Unleashing the Dogs . . .

Those who want to hate in pubic need to be returned to private life. 

The last few days I’ve been fighting a cold. You know how it is. Take something that relieves the symptoms while your body’s natural defenses fight off the viral infection. 

There was a time when I remember reading that it is better to just let your fever run high. The author of the article, who was no kind of doctor, believed that the high fever would kill viruses that were the cause of the cold. 

It turns out this was kind of silly advice. For a lot of diseases it really is the symptoms that kill you or permanently hurt the body. And relieving those symptoms helps your body heal itself in many ways. Not the least of which is getting plenty of sleep.

Unfortunately our body politic has come under the sway of "let the fever burn" politicians. They say they don’t like racism, but racist language is OK. They say they don’t like sexism, but sexist language is OK. They claim that they love everybody. But xenophobic language and white supremacist rally’s are OK. And of course they oppose all violence except the violent language they regularly deploy.

For these politicians its okay for a society to run a fever. And if you question the wisdom of letting hyperbolic language and extremist claims run wild in public you are accused of being too PC or catering to snowflakes. They believe that for society the old children’s chant “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me” applies. That is dangerous nonsense.

Words spoken in public by politicians and the media can actually be deadly. Rants against immigrants, or Muslims, or Jews leave open a moral space defined by outrage and hatred that prevents society from fighting off the diseases of racism, sexism, homophobia, islamophobia, and anti-Semitism. By making the symptoms of these disease acceptable they validate the disease itself. It's hard to argue that white supremist rallies are okay but that white supremacy isn’t. Or that anti-Semitic images are okay but anti-Semitism isn’t. Or that verbal attacks on Muslims are okay but Islamophobia and anti-muslim terrorism are not. 

Freedom of speech is a wonderful thing, so wonderful that it must always be defended against the coercive power of government. It is also a dangerous thing, and the only way to allay that danger is to make those who use it to create harm pay for it at election time. And that starts now. Those who want to hate in public need to be returned to private life. 

And those of us in the church? We must not only banish the language of hate, we must condemn it from our pulpits and in our classrooms and in or conversations. It won’t cure the disease, but it will begin to buy the innocents who are being slaughtered time until we can.