“I have a right to my opinion!”
“Excuse me, I thought this was a free country!”
“What about freedom of speech?”
You may have heard or seen these arguments or some variation
on them when you have witnessed or been a part of a disagreement. I feel that
it is especially prevalent online, so let me explain a few things. Outside of
libel if you’re writing, slander if you’re speaking, revealing classified info
if you have access to it, threatening someone’s life, screaming “Bomb!” in an
airport, and a few other special cases, you do indeed have the right to say
and/or write whatever you desire without intervention from the government. That
last bit is key. Freedom of speech and expression is not, nor should it be,
freedom from others expressing their disagreement with you. It is also not
Freedom from Facts. You can believe the earth is flat. You can spout off about
it, quote the “scientist” who wrote a book about it, and post links from the
Flat Earth Society, but you will still be wrong, and people will tell you that
you are. They are not infringing on your
right to free speech by exercising their own.
Like many rights, it
comes with consequences. If you are posting on Facebook, for instance, you need
to abide by their terms of service, or your content can be removed. In extreme
cases, your account can be terminated. This bit of information happens to be
true all over the internet, and is also likely true of your contract with your
ISP. You can say what you like, but if you don’t abide by the rules, which you
have agreed to follow, you can lose your services. The government isn’t
shutting down your Facebook account because you posted your Hustler spread. Facebook is because you
violated their TOS. Whether one agrees with the restrictions and enforcements
of the terms of service of various websites and ISPs is a different topic. In addition, some people’s opinions of you may
change after you explain why you believe the earth is flat. As a matter of
fact, some people may not even like you anymore. It is not an infringement on
your rights, but it is a consequence of your actions. To put it another way,
you can smoke, but that doesn’t mean that you won’t get cancer.
Also, to paraphrase pretty much every speech from the Voice
of Reason to a Superhero, with great power comes great responsibility. The
freedom to say and believe what you want is power. It is one that much of the
rest of the world doesn’t have. Don’t believe me? Ask a Syrian. When you are
not responsible with that power, you can do terrible, hurtful things. At best,
when you just say things to say them, without expressing your thoughts civilly,
with no desire to check for inaccuracies or logical fallacies, and without
making sure that you are not needlessly hurting someone (sometimes the truth
hurts, but it is necessary to tell it for the Greater Good, in keeping with the
Superhero theme of this paragraph), you look like an idiot. At worst, you
become a Supervillain of the information age, spreading lies and inaccurate information,
engaging in ad hominem attacks, treating the slippery slope argument as if it
were a god, rather than a smokescreen, and just generally contributing to the
serious lack of civil discourse we are experiencing in this country. When
someone finally stands up, takes off his or her glasses, puts on the spandex, very
politely but pointedly makes known all the inaccuracies, and states the truth,
the Supervillain retreats behind free speech, attempting to hide behind the
mantle he or she has just sullied. In the end, the Supervillain is a coward who
yells, “I thought this was a free country!” rather than actually respond to
anything that could challenge him or her. Those lines should be reserved for
times when there is an actual abuse of power, like the infamous pepper spraying
of the college students. They are not to be used when someone merely disagrees
with you.
All that being said, I love comments, and I do hope people
will comment on my blog when they feel compelled to do so; however, if I feel
that what is being said is not respectful to me, other commenters, or anyone
else, I reserve the right to delete your comments. Those are MY terms of
service, in addition to the Blogger TOS. If you possess it, you can take your
vitriol someplace else.
