Freedom and Speech

There is an utterly silent but totally effective power by which alone a nation finds redemption.

Two Washington Post editorials on October 29th, one by Dana Milbank and one by Huge Hewitt nicely capture the dilemma currently at the heart of our nation. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/?nid=top_nav_opinions&utm_term=.890704dbf1fe.

On one hand there is surely a link between accepting anti-Semitism and hatred of Jews and violence against Jews. On the other hand it isn't a strict causal link. America is full of anti-Semites. I know quite a few. But they would never murder anyone. And America is full of haters - and again at least some appear on my Facebook pages. But they aren't mass murderers. I know lots of people that deplore Ted Cruz, I'm one of them, but I came into the same room I'd just ignore him.

(This is best with any politician. Their egos feed on notoriety, so calling attention to them, even making their lives miserable, just throws gasoline on the fire of their egos. They'll be the first to tweet what happened in happy self-satisfaction while the votes and donations keep rolling in. The problem with the Maxine Waters strategy isn't merely that it degrades political discourse, it's fundamentally ineffective as a political maneuver. The only way to hurt politicians is to vote against them. Otherwise they only care if you spell their name right.)

Mass murder is a lot like forest fires. 99.9% of the time the hot exhaust pipe, the dropped cigarette, the flying ember from a campfire just cool down and burn out. It's the .001% of the time when they just catch the dried leaves that they cause the conflagration.

With some of these correlations between constant causes and rare effects there are individual causes we can legislate. Take our various smoking bans, or those related to food additives. But when it comes to speech the problem is tricky: 1. because we believe that freedom of speech is of such superlative value that only a direct and demonstrable cause of violence justifies curtailing it. 2. And because we still live in the macho fantasy of "sticks and stone may break my bones but words will never hurt me." The first provides a legitimate reason to be wary of restricting speech. The second simply provides verbal bullies an excuse to blame those whom they harm for being hurt.

As an American society we still haven't negotiated between the reason for free speech and the excuses for its abuse. And the only way that we can negotiate between these two is to so marginalize hateful speech in the public realm that no politician would dare use it. But we don't.

A significant portion of the American public across the political spectrum not only embraces hateful speech it valorizes it, seeing it as a way of speaking "truth to power." And as listeners when we are confronted with hateful language we double down on the power of hate by posting and reposting words we ourselves would never say. Does it all seem a little vicious? We cheapen the value of free speech by dismissing those who name the viciousness as PC whimps and snowflakes. "Sticks and stones" we chant like 5 year olds, "if you can't stand the heat. . . " we sing.

Whether its the mockery of religion by Bill Maher and the late night comedy shows, or the Islamophobic anti-Semitic conspiracy theories of the alt-Right we've become a nation of exorcists: shouting out the religious demons we think we see in public life and public persons while our supporters stand by and applaud our performance with shouts of "Amen!"

I'll let you in on a secret. The demons aren't out there. Not out there beyond our borders and not out their among our political opponents. They aren't out there in the political parties or out there in the politicians, or the media.

The demons are within us. We are a nation of the demon possessed. We can shout our mockery and curses and our condemnations at others all we want, but the demon simply burrows deeper into our hearts. It feeds on our anger and outrage and grows with our curses and our taunts. And if we think that we personally, because of our righteousness or our innocence, are not possessed then we are fools. Neither Sin nor Satan have a political ideology: they will possess any who live by anger, arrogance, or hate and draw them toward their doom. And they love to chant, "and words will never hurt me."

It may be, of course, that our nation can limp forward, muttering its curses under its breath with each labored step, while its relative freedom of religion is merely damaged but not destroyed by its freedom of speech. But not as long as we hold on to the fantasy of sticks and stones. That fantasy will destroy us as those with bigger verbal sticks and harder verbal stones gradually take over our society, and having subverted the freedom at the root of our freedom destroy the freedoms that are left.

Or we could vote them out of office, using that utterly silent but totally effective power by which alone a nation finds redemption.