Sticks and Stones May Break my Bones

What harm can words do? Sticks and stones right? Unfortunately this old school yard aphorism only  applies to jeers, cat calls, and to the incessant taunts of ones peers after a nasty spill off the high swings. In the world that we adults occupy however, words can hurt, they can harm, and are wielded often with the intent to do both.

Luckily, or not, for us though we have laws that limit such hurtful speech, like liable laws, and laws against hate speech. The best these laws can do for us however is punish the worst examples, examples which would fit right back in the school yard. Some of the more insidious, and potentially damaging examples of speech in our society can't be legally restricted, but non-the-less needs to be checked.

Recently a perfect example of this sinister speech popped out of the mouth of Natural Resource Minister Joe Oliver,

"Get off my lawn you dirty hippies."

"Unfortunately, there are environmental and other radical groups that would seek to block this opportunity to diversify our trade... Their goal is to stop any major project no matter what the cost to Canadian families in lost jobs and economic growth. No forestry. No mining. No oil. No gas. No more hydro-electric dams... Threaten to hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda," 

Nothing in what Oliver said there was even remotely illegal. Not a thing. That doesn't mean however that what he said was ethical, or correct. In what is considered civilized discourse calling the people who disagree with you radicals, and saying they want to hijack anything is generally not acceptable. Nor is trying to manipulate your audience by incurring the specter of impeding economic down turn when you can't possibly know that is the case. To put it more broadly, claiming that your opponents are all nut job misanthropes isn't proper debate strategy, and it doesn't make for a healthy Democracy. This is how words can hurt in a broader context, they damage our ability to maintain our freedom. We  cannot have freedom of speech when those in power can simply shout down dissenting opinions, when the electorate fails to take those in power to task for such flagrant abuse of language, or worse still, when the electorate is taken in by these tactics. 

If we are unwilling to do something about these verbal violations, perpetrated by those we choose to govern us, do we even deserve the freedom we have?