Lucian and Mary Brown: Untitled [man giving speech in rain] (c. 1950)

"I just wonder why."

This country was founded upon the ideal of Free Speech. In practice, it has always struggled to draw the distinction between Free Speech and Loose_Talk. Free Speech suggests that one might feel free to say anything they care to say to or about anybody. Civil discourse, of course, demands a few dampers be placed upon the full and, dare I suggest, free expression of observations. Likewise, simple civility might also suggest that certain speech be squelched lest someone take offense or choose to be offensive. Mark Twain suggested that while we might have the freedom to speak our minds, however addled, we also hold an overweening obligation not to, or not to very often. The distinction between Free Speech and Loose_Talk resides in the ear of the listener, though most speakers might understand where one begins and the other ends for themselves, if not necessarily for any other. Libel laws are notoriously difficult to enforce. Same with slander.

It's apparently not nearly enough to insist that individuals must carefully edit their utterances. We don't, as a rule, take much care in our everyday conversation. We can be inadvertently rude. Many verbal transgressions come as inadvertencies, things we never slowed down enough to suppose might somehow be interpreted as offensive. Some, though, use language for its shock and awe value, testing limits they know full well lie well south of what they spew out of their mouths. Fully aware of the ordinance against shouting "Fire!" in crowded theaters, they make a habit of violating that ordinance with feigned innocence, insisting that they never intended to produce the resulting stampede, when anybody should have seen that potential lurking. They damn themselves with feigned ignorance. Feigned ignorance seems to be a common element accompanying Loose_Talk.

We dare not insist upon civility, for this very insistence violates some underlying principle of the practice. One must choose to monitor one's own speech for potential violations, and nobody can command that anyone else freely choose. Such choices must be freely chosen, with little more than some warm-hearted suggestions to encourage. One must remain free to choose even a reliably losing position or else forfeit the right to free expression. Not every impression could or should please every listener, and insisting that it should amounts to perhaps the worst possible form of despotism. If I want Free Speech, it seems I must, then, learn to tolerate Loose_Talk, if only because the distinction between the two seems impossible to draw. What's free for me might always seem merely loose for you. I can't see anything else to do but tolerate more than I'd care to.

We now have an industry specializing in disseminating what seems to me to be nothing more or less than Hate Speech. I classify Hate Speech as clearly residing over the line beyond which only the clearly offensive falls. It seems a perversion of freedom if it deliberately humiliates another in execution. Not everyone seems equally sensitive to the potential harm their speech might cause. Some seem quite cavalier, as if intending to offend, and shouldn't that be part of Free Speech if we're truly serious about liberty? We might think of freedom and liberty as universally acknowledged goods, but each also harbors an ugly underside. We might hope folks will remain judicious without actually insisting upon it. Freedom and liberty might demand unreasonable levels of tolerance from almost everybody.

Hope as we might, some uncouth individuals will continue to use coarse language at even their own grandmother's table. They embarrass themselves more than they ever slander or offend even those with the more delicate sensibilities. Like bullies, they largely manage to defeat themselves without often noticing their self-inflicted damage. The rest of us get to witness their utter humiliation, to which they remain steadfastly oblivious. An entire subculture now thrives on just this sort of jive. It demands lies over truths. It insists that nobody ever actually levels with them. They revel in being wrong, with siding with The Dark Side. They seem snide and don't even seem to try to hide their ignorance, even from themselves. Unable or unwilling to fit into a polite society, they have invented an impertinent parallel universe where their freedom seems indistinguishable from coarseness. I can't successfully argue that they aren't, at some fundamental level, free to choose that course. I just wonder why.

©2025 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

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