No, what it supported was my POV that reasonable people were not dissenting.
Reasonable, thoughtful people were indeed self censoring. I know I was self censoring. And I was advising others to self censor. But the point was that the "Umbrage Machine" was suppressing others, not self, as well. And that we as a people are worse off for the censorship.
<< <snip> The right to go too far and the right to put it badly may not seem like terribly crucial rights, but they are. Opening your mouth is not an exact science, and it's harder to do well if you're looking over your shoulder at the same time. Consider an analogy from libel law. The constitution protects some false statements from libel suits, not for their own sake but to give attempts to tell the truth some necessary room for error. For similar reasons, a healthy political culture has to be able to shrug off some stupid or even offensive remarks. If your main concern is not to say anything offensive or subject to misinterpretation, a lot will go unsaid that is true or even possibly wise. Or at least amusing. Bill Maher has been watching what he says lately, and the nation is poorer for it.
If you don't watch what you say, you risk getting run over by the Great American Umbrage Machine. The U.S. political system protects freedom of speech from formal suppression better than any other nation on earth. But American culture is less tolerant of aberrant views and behavior than many others, and that tolerance has eroded further since Sept. 11. And as conservative culture warriors like to point out—or, indeed, complain (as in the political correctness debate)—a society's norms are set by the culture as much as by the political system. In a country like Great Britain, the legal protections for free speech are weaker than ours, but the social protections are stronger. They lack a First Amendment, but they have thicker skin and a greater acceptance of eccentricity of all sorts.
What gets suppressed when you're watching what you say is not formal political dissent or important revelations about government malfeasance. Those things you say with care in any event. It's the lesser criticisms of our government and our leaders, the odd speculative comment that you're not even sure of yourself, the joke that may fall flat. But these are important too. My New Year's resolution for 2002 is to stop listening to my Inner Ashcroft and to be less careful about what I say. How about you? |
