Monthly Archives: January 2022

Freedom of Speech Extremism

Why do I still watch Bill Maher?

The guy used to be interesting but now he is just Archie Bunker channeling Andy Rooney. In fact he went out of his way in his 1/28 episode to opine about how he has not changed; it’s the world that has changed. Sorry Bill, but you’re like those guys who lamented that Star Wars was ruined by Jar Jar Binks. But if Jar Jar doesn’t capture your imagination like the Ewoks did when you were a kid, it’s not Star Wars that has changed, it’s you. And you, Bill have become a surly curmudgeon ranting about what a waste space travel is, how stupid superhero movies are, how dangerous Muslims are, and how silly Progressives are.

But that was just my own little rant. What I really want to talk to you about in this installment is Freedom of Speech. In that same episode, Bill Maher spoke with Ira Glasser, former Executive Director of the ACLU about the new policies put in place at that organization. Their outrage was because the ACLU has said that it will no longer defend certain kinds of speech that are offensive.

Bill and Ira insist upon a non-negotiable, absolutist, all or nothing view of free speech. As Bill said:

“you can’t have it [freedom of speech] if there are exceptions.”

And later, Ira stated:

“the only way to do that is to defend speech no matter what the content is.”

Sorry but they are attempting to convince their audience to accept a fallacious false choice proposition regarding Freedom of Speech. According to them, if you impose any limits at all, you can’t have free speech. This is nonesense.

I can understand that Bill Maher, like so many other media talkers, has a personal vested self-interest in preserving their total immunity to say whatever they like without fear of repercussion. Therefore it is not surprising that most media pundits who express and create public opinion about free speech, strongly espouse a similar extremist view.

But no right is all or nothing. None can be. Of course, I would not want to see the ACLU become the champion of snowflakes, but they also should not protect what is clearly dangerous and harmful speech. And yes, speech can be deadly. The Free Speech false choice is what hate-mongers and misinformation-peddlers use to convince others to defend them.

We have to say enough already.

There are clear lines of acceptable societal norms at the extreme. And when speech crosses those clear lines, we can all recognize that and we should not have large, powerful, and influential organizations defending the indefensible. This absolutist, false choice position is the same one presented to protect gun rights. If we ban even one gun, they tell us, our Second Amendment rights are gone. Those who support unfettered Capitalism and wealth accumulation frighten us with the same false choice. If you impose any limit, any restrictions, then Capitalism is dead and you’re own right to make billions has been taken away. If we allow any abortions, then we must allow all abortions. The list of similar examples could go on indefinitely.

When it comes back to Free Speech, we can and must have reasonable limits and the ACLU should not defend hateful, damaging, and dangerous speech that crosses clear lines. To do so makes it complicit and undermines its mission to protect free speech.

Other countries like Canada have far more sane, reasonable limits on free speech and they are hardly a propaganda-controlled state.

We don’t accept false choices when they are used to justify abandoning reasonable limits on other rights, we should not accept them when used to advocate for an anything-goes position on free speech.

Bill, you’re simply wrong yet again. But no, I don’t think you’ve crossed the line and you should be able to continue spouting self-interested false choice arguments. Just as I should continue to have to right to push back. But that doesn’t mean there should be no limits at all nor that setting any limits at all would end freedom of speech.

But if you use your platform to suggest that “someone” should exercise their Second Amendment Rights to “deal with” anyone who disagrees with you, I hope the ACLU will decline to defend you.

Spider-Man Gets It

After being snowed in for a week, I finally got out to see Spider-Man: No Way Home (see here). It was a super fun action movie. But as with all good writing, it also made me think interesting thoughts, such as what makes people bad, redemption, and the effect of superpowers our real world.

The following contains movie spoilers. If you have not seen it yet, and think you might like to, close this article and come back after you’ve checked it out!

With sympathy to those of you who have little patience for superhero stuff, I’ll set up the story really simply. A group of supervillains are brought into our universe by accident. They immediately do what supervillains do; they unleash their terrible powers to create widespread havoc and death.

Spiderman does find a way to send them back to their own universes. Despite intense pressure to do so, and despite the horrible threat that these supervillains pose, he cannot bring himself to effectively deport them to wreak havoc in their old universes. So instead, he tries desperately to help each of them to become better people who can live peacefully in any universe.

Each of these supervillains has a different background and unique challenges that contribute to their evil behavior. Since I don’t have the room in this article to talk about all of them, I’ll focus on just one. That supervillain is called Electro and he is played in the movie by Jamie Foxx.

Electro has the ability to literally siphon electricity from electrical grids and to fire it in lightning-like bolts and bursts. His destructive power is fantastic. But when Spider-Man manages to destroy his electrical emitter, Electro immediately becomes your uncle. Suddenly he is no longer a crazed and maniacal supervillain, but a pretty ordinary next door neighbor. He is no more crazed and maniacal than your typical muffler-repairman and just about as dangerous. In fact, once his power is taken away, it’s hard to imagine that he was ever any kind of threat.

This sudden and dramatic transformation isn’t as unlikely as it may seem at first. Superpowers do actually exist in our real world, and they do induce the same kind of deadly behavior in many otherwise harmless people. Take those superpowers away, and those real-world supervillains are just your uncle, your neighbor, or your muffler-repairman.

These real-world superpowers most typically take the form of public or private office, wealth, or guns.

High offices are in limited supply. And great wealth is still relatively hard to come by. So while dangerous, people with those superpowers are somewhat rare. While they do exist and can do great damage, there can never be too many Donald Trump or Lex Luthor type supervillains in the world. And also, these supervillains are somewhat constrained by the precariousness of their positions of power.

But anyone today can buy a semi-automatic weapon and become a real-world supervillain that rivals Electro in destructive power. And relative to the rich and the office-holders, many of these people have few constraints that restrain their unleashing of that power – at least one time.

As Spider-Man often repeats, “with great power comes great responsibility.” There are certainly some, like Spider-Man, who take that to heart and strive to use their power, their office, their wealth, or their gun, to make the world a better place.

But it is also true to observe that “absolute power corrupts absolutely.” And as Spider-Man: No Way Home shows us, there are many who are intoxicated by great power and who, like Electro, would be perfectly decent citizens if not for that power.

So yea, guns.

Guns grant anyone a superpower. By making guns so easily available, we have created a nascent army of actual and potential supervillains.

Many rationalize that guns are not the problem. But that is simply wrong. As Spider-Man: No Way Home shows us, the means to destroy is exactly the problem. When people who can be drawn toward violence are allowed to have guns, it’s like giving Electro his superpower back. Without that power, he is not particularly dangerous. But with that power in his hands, he cannot help but become a supervillain.

For too many people, the lure to use their superpower can be overwhelming. If you could shoot lightning bolts, how could you not? You possess a voice. Are you never frustrated enough to shout out in anger with it? The mere possession of a superpower fundamentally inverts every calculation. With guns, your muffler-repair guy becomes a mass shooter. Without guns, well he’s just your muffler-repair guy.

Electro could not both possess a device of mass destruction and not use it. Modern guns grant less flashy but similarly destructive superpowers. We should not be so foolish as to give everyone access to them. Giving everyone access to Twitter is dangerous enough.

Spider-Man realized this. The weapons are the problem, not the people who possess them.

Spider-Man gets it. Why can’t we?