Thoughts on free speech and free thought

[unixronin]

Randy Cassingham, author of the email newsletter This Is True, had the following (in part) to say regarding the recent furor over the Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirts lampooning West Virginia, and the governor of that state's delusion that he had the authority to order Abercrombie & Fitch to destroy them:

A&F could well owe the people of WV an apology; that's not at all what I was remarking on.  Rather, it's this: what does ANY government official think he's doing by ORDERING someone to give up their Constitutional rights?  I speak, of course, of our First Amendment right of free speech.  Like many politicians, he probably swore an oath to DEFEND the Constitution, not whine like an idiot when someone exercises their rights, even if he doesn't like what they have to say.  Indeed, there's no NEED to guarantee speech everyone LIKES, is there?

Now this is the pernicious, creeping problem of political correctness.  The Constitution acknowledges and (theoretically) protects a right to free speech.  It does NOT grant nor recognize any right to be listened to, nor a right not to hear anything which one might deem offensive.  As soon as you start creating "hate speech" statutes, you start eroding that right to free speech and inserting the thin end of a wedge that begins with euphemisms like "persons of color," "African-American," and "physically challenged," and ends with it being illegal to mention Allah when a Christian is in the room, to mention Christ when a Muslim is in the room, to mention oil with a Sierra Club member in the room, and so on.  This same kind of asininity led to the Victorian and Edwardian practice of referring to women's "nether limbs" because it was unthinkable that someone should actually admit out loud that women have legs, and other even more ridiculous excesses.

There is, in fact, NOTHING non-trivial that can be said without the potential of offending someone.  If all speech that might someday offend someone, somewhere is banned, then we are all left mute.

I would actually go so far as to say that speech that shocks and offends people is not merely something that should not be banned, but something that should be specifically preserved.  Boundaries, including mental ones, should be challenged and expanded, not endlessly tightened and shrunk.  To demand that people think only inside a box that is continually being nipped, tucked and tightened is worse than folly, it is intellectual tyranny.

You know, I remember when 1984 rolled around and all kinds of people stood up and said, "See?  George Orwell was wrong!  It's not like that at all!"  I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, and things have only gone downhill since then.  The Founding Fathers must be spinning in their graves at seismic levels over the fenced "designated free speech zones" into which people critical of George Bush are currently being herded at his public appearances.

The saddest part of it is that so many people are too stupid or too thoughtless to realize that the same limits that bar anyone else from goring THEIR sacred cow will bar them from - even unintentionally - goring anyone else's, and that currently the people making the rules about which set of sacred cows it is not permitted to gore are among the most small-minded and repressive in the nation.

Comments

[jilara.livejournal.com]

I've been politically incorrect to someone for virtually my entire life, back to when I quoted Thomas Jefferson to my second grade teacher, who was punishing the entire class for the actions of two, and was given detention. (This was a pattern of my early school years--getting detention or sent to the principal's office for being too outspoken, usually in defense of someone's rights.)

I kind of think of the line from B5 about the guy who was the freedom fighter type that was someone's grandfather, and "what happened to him?" "oh, he was killed, but what he accomplished!" (Yeah, it's been a while since I saw that episode, but I recall the gist of it.)

I used to make comments "1984 was x years ago," a propos of erosion of American freedoms. Nowadays, we have a society that is out to do things like destroy historic landmarks because they have a religious background (e.g. the cross in South San Francisco) in the name of freedom from religion. (SF is even-handed. They also bulldozed out a rock monolith in Golden Gate Park when they found that the Hindu community was making pillgrimages to it and leaving flowers.)

Wasn't it in A Wrinkle in Time where the Orwellian society stated "We're all equal here, because everyone is exactly alike"? And had means of making you alike...

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Nowadays, we have a society that is out to do things like destroy historic landmarks because they have a religious background (e.g. the cross in South San Francisco) in the name of freedom from religion. (SF is even-handed. They also bulldozed out a rock monolith in Golden Gate Park when they found that the Hindu community was making pillgrimages to it and leaving flowers.)

Good grief. In San Francisco?!?

Is this Newsom's doing, or was it on Slick Willie's beat?

They've lost it. All hail the Crazy Years.

[jilara.livejournal.com]

The "sacred rock" was (mind blanks), before Willie Brown. The historical cross was saved by transfering ownership to a preservation society, but now there's a suit against them by "outraged citizens", to try to still have it torn down, because "this group was only formed as a desperation move to keep us from getting rid of it." Well, duh. Historical context counts nothing to these folks.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

has anyone pointed out to these people that they're behaving just like the Taliban?

Yo, shit-for-brains, there's a difference between "Freedom from religion" and "Suppression of religion". What comes next, the purges and fatwas?