Making Fun

A few days ago Congresswoman   Frederica Wilson  declared that people who make fun of members of congress should be prosecuted. Her claim is sufficiently absurd that there is no need to refute it, but there is a need to do something. So I offer the following oldies from various sources:

Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.

Question: How do you tell a real cowgirl from a Democratic Party congresswoman from Florida wearing a cowboy hat?

Answer: Out on the range, the cowgirl is smart enough to get the steer manure only on the outside of her boots.

We have the best Congress money can buy.

An embarrassed fellow did not want to let his elderly mother know that he was a congressman. So he told her he got his living playing the piano in a whorehouse.  

It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.

See you in court.

Nuts

“The Man who cannot afford to Speak his Thought is a Certificate of the Meanness of the Community in which he Resides”  -  Robert Ingersoll

Even in this country protected by the First Amendment and a with a strong tradition of upholding freedom of expression, there have been continuing attempts over time  and often successful ones to restrict or stifle free speech. Most of them fall into one or two classes – direct suppression by violence, mob action,  or law and suppression through intimidation by social pressures and threats of financial consequences or ostracism.  Blasphemy and obscenity statutes, Wilson’s imprisonment of dissenters during World War I,  and beatings and tarring and featherings of unpopular speakers are historical examples of the former.  The pressures on non-religious people in universities, most small towns, and many large ones well into the 20^th  Century not to let their opinions be known  are examples of the latter. 

The serious threats and attacks of the present time come from the American left.  It is fairly clear from things which have been said and written that many leftists actively and seriously want to prohibit discussion or advocacy of political or ethical opinions they dislike and that many more are at least willing for it to happen.  They try both methods, but apart from some college campuses and a few towns such as Berkeley where authorities cooperate with gangs of thugs to shut down speech and speakers the authorities don’t like, this is still a free enough country that the direct approach is not going to work very often. They are having much more success with the second method.  The canons and restrictions of so-called political correctness have become the rule in government, the traditional media, and many large companies and organizations of all sort  and have metastasized  throughout much of society to the point that  in a recent poll 58% of Americans said they were afraid to say what they really think.

In a column a few days age,  Robert Tracinski emphasized that social intimidation works only of a person allows himself to be intimidated.  If one stands up and says he does not give a damn if some or all  on the left sneer at him, call him some sort of “ist”,  lie about him, mischaracterize what he says, or label him as uncool, there is really nothing they can do about it. People need to realize that and enjoy the sense of liberation it can bring.

Of course there are people such as employees of Google, commentators at ESPN, actors, untenured professors,  and people with jobs  in  governments or many large corporations who would risk damage to their careers if they were caught deviating from the party line. One should admire those who dissent while understanding why many do not.  That leaves the rest of us (and especially the retired among us whose livelihoods the would be thought police literally cannot damage at all)  with the task to say what we think whenever we find it appropriate without worry or self-censorship  and  to be especially vigorous in opposing and repelling  the left’s attempts intimidation.

There is no need to be too rude or vulgar about  one’s opposition, just firm and clear and harsh enough. In December of 1944 German forces had units of the 101^st Airborne Division surrounded in Bastogne in Belgium.  Under a flag of truce two German officers and a couple of enlisted men brought  General Anthony McAuliffe, the American commander, an insulting written demand for surrender. McAuliffe’s  written reply was the one word  “nuts”.  As the Germans left the American positions, two American soldiers explained in German and English  to the German officers who were not up on American slang that it meant “go to hell.”  That is about right here for the lefties. Nuts to them.

Hate Speech Defined?

Some on the left have been trying to suppress discourse in various places on the basis of a desire to prevent  what they call hate speech.   Several writers have pointed out that hate speech does not exist as a legal category of expression and is not among  the types of declarations such as shouting “fire” in a theater or inciting a mob to go down the street and murder someone which are not legally protected by the First Amendment.  These observations are true, and attempts to ban or censor statements as hate speech are clearly unconstitutional. Still it is interesting to consider what the term might mean if specifically defined  and thus perhaps to figure out  precisely what  it is these leftists want to ban.

  It could mean  any expression of actual hatred of someone or something, but most people agree there are people  and things such as, say, Soviet Russia, Adolph Hitler, Bin Laden, and slave traders (at least the non-Arab ones) which are deserving of hatred. Besides most of the people carrying on  about hate speech seem quite uninhibited about letting the world  know about all the people and  things they hate. So that can’t  be  what is meant.

It could mean being vulgarly offensive or demeaning to an individual or a group of people as with racial, ethic, religious, or sexual slurs or insults.  But many  anti-hate speech leftists do this all the time to Christians, white men, and traditionally minded married heterosexuals and  especially to blacks, Hispanics, women, Lesbians, and homosexual  men who hold political opinions they dislike. So that can’t be what they want to ban  either.

  It could mean insulting hyperbole as when one might say the secret service people protecting Mrs. Clinton had to worry about a house falling on her from the sky or that Barack Obama could not string two coherent sentences together without his teleprompter. However leftists often see nothing wrong with things such as claiming that George W. Bush was retarded or that Trump is Darth Vader without the deep voice. So that can’t be it. 

It could mean expressing wishes for someone’s suffering or demise as when a person might say the republic would be well served if Chuck Schumer fell in the Potomac and Pelosi drowned while unsuccessfully trying to save him. But again some leftists say this sort of thing all the time about  people such as Trump, Limbaugh, and Bush.  So that too is not the answer.

It could mean simple excessively bad manners and rudeness, but no one who has attentively observed recent activities around the country  since November could see much reason to think  leftists had compunction about that.

One could go on with other imagined possibilities, but the point is clear enough. What the term “hate speech” means, to the extent it means anything, is speech which strongly disagrees with the beliefs or offends the sensibilities of some  leftists. It is a textbook’s example of what the objectivists call an anti-concept and of the sort of language Orwell warned against.  It should be unmasked as such, and efforts by leftists to suppress free discourse and expression should be opposed by all liberally minded people.

There certainly is hateful speech – assertions and opinions which are  irrational, insulting and even disgusting and inhumane. The right way to deal with them is with rational disputation, refutation, and  appropriate ridicule. This  is the same medicine we should dispense to the hate speech crowd.   Then remind them it’s a free country and tell them to go to hell.