When The Right To Hate Is What’s At Stake
The First Amendment becomes meaningless with this psychological manipulator
I would like to start off by saying that free speech is currently not in jeopardy; it wasn’t in the past and it is so firmly cemented, politically and socioeconomically, in American culture that there is no chance of it eroding in the future. The way free speech is wielded however, especially today under the Trump administration is of major moral concern. When free speech is used to defend, obfuscate, denigrate or propagate hostilities, hatreds, and violence towards fellow humans who contribute to and uphold the same society as you do then it becomes troubling, especially under a Trump presidency.
Free speech is not in jeopardy when a collective speciously decides that it should assert dominance over other groups of Americans. When it is used to create division and not unity, the impact of freedom of speech as a doctrine and principle lessens in effectiveness as a legal right of expression among equals. It diminishes the protections of public order and social peace. Free speech promoted by this president at a rally on Thursday in Minnesota, which is home to the largest concentration of Somalians here in the U.S., of which is just around 52,000, has the tendency to promote social harms, particularly against this group and others who face the wanton wrath of bigotry and racism.
“As you know for many years leaders in Washington brought large numbers of refugees to your state from Somalia without considering the impact on schools and communities and taxpayers,” he said as some in the crowd jeered, adding, “You should be able to decide what is best for your own cities and for your own neighborhoods and that’s what you have the right to do right now, and believe me, no other president would be doing that.”
For those who observe this rhetoric underlying freedom of speech as uninteresting or incurious as a consequence of the First Amendment, then it would be ill advised not to caution such rationale as it leads to a certain cultural numbness — acceding to the deviancy in President Trump’s calls to acculturate this abberation as a norm. Do not allow his proclaimed omnipotence as President of The United States to disarm you of a decency and civility towards your fellow citizens in a campaign that seeks moral neglect from you in exchange for the ephemeral rewards of aligning with the discordant and discursive interests of the powerful in government today.
“Then, I have an Article II, where I have to the right to do whatever I want as president,” he said. “But I don’t even talk about that.”
🧐🤨😣
Freedom of speech has become an uninformed excuse — by motivated ignorance and insensitive beliefs — to abuse fellow citizens that represent minority inclusions of American values and progress towards democracy. Freedom of speech as it is wielded by a bastion of ardent right-wing adherents, libertarians, nationalists, evangelicals, white supremacists, and by the conspicuous minorities who placate these groups, present a clear and present danger to violence and civil unrest which paradoxically threaten the principle of the right to freedom of speech.
Through deliberation and debate it becomes evident that no group — political or otherwise — should be seen as having a monopoly on the government of the United States, it is only the individual, and the rights guaranteed as American individuals, that government should observe and steadfastly preserve in the virtues of tolerance as a (virtuous) consequence of the First Amendment. This should not be that difficult to wrap your head around because America is first and foremost an immigrant nation society and tolerance is what holds it together, yet we see majoritative groups align themselves over time under faux identitarian social constructs of race, ethnicity, religiosity and hierarchy threatening and attempting to rip apart the essence of being American.
This distortion and confusion has led to a resistance to this presidency in particular and its contradicting ideology of Real Americanism. It lacks any basis and has become a politicized weapon to debase our interdependence that enables peace and prosperity as one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Lest we forget.
