Last week I read End of Discussion: How the Left’s Outrage Industry Shuts Down Debate, Manipulates Voters, and Makes America Less Free (and Fun). (Not just the title, but the whole book.) It was an adventure. I laughed. I cried. (Not really, but in several places I was very sad.) 

And I thought how easy it would be to write the same book substituting the word “Right” for “Left.”

The authors, Mary Katharine Ham and Guy Benson, write well. For the most part, they don’t take themselves too seriously, and they even make a feint at offering an even-handed treatment. They admit on page 9 that “the Right is hardly blameless,” then they proceed for another 274 pages to blame the left.

I really expected nothing more or less from them since they are both employed by Fox News. However, in some cases it seemed that they almost sprained their typing fingers keeping them pointed at the left.

They decried the name calling, without referencing any of the Right’s name slinging. That’s one place where I laughed. They also had a long chapter on voter manipulation that included a number of potential voter frauds, but didn’t mention that George W. Bushs’ state of Texas sent Jeb Bushs’ state of Florida a list of 2000 felons. Florida matched the list against the voter roles for people with similar names and approximate birth dates; the only exact match required was for race. The 2000 felons became a list of over 50,000 people who, by Florida law, could not vote unless they could prove that it was a case of mistaken identity.

(Johnny Jackson, Jr. probably had an easier time than most proving that he wasn’t the felon since the right guy—John Fitzgerald Jackson—was still in jail in Texas.)

But that wasn’t the part that made me sad. It was that the book title worked as well blaming the Left as the Right (and vice-versa). That’s the point to which we’ve fallen.

I found that there were some places where I was in full agreement with Ham and Benson. For instance, there’s the story of one young lady who took off for Africa with a job and landed in Africa without one. This story has been told in the last two book I’ve read, the other one written liberal-leaning author. It seems that the young lady tweeted what she thought was a joke and everybody else in the world thought was bad taste.

Twitterdom went into action, following her across the Atlantic like a swarm of killer bees. The result, as noted, was that she lost her job, a punishment that in no way fit the crime. In fact, there was no crime. It was just bad taste. And if bad taste were a crime half the people going to the mall would be in jail.

This sort of thing, lynching by bits and bytes, seems to have become something of a sport.

Ham and Benson highlighted another problem that seems to be growing: sensitivity as a weapon of power. In this case a DJ at a bar in Chapel Hill played a song that a female patron objected to. I’ll admit I don’t fully understand this story since I’ve never heard “Blurred Lines” by Robin Thicke. I looked up the lyrics and found that the intro was: Everybody get up, WOO/Everybody get up, WOO/ Hey,hey,hey/ WOO/Hey,hey,hey/WOO.

So far as I’m concerned, we’re back to bad taste again. However, the offending line seems to come in the first verse: I know you want it.  (I'm surprised that line's still around. It was considered ignorant when I was in high school.)

The offended young lady said that hearing that song “might be a triggering event for some women.” She not only complained to the DJ, but also to the manager. The manager issued a public apology and announced that the DJ had been fired. This for playing what had been a number one tune for twelve weeks and Billboard’s Song of the Summer.

(The song’s popularity again shows the level to which we’ve fallen, but that’s a subject for another time.)

The point is that one person gets offended, raises a stink, and someone—totally innocent, so far as I can tell—gets hurt. Then the offended person feels victorious and goes to look for something else to be offended about.

I get offended, too. Even outraged. And one of the things I’m offended about is that someone could make a lot of money from lyrics like those referenced above. However, I know that I have no constitutional right not to be offended, that my opinions may differ from others, and that my zone of personal influence probably does not extend more than three feet in any direction. 

If I’m offended, I may express it, but I shouldn’t expect anybody to do anything about it.

This incident raises a number of questions. Why wasn’t it sufficient for the young lady to simply ask the DJ not to play the tune? Why did the manager need a sacrificial employee? And the big one, how did this song remain number one for twelve weeks, especially if it was so offensive?

Perhaps in that last question lies the answer to the problem. If we are offended by something, we shouldn’t buy it, shouldn’t listen to it, shouldn’t watch it, and certainly shouldn’t make it more profitable for those who are doing it. We have a personal responsibility to protect ourselves from that which we deem offensive, and if each of us does that, much of it will probably go away.

However, we shouldn’t become a mob of cyber vigilantes looking for things to scream about so that we can make someone else’s life more difficult. That’s neither civilized nor smart.

Ham and Benson, bless their little conservative hearts, point out a lot of problems that affect us. The fact that they’re terribly selective in their proofs doesn’t make the principles any less true.

Which brings me to my final question: when did we start worrying about Right and Left instead of right and wrong?