The Solution to Hate Speech is More Speech That Tells the Truth

You will notice that the subtitle to this blog is "The Truth Has No Agenda," a quote from the always remarkable Glenn Beck.  While I have believed that that there is something called absolute truth, even if man may not know it in its entirety, I also have believed that if one seeks the truth assiduously, one will get closer to finding it.

Yesterday, Don Fisher, Jr. published a piece at the American Thinker entitled The Time I Got Punished for Hate Speech. The article describes Fisher's being put in what he calls Facebook Jail for not using the correct pronouns to describe a transgendered individual. I can sympathize.  But to do so, let me tell you a story.

As a kid, we moved into a large house that would accommodate our large family.  But the house had been owned by something of a recluse, and was surrounded by 10 foot high Floribunda Rose bushes on all sides.  Slowly my father got the roses cut down, and burned (yes, back then you could burn excess vegetation...the horror.)  Now, my Dad was immune to poison ivy.  To this day, I get small rashes that itch, but go away within a week or two.  So, my Dad had no idea that my sister was deathly allergic to the lectin in poison ivy.  He had cut down a number of bushes which also contained a fair amount of poison ivy.  My sister, as were all of us kids, was out playing when he set it on fire.  Within an hour of the small amount of smoke to which she was exposed, her entire body was blown up, her eyes shut, and it even invaded her esophagus.  Now, she survived, but has been very careful to avoid poison ivy her entire life.

Was it my sister's  job to protect herself, or was it everyone else's job to protect her?  Let me tell you another story.

As a child, very few children had peanut allergies.  A number of us brought peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to school every day.  Peanut butter was cheap, compared to other things.  My mother made strawberry jam every year, so that was fairly cheap also.  Indeed, for a number of years, my mother also made bread for our sandwiches.  I have seen a statistic that something like 0.6 % of children may have been allergic to peanuts. Currently, only 4% of people apparently have any kind of food allergy whatsoever.  And yet, we can not have peanuts on a plane because someone somewhere may possibly be allergic.  In other words, it has now become society's problem, in this case the airlines, to protect people with peanut allergies, rather than the people who have these allergies.

Is it society's job to protect these people, or is it up to those who have a peanut allergy to protect themselves by speaking up?  If someone on a given flight indicates an allergy, out come the pretzels.  Otherwise, passengers can have a variety of snacks.

When we met, Mrs. Polykahr had a friend, a coworker, who was married to an Air Force careerist.  Upon retiring from the Air Force, he began to exhibit a desire to "become" a woman.  He indicated he had always felt like a woman, and was sure there was a woman inside, waiting to come out.  Naturally, he had no female characteristics, and in fact, when dressed as a woman, simply looked like a man in drag, exhibiting masculine mannerisms.  I refused to call him by his adopted female name, instead calling him by his birth name, and I refused to refer to him as a "she."  Clearly this guy was confused, and I did not see any reason to go along with the charade.  Giving in to his delusion would not help him in any way.

Is it my duty to call an individual who is confused about himself or herself by that person's preferred pronoun?   I don't think so, and it is not "hate speech" to tell the truth.  There are two genders, and we have a set of pronouns to describe each within the English language.  No need to make up any new ones.

In fact, what all these and, indeed, the entire PC movement have in common is the notion that we would rather protect individuals from the sometimes painful truth, so we are going to play along with them.  It is even now considered unchristian to tell the emperor he has no clothes.  Social media has reinforced the notion.  But, and Christians take notice, kindness, is a virtue only when you can be kind and tell the truth.  Telling the truth may be the kinder thing to do though. It is not "hate speech" to tell the truth.

We all recognize hate speech, or we used to.  Indeed, people who advocate for abortion are demonstrating hate, because the original purpose of abortions was to eliminate the people Mrs. Sanger believed were undesirables: blacks, the Irish, the Italians...well...Sanger had a long list.  She and the KKK would find a lot of common ground.   I doubt the motives of pro-abortionists has changed much either.  Leftists, who want desperately to change society, want government to enforce their ever changing notions of what hate speech is, or lacking that, have a big brother corporation like Facebook do it for them.  Either way, it is censorship, and we can not have that.  Here's the truth:

The truth is that the solution to bad speech, even to hate speech, is more speech.  Cut the PC crap.    .