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.
