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David McElroy

An Alien Sent to Observe the Human Race

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Town’s new fine for public profanity points to problem of ‘public’ spaces

By David McElroy · June 14, 2012

If you plan to spend any time in Middleborough, Mass., you might want to be careful if you’re the sort who enjoys slinging four-letter words around. The town’s residents voted 183-50 Monday night to enact a fine for the public use of profanity, so police will have their ears open.

In modern American society, this is typically seen as a conflict between free speech and civility. Some people believe you should be able to say anything you want without government interference, and others believe that offensive and vulgar behavior should be prohibited. Merchants in the town say some of their customers have been uncomfortable with groups of teens hanging out downtown and swearing loudly. So which side is right?

I’m an advocate of keeping government completely out of the business of censoring speech, but I’m also someone who detests profanity. (I’m one of the few people you know who you’ll never hear it from. I didn’t grow up with it and I’ve consciously avoided using it. It’s not what I want to be.) So it sounds as though these two competing values are in conflict and there’s no logical way to resolve it.

That’s sort of true. There’s no logical way to resolve it under the current system of “public” ownership of property and the rules that come with “public” space. But what if the real issue isn’t free speech vs. civility? What if the real issue is who owns property — and who should be allowed to make the rules?

There’s a basic tension between freedom and democracy. Freedom demands that people have the ability to say what they want to say without government censoring it. Democracy demands that the majority of those voting in the town have the right to establish rules for the others to follow. How do we resolve this?

The problem is the existence of “public property.” If everybody owns something, nobody really owns it. In the statist model that we live with today, we’re perpetually faced with that conflict between freedom and democracy. But what if everything were privately owned? Then the question could be settled by the owner — and people would “vote” with their patronage.

What if a downtown area were owned by a commercial company? What if a company developed property and planned shops and attracted merchants to fill up those stores — and then established the rules of behavior for patrons? There would then be no conflict. One shopping area might cater to a more sedate crowd that wants more civility and decorum. Another development might cater to a crowd that’s freewheeling and boisterous. And so forth. Customers would choose the plan that suited them the best. Some models would succeed and some would fail, but they would change as their owners decided that changes could attract customers.

What I’ve just described can’t work in the public system, because the First Amendment prevents governments from making the rules that limit speech. (Whether Middleborough’s rules stand up in court is an open question. It’s hard for me to believe that they will.) On the other hand, it’s a genuine problem for merchants who are trying to conduct business in a pleasant atmosphere and loud, profane people are bothering customers. The current system can’t resolve those conflicts.

We already do a limited version of this with shopping malls. I don’t care for the sterility of most shopping malls, but there are exceptions (and the exceptions tend to be nice places to spend time). We also do a limited version of this at places such as theme parks. You go through a gate and enter private space where someone else sets the rules.

Why can’t we extend this to the rest of society? In fact, why can’t we eliminate all “public” ownership of anything? Why can’t we let entire cities and enclaves of varying sizes operate under their own rules? It’s not possible today, but why can’t it exist in the future?

As long as we live with the coercive state in what it supposed to be a “liberal democracy,” there’s going to be a conflict between freedom and majority will. The privatization of everything — of all of society — is the solution. It’s something that will scare most people. It won’t happen all at once. But I think it’s where we’re going to end up.

In the meantime, I doubt these Middleborough fines will stand up in court. At this point, free speech is still going to trump majority will, but it’s silly that we live under a system that tries to balance these two irreconcilable things.

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Briefly

It was five years ago tonight when Lucy first rode in the car with me. She was on her way to her “forever home” with me that night, but she didn’t know it, so she was terrified. It was a much happier and braver girl who took a ride in the car tonight so we could go through a drive-through window and order a hamburger for her — to celebrate five years with me. She had a great time. If she could remember five years ago tonight, she would be proud of how far she’s come, too. If you’d like to know more about Lucy’s journey from scared dog to brave queen of the household, here’s something I wrote after her first year with me. I’m hoping this girl will have many more happy years with me.

I’ve never been attracted to skinny women. There’s nothing wrong with someone who’s naturally thin, but it’s never been my preference. What has shocked me, though, is the judgment I’ve heard from women all through my life — about themselves and others — about who’s “fat.” I concluded long ago that most women in our culture have been brainwashed to believe that skinny is attractive — and that anything other than skinny is ugly. I first assumed that I was the oddball — for preferring women with bigger and heavier bodies — but I’m coming to the conclusion that most men naturally feel this way to one extent or another. I just ran across new research by a couple of Northwestern University psychology professors that shows that women seriously overestimate how much a straight man will be attracted to a skinny woman. In a perfect world, we would all be at a healthy weight, but when it comes to attractiveness, too heavy is more attractive than skinny. At least to me — and to a lot of men, too.

Years ago, I heard a question that seemed very insightful at the time. You’ve probably heard it, too. What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail? The question is intended to help you uncover things you really want to do, but which you’re afraid to try — for fear of failure. In an interview today, I heard the great marketing guru Seth Godin give a different point of view. He said the better question is to ask what you would do even if you knew it would fail. That struck me as far more insightful than the original version. We ought to be doing what we know is right, not what will maximize our success or praise from others. There are some battles that are worth fighting even if you believe you’re doomed to failure. Those battles are often for love or important ideas or our children. Some things are simply worth fighting for — and the truth is that you might win anyway. Do the right thing. Take the chance.

The more I understand about myself, about human nature and about the nature of reality, the more I realize I’m a radical by the standards of both Modernism and Postmodernism. Seeing the things which I’m stumbling toward makes me an enemy of many of the core ideas upon which contemporary culture is built. It exposes the culture as a monstrous lie — like a dangerous infection that’s slowly destroying what human were created to be. My “inner observer” has always known that truth was found in the ideas of the Enlightenment, but I’m slowly finding words to explain what has merely been instinct until now. The Enlightenment was humanity’s great leap forward, but shallow and arrogant thinkers for the next two centuries threw away the fruits of that achievement. We can’t go forward as a species until we go back to correct this intellectual and spiritual error — and part of that is acknowledging that our collective attempts to do away with our Creator will always fail.

I’ve come to believe that some of us — including me — aren’t very good at knowing how to be happy. I don’t mean that in the sense that happy talk and positive thinking should be able to make us happy regardless of the circumstances. I mean that some of us had so much experience with being unhappy when we were young that we were trained to be unhappy — and that being happy is an unconsciously uncomfortable thing. When I look at times in my past when I should have been happy, it rarely lasted. I believe now that I found reasons to be unhappy — and caused real problems for myself — because being comfortable and happy felt so foreign to my programming. If I’m right, this means that some of us have to do more than just change our circumstances. It means we have to learn how to accept the happiness that we unconsciously fear we don’t deserve.

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