Jackie Allison has submitted an article on her concerns about freedom of speech in this current day and age.
I placed a 9×12-inch envelope on the counter at the post office. The postal worker jumped into a spiel about hazardous materials, alcohol, explosives, perfume, and other stuff. You’d have thought I was mailing an atom bomb instead of exercising freedom of speech by sending a newspaper to my aunt.
What’s wrong with perfume? Did broken perfume bottles cause severe allergic reactions among postal workers? Was perfume flammable? Did perfume explode? The perfume was applied to the skin. The envelope was flat. Did it look like it contained a bottle of Jack Daniels?
The sarcastic me wanted to reply, “I am shipping something hazardous in this nearly flat envelope. There’s a pound of gunpowder surrounding three kilos of cocaine and a dragon egg on the verge of hatching. Also, there’s nail polish remover, the kind with acetate, an ounce of Channel #5 wrapped in government secrets. But there’s not a jar of moonshine. I drank that on the way here. You might want to wash your hands after handling the package, not because of neurotoxins, more likely because of cat pee.”
I could’ve exercised freedom of speech and blurted out the first thing that came into my head. The postal worker could’ve had a laugh with me while thinking, “what a nut job.”
In the zeitgeist of our times, freedom of speech had come to mean sensationalism and bluntness beyond anything polite, but I wasn’t sure that just anyone could still get away with it. Despite the obviously flat package, I wasn’t sure that I wouldn’t have been arrested for making false statements to a government employee.
“Sorry, just kidding. The newspaper in the envelope might have stories about guns, drugs, espionage, and a picture of a kitten,” probably wouldn’t have been accepted as an apology for words taken as a security threat instead of sarcasm.
Our founding fathers faced a dilemma when considering freedom of speech. Should freedom of speech be limited when speaking against the government because this could create contempt for a government? But the only way to keep a government in check was with free communication despite it creating contempt. Our founding fathers would’ve probably canned the entire idea of freedom of speech if they had had to deal with Twitter and Facebook.
A person who tweeted, “You see the bazongas on that babe? Me neither. What a loser to womanhood,” had more than a few people wanting to bring back the brank. The brank was a medieval, locking iron device that prevented a person from speaking. The device was used on persons who caused discord, disrupted public peace, or were a nuisance.
Luckily, our founding fathers possessed intelligence and insightfulness and saw fit to grant freedom of speech. When speech lacked discretion, tact, or a filter to keep stupid stuff from being said, the public gained a clearer picture of the speaker. A person who was careless with their speech revealed prejudice, deep-seated issues, and general assholishness. In this light, freedom of speech was a damn good idea. We should always ensure everyone has a voice and that they aren’t kept from using it, no matter how much of a nuisance they choose to be.
In my Webster’s Compact Desk Dictionary, a limited number of nouns separated idiot from intelligence. Instead of being annoyed at the person doing their job, I chose illumination without being an ignoramus answering the postal worker’s question. “No, nothing, a newspaper,” I said.
My aunt received the paper, law enforcement pursued real threats to national security, and the postal worker had a good day. I didn’t end up looking like an idiot, but I still liked the idea that I could have if I wanted to.