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Freedom has a price but it doesn't keep score
I got an email from a co-worker that is a member of an organization on Emory’s campus that is trying to bring issues of racism to the forefront of the campu’s collective mentality so that they can better develop strategies for dealing with it. She forwarded me this email today:
One of the white members of my TCP group shared this story with us last night. We are thankful and optimistic that she is one of many Emory students who do not share in this new breed of hate and is sharing her voice to protest.
What can we do about it?
http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=1231684&page=1
Unfortunately for her, I decided to respond. I won’t send the full text of my email but basically I said “Nothing. and there shoudln’t be anything that you can do about it.” One of the unfortunately and necessary tenants of a society like ours is that folks should be free to think what they want and to also teach their kids the same thing. You cannot legislate tolerance and love any more than you can legislate morality. Nor should you try to. Its a slippery slope that we really don’t want to even get near.“
So exactly how far should the government/society go to protect itself from this type of thing?
One of the white members of my TCP group shared this story with us last night. We are thankful and optimistic that she is one of many Emory students who do not share in this new breed of hate and is sharing her voice to protest.
What can we do about it?
http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=1231684&page=1
Unfortunately for her, I decided to respond. I won’t send the full text of my email but basically I said “Nothing. and there shoudln’t be anything that you can do about it.” One of the unfortunately and necessary tenants of a society like ours is that folks should be free to think what they want and to also teach their kids the same thing. You cannot legislate tolerance and love any more than you can legislate morality. Nor should you try to. Its a slippery slope that we really don’t want to even get near.“
So exactly how far should the government/society go to protect itself from this type of thing?
no subject
In the 80s, Orson Scott Card would sometimes hold a Secular Humanist Revival at science fiction conventions he was a guest at. It was a send-up of religious revival meetings - a tent, funeral-parlor fans, the works. Card would act all preacher-man like, all theatrical and booming voice and so forth, getting "amens" and "halleluias" from the crowd... making fun of what was at the time a hot-button issue, namely that fundamentalists were railing against "secular humanism" being taught as a religion in schools.
Relevant point: at the one I went to, Card held up a textbook that some school board somewhere had added to the curriculum, one that the fundamentalists felt was more appropriate than the "secular humanist" books previously used. Someone in the crowd yelled "burn it!" That got some chuckles, but Card drew himself up in his most mock-officious stance and said "There will be no book burnings at *MY* revival, sir!"
That drew applause.
Then he said "No, I'm going to do much worse than burn it... I'm going to READ it!"
That brought the house down.
no subject