NEVER LET IT BE SAID THAT YOU CAN NEVER LET IT BE SAID

“Shut up! I don’t want to hear it! I’m leaving!” This is how we apply the concept of “cancel culture” in our personal relationships. Unfortunately, it is not very conducive to good relationships. When we shut out communication entirely, no problem gets solved. If we only listen to what we want to hear, no problem gets solved. I can tell you from experience that many people have said things that I find offensive and repugnant. However, the First Amendment of the United States Constitution states that they have the right to say it. It states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Here is the bottom line. No baby is born with an opinion or a belief. Everything we think was either indoctrinated into us by our family, community, religion, schools, culture, or media exposure, or we drew conclusions from our experiences, which could be detrimental. Everything that anyone thinks, every attitude, opinion, or belief, is up for debate, and debate is one of the ways we settle our differences. If we cut someone off just because we don’t like what they are saying, especially if it is done within any form of media, we are on a very slippery slope. If there are groups that say things we don’t like or disapprove of, we can choose not to listen. However, what we most need to do is grant them permission to express their views and then counter with a debate. Never let it be said that you can never let it be said, but never let it be said that anything you say cannot be challenged.

I can tell you that I paid little attention to Charlie Kirk before his assassination a few weeks ago, and I can confirm that I have seen clips of his interviews and speeches in which he made statements that I found appalling. However, he had the right to say them. I can also tell you that I’ve seen clips of him saying things that I considered to be ethical and appropriate. No one should ever have silenced him, neither a deranged individual nor a government. Now, in the wake of his murder, and before, we have a government pressuring companies to cancel and suspend the words of comedians because they don’t like what they are saying. Whether it is on one side or the other, shutting down commentary puts us on a very slippery slope, especially when the government is doing it, because if it comes from any branch of the government, it means that the government itself is violating the Constitution on which the governance of our country is based. The last entity that should be violating the Constitution is our own government, and look within the words of the First Amendment above. It includes freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and the right to peacefully assemble and petition the government regarding our grievances. If the government ignores one part, will it also ignore other parts? That could include infringement on freedom of religion, freedom of the press, or the right to protest, none of which we should be willing to lose.

I happen to find Donald Trump a morally, socially, and politically repugnant person. He has said very little that I have ever approved of, and that includes going way back to his first appearance in the media forty years ago or more. However, there have been times when I have said, “I hate it when I agree with him,” and I say that because I find his behavior repulsive.  Nonetheless, I thought it was an infringement on his freedom of speech when he was kicked off Twitter. I despise practically every word that comes out of his mouth, and I know a great deal of it is blatant lies, but he still has a right to say it. Unfortunately, the courts would have to decide if freedom of speech also applies to lying. The question is, is lying free speech? In advertising, it isn’t. The Federal Trade Commission enforces truth-in-advertising laws that prohibit businesses from making deceptive or misleading claims in their advertising. Apparently, those laws don’t apply to campaign ads. However, I think they should. It’s one thing to say what you think, it’s entirely another to deliberately mislead someone, especially the public as a whole. What I never saw Charlie Kirk do (that I’m aware of) or Jimmy Kimmel or Stephen Colbert, for that matter, is lie or threaten. The latter two say/said things about the right that the right doesn’t like, and Kirk said things about the left that the left doesn’t like. Stating an unpopular opinion is very different from lying, and shutting anyone down for expressing an opinion that we find offensive should never happen, especially under pressure from the government, no matter what they say.

We have become too oriented toward being politically correct in this country. A genuine atmosphere of political correctness would be the truth and nothing but the truth. However, the truth itself can be offensive. I had a friend, before she passed away, who used to say, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall piss you off.” Whether we get pissed off about it or not, the truth is the most important commodity we have. Yet, we have become so attuned to preventing people from offending us that we forget they have the right to offend us. Besides, offense has to do with what we think that counters what they think. So, if we become offended, it’s because they have broken our internal rules. They haven’t broken theirs, and all internal rules are subject to change. All beliefs, opinions, and attitudes are subject to change because the only person in charge of our beliefs, opinions, and attitudes is us. We have no control over what another person thinks or does, no matter how repugnant we think it is, and we have no right to try to control what they say. If we don’t like it, we can challenge it. We can tell them we are offended, but our offense has nothing to do with their intent, which could have been benign or based on ignorance; it has to do with our internal rules about what is and is not offensive, and that varies from person to person.

