Ediblog.com
Selwyn Duke
The Offensiveness Of Taking Offense
©
2007 Selwyn Duke
The
voicing of the unpopular, being the very soul of free speech, the right to give
and take offense shall not be infringed.
Sometimes
I think it is time to insert the above into our First Amendment.
Whether it’s an off-color joke or colorful commentary, it’s now hard
to make anything but the most plain vanilla statements without offending
somebody. In fact, so ingrained is
the notion of being offended that it has become a topic of satire.
Just think about Geico’s famous commercials, wherein stone-age
characters take umbrage at the slogan, “So easy a caveman can do it.”
Ironically,
associating cavemen with being thin-skinned is quite apropos, since it is a
frailty born of the more ignoble aspects of man’s nature.
As to this, I think about documentarian Alby
Mangels who, while visiting primitives in Papua New Guinea, warned
against “knocking back their hospitality.”
Prudence dictated he be wary, as those less spiritually and morally
evolved are ruled by pride, the worst of the Seven Deadly Sins.
And, lest we entertain the fancy that it is the superior person who
doesn’t give offense, know that it is actually the superior one who doesn’t
take it. It’s hard to offend the
humble.
In
truth, though, our civilization is not as overcome by pride as by duplicity.
And this is what is truly offensive (in the way an odor is so) about this
offensiveness business: Screaming “That’s offensive!” is nothing but a
ploy. Yes, you heard it here first,
few who emit that utterance are actually offended.
They
just don’t happen to like what you’re saying.
I’ll
explain precisely what is going on. Liberals
trade on this ploy, using it as a standard response whenever their sacred cows
come under scrutiny. If they were
tolerant, they would simply accept that some will espouse what we despise.
If they were honest, they would simply say what they mean.
But tolerance is just another ploy, and honesty, well, it has never
served the ends of the left, and never less so than here.
An understanding of what they really mean to say will illustrate why:
“I
hate what you’re saying, it makes me angry and you should shut your mouth!
[expletives omitted]”
Of
course, to exhibit such petulance would do nothing but reveal their vaunted
tolerance for the facade it is and demonstrate their moral inferiority.
And telling others to shut-up is the stuff of neither polite society nor
effective debate, so a different strategy is in order.
And
the “Offensiveness Ploy” (OP) is ideal, as it shifts the onus from them to
you. A direct command to still your
tongue would make them appear the villains, intolerant, immature, imperious
clods, incapable of brooking dissent. It
would be offensive. But the OP makes
you seem the offensive one. And when
told to shut-up, we feel transgressed against and know we occupy the moral high
ground, a place from which taking the offense is justified.
The OP, however, casts us as the transgressors, cowing us as we look up
from our valley of disgrace. It
works: Accusing others of giving offense is the best offense, as it places them
on the defense.
But
you don’t have to read Sun Tzu’s The Art of War to know strategies
change with the situation. And this
is why, when the bounds of propriety are loosed and the power is all theirs,
liberals often show their true colors, resorting to a tactic blunter and less
sophisticated but even more effective: Force.
Just
think about the “students” – they don’t deserve the designation – who
attacked Minutemen founder Jim Gilchrist at that institution of lower learning,
Columbia University. Think about
incidents where other conservative speakers were given the same treatment on
other campuses, a phenomenon that prompted pundit Ann Coulter to retain
bodyguards. You may think I’m
painting the left with too broad a brush but, I can assure you, the very same
spoiled brats would use the OP in any situation wherein the balance of power
didn’t favor them. But in a
bastion of liberalism, where accountability is as absent as sensibility, they
don’t have to. And here’s their
message:
“I
hate what you’re saying, it makes me angry and you should shut your mouth!
And you’re going to shut your mouth whether you like it or not.
We don’t have to take it anymore [expletives omitted].”
I
suppose it’s one situation where you could say that honesty is definitely not
refreshing.
Would
that anyone claim I’m wrong, he has much to explain.
Like, for instance, why these tolerant, inoffensive liberals, upon
achieving institutional power, become similarly heavy-handed and use the
principles of tolerance and offensiveness to squelch ideas they dislike.
They have given us speech codes at universities and in corporations and
hate speech laws in foreign countries. And
the sanctimony, oh, the sanctimony. As
they ostracize, penalize, terminate and arrest those who sin against political
correctness, they tell us they’re just protecting others from hateful feelings
when they really just feel hateful.
Can
there be doubt of this? This
oh-so-sensitive set is the very one that defends the immersion
of a crucifix in a jar of urine as artistic expression and the equation
of 9/11 victims with Nazis as academic freedom.
If
the truth about the OP hasn’t raised your ire yet, understand that it is
nothing less than part of the groundwork necessary for social engineering.
If you want to effect social and legislative change, you must win the
social and political debates so as to garner support for it.
But if you can’t defeat your adversaries in the arena of ideas, you
have to keep them out of the competition; if you can’t refute what’s argued,
you must stop it from being spoken.
So,
first you demonize speech refutative of your agenda by labeling it
“offensive,” which cultivates social codes and attendant social pressure
facilitative of the change you desire. Then,
as these social codes become more widely accepted and entrenched, expressing
them through rules and laws becomes more acceptable.
This leads to the next stage, the organizational expression of them –
the speech codes in various private institutions.
And once sufficiently inured to these, it’s time for the last stage of
this imprisoning of ideas: The legislative expression of these social codes
known as hate speech laws.
Case
in point: It becomes harder for traditionalists to argue against anti-marriage
if they’re scorned and ostracized for saying homosexual behavior is sinful,
destructive or disordered. It
becomes harder still if those who do are punished within the context of our
schools and businesses. And it
becomes impossible if the government arrests you for such expression.
The easiest way to win a debate is to prevent the other side from
debating.
Thus,
there is a lesson here we ignore at our own peril.
You can have freedom from being offended or you can freedom of speech,
but you cannot have both.
This
is why I have no tolerance for the Offensiveness Ploy.
It is manipulation by the mediocre, victory for the vacuous, derision by
the dull. It is the protestation of
a child, one with neither the brute force to be a Brownshirt nor the executive
force to be a Blackshirt. If someone
is offended by truth, the problem lies not with it being uttered.
If someone doesn’t want it uttered, he has a problem with truth.
The
great victory of the left is that it has made us apologize for being right.
A few may be truly offended, being in the grip of primitive pride.
But, mostly, we are in the grip of a primitive ploy.
We need more offensiveness, not less.
We must offend the liars, the degraded, the darkness, the destroyers of
civilization.
So
my answer to the offended is, you have every right to be offended.
Now, grow up. If you can’t
sit at the table of reasoned debate, go back to your bread and circuses.
Let the adults figure out the problems of the world.
Selwyn Duke is a freelance writer out or Larchmont, NY. He has written for various publications including: IntellectualConservative.com, AmericanThinker.com and is a regular columnist for RenewAmerica.us.