The American Constitution, in the First Amendment, guarantees freedom of speech and I, for one, strongly support that freedom. I do not, however, think that the freedom to say anything one wishes regardless of the circumstances or outcome of that expression should be without limits.
Lately, here in the United States, the battle for freedom of expression has taken on some bizarre overtones and, frankly, it has me worried for the health of our democratic system of government and questioning just how free we really are.
One of the things that I’ve noticed is that there are organizations who make loud noises about freedom of expression, claiming that the government and social media conspires to limit theirs. The thing that amazes me, though, is that these same organizations have as their main goal the limitation of the ability of others to freely express themselves. Amazing, too, how many of them have the words “liberty” or ‘patriot’ in their names. Kind of like the countries with “people’s democracy” in their names that don’t help people and don’t have democracy, these organizations espouse liberty for a select few and believe that anyone who disagrees with their warped views is “unpatriotic”.
I’ll give you an example. These people and groups object to any effort to stem their lies about the outcome of elections that they lose, conspiracy theories about just about everything, and denial of the existence of racism, climate change, or anything else, while at the same time pushing to pass laws denying teachers and others the right to express their opinions about the same things. They want the right to spew hate and lies about minorities, immigrants, and transgender people, but want to deny the right of anyone to talk about out country’s checkered past when it comes to the way it has treated Native Americans and people of color.
It’s not just verbal expression that’s protected by the First Amendment, but certain actions. For example, an organization called Moms for Liberty, founded in Florida in 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, in opposition to mask mandates and school closures, demands the right to hold its views while harassing teachers and school administrators who teach things they disagree with. They have even gone so far as to publicly label teachers’ unions as ‘cartels’ and ‘terrorist organizations’ according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nongovernmental organization that monitors hate groups in the United States. While they spew a constant stream of hate and name-calling, they bristle at being called a hate group.
And, they’re not the only ones. All of the extremist groups at both ends of the political spectrum insist on the freedom to say what they want, when they want, regardless of the impact it has on the targets of their vitriol. At the same time, they cry ‘foul’ whenever they’re called out for their hate speech.
I wish there was a simple way to deal with this issue, but, alas, there’s not. Freedom of speech means having to tolerate hearing things that bother you, so the only advice I can offer is listen to whatever is being said with a skeptical mind and don’t let a vicious bunch of malcontents convince you that day is night and up is down as they unfortunately have already done with so many.
Caveat emptor. – NWI
