I'm Against Silencing People Even When They Are My Enemies

The Rude Pundit sums up how I feel about silencing others, only with way more cussing: http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2007/04/firing-don-imus-stinks-no-no-for-rude.html. Somehow, RP knows just how to use the right cuss word at the right moment to make his point more effectively.

In my opinion, it is a virtue to tolerate speech, even hateful or uncivil speech. I do not have to listen to it or agree with it, but I do not want to go down the road of silencing people. That does no good at all.

In this whole Imus affair, there is so much hypocrisy going around that you need hip boots to wade through it. O&A, my favorite shock jocks, are rightly nervous about their own careers because of the chilling effect of Sharpton’s protests. They featured that idiot Sean Hannity on the program this morning who spoke out against silencing people. He is afraid that right wing pundits will be targeted next. Didn’t right wing pundits work tirelessly to get Ward Churchill fired from his job because of some of his statements? Wasn’t it nutjob Catholic League Bill what’s his name that got some bloggers run off John Edwards’ campaign and who threatened O&A? Now that the worm is on the other foot and the shoe has turned, wingnuts are all about “freedom of speech”.

The Imus affair isn’t about “freedom of speech”. Constitutional rights pertain only to government action (except in the case of the 13th Amendment), and a private individual cannot abridge another individuals right to free speech. The government didn’t silence Imus. It was the work of mindless corporations exercising their prerogatives in the market. The Imus affair is about an ethos that fights disagreement by silencing the disagreeable speaker instead of fighting speech with speech. It takes a lot of work to change an ethos. The wingnuts, the snarky knee jerk progressives, and everyone else has to eschew efforts to silence others, not just when it is happening to their side.

Let’s see if Sean Hannity doesn’t target some poor schmendrick for his speech in the next year.