Rachel Dahl
I can’t quit crying.
Every time I think of a man being shot for having the courage to stand for his beliefs, to speak publicly, engage people in discourse about the fundamental ideas that truly matter in a society, my heart twists in my chest, a lump sticks in my throat, and my eyes drip this awful liquid all over my keyboard.
The only other time I remember feeling this was September 11, 2001. The world changed that day, somehow, for me, and it changed again last week. I feel physically different.
But some things do not and should not change.
We cannot allow ourselves to think it’s ok to kill each other. That someone “deserved” to die because of what he thought or said. Or what we thought he thought.
This week has been a trip back to the theorists for me – back to visits with Milton, Locke, and John Stuart Mill for a great deal of thought and pondering, searching through old textbooks, digging through articles and papers on free speech and tolerance and foundational principles. The cracks of my days have been filled with a deep review of my education and my fundamental beliefs.
As a journalist, a recorder of local news, a keeper of the history of our community, speech, and the ability to gather ideas, cannot be more important to what we do. When voices are silenced out of fear, our job is made incredibly difficult.
We run into that all the time – people fear repercussions from their boss most often, but also friends and the community in general. But still, we don’t fear death in speaking. In a very real and general sense, we have had the luxury in this country that we don’t think that way.
Until last week.
I’m reminded in my reading that this idea we have of “free speech” is not absolute. When it comes to speech and tolerance, we have collectively held a basic agreement, we are under a loose social contract, that limits what we can and should say. We don’t yell “fire” in a crowded theater. There are also limits to the sanctions for stupid, dangerous, or harmful discourse, or discourse with which we don’t agree. The ultimate limitation in our country, before last Wednesday, was the agreement we have with each other, which is that you don’t get killed for things you say. Or print.
And this is why I’m shaken.
You can say some pretty stupid things in this country and get away with it. You may get fired, people may quit buying from your business, your friends might divorce you, but you don’t get killed for it. We cannot let that happen. We cannot allow ourselves or our friends to think or say that’s ok.
We have learned in this newspaper business that you can write a story about something that happened, tell the facts straight out, leave out all your opinions, and people will still get mad. They will decide not to buy advertising and prevent all their departments from advertising, and that will shock you, and you will think deeply about the First Amendment. But they don’t kill you for having written it.
We actually have been threatened physically over stories we’ve written, verbally accosted, and challenged. We’ve made police reports and followed law enforcement suggestions for our safety. But, until last week, we took for granted what most of our country takes for granted – that we are protected and off-limits. There has been just enough idealistic belief in this country in our fundamental structures that we all have felt it wouldn’t happen to us.
What a luxury. How heartbreaking that naivety is now gone.
So with the scales removed from our eyes and a deeper respect for the responsibilities of what we’re doing, we’ll all still be right here…
…Keeping you Posted.
Rach
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