The View from Flyover Country by Sarah Kendzior

Author:Sarah Kendzior
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Flatiron Books

The Ingredients of Free Speech

In America, a nation was divided by a sandwich. Across the world, people are dying because of a Z-grade film trailer. The battle lines of free speech are often drawn over the banal. One strategy of those who seek to minimize the argument of the offended party is to scoff at what inspired it. It’s only a restaurant, only a movie, only a cartoon—why the outrage? they ask.

But such conflicts are rarely about the object in question. They are about the participants and their culture, their ideologies and their faith. They are about sanction and censure, about whose dignity can withstand whose degradation.

Freedom of speech is protected by law but guided by emotion. We should not mistake legal sanction for personal approval, but we should also not mistake personal disapproval for a rejection of free speech. In free societies, people have the right to say hateful things. And those offended have the right to oppose and condemn them.

—Originally published September 25, 2012

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