We are all indoctrinated into our beliefs, and the most important thing to understand about any belief is that no belief can be the ultimate truth, even if it is based on some truth. Unfortunately, the definition of belief gets confused with faith. Having faith in something can apply to many aspects of life. I can have faith that the doctor I’m seeing is competent and stays current with medical research. That might not be true, but when I see the doctor, I approach the visit with that faith, unless the doctor proves me wrong. I can have faith that when I drive, the vast majority of other drivers will not cross into my lane and will, in general, follow the road rules. That’s not the same as believing something. We can believe a lie, and we can believe a fantasy. For instance, if we fantasize that someone will attack us, even if we haven’t been threatened or placed in any overtly dangerous situation, the belief in that fantasy produces anxiety, and we respond physically to the fantasy as though it were real. Beliefs and opinions can change, and if you think back, you can probably identify times when your beliefs or opinions changed. You may have converted from one religion to another. You may have experienced something that challenged your belief and helped you see through it, realizing that you had an erroneous one. You may have been in a conversation with someone who said something that caused you to think, “I never thought of it that way, and yeah, they made a good point.” However, if we disregard what others are saying, we may never have that experience. We may remain stuck in a belief system or with an opinion that is detrimental not only to us but also to others. We must understand that free and open dialogue, even if it is repugnant to us, is one of the ways we learn, and sometimes learn a better way. For instance, I was raised in a very conservative and authoritarian church. In truth, it was a very judgmental religion that taught that only our church was right and every other Christian denomination or other religion was wrong. I was told that I would go to hell because I accepted a scholarship to a Presbyterian college. Yet, attending that college was one of the best things that has ever happened to me, as I was taught to think for myself. One day, during my freshman year, I was arguing that something was a sin. I don’t remember what. A Presbyterian pre-ministerial student asked me, “Why do you believe that?” I said, “Because the Bible says so.” He asked, “Where do you find that in the Bible?” I quoted him chapter and verse (and again, I don’t remember what it was). He asked, “How do you know that’s what it means?” I said, “Because the preacher said so.” He asked, “How do you know the preacher is right?” I said, “Because he is ordained by God.”  He asked, “How do you know he is ordained by God?” By this time, I was furious because I had no argument left. However, I learned an extremely important lesson: to think for myself and not believe something just because someone tells me I must believe it. Because I began thinking for myself, I abandoned the religion of my childhood, but not entirely, as there were passages taught about love and acceptance that I retain. I began to see other passages of the Bible in a different light. Perhaps when we hear someone saying anything that we find offensive or wrong, what we need to do, rather than demanding that only our side is right, is ask them similar types of questions. If we do that, and if we are also willing to be questioned, we may find ourselves within a middle ground instead of on the extreme.

The above brings me to a lesson learned by Siddhartha, who was to become the Buddha. The story goes that one day, he was meditating on the banks of the river, and as he was meditating, he heard a boat floating downstream. On the boat, a father was teaching his son how to tune a sitar (similar to a guitar). The father instructed his son, “If you tighten the string too tightly, it will snap. If you leave it too lose it, it will not play in harmony.” This was the moment when Siddhartha realized that the path to enlightenment lies in the middle way, not on either extreme. This is a lesson our whole country needs to learn today, because both sides have tightened the string too tightly, and unfortunately, we are on the verge of snapping. In today’s age, with so many of us on social media, we forget what the algorithms do. In 2020, Netflix aired a documentary titled The Social Dilemma. One of the things they pointed out in that documentary was an experiment in which people were asked to open social media accounts. One group clicked on mostly conservative, right-wing posts, and the other clicked on mostly liberal, left-wing posts. What they discovered was that the longer these folks were online, the more extremist content they received, whether it was conservative or liberal. So, the algorithms began shutting out any argument from the other side. This is one of the reasons for the polarization occurring in the United States today, which is likely also happening in other countries. When we are polarized, we don’t listen to anything the other side has to say, and if we do that, no matter what our beliefs are, we begin to see ourselves and our society from a distorted perspective. What we must do, regardless of our position on the political spectrum, is approach what we see in the mainstream media, alternative media, and social media with a critical eye and a healthy dose of skepticism. Even if we don’t like what they are saying, even if it goes against our morals and values, they have the right to express it. Everyone does. If we start shutting people down just because they are not saying what is congruent with our opinions and beliefs, we are, to quote an old saying, throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If you don’t understand that metaphor, it means that if you throw out everything, you throw the good out with the bad. You want to keep the baby, but get rid of the bathwater. Too often these days, we are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. We are canceling out anything the other side has to say, thereby missing any points of agreement or the opportunity to question them and engage in a productive discourse. Trust me, nobody agrees on everything, and nobody disagrees on everything. Things like kicking Trump off Twitter, canceling The Late Show, and suspending Jimmy Kimmel are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It is very dangerous to shut down whatever anyone has to say unless it is an overt threat to harm people; in such cases, we need to act in the service of protecting those who need to be protected. The response in support of free speech from each of us needs to be, “I may find what you say repulsive and offensive. I may let you know if it offends me. I may challenge you and argue with you about your opinion, but as long as you are not threatening anyone, I will wholeheartedly defend your right to say it.”