I think it is time for people, particularly conservatives and libertarians, and cocktail party liberals, who are so angry and indignant against "politically correctness" and "social justice warriors" to recognize there is a fundamental difference between the nanny brigade, who tell us to not say things that are racist and sexist, and those who are racist and sexist--and especially those who are violent with respect to their racism and sexism. The "p.c. crowd" are a pain in the neck sometimes, but the actual racist, etc. folks are dangerous, ignorant, horrible, and, when they really get riled up, violent. There is no equivalence in almost any case one may name. If you find one, it only shows how attenuated and remote the comparison actually is, and why there is no equivalency.
I think the events of the past week should should be a reminder for those who revere the First Amendment that words sometimes do lead to actions. It does not mean we should undermine the First Amendment. It just means we should not elevate "sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me" to a constitutional "right." Sometimes words are a prelude to an assault. Sometimes words themselves are an assault, as in a threat.
This should also be a reminder that weaponizing the First Amendment to deny a gay couple a blank sheet cake in a style often used for weddings, Rand Paul's, Barry Goldwater's, and too many libertarians' hesitation to support civil rights employment, consumer, and housing laws on the basis of free speech for discriminators, etc. have very real and repressive consequences.
And for those right wingers who think most American violence emanates from "the left," let's keep the following in mind: There was, admittedly, a lot of labor-management violence in the United States from around 1870 through 1935 (the latter the year the Congress passed, and FDR signed, the National Labor Relations Act). But the parties in that period saw their struggles as a war. Management hired men (rarely women) who were armed to repress workers, and too often corruptly controlled regular law enforcement. Powerlessness workers resorted to violence where the police were in the hands of management. And labor people recognized what happens when their side has even one bomb thrower, as the Haymarket riot of 1886 revealed. If we want to call the labor side "the left," then let's call the management side "the right." The Haymarket Affair Wiki page gives us a much better perspective than some right wingers' tweet. And the John Sayles film, "Matewan," tells us much about the West Virginia coal wars of the 1920s for those averse to reading non-fiction.
However, when we look on the right wing side of the ledger, we see lynchings of blacks, lynching of labor union organizers and leaders, and the like. The culture of Jim Crow is not something the "left" created, cultivated, or supported. And the violence within a Jim Crow system on a daily basis is one that is often not recognized. All of that, conservatives and right wingers, is what you folks mostly if not always bear as a burden in American history. And since the late 1970s, we have seen countless examples of bombings, shootings, knifings, and outright killing of abortion providers. That, again, is not coming from the "left." One may also look at incarceration rate increases as having a violent undertone from the State that is used to keep "the Other" in place.
The Euro-American genocide of the Native Americans is, admittedly, a project that went across most of the mainstream of the United States' political spectrum, having recently completed "The Indigenous Peoples History of the United States."
There is, in short, a reason to not be a First Amendment absolutist, contrary to ACLU lawyers and more often right wingers these days who are obsessed in their denouncing of "political correctness." There is, in fact, reason for us to begin to say even the language of racism, sexism, homophobia, and, once again, anti-Semitism, has no place in our society. I have refrained, in the past, from overstating any attack on the "p.c. crowd," owing to my recognition of how the right wing weaponized what was originally an argument among elements of the "left" in the 1980s, where some lefties would say, "Hey, can we lighten up for a moment..." We can point culturally to this from a 1985 song from the liberal-left oriented a cappella "new wave" group from the Bay Area of California, The Bobs, "Please Let Me Be Your Third World Country," though one listens carefully to this in our current culture, and the fellow's perspective in the song does seem like he is less than sensitive in that "manly" way :). But when William Bennett, the late Allan Bloom, and George Will got hold of the phrase "politically correct," in the late 1980s, it became a political weapon used to attack anyone who was concerned with racism, sexism, and the like, and it gave an almost martyr status to those who were in fact racist, sexist, and not otherwise likable at all.
At this moment in American history, we are in the throes of right wing governmental dominance, and pray for sanity in the upcoming elections, and have, as a president, a man who thinks p.c. leftists are the real enemy in our society, and often wears the coat of a martyred man castigated by forces of "political correctness." And with this president's rhetoric, we are seeing how people who are racist, sexist, etc. are emboldened to take more and more acts that are abusive, and now increasingly violent. From this, we ought to recognize there are, at least sometimes, consequences arising from these sorts of verbal statements and arguments. I am not prescribing an Alien & Sedition Acts, Espionage Act, or Smith Act. I am also not saying we should enact criminal anti-hate speech laws (though I would like t see more legislative study, in our current time, as to how the laws affect society, good and bad, in Canada, Great Britain, and France, and other civilized places, and if they have a place within First Amendment jurisprudence). I am, instead, asking us, as a society, to cool the anti-p.c. rhetoric, and realize p.c. people can be, again, a pain in the neck sometimes, but they are on the side of civility and decency at the end of the day. The racists, the sexists, the anti-Semites, etc. are not on the side of civility and decency, and we should instead be looking to sing together the song from They Might Be Giants, "Your Racist Friend."*
*And, in the parlance of cable news spinners, maybe it is time for people who are Republican, people who are conservative, and right wing, to denounce clearly and loudly the racist, the sexist, and show us we are really all on the same side. You know, the way cable news spinners, Republicans, conservatives, and right wingers say to liberals and leftists when some little, isolated "anti-fa" group or individual does some property damage, or one of them punches Richard Spencer, or say to all Muslims in America when some Islamic fundamentalist somewhere else on the planet blows up a market place. Yup. You folks know the drill, doncha? :)
