Keller @ Large: Imagine If People Knew When To Shut Up
BOSTON (CBS) - We live in a time where people are ready and willing to debate absolutely anything, no matter how trivial.
The latest case study is the news that Harvard rescinded acceptances of ten students who, in their first act as incoming freshmen, went on Facebook and posted vile comments, including, as the Globe reports, messages that "made sexual jokes about the Holocaust, implied that child abuse was sexually arousing, and poked fun at suicide and Mexicans."
The fact that this cost them their ticket to Harvard strikes me as unremarkable. Harvard has the absolute right to teach this little jerks a lesson about the importance of civility and manners.
But lo and behold, this episode has become the focus of a "nationwide debate," a free-speech issue that has aroused the ire of an official at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, who tells the Globe: "I don't know what lesson these students have learned, other than to keep their mouth shut."
What a great lesson to learn!
Think of how much better our world would be if more people knew when to keep their mouths shut.
No more drunken fools shouting obscenities or racial slurs at ballgames.
No more talk radio callers that make you lunge for the off switch.
No more outrageous trolling online.
Hillary Clinton might be president now if she had kept her musings about "deplorables" to herself.
President Trump might have an approval rating higher than broken glass.
But no, everyone has to share everything at all times.
That's not free speech.
That's diarrhea of the mouth, and Harvard is lucky to have ten fewer carriers of that disease.