—0.02%. Next to nothing. For the length of the Obama presidency, with growth significantly below norm, unemployment for blacks aged 24 and younger has hovered between 30% and 40%. That’s the real powder key, not the police.”
