Boundaries
Ol' Remus

It's said the composers of the Constitution intended to constrain the central government by charging it with protecting the rights of the citizen. This was clearly a lapse in judgement, a pratfall actually, the kind requiring many tankards of the previous autumn's cider. Since those wonderful days of yesteryear, generations of our best and brightest have not merely alienated our inalienable rights, they've criminalized most of them. The work has been exacting and exhausting but it's yielded a dark parallel to the Constitution worthy of the veneration it receives in learned circles.

But alas, we're told an emergency is at hand. The populace is showing signs of self awareness. They're alarmed. The tattered and discredited remnants of free speech are suspected. Team USGov says decisive action is required to turn this thing around lest it be a serious inconvenience later on. Dismantling the remains of the First Amendment has been more trying than anticipated. They ask our understanding. Freedom of expression was supposed to hold the line, what more could we want than nude dancing and flag burning? To hear them tell it, actual free speech is a violation of an arrangement they thought was in place, namely, we'd keep our mouths shut and they'd do as they please. Worse, the soporifics are proving ineffective and may not hold until the job is done. It ain't fair. They've worked so hard.

The citizenry could "reign in inflammatory rhetoric" until our civil discourse is as antiseptic as they'd like. Upon arising in the morning we'd review the boundaries for the day lest we unknowingly push some otherwise blissful yeoman over the edge. We'd also find itemized consequences for our words and check for updates. Occasionally we'd risk a medium-value word as a reckless thrill. Raised eyebrows and furtive glances would affirm our status as wicked bon vivants. But in the main we'd spend our days "reaching out" and pondering "the broader implications" and "raising awareness" and so forth.

Our betters would appoint experts to draw the boundaries. CAIR would decide exactly where to place yet another apostrophe in Qur'an, it's become a free-for-all rather than a reliable measure of tolerance for the intolerable. The National Association of Black Journalists would attend to a replacement for African-American, partly to overcome the difficulties the phrase presents when traveling abroad, partly because of the scandalous need for more syllables. We'd reel it off like the list of Big Mac ingredients. The Associated Press would be charged with finding a replacement for homicide having no possibility of offence to same-sex activists. Perhaps in the far future we would communicate by hymns of praise, we'd be issued a little box and pull out the sheet music like facial tissue. Never mind it'd be the sort of drivel a maudlin drunk would croak out between pukes.

Or the citizenry could set aside the foppish mewlings of self-selected referees and give no weight to how inflammatory they think our rhetoric is. Thomas Paine isn't revered for his ash cake recipe. And it was the Royalists who denounced him as inflammatory, no coincidence. Our conversations are intended for each other, not to please uninvited dandies who imagine they have a cosmic writ to license what we say and how we say it. We needn't answer to them, nor explain ourselves to them, nor excuse ourselves, nor apologize to them. Nor are we obliged to observe the ever-contracting boundaries they set for us. They conflate dissent with hate and terrorism. Their intent is to discredit dissent itself so we may be dismissed entirely and trouble them no more. We're expected to capitulate and withdraw in shame. We decline, to their rage. Now they threaten us. We're unmoved.

Much has gone unsaid as yet, but the times they are a-changin'. When we're unemployed, when our education and experience count for nothing, when our savings are confiscated and our retirements stolen, when federal drones are paid twice what productive people are paid, when legitimate public services are cut but taxes are raised, when it's a choice between food stamps or dumpster-diving, now we see who thinks it important we tone down inflammatory rhetoric. The classic question is: who benefits? Not us. Excessive civility has benefited only the uncivil. Nor is "healing" a fitting response to the loudmouths hogging the microphone, it's not our part to tidy up after them and begone. Civility is admirable but honesty is a necessity. It's time for plain talk and lots of it. They couldn't make it more clear why.

It comes down to this: we know what we are to them, enemies to be punished. Their words. They say they don't want to quell anger. They say they're itching for a fight. They say they'll hit back twice as hard. These are their terms. They believe, actually believe, their insults and libel and threats should go unanswered. If treating the people as enemies is proper then punishing the people is proper. And so they do. They believe these things because resistance is what they fear, so resistance is what they see. But something far tougher than resistance is emerging. It's everywhere and nowhere, it's self-assembling, it's committed to restoring a legitimate Constitutional republic and therefore every bit the enemy they imagine it to be. They're looking for noise and drama. They're fools. They merely need to look around. It's already upon them.

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