From Sponsor #2: Danni, a friend and sponsor poses this question-comment from the context of a Christian and world citizen.
'I do not understand for the life of me why anyone feels that their words are more important that another's.'
What is it that makes us believe our words carry more weight than other peoples' words or expressions? When we do defer to another, why is it so often a person from within our 'in-group' or from within a zone of acceptable difference? What marks the boundary between tolerance and caution in discussion and action?
As with every thoughtful question posed, immediately more questions than answers arise.
Now we saw in National Socialist Party v. Skokie, 432 U.S. 43 (1977) a striking situation take place, with the ACLU suing on their behalf. Eventually the NSPA won in the Supreme Court through a defense of the First Amendment. What does such a stance say about the values of free speech versus freedom to live free from fear and harassment in America?
I travel around every day here in Jerusalem and I hear and see anger and intolerance expressed vocally and physically, from group to group, with none spared from these caustic and constant volley of insults, stereotypes, and threats. When I arrive in the morning at Yad Vashem, for a day of study and reflection, I feel the same heaviness of an ugly history as many of the other visitors to the museum.
If I assert a doctrine of peace and non-violence in Israel, and soon, in Geneva, do my words automatically have more gravity because they reflect the ideal towards which we claim to strive? If so, then this would answer my friend's question. My words have more weight because they are... right. But that logic is the first step on the same worn path which each charismatic leader and true believer treads in the march towards seizing public sway. If enough people agree, does that make it right?
Perhaps it is the hope that our words will end the daily bouts of expected and unexpected violence choking us and our children, those unpredictable moments of ferocity which threaten to end everything, the good and the not so good. Perhaps such a hope is why we continue to shout antiquated or contemporary views, each attempting to drown out another's voice.
But in voice, there is a freedom. Let us continue to shout until we are hoarse and breathless.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
"No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity." -- James Madison, Federalist No. 10
ReplyDeleteI'm a believer in John Stuart Mill's marketplace of ideas, that free speech helps foster the best ideas and dialogue. Then again, we can also protest in our own way other's speech. If the Nazis can march in Skokie, then demonstrators have the right to be there to protest. If even public hate speech is outlawed, it will be difficult to define what is inappropriately offensive but not strictly legally obscene, seditious, "fighting words" and so on. After all, Republicans, the supposed champions of small government, have been fighting for 20 years for a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning. Do people have the right to call Obama a Nazi? Yea, but I also have the right to call them lunatics.
But when it comes to opinions in general, how does morality play out? Saying "slavery is morally wrong and should be abolished" is a given today but in 1860 in America that was a radical statement. Is it possible for something to be moral in one culture or time but not others, then how is morality not arbitrary?