OPINION: Ignorant pigs stampede sale

A stampede of human pigs, in pursuit of happiness, trampled Jdimytai Damour to death.

Blame Damour's death on rampant stupidity and immorality. Our culture increasingly disregards the importance of religion and knowledge, blurring the distinction between humans and animals. Religion and knowledge are key elements of freedom. As they fade, expect more barbaric events.

Damour was a large and gentle dreadlocked young man, working his temp job on Black Friday at a Wal-Mart on Long Island, New York. His death proves that freedom cannot thrive in a country that glorifies ignorance. Freedom cannot thrive in a country that abandon's traditional morality, as if it's yesterday's expendable oppression by religion. It cannot thrive in a culture that increasingly forgets its founding principles, or views them as the outdated or contemptible ideas of obsolete pioneers.

By now, most Americans know the story of Damour. He was trying to hold back a tide of early bargain hunters just before the store's scheduled 5 a.m. opening. As the crowd pushed forward, the glass doors shattered. Damour was thrown to the ground and trampled by a mob racing for early bird specials. Customers who didn't step on him simply raced on by in pursuit of flat-screen TVs and Guitar Hero accessories. When the murderous mob heard the store might close temporarily, to deal with an employee killed by shoppers, moans of protest ensued. This Black Friday feeding frenzy is somehow linked to a celebration 27 days later that ostensibly honors the birth of Jesus.

After Damour's horrific killing, a Nassau county police spokesman said authorities would have a difficult time determining who should be held responsible. It shouldn't be too difficult, because cops have surveillance video. Anyone who stepped on Damour participated in an assault that led to his death. Charges of murder would not be too extreme. Damour had rights. He had the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and those were taken by members of an ignorant, immoral mob.

R.C. Hoiles - the late, great founder of Freedom Communications, Inc., parent company of The Gazette - would look fondly on retailers offering extreme bargains to customers who are struggling through recession. Only in a free country are ordinary, average, working-class people able to afford giant TVs and other luxury amenities during difficult times. Yet the trampling of Damour would be seen as failure, and a sign that our free republic may self destruct. Hoiles would see this killing as a threat to the institution of freedom itself, as freedom must be properly managed by those who possess it. The Gazette's Principles of Freedom hold that "freedom is neither license nor anarchy."

Nobody had license to push past Damour, who was managing access to private property.

By racing the door, in pursuit of happiness, shoppers trespassed and killed. They abused their freedom and devolved into anarchy. Free societies are rife with criminals who commit isolated crimes day and night. But this was something different. This was a mob scene, in which hundreds of ordinary citizens dispensed with decency - a necessary ingredient for freedom to reign. This was the general public competing for toasters and TVs, trampling a man and showing no remorse.

If freedom is neither license nor anarchy, what is it? It is self-control, explained Hoiles.

How does one know the boundaries of self-control, which separate freedom from anarchy? Hoiles believed that self-control "must be consistent with the truths expressed in such great moral guides as the Ten Commandments, the Golden Rule and the Declaration of Independence."

In the modern United States, millions thumb their noses at these moral guides and millions more can't recite a line from them. In the most recent study of our country's collective ignorance, commissioned by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 30 percent of elected officials didn't know that "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" are rights defined by the Declaration of Independence.

Hoiles knew the dangers of freedom outside the confines of morality, and we see those dangers in the trampling of Damour. If the free-roaming pigs at Wal-Mart had been guided by the Ten Commandments, they would have gone out of their way to avoid killing Damour. If they had respected the Golden Rule - embraced by Jesus, Hillel and Confucius - some key thoughts might have countered their impulse to stampede: "If I were guarding that door, would I want customers pushing on the glass?" and "If I were that man on the ground, would I want my head trampled?" and "If I were that man, would I want someone to save me?"

If the pigs knew and respected the Declaration of Independence, they'd have seen the black man on the ground and thought: "All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Knowledge of those words led our country to abolish the ancient practice of slavery, yet few Americans today seem to embrace them.

If Nassau County officials know the Declaration of Independence, they'll respect this line: "to secure these rights (Life, Liberty, pursuit of Happiness), Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

The anarchy pigs, in pursuit of toys, abandoned self-control. Their pursuits of happiness came at the expense of Damour's most foundational right - his right to life.

Government, in the form of law enforcement, must avenge Damour's death. All who participated in Damour's killing, meaning all who used him as a rug, must be caged - in defense of freedom.