Long post about the freedom of speech for the very patient

My father has always been a great story-teller who could turn an insipid incident into an amusing anecdote, so I grew up on vividly delivered fables and fairy tales, as well as true stories from his youth. Some of his true stories were a bit grim, especially by Disney standards, but no worse than one of the more violent bits in the Brother Grimm anthology. One of these grim stories was about a lost land: his parents' beautiful farmland that was seized by the Communist government as part of the Party's agricultural collectivization plan. Another grim story was about lost food as during the dictatorship of Mátyás Rákosi (who humbly referred to himself as "Stalin's best Hungarian disciple") my grandparents were required to surrender a shamefully large portion of their grains, fruits, vegetables and livestock  to the State, every time they harvested their crops or slaughtered an animal. 

There were other grim stories about lost trust, about people having to carefully watch their words as they never knew who would report them for some real or fictitious crime against the People's Republic of Hungary. Unsuspecting citizens were routinely taken away by the ÁVH (the Hungarian state security police) in the middle of the night,  a lot like Josef K in Kafka's Trial. Or a lot like the dad of my father's elementary school classmate. My father couldn't have been older than 6 or 7 when his class was assigned the task of writing an essay about the birthday gift they would like to give to Comrade Stalin, an appropriate task to celebrate the birthday of the great leader. One of the little boys in my father's class cracked a joke and blurted out: "a rope", a sentiment probably shared by many souls living in the Eastern Bloc at the time, a sentiment that nobody dared to utter in public where Big Brother saw and heard everything. Nobody, except a big-mouthed little boy who didn't fully grasp the workings of a well-oiled dictatorship  yet. Later that night the boy's father was "taken away" as the Authorities assumed that no child invents such ideas on his own; therefore, the dangerous heresy must have come from the boy's father. But the grimmest stories were about lost lives, the stories of thousands who were tortured, forced to confess in show trials, imprisoned in concentration camps, deported to the east, or executed between 1949 and 1952. 

My father claims that "things loosened up a lot" after Stalin died in 1953, but I think his idea of "loosened up" conditions  is a lot like my idea of the improved condition of Izzy's cyclical vomiting. As in, ooh the Bean's last non-stop vomiting episode only lasted 6 hours, as opposed to 52, so it was a breeze. Hungary was still occupied by Soviet troops and was under an oppressive Communist regime, and it was this oppression that he 1956 revolution fought against. The bloody revolt started as a peaceful demonstration by university students who complied a list of demands, among which there were calls for the evacuation of all Soviet troops and "the complete recognition of freedom of opinion and of expression, of freedom of the press and of radio". The peaceful demonstration turned into a bloody revolution that was violently suppressed by the Soviet military. In the aftermath, 26,000 people were tried, 22,000 were sentenced, 13,000 were imprisoned and several hundred executed. Many of them were young college students, some of them still minors whose execution had to wait till their 18th birthday. 200,000 fled the country but many intellectuals stayed despite of the continued repression.  

By the time I came along, Hungary had a much more relaxed political atmosphere and became the most reformed-minded state in the Eastern Block. Russian was still the first compulsory foreign language that we had to start learning in 4th grade, churches were still monitored by the government and attendance was frowned on, travel to the west was still restricted and our modern history books were censored and biased, but at least we didn't have a sadistic sociopath as our prime minister, like our  less fortunate Eastern neighbors. I believe I was 14 when I watched the the quick metamorphosis of Nicolae Ceausescu from scary monstrous dictator into pitiful old man before he was executed alongside his equally monstrous wife, Elena. The same year that the Communist regime collapsed in Hungary, the Berlin Wall was opened and consequently dismantled, another event I watched on live television. The live broadcast probably interrupted some Czechoslovakian TV show about the sales women of a suspiciously well-supplied supermarket or the medical staff of a hospital where medical insurance was not an issue. 

Given my country's history, I recognize the full worth and importance of human rights and I'm grateful for my right to the freedom of expression. However, it always puzzles me when the right to free speech is used to defend people's right to use hateful, derogatory language. Whenever there is a commentary condemning the usage of the word 'retard' or some other slur against people with disabilities, someone always pulls out the Bill of Rights and loudly declares people's inalienable right to freely insult, mock, and degrade each other. This application of the freedom of speech and its vehement defense perplexes me because being an ass is a universally recognized right. Even under the most oppressive regimes,  people have always been free to verbally abuse each other, mistreat people with differences and make fun of disabilities. The right to free speech is one of the most precious and most important human rights that enables people to freely hold opinions, have ideas, express their views and receive and impart information and ideas without censorship. It has a pivotal role in a democracy as it is supposed to protect individuals against more powerful authorities, as opposed to enable individuals to bully the more vulnerable members of society. 

Perhaps it's worth mentioning that Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights points out that the freedom of speech and expression comes with special duties and responsibilities and is thus subjected to certain restrictions and limitations, for example, respecting the rights and reputation of others, or protecting national security, public order or morals. If we believe that every person - regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, religion or intellectual ability - possesses the right to dignity, than by exercising unrestricted free speech that degrades and objectifies intellectually disabled people violates their basic human right.

However, I don't think that the usage of the word 'retard', and other derogatory terms  degrading disabled people, are a matter of legal rights as much as a matter of plain old human decency. I have watched enough Soviet films and read enough biased literature to be weary of censorship, and to be aware of its inefficiency when it comes to changing attitudes. I don't believe movies should be censored and words should be banned; however, I do want to live in a society where bigotry against people with disabilities is regarded with the same disdain as racism or antisemitism and where  Tracy Morgan's 'retarded'-joke evokes the same embarrassed reaction in his audience as Lars Von Trier's 'Nazi'-remark did in Kirstin Dunst at Cannes. 

http://youtu.be/LayW8aq4GLw