respect what

the other day i uttered a fairly uncontroversial statement. it went something along the lines of: "rush limbaugh kinda sucks. it'd be great if his next heart attack was fatal." my mom told me i was being mean-spirited. i replied by saying that even though i was being mean-spirited, it was justified given that rush's corpulent form is unpleasing to the eye and his tired, "anti-liberal" ranting and raving is grating on the ears and mind. the world would be a much more pleasant place if he didn't exist, and the tortured and bloody narrative that is human history will not miss him. many, many people less deserving of death have died more painfully and earlier than he will. if i saw him bleeding out on the street, i would do nothing to help him and i would encourage others to do the same. my mom, who is no fan of limbaugh, kind of saw my point. she ended the conversation by saying something about how it is all part of rush's right to free speech, and we shouldn't get too hung up about it.

she's probably right, but that was, without exaggeration, the ten millionth time in my life i'd heard someone use "free speech" in this manner. people seem to be of the opinion that just because we have the right to say more or less whatever we want most of the time, we also need to respect all sorts of inane gibberish and the slack-jawed yokels who produce it.

it goes like this: "i, as a proud america, have the right to speak like a total moron, and you need to passively accept without dispute or comment the deluge of vaguely coherent, probably racist garbage that comes out of my mouth as a blessed instance of god's greatest gift to man, freedom."

this also applies to religion in a similar fashion: "i, as a woefully credulous and unthinking american, accept with uncritical certitude an abundance of ridiculous bronze-age superstitions and hocus pocus that not only informs how i go about my day, but also the political party i favor and the politicians i vote for, and if you so much as cringe when i bring up my belief in an invisible man and his palestinian zombie son and how they will save you from some ancient transgression involving a magical garden and a talking snake (which you had nothing to do with), i will accuse you of being intolerant, narrow-minded and morally bankrupt."

quite some time ago, i was talking with an old room-mate, who is muslim (well, i haven't kept up with him in a while. he may have apostatized--god willing). this was just around the time that one danish newspaper perpetrated some seriously crucial IRL trolling against the international islamic community in the form of a series of comics that lampooned the religion's beloved warlord/prophet. if i recall correctly, fatwas were issued, newspapers burned, embassies attacked. i didn't see what the big deal was. so what--a few crusty old danish guys are making fun of your silly religion. there's no need to do anything drastic like break into one of the guys's house wielding a hatchet and shouting islamic slogans. additionally, freedom of speech and all that.

my room-mate countered by saying that respect was more important than the freedom to speak one's mind. bullshit, i said. the only thing separating us from chimps is that some of us have profound ideas some of the time, and the ability to promulgate those is more important than pretending that the heavily redacted, probably racist stream-of-consciousness rants of some nomadic gangster are not total nonsense.

i guess what i'm trying to say is: keep respect way the fuck away from freedom of speech. people deserve to be offended because everyone's mind contains loads of terrible ideas, and the only way to weed those out is to let them stand in the open. . .and be the constant target of scorn and ridicule. it gives people like me something to do.

+mc