Here in the free world (by which I mean the US, Tahiti, and parts of Canada) we have freedom of press that many of those in the non-free world (everywhere else and the rest of Canada) can only dream of while dangling nakedly from a tree branch, slathered in marmalade, while some fascist disciplinarian unleashes a flock of fruit bats.      

Throughout history, few people have inspired more change than those who voiced an unpopular opinion. Their opinions were not very popular because the most immediately noticeable changes they inspired were not very popular. Such change typically included alterations made, against their will, to their social and financial standing, personal liberty, and the proximity of their heads in relation to their bodies. In written form, however, those same opinions stood a much better chance of surviving long enough to pose a genuine threat to the establishment. Given time, the political and social change they inspired was no less drastic or permanent than that made to their progenitors’ anatomical correctness. It often took decades or centuries for the common folk to learn to read and implement those changes, but eventually the heads that had once rolled for conceptualizing them were removed from the pike to make room for those of the next heresy’s representatives.         

Extensive medieval comparison testing first proved the pen was mightier than the sword. With the sword, you could only reach one person at a time and you had to catch them first, whereas with books, you could not only reach multiple victims simultaneously, but you could charge them for it too. Perhaps the greatest advantage the pen had over the sword was that its converts occasionally lived long enough to convert others in turn, as apposed to simply serving as a one-time example. Books were even handy outside the confines of conventional usage. “Burn a heretic”, stated a popular Medieval saying, “and you entertain the masses for an hour; allow a heretic to write books, and the masses can boogie around the bonfire every night for a month!”  

During WW II, the Germans further demonstrated the versatility of printed matter by dumping bushels of it over their neighbor’s decimated cities between rounds of bombs.

While it’s possible the Germans were simply trying to dispose of unread letters to the Fuhrer after they had run out of landfill space back in the Fatherland, experts in psychological warfare agree that they did this because the most demoralizing thing to a nation living in constant fear of an aerial assault is another false alarm. The next most demoralizing thing is finally getting new reading material after weeks in the bomb shelter, only to remember you can’t read German.

Long story short, the language barrier withstood those brutal assaults, and the Krauts learned a valuable lesson about the importance of tailoring their demoralization campaigns to the needs of their “target audience”.   

Like many other weapons that are mightier than the sword, however, the pen has the potential to backfire. Just ask any girl who’s ever gone wild after signing a waiver. They might get out of the souvenir T-shirt easily enough, but a drunkenly scrawled name below a few paragraphs of legal gibberish constitutes a legal contract that’s harder to escape from than the heretic’s wing of a medieval dungeon.

In short, paper—with a little help from pen—beats not only rock and scissors, but your entire legal defense team as well. This is why law enforcement, con artists and your future ex-wife like to get things in writing.

In conclusion, fellow citizens of the Free World, it is our somber responsibility to write freely while we still can, because others may not. If, for any reason you are unwilling or unable to fulfill this obligation, or if you’d rather take your chances with a fascist disciplinarian, please notify me in writing. Just remember, I can’t read German.