Bang. Bang.

Bang.

Perhaps you are aware of the great kerfuffle this week regarding Facebook? You’re not?!? Bless your heart. May I please come live on your planet?

The rest of us know that a poll was posted on the social networking site Facebook last weekend with the title, “Should Obama Be Killed?” This set off a firestorm of self-righteous indignation among the sort of people whose fourth grade motto was “I’m telling.” These people seemed to fall all over themselves to be the first to report the perpetrator(s) to the mother superior at Facebook and loudly denounce the right-wing hooligan(s), indisputably racist, who must have devised such an affront to decency.

Boy must their faces have been red when the Secret Service reported that the perpetrator was a juvenile, that no threat to the president had ever existed, and no charges would be filed.

Of course the poll never, ever posed any sort of threat to the president. Not even a little, bitty, teeny, tiny one. “Should Obama Be Killed?” does not pose a threat. “Obama should be killed.” poses a marginally greater threat. “I am going to kill Obama with the Gluck I have in my storage locker when he speaks in Sheboygan on Tuesday.” Now that’s a threat.

Not only does “Should Obama Be Killed?” not, in and of itself, constitute a threat, the four possible answers, "yes," "maybe," "if he cuts my health care" and "no," make clear that the whole exercise was a satire. The technical term for anyone who misses the fact that this is satire is “moron.” Hint, it’s the third answer that gives it away.

But let’s say that the poll hadn’t been posted by a child with a wicked sense of humor, but rather by the prissocracy’s worst nightmare. Let’s say that the poll was posted by a disaffected thug in fatigues and a wife beater who was way, way, way off his or her thorazine and who believed Obama was not legitimately president because he was born in Kenya otherwise he would be able to produce a birth certificate. Would I still see it as harmless and humorous?

Absolutely not. But I would argue with greater urgency that he or she had every right to post it and that we all lost something immeasurable when it was taken down. I acknowledge that Facebook is a private enterprise with the right to remove any application or expel any member. But with over 300,000,000 members Facebook has more than ordinary influence in determining how freedom of speech is construed in our society.

I’m also going to pursue this line because much of the commentary I have read and been directly subject to hasn’t made a distinction between Facebook and America. The poll was not right, it was offensive, things like that just shouldn’t be allowed. My favorite was directed at me as part of a discussion thread on, yes, Facebook: “But this is just not an issue one debates...a poll like this is disgusting and entirely inappropriate. Free speech gets trumped by safety...you just do not talk about killing the president...period.” The ellipses are the writer’s not mine.

In a democracy, in a constitutional democracy, in a constitutional democracy with our particular constitution, free speech should be trumped by safety only very rarely, with great regret and after careful deliberation.

Disgusting and inappropriate speech has the absolute protection of the first amendment. Ask George Carlin or his estate. Ask the folks at Westboro Baptist Church (of “God Hates Fags” at funerals fame). Ask those given to cross burnings. Now the last two give me great pause. Hatred that virulent is not an easy thing to contemplate. I have to take a deep breath before going on to say that I believe that speech or expression that repugnant should be protected. But I do. I believe it requires vigilant protection.

Free speech doesn’t exist on a continuum. Or, when it does, it’s a downward slope. Once we say speech can be limited, speech can be restricted, then each subsequent limit, each subsequent restriction is only a matter of degree. The fundamental premise that speech can be limited or restricted has already been established. History does not offer much evidence of rights being restored incrementally, but they can be dribbled away.

In closing, I want to bring it the heaviest of guns – my betters. The great linguist Noam Chomsky who understands the power of language on many levels reached the conclusion: If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.

A few words from E.M. Forster, dedicated to the multitudes who couldn’t wait to drive the offending poll from Facebook: We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship.

Finally, because we have the rule of three, because he was there at our creation, and because he’s Mr. Jefferson: We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.