Offended Nation

“The first Amendment is designed to protect speech from people not to protect people from speech.”

That is a quote of my own that I often use to help those who do not fully understand the basic nature of free speech. The modern idea of “hate speech” obviously flies in the face of this basic principle. The fundamental problem with the concept of hate speech is this, “Who gets to decide what actually is hate speech?”

In modern America, the “offended” get to make that decision and therein lies true crux of the problem. It is nearly impossible these days to find someone who is not offended by something. What I hope to do in this missive is to make clear what offended truly means and how to combat the ever increasing numbers of people who can no longer handle the idea of truly free speech.

Those of you reading this probably already know that the first Amendment was really designed to allow unpopular or uncomfortable speech a place in society free of recrimination.

This is no longer the case in modern America due primarily to a growing sensitivity to unpopular or uncomfortable speech. This sensitivity is most apparent on college campuses where “free speech zones” had to be created because it narrowed an area where truth might be present thus offending those who were unused to it or found it frightening. One can easily avoid a small area where truth may exist. Instead of college being a place where those attending could have their beliefs and ideology challenged by opposing viewpoints, the college campus became a place where nearly monolithic group-think became the norm. With each passing year, the concept of independent thought becomes less and less desirable in favor of falling in line with the “ideology du jour”. It's arguable that peer pressure is worse in college than it is in primary and secondary schools. The old adage, “Go along to get along” is a way of life in college. This is, of course, not something that happened recently to be sure. It's been growing worse for nearly 2 decades and what we are left with as a result is a generation of young adults who can no longer distinguish between something they may not like and something that truly is offensive. By this point, everything they don't like is offensive simply because they have not been sufficiently challenged enough intellectually to know the difference. These young people have spent their college years immersed in an environment that teaches them that to be “offended” is the most egregious thing that can happen to them.

What these young people have never been taught is that being offended is a personal choice, not an action that has been done to them. What they often say is, “What you are doing/saying is offending me.” while never realizing they have made a personal choice to be offended.

Personally, I don't get offended any more in my life. I get angry or frustrated about certain things but learning either to deal with those things by either removing myself from a situation that angers or frustrates me or by simply ignoring it altogether. Getting pissed off is something that happens to me occasionally from either external sources or decisions I have made. Being pissed off does not surrender my own personal power in any way. Being offended surrenders all my power to an external force that may or may not acknowledge or even apologize for the offense. Without acknowledgment or an apology, one cannot get the closure to an offense that is required by the person who is offended. The very real problem with acknowledgment or apology is the subjective nature of what is considered offensive. One man's joke is another man's offense such is the flimsy nature of offense.

If I tell a joke that some find funny and others do not, who is to say the joke is offensive? Usually, the person who finds the joke not funny renders a judgment that not only is it not funny, it is offensive. The person who laughs at the joke does not consider it offensive at all. The line between offensive and not funny is so fine as to be nearly invisible to some.

What we are currently experiencing is the rise of the “some things just aren't funny” army. Valiant warriors are they, determined to decide for the rest of us who may not be aware or enlightened enough to know what's funny and what isn't. They have determined for the rest of us that anything that is not funny is also offensive in some way. A joke that wasn't funny in the old days was met with complete silence. These days it's met with howls of derision and the wailing and gnashing of teeth of the offended. A-list comedians are beginning to be a scarce commodity on college campuses because the idea that some things aren't funny is blossoming into the belief that nothing is funny. Humor, by its very nature, most often comes at the expense of someone else to truly be funny whether that be a personality type or a group of people. I make jokes about my own OCD tendencies constantly because while they can be a slight burden at times, they are still quite funny when viewed in the big picture. People who are also OCD to any degree do not find those jokes offensive, at least not that I've been made aware of. I make jokes about being Italian, bald and other physical and personality quirks but those are excused because I am talking about myself.

This is the root of the subjectivity problem. If a joke about my own OCD is funny because I'm talking about myself, one must draw the conclusion that it is funny regardless who I'm speaking of. Such is not the case today though. It is perfectly acceptable for me to make light of my own quirks but the instant I step outside the line and speak of someone else's quirks I am branded offensive. A joke is either funny or it is not. Offense comes from inside the listener but not from the joke.

Thus also is truth branded offensive when used at the expense of a person or group of people. Simply saying, “Radical Islam is a serious problem both in the U.S. and the wider world.” will bring shouts of racism, an entirely inaccurate statement on it's surface, xenophobia and worse on the average college campus. Simple truth has no place in college any longer. One must instead be so nuanced as to be completely incomprehensible in the end. This is evident by the less than warm reception that speakers like Milo Yiannopolous and Steven Crowder receive when they speak at a college campus. They both speak often of the dangers of radical Islam and it's effects on our culture, our way of life and their brutal treatment of women. As a result, they are often met with protests, harsh treatment and in one recent instance, a violent mob burned and looted parts of the Berkely campus in reaction to a scheduled appearance by Milo. Disagreement with a point of view is also thought of as offensive by those with no faculty to either accept it or understand it. Once again, they chose to be offended when cold indifference would have been a much harsher criticism of Milo and his beliefs.

Offense comes from within not from without. Being offended requires you to surrender your power of self control and that too is an underlying problem with this generation. They possess no self control to allow a point of view or an uncomfortable truth they may not agree with be allowed to cross their paths. It must be emotionally exhausting to spend every day finding and pointing out all the things that are offensive in life.

The easier path for them is to become offended simply because they are no longer required to think rationally or logically when offended. Thinking rationally and logically requires a modicum of self control and intellectual discipline that they just don't have. Their immersion into the waters of “everything I don't like is offensive” is the baptism by which they have been saved. Much like religion, their belief is unshakable and immutable but also requires no hard evidence to be considered fact.

You just have to believe you are offended and that is all that is needed to change the world.

If one wished to remove everything offensive from the world there would be almost nothing left. No art, no truth, no beauty and no humor.

Ultimately, who would want to live in a world like that?