Commentary

JOHN BRUMMETT: At Face(book) value

We experienced a little social-media dust-up Monday.

Facebook deleted a post from state Sen. Jason Rapert about the supposed national imperative to round up all extremist Muslim sympathizers and "anti-American crazies" and deny further admission to the country to anyone of the Muslim religious persuasion and practice.

Rapert then made a post giving Facebook 24 hours to stop violating his constitutional right of free speech. Or ... what?

By morning, Facebook had restored the post and said it was sorry. Mark Zuckerberg had lost this tangle with the fiddlin' preacher of Bigelow.

It was an appropriate resolution. Rapert's post was no more offending than his standard fare. He went on a Twitter spasm against me later that very night that was no better.


Some readers implore me not to write about this religiously intolerant grandstander on the basis that critical attention from someone he can demagogically dismiss as a liberal heathen merely emboldens him. But, in this instance, a few important points can be made in a calm and thoughtful way.

First, Rapert went awry in alleging that Facebook had violated his constitutional right of free expression by taking down the post. The constitutional right of free expression is granted by the government. It is violated only when the government prevents one from speaking, or sanctions one for doing so.

For Facebook to take down that post was private-sector editing, no different from Voices boss Brenda Looper excising a sentence from this column saying Rapert was the one who was "anti-American crazy" and ought to be rounded up and deported--and which may or may not have been included in the original text. You'll never know.

Getting edited by a media company is not being denied a constitutional right. In fact, this newspaper at noon Saturday will install Rapert on a public panel at its "Senior Expo." The newspaper and the government will permit him to say whatever he wishes, perhaps about me, as I will sit on that panel as well.

Some of my faux-liberal acquaintances want to know why in the world I would consent to sit on a panel giving a forum to the likes of Rapert. The answer is that I am an American believing in the rights nobly granted by America to Americans.

The further answer is that the requisite "balance" of such a panel is to offset me, being right, with someone who will be wrong. Rapert fills the bill.

And Rapert, by the way, speaks with the aegis of voters in Faulkner County, who have overwhelmingly voted to place him in the state Legislature. He thus appears on the panel with more credible formal credential than I. Nobody has voted for me for anything, or much would.

While Rapert's original post was hardly worthy of Facebook's removal, it was, alas, replete with error and misapprehension.

In fact, the only constitutional violation in the scenario is the one proposed by Rapert. That's the one to deny this nation's proud and precious grant of freedom of religion and forbid entry into our country solely on account of religious affiliation.

Rapert's invoking of "anti-American crazies" bears uneasy resemblance to Joe McCarthy's witch-hunt into "un-American activities," and, anyway, defies workable definition.

Finally, Rapert's Twitter spasm against me could be summarized thusly: Many radicals and terrorists claiming the Islamic faith have committed grotesque murder. The Koran contains a passage seeming to call for killing those of other religions. So we are in a religious war in which all Muslims are either enemies or logical suspects ripe for our intolerance of them.

Two things about that:

One is that the Holy Bible contains odd and violent passages that are disregarded by its general believers. Indeed, religion is largely a matter of taking a leap of faith in designing a code of conduct that works for you, and applying the passages that conform to your faith and disregarding by rational deliberation those that seem odd. And it's all good if it enriches and gives meaning to your life and lends to a civil society.

Secondly, a terrorist is merely a murdering criminal, not a religious person, no matter whether he claims Islamic or Christian or Jewish or other religious affiliation.

We need to keep terrorists out of our country and let in religious people. And they are never the same.

A professed Christian who kills does not defile true Christianity. The same goes for a professed Muslim who kills.

A blanket ban on Muslims is as anti-American crazy as a blanket ban on Southern Baptists.

After a brief pause for thought, I have decided to oppose any ban on either.

I guess that makes me a Muslim sympathizer. And a Baptist sympathizer. And a loving embracer of the U.S. Constitution with its great human experiment in liberty and justice for all.

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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, was inducted into the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame in 2014. Email him at [email protected]. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.

Editorial on 09/22/2016

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