Bad opinions are like anuses. Everybody has one. Displaying them in public is generally frowned upon.
Bad opinions are also in the eye of the beholder. A bad opinion might be based on a misunderstanding of the facts. It might be based on a sincere belief that others don’t necessarily share. It might be based on ignorance. It might be based on prejudice. It might even have been based on a once-accurate understanding of reality that is no longer accurate because we’ve made new discoveries.
However, this is America, dammit. However offensive a bad opinion should be, merely holding a bad opinion should not be punished. Nor should merely expressing bad opinions.
Some people like to say that the First Amendment only applies to the government. That may be technically true if one takes a literal reading of the letter of the law. But what about the spirit of the law?
Here’s what I think:
- Nobody should lose their job or their career merely for expressing their opinion.
- Nobody should be imprisoned for expressing their opinion.
- Nobody should be forced to leave their country for expressing their opinion.
- Above all: Nobody should be murdered — whether by the state or by an individual — for expressing an opinion.
This is non-negotiable, even for Nazis, unless they do more than merely express their opinion. For example, if somebody were to give my wife grief because she kept her name instead of taking mine, but don’t have the authority or the power to force her to conform to their idea of how a married woman should behave, then what’s the harm? That opinion has no more power over my wife or me than we choose to give it. It might not even be worthwhile to tell them off for expressing their opinion to us. We could simply walk away and then privately mock that retrograde asshole for thinking they have standing to tell us how to be married.
Again, even if somebody does hold public office, I don’t think we should be punishing them merely for expressing bad opinions. If they try to legislate those opinions into law, we should oppose them. If they succeed, and the law is unjust, we should be willing to defy them. And if they abuse their power, they should be removed from office after receiving due process.
Now, you might say that these are nice principles, but principles aren’t practical. Fair enough. Here’s practicality for you: Conservatism, like Christianity, thrives on martyrdom.
Assassinating a conservative only rallies other conservatives, as one might observe not only from recent events, but from unsuccessful attempts on the President’s life during his 2024 election campaign. If you are determined to oppose conservatism or Christianity, it is an unforced strategic error to give either ideology’s adherents free ammunition.
Furthermore, you only hurt your own cause thereby. No matter how vile somebody’s opinions may be, they are still human beings. They almost certainly have people who care for them and would mourn their loss. These people don’t necessarily agree with everything your enemy thinks or says. But if you put them in the position of having to bury and grieve for somebody merely because you are so offended by something they’ve said that the urge to violence overrules all reason and restraint, then you should not be shocked by their enmity.
“Talk shit, get hit,” is not the American way. Nor is it civilized. Neither is “Talk shit, get shot.” Opposing conservatism is a worthwhile cause, but not so worthwhile that it justifies a “by any means necessary” approach. Not when most conservatives are all talk, and no action.
Let them talk, if that’s all they can do. If they do more than talk, then oppose them with proportionate action. Do not be the first to resort to violence regardless of provocation, unless your own life or the lives of innocents is at stake.
This is Not a Centrist’s Opinion
Allow me to make one thing clear: I have no interest in playing “both sides” here. I have no interest in defending conservatives or their ideology: to do either is to defend the indefensible.
I have held the following opinion on conservatism my entire adult life: conservatism is a morally and intellectually bankrupt ideology. Regardless of any high-minded rhetoric on the parts of conservative intellectuals like Edmund Burke, G.K. Chesterton, or William F. Buckley Jr., conservatism in practice rests on one core axiom: the double standard, a “rule of law” that protects the elite without binding them and binds the rest of us without protecting us. That ideology deserves your hatred. Its adherents deserve your contempt. However, hateful conservatism as an ideology may be, and however contemptible its adherents may be, that is no excuse to resort to their methods.
It wasn’t liberals who murdered Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or Malcolm X. Nor was it lefists, let alone transgender people. While left-wing violence remains a factor, there is no reasonable equivalence between Proud Boys getting their asses handed to them by antifascists in the street and a white supremacist shooting up a synagogue or a gay nightclub. The former is still wrong, but the latter is utterly indefensible. Any conservative who insists otherwise is either wrong, or deliberately lying in service to an authoritarian agenda, and I have every right to despise them for it. But I won’t kill them for it. Nobody elected me to judge them, let alone carry out a sentence of death against them.
Defending Conservatives?
One might reasonably ask why I’m defending the rights of conservatives to speak their minds if I think they’re assholes. It’s simple: I’m not defending them.
Yes, I think most prominent conservatives are assholes. However, the criteria for whether somebody is an asshole are subjective. The people I detest for their ideology and the way they misuse public office might very well think that I am an asshole because I refuse to lick their boots. They are no less entitled to their opinion than I am to mine.
I’m not a constitutional lawyer.
My understanding of freedom of speech is that honoring this fundamental human right means defending the rights of assholes to be assholes.
If the First and Fourteenth Amendments are insufficient legal or constitutional basis for the right of Americans to be assholes, try the Ninth Amendment.
It covers unenumerated rights: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.