My letter to the editor that I believed that Communism was starting to take hold in America.
To the Editor:
Dear Sir,
'Open Letter to One'
“As soon as you abuse the privilege of being free, you are no longer.”
Your freedoms may not be taken from you at that very instant, because a great number of other people all around you have not fallen into your plight. But it has died inside you where it counts the most.
Although the outward appearance will look the same, as you may still be able to do as you normally did before, it will appear to you more and more as you go on, that you have lost your zest in doing what before seemed a great fulfillment in your life.
Besides the fact that you are living in frustration and despair, from dreary days into drearier nights and back again. You are still but only one lost to freedom, for now you become a follower. For without a fulfillment in doing what you desire, you accept the thoughts, actions, and desires of others. You become a conformist, compromiser, pacifist and what have you.
If, as some have done, you finally analyze what you have let yourself into, but say, Oh Well! Everyone else seems OK, so I'll just coast along and see what happens. Never regaining enough of yourself to take the time and the effort to get out of this dilemma. Also never realizing just how many others have also fallen into your plight.
Others around you, without as strong will as your own, see that you are still—at least outwardly—a close image of your former self, but without expending the energy you used to use to partake in the actions that were necessary for maintaining your personal freedoms, without an apparent loss of these freedoms. So now they also, slowly but surely, abuse their own privilege of being free.
Now all these, “I'm only one,” have multiplied themselves over and over again.
Now a lot of people who have thought what they were doing was right. But, seeing this change, begin to wonder maybe some of it is wrong. Gosh! This must be the modern look, everyone else seems to be doing just the opposite these days, maybe I'd better get on the bandwagon before someone thinks I'm not keeping up with the times.
Now we have a majority from one. Hello, Communism.
Damn it! I forgot to lock my back door again. Thank You.
Yours Truly,
_________________
Norbert A. Tanguay
(The above letter was written and mailed to Time Magazine on April 28, 1961)
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