Campaign of terror

re: "Walls close in on free press" (BP, Editorial, April 6)

Dear editor,

Blasphemous? When hoary myths are elevated to forced ideology worthy of the most zealous cult of fanatics intent on protecting their sacred dogmas from generously perceived insult, they threaten both reason and good morals. The Chiangmai governor, like the terrorizing law he uses to attack reasonable social use of their cultural heritage by citizens who are equally members of society, needs to grow up. If he dislikes healthy satire, he should not watch it. Better yet, he should respond in kind to correct what believes are misunderstandings or unjust uses of cultural relics. But to be fair, it is precisely because the facts and reason often fail to support any such cheerful rebuttal that suppression absent reason must be resorted to.

To use the law to silence different opinions proves only that the law is profoundly anti-democratic in its moral corruption. But this has always been the way of self-anointing dictators, who cannot survive if their dubious myths are subject to honest truth seeking and speaking, and who must therefore suppress honest critical reasoning that might inconveniently expose naked truths to social awareness. Its abuses consistent with the very etymology of the word show, however much it might pretend to care for good morals and reason, the ugly reality that the office of dictator is as morally corrupt in principle as it typically is in practice: it has never been otherwise.

 Felix Qui

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

The text as edited was published in PostBag on April 7, 2018, under the title "Campaign of terror" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/1442186/campaign-of-terror