Omphaloskepsis is another word for navel gazing, so I guess I learned something new today.
What I haven't learned is how stupid Americans continue to be. According to Reason.com, 1 in 3 believe that the First Amendment goes "Too Far." You know what? Those Americans should be herded up and loaded into cattle cars....
What? I've gone too far. If you crack open a dictionary, what I just used is the age-old tactic of hyperbole. I don't really mean that statement above literally, but what has eroded in America is the concept of everyone getting free speech.
Very little speech in America is hate speech, but now we label differences of opinion as hate. America is not supposed to be the land of censoring unlike thoughts, but the land of spirited debate. Giant corporations like Google have chosen winners and losers in free speech battles instead of letting speech live and breathe.
The late Sam Kenison tested the limits of speech to hilarious results. If you go to the YouTube page, comments are mostly positive. If you head on over to Social Media, it is littered with negative comments "if you have to yell, its not comedy," "not funny," and "hate speech" litter the discourse.
Very few Americans think they have too little free speech, they simply think that other guy has too much.
I am not a free speech absolutist like Elon Musk claims to be. (Which he's not.) I have my well delineated speech limits hidden deep in the Beacon of Speech archives:
What really bothers me today is writers who are Liberal who pretend to be the center. Even writers like Connie Schultz, who freely admit they're Liberal, work for News Agencies that won't admit their biases.
Same thing for right-wingers who suck from the corporate teet trying to sell themselves as the "common man."
Right on the Beacon of Speech home page, we admit our Libertarian leanings. But even misrepresenting your speech is free speech....
We are sort of in a rut this week. This year, we entered the Pulitzer Race for Commentary with our article The Maximum Wage. Our goal was a half hour read, with 100 references, for the most left-leaning topic that we believed in. Our length was a little short, but we were very comfortable with our entry.
Why a left-leaning topic? Because if you're not left-leaning, you don't win. I believe a Pulitzer would elevate Beacon of Speech to a full-time website.
But I don't believe in the Maximum Wage with all my heart. The article is basically a counter-balance to billionaire propaganda which runs unchecked in this country. There is a conventional wisdom in America that the more money you have, the smarter you are. That is fundamentally incorrect.
What I do believe in is Free Speech.
I send articles to Drudge Report, they have never replied.
I have sent a few articles to Zero Hedge, they have never replied.
I send nearly every article to WhatFinger, they share about 1 in 5.
The Maximum Wage was the first time I specifically wrote to the test, if you will. In past years, I would just take my best writing and enter that. This year, I TRIED to win a Pulitzer.
What does that have to do with being in a rut? Beacon of Speech is predicated on writing whatever I want. How many people in America write what they want as opposed to writing based on unseen tethers? I think I'm having a bit of an existential crisis.
If I lose to someone like Matt Taibbi or Tyler Durden, I am okay with that, they're really good writers. If I lose to some partisan hack at the Daily Beast that wrote about how hard it is to be a transgender minority in South Dakota, I think I may burst a blood vessel.
Why does my free speech matter? Because I'm Joe Everyman, the one the Constitution was written to protect, not forget.