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Sound It Out Now
Rosencrantz
19 Jan 2003
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." -Voltaire
Speech is a glorious thing. Nothing causes more trouble, changes more things, and creates more love, hate, sadness, anger, bigotry, acceptance, ill will and good tidings. And it's a vital idea that this speech be free and flow like wine.
I'm not talking about child pornography or a burning flag or a man putting himself on fire. That can be free speech, but the freedom of speech I look to fight for is the right for you to say one thing, me to say another, we agree to disagree and keep on talking. What is the matter of which I write? Words, words, words!
That marvelous exchange of syllables, constants, vowels, stresses, rhymes, dictions, and clicks of the tongue from the mouth is what should be fought for above all else. And why should this battle be fought for such things to exist? Things that cause wars, cause tension, cause dissension, cause pain, cause unhappiness?
Because it is those very same things that create peace, create ease, create goodwill, create healing, create joy.
Words revolutionize thought. Hear the barbaric yawp of Whitman and quiet your heart to listen to Eliot's love song, let Salinger whisk you away to Huxley's brave new world, go fishing with Melville (Fitzgerald and Hemingway can bring the drinks), visit the south and permit Faulkner to confuse you, allow Bob Dylan and the Beatles to tell the stories of the world, listen to Jefferson and Paine and Burke and Socrates as they tell the ways to liberty and to life.
Words create a sense of being. Without words, there'd be no ideas, no religion, and no way to identify you, no way to explain your love of someone or your hatred of someone. You couldn't do your grocery list, or your pros and cons of that special someone versus that other special someone.
The only way to ensure this continual revolution of thought, this sense of being, is that everyone be allowed to say what their revolution is, what their being is. You can disagree with me, you can agree with me, but speak it out! You have the same power, the same right I do! Whether it be me, that person next to you, or that fellow with the Confederate flag outside who sits on his porch, polishing his shotgun. Whether it is Charlton or Arnold, DiFranco or Dubya. The right to speak freely, to say one thing, is the only true way to be free and shall be worth dying for.
Those are just my words. What are yours?
Wasn't actually written today...written in october...maybe?
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