Ray and I were getting some dinner today and I got a reminder of the importance of the First Amendment.
As we were waiting for our order to come up, the TV flashed a new story about three officers being killed today in Baton Rouge. Two other patrons (both of whom happened to be African American) had vastly different reactions. One guy basically said “that’s what they get…they’ve been killing us for years.” The other guy says “more violence don’t solve the problem. It’s ignorance like that, that’s what keeps the tension going.”
Right now, it feels like there’s some kind of killing season here in America. It’s Florida. It’s Louisiana. It’s Wisconsin. It’s every state in the union and no one is winning.
The lesson here is this: Even though we have some deep rooted problems to solve, America is still one of the greatest countries in the world. I still feel lucky to have been born here - even with this country’s shaky history with people of color.
This is still a place of freedom and opportunity. Freedom, however, is a scary thing and it is never free. Having it is like opening the floodgates; both the good and bad can get in, but both must be protected. Especially the freedom of expression.
What we all need to understand is that protecting free speech is imperative to preserving the foundation of what makes this country great. It doesn’t matter if you don’t agree with what’s being said. I thought that it was pretty ignorant and cruel that the guy in the restaurant would actually be cheering the fact that those police officers lost their lives. It seemed incredible to me that he couldn’t imagine that these people were loved and had families that would miss them. He couldn’t have known whether or not we’d just lost three of the kind of police officers we need - people that want to serve the community and put their lives on the line everyday to do so. He was looking at the entire thing as it if was some sort of perverse score board and that killing police officers meant that black people were somehow winning.
The great thing about this country is that he’s free to say these things. And the other guy is free to disagree. This is important. If one of us doesn’t have freedom, then none of us do.
I’ve had to get this lesson with the presidential campaign too. It can’t just be what I’d like to hear or points of view that I can support. Donald Trump being able to spew his populist, xenophobic, misogynistic, racist hate speech means that a Pride Parade can happen. It means that a Black Lives Matter or Pro-choice rally can happen. You and I can openly disagree with Trump or President Obama or prayer in schools or whatever else we can think of without fear of being jailed or killed.
That does not happen everywhere on earth. With all the information available on the internet, I don’t think enough people get that. We’re too busy with distractions. I’m convinced that the celebrity news that is even cycled through many “serious” outlets are the pretty, shiny things that keep us preoccupied. Journalist, writers and artists are being jailed, terrorized and killed for expressing themselves (Egypt, Syria, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Russia, Lesotho, Bahrain, Maldives, North Korea, Algeria, China, Belarus, South Korea, Indonesia, Zambia, Sudan, Kyrgyzstan, to name a few places). For blogging (Syria, China). For tweeting (Bahrain). For a Facebook post (Bangladesh).
This is happening in the world. Today. To my American ears, this sounds completely insane. Here, I can tweet and Snapchat and Instagram anything I want. It’s my right. People elsewhere have to be willing to risk their freedom and their lives to do exactly what I’m doing right now.
Freedom of speech must be protected at all costs.
We can’t censor people because we don’t agree with what they say. It’s a slippery slope. Somewhere down the line, someone will decide that they don’t like what we’re saying and the next thing you know, we’re the ones being shut down.
We are so privileged here, that we’ve imagined that our rights have expanded into other areas, like never having to be offended. That’s not in the Constitution. Folks have enjoyed their freedom so long that they’ve turned soft, or their egos are so big that insults or offensive words send them into a tailspin. People here before us existed in much harsher times and managed to keep their head, even when the attacks were institutionally backed.
We cannot react to the madness by dismantling the very things that makes us great. That’s how ignorance wins. It would be like eliminating radio because we find some songs objectionable. We wouldn’t have to hear those songs anymore, true, but we also wouldn’t hear the Beatles or the Rolling Stones or N.W.A.
There would be nothing but silence…but the silence would be deafening.
