Freedom of speech does NOT mean that you can lie, or say toxic, incendiary things, or support hate groups with the profits from your public company, and not expect the public to challenge you on it.\u00a0A CEO of a company\u2013any company\u2013is free to believe, and even say out loud, what he\/she chooses. Without fear of torture, death, or imprisonment.<\/p>\n
But freedoms and rights are not the same thing. Freedom of speech does not entitle a person to call names without consequence. Just because radio personalities can say whatever they want in air time\u2013without going to jail or being bodily harmed\u2013does not mean that it\u2019s their God-given right to do so. Advertisers who pull their support from Lowe\u2019s or Rush Limbagh, or stations who choose to pull\u2013who\u2019s that really racist guy that says all that stuff?\u2013I don\u2019t remember\u2026 Anyway, advertisers and media outlets are not infringing on anybody\u2019s free speech when they choose not to air a\u00a0certain message. It is their right <\/em>to only air (or fund) that which they uphold to be just and informative. Crazy dj guy maybe got fired, but he is not going to jail. He\u2019s a free man. He can go right on saying horrible things in his own house, on his own time. Heck, he can buy his own radio station, or sponsor his own program, and nobody\u2019s going to hurt him. At least, not in any government sanctioned way\u2026<\/p>\n I read the Hunger Games <\/span>(finally!) and am reminded that it is indeed, a great freedom, being able to bear arms. When regular people are not allowed to hunt and provide their own food, or defend themselves from violent armies, what you have on your hands is a District 12\u2013a place in which people are kept poor, hungry, and scared, so that they will never question the tyranny of the status quo. But the right to own weapons and be free people, and the right to own an assault rifle designed to kill large groups of people in a matter of seconds\u2026 that is perhaps not the same thing.\u00a0 Given the rise of substance abuse, mental illness, violence in entertainment, and inflamatory political rhetoric, it is time for us, as a free, justice-loving people, to start asking some tough questions about the difference in rights and freedoms.<\/p>\n Furthermore, we need to be taking a hard core look at our need to be free in all things\u2026and our need to be right, <\/em>in all things.<\/p>\n Which is to say\u2026we can\u2019t expect to be have both. If we want to truly be a nation of free people, then lots of us are going to have to let go our need to be right. If you want to be free, you have to want your neighbor to be free, too. Even if that means your neighbor wants to love and live with somebody\u00a0who makes you uncomfortable. Even if that means your neighbor wants to watch a media outlet that makes you crazy. Even if your neighbor wants to keep a bunch of guns in his garage. Even if your neighbor uses bad grammar.<\/em> We\u2019ve all got to let go our compulsive need to be correct and validated in our moral whatever\u2026if we truly want to be free.<\/p>\n It should go without saying\u2013and yet lately, somehow, it does not\u2013that nobody owns God. Not evangelical or progressive Christians, not\u00a0Catholics or protestants, not democrats or republicans, not the pro-chicken pickers or the anti-chicken picketers.<\/p>\n In the same way, it should go without saying\u2013but lately, does not\u2013that nobody owns the language of freedom. On both sides of the aisle, on all sides of the chasm, whether faithful or faithless, we are all freedom-loving people. We are all indebted to the visionary dreamers of the Revolution. We are all grateful to our military service people, who make such sacrifices to\u00a0keep us free. So that we can eat chicken (or not), worship (or not), and even say hurtful things about large groups of people. If we want to.<\/p>\n But being free to say something, and\u00a0having the right\u2026well, those are different things.<\/p>\n Without free speech, freedom of religion, and free enterprise, we\u2019d all just be back in the districts. Surviving, somehow, in the darkness, and just hoping the Capitol will leave us alone to starve in peace. Nobody wants that.\u00a0 But, lest we forget\u2026 it is not just freedom that allows us to engage in all this discourse. It is abundance<\/em>. Only in a place of plenty can regular people enter into such heated debate about where to eat, (or not).<\/p>\n And to live with so many food choices, every single day\u2013that is neither a freedom, nor a right. It is a dang privilege, and God forgive us when we forget it.<\/p>\n I\u2019d love to see every fast food restaurant in the country give a big ol tithe of yesterday\u2019s intake to organizations that fight hunger. Just as a way of saying, whether you ate at the one place because you agreed with their values, or ate somewhere else because you didn\u2019t, we\u2019re all free, privileged people with bigger fish (mmm\u2026fish) to fry.<\/p>\n
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