Sticks and Stones…

I have a theory about when America started going wrong. It was fifteen years ago or so, with the hanging of a Soviet-style message banner in the lunchroom/gym of my childrens' elementary school. It proclaimed, "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will crush my soul".

I always found this statement a bit ridiculous, the misguided attempt by "educators" to feminize my boys, make them more "sensitive" to the feelings of others -- and more manageable by authorities seeking to minimize friction and hurt feelings among their delicate, narcissistic charges. With old-fashioned physical schoolyard violence permanently discredited as acceptable human behavior, it was time to work on our words. Don’t get me wrong – I am against bullying like the next guy, but I believe that you have to develop a tougher hide to insults, real and imagined, instead of hyper-sensitizing kids into always feeling on the verge of victimhood.

I shrugged my shoulders at this well-meaning (if somewhat silly) banner, one of many such instances of attempted social engineering at our left-leaning suburban private day school. However, I did not fully appreciate the insidiousness of the message behind the phrase on the banner. While, in the context of its environment, I took these words literally as an “anti-bullying” plea, I failed to understand that avoidance of “words… crush[ing] my soul” was a core basis of the teaching ideology of that school, and of the liberal educational establishment in America in general. Such “thought leaders” in academia, media and politics essentially posit that a person’s discomfort with words, whether directed against their personality or a cherished political position, can be good reason for speech suppression and sometimes, political reeducation or sensitivity training and repentance. Because, you see, being judgmental of the values or actions of others may "crush the soul" of the hypersensitive and the righteously entitled just as readily as calling them ugly or stupid, and conveys unacceptable prejudice or bias, requiring suppression and remedy.

The result: Western society has lost its ability to argue out ideas and thereby attempt to synthesize relatively unified positions, thereby making it unable to defend itself against those who would advocate evil,  malevolent or stupid ideas. The progressive elite argue today that, "Displaying moral or religious judgement of right and wrong is prejudicial and hurtful, and anyone can be criticized for their actions, right?  Such speech deserves suppression and condemnation." This resulting penchant towards suppression of critical speech obliterates the white blood cells capable of protecting society from bad ideas or worse. Lacking the ability to identify and debate matters  deprives society of the ability to rally the will to combat its would-be destroyers.

Just read the headlines. We live in a world  increasingly gone mad, led by a United States of America  that increasingly looks and thinks like Western Europe, a feckless grouping of countries that lacks  the confidence or moral will to confront, verbally or physically,  the forces of the eventual demise of its culture, values and freedoms. Indeed, in order to attempt to lower the odds of such confrontation, we see the ever-tightening of the bounds of permissible speech on college campuses, and in the media and society in general. Moral equivalency and cowardice permits no one the ability to be absolutely right, and fear of stirring the hornet’s nest with words leads to repression of speech and honest debate:

--ISIS, Al Qaeda, Al Nusra, the Taliban, Boko Haram, AQIM and other forms of Islamic extremism propagate, resulting in the destruction of societies, beheadings and slavery of “the other”, and the genocide of Middle Eastern Christianity, as well as of their own. But address Islamic extremism as a disease emanating from Islam, perhaps requiring a rethinking by Muslims of Islam?  Whoa, whoa, whoa,  how about the Spanish Inquisition five hundred years ago or violent, God-inspired wars in the Bible three thousand years ago? Anyway, you can’t say “Islamic extremism” any more than you can use the “N-word” – it just exposes you as a racist, and possibly constitutes hate speech which should be banned (as hate speech is banned in Europe), the First Amendment be damned. These Islamist seeds of violence sprouting in the US and in Europe? Treat the symptom gingerly, avoid thinking about the cause, even while brave leaders like President el-Sisi of Egypt calls out the disease within Islam, for all to hear.

-- A caterer’s right to exercise his freedom of religion and abide by millennia of religious practice that shaped our civilization by refusing to cater a gay marriage, or an internet executive’s support for a constitutional proposition to forbid gay marriage in California? Instant public vilification and death threats, lost jobs, a cause for political re-education in the schools to eradicate this form of “prejudice”, etc….  

--The rabid abuse and forced, politically correct craven apologies, in separate incidents, by democratic party presidential candidate Martin O’Malley and Smith College President Kathleen McCartney for their respective  refinement  to the shibboleth “Black lives matter” with the seemingly non-objectionable, “All lives matter”.

--Any discussion about personal responsibility,  violent crime and incarceration rates in the American black community – wring hands, scream racism, ignore violent crime statistics and dysfunctional family structures, and then exclusively blame the police for not being sensitive enough to the communities they are protecting -- as urban violent crime rates surge ever higher.

Instead of exploring these issues openly and showing the willingness to condemn certain behavior as bad, evil, destructive or simply not a great idea,  we focus on empty slogans, commercial boycotts and calls for removal and repression of open debate in order to avoid “offending” those in our society who are most thin-skinned or who advocate the most extreme, anti-social behavior. The seeds of our destruction as a free, democratic society are found in our  inability to openly debate these issues, making it far more difficult to (more or less) unify society to confront social ills or those intent on upending our lives in the name of values anathema to our own. The underlying concepts of non-judgementalism and moral equivalency ensconced in that gymnasium banner act to repress the speech and debate that we need as a society to survive. 

I was taught in law school, many moons ago, that freedom of speech is virtually unconditional under our Constitution, and that the remedy to bad speech is not suppression, but more speech. I am very proud that my alma mater, the University of Chicago, has made itself an exception in academia and published a very clear-eyed statement of principles on freedom of expression, declaring that,

“’[E]ducation should not be intended to make people comfortable, it is meant to make them think. Universities should be expected to provide the conditions within which hard thought, and therefore strong disagreement, independent judgment, and the questioning of stubborn assumptions, can flourish in an environment of the greatest freedom’…. As a corollary to the University’s commitment to protect and promote free expression, members of the University community must also act in conformity with the principle of free expression. Although members of the University community are free to criticize and contest the views expressed on campus, and to criticize and contest speakers who are invited to express their views on campus, they may not obstruct or otherwise interfere with the freedom of others to express views they reject or even loathe. To this end, the University has a solemn responsibility not only to promote a lively and fearless freedom of debate and deliberation, but also to protect that freedom when others attempt to restrict it.”

Unfortunately, the American public, led by its education establishment at all levels, the press, our politicians and the courts, have all but abandoned the primacy of our constitutional protections, and our rights wither away before our eyes – freedom of speech being the most important one among them.

Believers in the First Amendment of the Constitution would advocate that sticks and stones may break my bones but words will make me stronger. Instead, we increasingly live with the sentiment born on that school gymnasium banner. In the end, when our bones ARE broken by those who abuse our liberty, we will realize that the crushing of our souls may turn out to be the last thing to have worried about.