Three Wise Men: On Free Speech

Well, another New Year's come and gone. And, way too quickly. I think the week between Christmas and New Year's is my favorite one of the year, because I basically revert back to living like a teen-ager. Sitting on the couch, playing video games. Watching movies, listening to music. Staying up until three in the morning, sleeping until ten in the morning. It's the life I was meant to live, if that dumb having to make a living thing hadn't walked into my life.

New Year's eve, we invited everyone over to our place for a housewarming-slash-ring-in-the-New-Year party. It was the first time we've really let anyone in to see the place, mostly because we finally got around to picking the place up so it would look presentable.

The photo above is from the party. It was taken in our living room. Corb and I climbed up to the loft to take it. Everyone's showing off their skanky swap gifts--it's an annual tradition for New Years.  Ms. LeShock, you'll notice the lava lamp, if you look hard enough!

Pay no attention to the lady wearing a size EE bra over her head as a doily. That's Corb's sister-in-law, proudly displaying the skanky swap item she won that night...

Oh, and throughout the week, I read. Of course. For some reason, this season, I've found myself obsessed with three wise men, each one possessing more wit in their little finger than most of us have in our entire bodies: Mark Twain, Groucho Marx, and Jack Benny.

These three gents have kept me entertained for hours, making me smile, making me laugh out loud, and more often than not, making me think. So much so, that I think I'll quote them a bit, all week long.

I think Mark Twain has been my favorite, although it's really hard to choose a favorite among such an august group. For my birthday, I received a copy of "Who Is Mark Twain?" a collection of never-before-published personal papers. I've always been a huge fan of Twain's unpublished material ever since I found a copy of "Letters from the Earth" at a used book store about twenty years ago. I lost the copy a while back, but it turned up during the move, and I'm now proudly displaying it in the library.

"Who Is Mark Twain" is just as entertaining, and a quick read, too: twenty or so short entries, usually around six pages in length. Twain discusses dentistry, talks to the devil, complains about government, and even disses Jane Austen ("Does Jane Austen do her work too remorselessly well? She makes me detest all her people, without reserve. Is it her purpose to make the reader detest her people up to the middle of the book and like them in the rest of the chapters? Some day I will examine the other end of her books and see.")

Most of all, Twain had the wisdom to know when it made sense to offer up his opinion and when to keep his tremendous literary voice silent. Many of these entries didn't see the light of day while he was living, for a reason.

I think my favorite story is called "The Privilege of the Grave," where he says:

"Its occupant has but one privilege which is not exercised by any living person: free speech. The living man is not without this privilege--strictly speaking--but as he possesses it merely as an empty formality, and knows better than to make use of it, it cannot be seriously regarded as an actual possession. As an active privilege, it ranks with the privilege of committing murder: we may exercise it if we are willing to take the consequences. Murder is forbidden both in form and in fact; free speech is granted in form but forbidden in fact...murder is sometimes punished, free speech always--when committed."

As anyone who does any sort of journaling knows--or as anyone who has spent even a few fruitless hours wrestling with someone on any sort of social media (including Facebook), even now, unfettered free speech can have costly consequences. Although in the heat of passion it may be tempting to say whatever the hell's on your mind, in practice, this exercise of free speech can easily become more hellish than it's worth. It can lose you friends--or hang over your head-- for years to come.

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