In a republic, both kings and queens are alien things.
By Dave Read, Lenox, MA, Dec. 19, 2025 – Words are artificial things that people say or write in order to convey their otherwise inaudible, illegible thoughts and feelings. Ideas and emotions are the most powerful of all human things, but nouns, verbs, pronouns, adverbs, and adjectives are as devoid of value and incapable of guilt as are the wires of a piano.
When I play the piano, it does not produce beautiful music, just noisy sound. But we don’t punish the piano, or prohibit its use. Nor do we require everybody to learn to play it, even though a well-played rendition of Rhapsody in Blue conveys more about what it means to be human than an equivalent amount of written words will, unless from the pen of someone like Hawthorne or Shakespeare.
Words on trial?
Then, why are we told to hate speech? By what sophistry do we convict inert words for crimes that can only be committed by willful, adult members of the human race?
If someone shouts fire in a crowded theater that is not on fire, society does not require the removal of the felon’s vocal chords, nor even of their tongue. But, by whatever punishment society does enact on them, it is hoped the felon commits no more vocal crimes.
Even though the sound of it shouted may be the next proximate cause of a lethal stampede, society nevertheless holds ‘fire’ blameless, and it remains in circulation, innocent as each of the seven words George Carlin told us cannot be said on TV.
(Nor do we punish pianos when their strings are used as garottes.)
Hate speech is a mirage
Hate speech is a fallacious social construct that aims its wrath at the innocent messenger – the words someone uses with criminal and/or malicious intent. Not only do we hold the word ‘fire’ blameless, but we hold the act of shouting it in crowded theaters blameless, because it has saved and will again save lives when done for good purpose.
The misguided mavens of speech in America seek both to prohibit the use of whatever they deem amounts to “hate speech,” while also demanding that we use the argot favored by communities that use different rules of grammar than the general population does. The public’s reluctance to use impersonal pronouns to refer to actual people must not be deemed offensive. That would indicate prejudice, which society rightly condemns.
Nobody is more personally insecure, and liable to unhappiness, than someone who demands to be addressed differently than the way the general population is addressed. In so doing, they anthropomorphize impersonal pronouns, without first seeking the advice and consent of the people who own the language. My educated guess is that, if consulted, the people would prefer the customary use of people’s names, then personal pronouns when appropriate.
In a republic, no community is justified in forcing its lexicon, patois, and nicknames on the people. Kings, Crown Princes, and Ayatollahs get away with demanding to be addressed in a way that affirms their superiority over commoners, but even our phony king answers to he, him, his his his his his his his his his his his his his his his his…
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