Machan's Musings - Words and Pictures Don’t Justify Violent Response
by Tibor R. Machan
It’s not only some people in the Middle East who go crazy when they get offended. You can see this kind of thing happening in many crimes of passion right here in the good old US of A. Men and women who are upset with what they are told or shown—such as, "I don’t love you anymore" or "Please just get out of my life" or some sensational images—often refuse to deal with the rejection or offense in civilized ways.
Not only that. Entire special-interest organizations are now being led by people who respond to criticism by demanding harsh measures against the critics. And, of course, we all have heard of those criminal-defense tactics whereby attorneys try to convince juries that their clients did the crime because of a movie or book or something else they read or saw.
Whatever has happened to that simple but true notion that sticks and stones may break your bones, but words—and pictures—will never hurt? The idea behind this is that while emotions might be prompted by words and pictures, any civilized human being ought to know how to turn away from them and move on. This is what being a human being, with powers of self-awareness and self-control, is about.
In anyone’s life there will be many occasions when he or she will become upset from being called names, having favorite ideas demeaned by others, derisive references to one’s favorite movies, teams, books, paintings, and so forth. Any time I read a review of a book or movie or play I like, I of course get annoyed. Most recently a prominent journal, in which I myself have published several papers, took off against one of my favorite thinkers and I went about wounded for a couple of hours. Then there is always someone telling me I have behaved badly in the face of some event I should have dealt with differently. I have lost friends, too, because I wrote things that have offended. And upon that, I myself was accosted with some harsh words. So it goes, but it should never break out into violence.
Our lives, as noted before, are replete with people hurling invectives at us, dissing what we like or praising what we hate. But, yes, we can walk away from these, shake off the insult or ad hominems, realize, after a bit of mental and emotional shock, that no one owes us to be loved, cherished, or agreed with about even the most precious matters.
Yet we find that political correctness is nearly abolishing the idea of freedom of thought and imagery. Saddam Hussein, a mass murderer and vicious dictator, is depicted in his shorts and this is supposed to be a major crime for which not just someone who may have sneaked the photo should apologize—for sneaking it, not for what it contained, mind you. Newsweek admittedly misreports what some Americans did to a copy of the Koran and this is supposed to excuse crowds of people going on a rampage? What is going on here?
I suppose the lesson, not often enough taught—because that itself would appear to be offensive to some—is that human beings can always regress to savagery. There is no guarantee that they will be guided by principles of civil conduct, by restraint and proportionality of conduct. To words, in short, one responds with words, not with sticks and stones. Yes, words can produce painful emotions but that’s no excuse whatsoever for losing one’s cool, for going ballistic.
This is one of the problems with all those erudite analyses about how terrorism is produced either by the terrorists hatred of liberty or by his or her taking umbrage at American foreign policy measures. Neither justifies terrorism—which is lashing out violently, sometimes with mass slaughter, at totally innocent people. Terrorism is a kind of venting on a grand scale and whatever other objective is associated with it does not manage to make it anything better. Like toddlers who throw a fit, smashing toys and even beating up smaller siblings, terrorists are out of control, only they are adult human beings and have no excuse to offer for their vicious conduct.
It would be very welcome if most commentators stopped providing excuses for blowing one’s top and called for civilized, adult conduct on everyone’s part who is feeling badly about something that didn’t cause any damage but merely—even if wrongly—upset some people. This may help reduce both crimes of passion and terrorism.
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