“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

                                                Voltaire

A new McCarthyism is loose in America.  Unchecked, its impact on the fabric of our society can be more devastating than any consequences which resulted from the Wisconsin senator’s brief reign of terror.

Today, it is not our right of association which is under attack but a more fundamental First Amendment guarantee … freedom of speech.

In a laudatory effort to temper institutional bias, programs were developed to sensitize people to language, encouraging them reflect on the impact of the words they use.  However, like many other noble projects, this one was prostituted, evolving into an overt attempt to regulate speech.  Positive strides to eliminate group stereotyping and degenderizing our laws have been overshadowed by a “politically correct” speech movement now infecting more than two hundred colleges and most of our governmental, economic and social institutions.

In many secondary schools and universities, places where students should be taught an appreciation of our basic liberties, respect for the rights of others, and encouraged to explore new, however radical, ideas … speech and language prohibitions now constrain such goals. 

In reactive attempts to prove their institution’s sensitivity to specific groups, administrators and educators find it disturbingly easy to ride roughshod over the rights of others who may hold differing opinions … particularly where religion, race, gender and sexual orientation are concerned.  Often, individuals charged with breaking these campus speech codes are summoned before star chambers whose members see nothing wrong in denying accused persons the protections any similar forum of adjudication would guarantee.

This censorship cudgel has also become a threat to faculties who must carefully screen what they say and assign.  The dread of offending, however subtly, students has replaced goals of exploring new and divergent ideas and stimulating intellectual thought.  Several recent incidents at University of New Hampshire bear stark witness to this insane mentality.

However, academe is not alone in this quest to silence discomforting language.  Legislatures nationwide have churned out a steady stream of bills to protect the public from all conceivable ills.  In the process they have extended reasonable restrictions against personal threats, overt intimidation and blatant sexual and racial harassment to now encompass even the merest hint of language or actions which might offend the sensibilities of another.  Tragically, those accused of such violations are often presumed guilty until proven otherwise in yet another tortured manipulation of our legal system.

Advocates of strictly enforcing politically correct speech regulations are quick assert our Constitutional rights are not absolute.  They gloat in reciting the prohibition on falsely yelling, “Fire!”, in a crowded theater.  These thought police then extrapolate that now famous “exception” to justify the countenance of a continuum of situations where the restrictions on liberties is essential for the public good.

They forget, the crowded theater exception unique and narrow.  A more appropriate analogy in defining the limits on constitutional rights would be, the right of one’s fist stops just short of another’s nose. 

Our constitutionally guaranteed rights must be absolute and inviolate … unless they infringe on the rights of others or present a clear and present danger to society as a whole.  Verbally offending the sensibilities of others, however rude, impolite or even upsetting such speech might be, fails to meet either of these litmus tests!

Even cruel epitaphs hurled at others must be tolerated if we’re to avoid another taking step down the slippery slope of censorship.  As is the case with small children taunting one another, when such comments are simply ignored they generally cease.

Our guarantees of free speech, a free press and freedom of peaceable assembly not only afford every citizen the opportunity to have his/her opinions aired publicly, but it concurrently obligates them to respect the same rights when exercised by others, no matter how offensive such ideas or language may be to them or the mainstream of American society. 

We have a choice.  We can either reign in the speech of others to meet some arbitrary standards or as Voltaire said, “defend to the death” the speech of those with whom we may disagree.  While the latter path is often uncomfortable and offensive … the former is an invitation to forever restrict our own freedoms.