It’s not as if death hasn’t filled the airwaves enough this week, and now here we are at 9-11, truly a day of sorrow in our lives.
I just finished an interview on The Ed Dean Show, talking about free speech, with the backdrop of politically driven acts of violence and the aftermath roles of online posts. We still have not learned to use these amazing tools properly when huge and tragic events occur. We must be better.
Sadly, I read a post by a county commissioner friend earlier where he rightly proclaimed he is deleting multiple friends based on their ugly posts. He is right to do so. We all should. While as an advocate for free speech and your right to say most anything you’d like, there still are consequences for idiocy, even if just being unfriended. We don’t have to read that which we find offensive.
We will be forced to parse, however, in the public arena, the vast difference between real injury (think libel and slander) and hurting someone’s feelings when it comes to public regulation of speech. Europe is wrestling with this now, and it looks as uncomfortable as it should be. I’m recalling the childhood retort, “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me.”
Wisdom can be found in many places. We just have to pursue it. “In 1927, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis had an answer: “The remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”
Government has a tendency to overreact-too many politicians seek attention and are driven by “We must do something”. The marketplace of ideas has a way of sorting things out if the issues stay fresh in public memory. I fear, just as we seem to have forgotten how we felt in 9-12, that the hot issues of today will simmer as tomorrow always brings new ones. I’m recalling we lost freedoms after 9-11 and we just accepted it. I pray that the issues that evolve from 9-10 do not lead to the same results.
