Good and just people are not just bothered by the bad things people do, but also by the bad things they may be thinking while they do it.  This is reasonable, on its face, because a lot of  the time (though far from always), misconduct arises from ideas, emotions, motives and intentions that are not very admirable and sometimes despicable. The indisputable connection between what we think and what we do increasingly is fueling the idea that we can and should try to control people’s thoughts—not by encouraging good ones through education, culture, philosophy, role models and positive reinforcement, but by preventing bad thoughts through punishment, enforced conformity, censorship, and linguistic controls.

The civil rights movement, once dedicated to wiping out discrimination, which is a kind of conduct, now focuses on eliminating bigotry and bias, a form of thought. Hate crime legislation extends penalties for criminal acts beyond the act itself to what the criminal was thinking while he committed it.  The term “hate speech” is frequently used to describe any intense negative opinion as a way of both suppressing and de-legitimizing political opinion. The label effectively argues that an opinion, even a reasonable opinion by itself, should be shunned and even suppressed based on the “illegitimacy” of the thought process used to arrive at it.

As many predicted, this device or tendency (which you call it depends in part on how cynical you are) has intensified with the election of our first African American president, allowing the kind of intense opposition rhetoric, satire, condemnation, hyperbole and ridicule that has been directed at virtually every president before him to now be characterized as hate speech, or proof of racial prejudice. People, of course, have a right to engage in this tactic, but it is wrong.

Over on Facebook, over a million people have joined a fan page called “DEAR LORD, THIS YEAR YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE ACTOR, PATRICK SWAYZIE. YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE ACTRESS, FARAH FAWCETT. YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE SINGER, MICHAEL JACKSON. I JUST WANTED TO LET YOU KNOW, MY FAVORITE PRESIDENT IS BARACK OBAMA. AMEN”, inspired by a joke that is a lot older than Barack Obama, and probably older than Millard Fillmore. This is being characterized all over the web as a site that is “praying” for the death of the President. Ok. Personally, my guess is that relatively few involved with that site regards it as a prayer, but rather as a particularly nasty way to express dislike of Mr. Obama and his policies, but leave that aside: for the sake of simplicity, I’ll stipulate that it’s a prayer. It is a prayer with a political opinion attached however.

In response to this page, another Facebook page has been launched, this one a petition to have Facebook remove the anti-Obama site. A lot of my friends have joined it along with a lot of other Facebook users, oddly unaware that petitioning public or private entities to suppress speech, even offensive speech, is a dangerous business. They do this, of course, in full confidence that their opinions are good and right, and the opinions they are trying to suppress are bad and wrong. But what they are really doing is attempted bullying, and bullying aimed at offensive thought. Praying for the President’s death is a non-act if there ever was one, unless you really think a Facebook prayer has a shot at convincing the Lord Almighty into tossing a fireball at the White House.

This isn’t a First Amendment matter. Facebook can ban whatever it wants to. But the actions of the petition signers are at least as disrespectful of democratic principles and freedom of thought as the Obama “prayer” site is disrespecful of the President. The right way, in this nation, in this culture, to oppose offensive ideas, motives and words is to demonstrate with reasoning and rhetoric why they are misguided. Remember, nobody on Facebook has to look at the Obama prayer page who doesn’t want to. There is nothing wrong with trying to get an offensive billboard moved so you don’t have to look at it through your bedroom window, but it is wrong for you to try to make your personal assessment of acceptable or unacceptable messages, opinions and thoughts to become the standard by which thoughts are allowed to be communicated at all.

It doesn’t change the ethical equation, but if the petitioners would examine the prayer site, they would realize that leaving it up for all to see is the most effective way to undermine it. To call the messages on the site moronic would be charitable. It isn’t a hate site, it’s a sub-par education, hopeless spelling (the page’s title leaves out one of the “r’s” in “Farrah,” for example) and deficient IQ site. It argues against itself.

Even if the page were filled with sparkling, if hateful, repartee and brilliant, though racist, rhetoric, however, it would not justify silencing it. I know of no one who has signed the petition who would have done the same for a “Kill George Bush” Facebook page, and that is telling. The petition condemns hate, but what it really wants to stop is hate that the signatories don’t agree with. There is more than a little honesty and integrity problem there. Political argument should be won in a tournament of ideas, but by default, because one side has managed to get the other disqualified.

As is usually the case on Facebook, someone else has entered the battle of the Facebook pages, a tongue-in-cheek wag who has launched “A petition to remove groups that are petitioning to remove groups on Facebook.” I can’t determine who the creator is, but he understands.