Tolerance stumbles, but principles immovable

On March 22, Roseanne (and co-star John Goodman) appeared on the Jimmy Kimmel show to promote the return of their iconic series. And her words prompted me to think on two points.

Kimmel: "Roseanne Conner is a Trump supporter, on the show."

Roseanne: "Well, she did vote for the president."

K: "She voted for the president."

R: "Yup, she did."

K: "And that's part of the dynamic with you and your family, on that show."

R: "And in real life. It's like everybody's family is pissed off at each other, for one thing or the other."

K: "Is your family mad at you?"

R: "Well, you know, we had some pro-Hillarys, and some pro-Trumps. And there was a lot of fightin'."

Discord owing to politics just cropped up in my own family. I'm ashamed to admit I lifted the shovel as energetically as anyone.

I usually delete social media political posts with which I disagree. But a family member's recent reposting of a specific, never proved smear of one politician provoked me to insist they either provide substantiating evidence (of which I knew there to be none), or retract the allegation.

And therein, I was wrong. While demanding evidence is legitimate, calling for the stifling of even scurrilous speech is not. At least, not by me. As I wasn't the party traduced, I was without standing.

Doing so runs clangingly counter to the free speech sympathy I elsewhere advocate. I failed my own general instinct. 

Besides, by being thrown without factual basis, social media smears discredit themselves and are unworthy of serious consideration. Harsh but merited will be conclusions about the posters' credibility.  

In my latest book, I had written extensively on the presumption of innocence. In affirming its historic imprint, I quoted the Old Testament, Magna Carta, US Constitution's Fourth Amendment, and the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights.

I also had addressed the subjects of Fake News, political dirty trickery, and social media dissemination of slurs. So, when I happened upon the post to which I reacted wrongly, lessons of which I'd just written were fresh in my spirit.

That explains, but it does not excuse. I hope to learn from my heat-of-the-moment tumble from principle.

Kimmel: "You were a very liberal, socially liberal person, in general."

Roseanne: "I'm still the same. You all moved! You all went so far fuckin' out, you lost everybody!"

As I've held fast to longtime ideas and values, I've seen the major parties resituate themselves. For example: Democrats once supported unhindered expression. Liberals took up arms in defense of unorthodox voices, defending them, on principle, against governmental and corporate suppression. 

Conservatives were most frequently seen as favoring censorship, a not entirely unwarranted conclusion.

The Democrats-boosting ACLU, of which I was once a member, traditionally supported free speech. But no more. Following the 2017 Charlottsville, Virginia "Unite The Right" rally, the organization unashamedly announced it would no longer defend First Amendment rights for citizens who'd availed themselves of Second Amendment ones.

That same year, the Washington Area Metro Transit Authority refused to post ads for author Milo Yiannoupolos' Dangerous. ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio was not troubled by this governmental stifling of an ideological adversary. He tweeted: "I don't believe in protecting principle for the sake of principle in all cases."

Never mind that that's pretty much the ACLU's defining philosophical essence. Or, at least, used to be.

Today's Democrat Party is typically in lockstep with anti-free speech terrorists of the Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and Resistance order. Speakers are shouted down, or their expression denied entirely. Event sites are attacked by masked rioters, who destroy property and set blazes. Audiences are threatened and assaulted. Controversial radio, television, and online broadcasts are petitioned against, their advertisers pressured. Not that opposing voices be heard, which would be a legitimate ambition, but only that disobliging ones be stifled.

Consider, also, the on-campus enthusiasm for railroading those accused, official disregard for established evidentiary standards, and denying defendants effective voice in proceedings whose outcomes may impact not only their academic welfare, but also post-educational professional fortunes.

Liberals who traditionally evoked Daniel Webster, Clarence Darrow (the "Attorney for the Damned"), and the Scottsboro Boys in pressing for the rights of the accused kneeling in abject submission before the formidable state now remain tellingly silent in the face of contemporary injustices.

Democrats formerly championed the fine idea of the common man selecting civil government through the electoral process. But no more, as liberal local officials obstruct federal authority, prominent figures urge the destruction of the electoral college, and street hordes mindlessly chant "Not my president." 

And, in times previous, Democrats railed against unelected corporations exercising control over citizens' Constitutional liberties. This season, though, private mega-companies like Citibank, Walmart, Kroger (Fred Meyer), MetLife, Dick's, L.L. Bean,  Hertz, and Delta announced policies in calculated contravention of citizens' Second Amendment rights. And no protestation has issued from the left.

Nor has the Democrat Party uttered violation of privacy complaints about Big Tech behemoths like Google, Youtube, Twitter, and Facebook harvesting and marketing users' information, or censoring political speech. 

The late columnist, author, and and civil libertarian Nat Hentoff enjoyed general recognition as an authority on citizens' Constitutional rights, especially regarding speech and judicial issues. 

I recall that in one of his later columns, Hentoff noted that he would be more inclined to support a Republican presidential candidate than a Democratic one. The former party, he argued, would be institutionally inclined to protect the Constitutional rights and liberties he'd spent a lifetime championing. 

Democrats were increasingly radical and likely to shred America's most vital document, Hentoff warned, at once strangling citizens' freedoms and guarantees of justice.

And here we are, living in the terrible reality he predicted. 

So, Roseanne spoke for many of us: "I'm still the same. You all moved!"