Literally every right we have comes with limits.
We have the right to free speech, yet I can’t libel people. I can’t (legally) threaten people with bodily harm. I can most definitely use inflammatory rhetoric, but I can’t use it to incite violence without facing criminal charges. I can’t yell obscenities outside at 3 am, apparently. I have first-hand knowledge about that last one, courtesy of the Houston Police Department and some pissed-off neighbors circa 2000. Continue reading
I want to boycott the NFL.
I want to put my money where my mouth is. Not like in a stripper way, but more like in the sense that I want my actions to match my values. Just to be clear, lest you think I am a stripper. I’m flattered, but I lack the balance to successfully pole dance in high heels. Don’t worry about how I know that. Continue reading
Article 33 of the Geneva Convention prohibits “collective punishment.” Simply put, it’s against the rules to punish someone for something they didn’t personally do. Makes sense at an innate level.
We understand basic fairness from the time we are babies. We cannot internalize cause and effect when we’re being punished for something that someone else did.
Instead, the cause and effect will shift away from the behavior being punished and toward something that makes more instinctive sense. Continue reading
How would the folks on the right have reacted if Kathy Griffin had posed with a fake, severed head of Hillary Clinton?
I doubt they would have been calling for her death, her deportation, or the downfall of her career. As I saw in a recent meme, they probably would have invited her to speak at the next Republican National Convention. That’s not too much of a stretch, given the White House invitation extended a few months back to Ted “Suck My Machine Gun” Nugent. Imagery of violence is okay for Republicans, as long as it’s aimed at Democrats. I kid! I kid! Kind of. Continue reading
Lately, it seems that everyone is convinced of everything. No room for thought, for challenge, for argument. Opinion is sold – and bought – as fact. Opinion that matches our already-held beliefs is held as ultra-true-can’t-possibly-be-wrong mega-fact. We’re apologists for obvious flaws in our standard-bearers.
Original by Via Tsuji
We use memes, quotes, videos, rants and shares to defend and to offend. We attack character and intellect of people we’ve never even met; we defend character and intellect of people we will never meet.
In a country that prizes free speech, one major philosophical premise of that freedom (courtesy of Thomas Jefferson) is that “…error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.”
We can let you say whatever nonsense you want to say as loudly as you want to say it, as long as we can safely bank on the idea that the vast majority of us employ reason to discern between utter bullshit and truth.
Reason isn’t swayed by hyperbole, talking points, echo chambers, or stump speeches.
Reason isn’t scared into blind support by patriotic platitudes.
Reason gets suspicious when asked to blame “the Muslims,” “the refugees,” “the Mexicans,” “the Blacks,” “the liberals,” or “the conservatives,” because reason knows scapegoating and character attacks are the tools of those who lack facts.
Reason knows that if a solution sounds too simple to be plausible, or too good to be true, it is.
Reason knows that every best choice comes with some negative consequences and every worst choice comes with some positive consequences, too.
When you find yourself getting emotionally swayed, take a page from the cynic’s book for just a second. Ask yourself: what is she selling me? What does he NOT want me to ask? What’s in it for him or her?
There is no “right answer” in a complex society. There’s only the best possible answer for the most possible people. There are many paths up that mountain. Anyone trying to tell you that his is the only one, however, is asking you to suspend reason in the hopes his errant opinion will be mistaken for truth.