Letters to the editor

Posted on October 29, 2007

Learning to mute a message of hate

We need to realize that when a “preacher” decides to grace us with his presence, we are the ones that have control over the “preacher,” not the other way around. The indignation felt and shown is justified; however, while it may seem that the only thing we can do is yell back, we as students have the ability to control the effectiveness of what he says.

First, acknowledging his presence gives him power to use his words. I realize it is much easier said than done, but if you ignore him, you will deny him the attention he needs to spread his message. Second, yelling back only fuels his convictions. Instead we should emulate the peaceful protesters’ restraint and tact. Their actions spoke more about who we are at JMU than any verbal hate that was thrown at the “preacher.”

I don’t support what he said, but since we cannot stop him from talking we need to learn two things: Spoken words are not necessarily true, and if we want to truly silence him, we need to exert our control in constructive ways. For every message of hate, we must be ready to prove our tolerance.

Tory Federwisch
junior, political science

The First Amendment is not all-inclusive

Last Thursday’s editorial titled “Picked by God, protected by law” discussed how last week’s visitor to our campus, Matt Bourgault, is allowed to call people whores or whatever else he wants because “the First Amendment protects speech—not certain kinds of speech, but all speech.” While I’m no expert in law, I know enough to know that the First Amendment does not protect all speech. One of those unprotected types of speech comes from Chaplinsky vs. the State of New Hampshire, in which a Jehovah’s Witness was arrested for yelling at a police officer, calling him a racketeer and fascist. The Supreme Court ruled that “fighting words” aren’t protected under the First Amendment. “Fighting words” are defined as words that “by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace,” according to freedomforum.org. If “racketeer” is deemed a fighting word, then pointing out people and calling them whores should fall in the  same category. If someone were to yell baseless accusations at me, I certainly wouldn’t stand for it. While I believe Bourgault should be allowed to come to JMU, the administration and law enforcement can’t give him a carte blanche to say whatever he wants.

Preston Jones
sophomore, accounting